Our Holy Dreams of Yesterday

 

 

“…our holy dreams of yesterday are gone” - Brandi Carlisle - This Time Tomorrow

Grief comes on like a dark wild storm betimes.  It either comes to me or my youngest daughter.  Then she tells me, or shares what triggers it, and we are off to the dark races again.  No matter the problems she had, we had with her, she was my sweet adopted, so wanted, baby, my darling girl, my troubled teen, my unhealthy adult daughter.  There was always hope before.  All our hopes of reconciliation are gone.  We had so many but this time it will not happen. 

All our holy desires now are that she has finally found peace.  That she will openly receive all the love her brothers and sisters, her father, and I, are sending to her to lighten her way. 

Losing a child, a daughter, a sibling, an auntie, has brought us all to our knees. We look at all she brought into our life and each of us are determined to remember the good things.  We are trying to dissolve the shadows with the light of what love we always had for her.  I do not know where all her six siblings are in their grief work.  It has been awkward, right from her funeral until now.  I have not had the opportunity to sit with each of them.  I have had phone calls, texts, emails, and we have had deep and loving discussions with them.  The closest to her was my youngest daughter and my granddaughter.  I know the quote above speaks volumes for them.  I am here as a sounding board for them.  I hold my own grief close to my heart and try not to add to theirs. 

There are still people I have not seen since her death that are offering condolences.  Condolences, now, only bring the shadows back. It forces me to enter that dark place again for a time.  There is much grief work yet for me to do.  It is no longer overwhelming but it weighs heavily on my heart and soul. 

This grief is like no other.  One can lose mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, soulmates.  I have.  Each is different in their place in our hearts.  But this… this has been truly whipping storms and dark nights of the soul.  Each of us will get through this, but there will always be those moments, hours, days, that come on and force us to do the individual, personal, grief work. 

Bless us who are bent low as willows on a bank of a stream of tears because of such griefs. 

©Carol Desjarlais 9.25.23

 

Happy Mabon

 

 

Welcome to Mabon, the fall equinox, the second harvest, the time of Octoberfest, a time for feasting on harvests, and a time to move into the cinnamon and apple time of year.  This equinox is the time of equal day and night.  It is a time of deepening spiritual awareness as we reflect on last season’s bounty and lessons.  Gourds and pumpkins peer through their dusty leaves with fat cheeks beaming at the cooler weather.  Deer are crunching through falling leaves.  We are reaping what we sowed last season.  What work have we done in preparation for this season?  What sacrifices have we made?  We have come far. We change with Mother Nature.

It is a time for giving thanks, even though crops may be meagre…even though last season gave us challenges, some we may not have conquered…at least, here we are and there are things to be grateful for nonetheless.  This is a time to give of our bounty, to give service, to be generous.  We need to begin to prepare our home as our sanctuary for the coming cold hard months.  We gather in all ways, including gathering with friends and family and gaining new connections to balance and create harmony in our life. 

Decorate your home with symbols of Mabon:  leaves, pinecones, seeds, cornucopia.  Decorate with oranges and reds, yellows, browns, dark yellows and dark greens.  Serve up food with corn, squash, beans, pumpkins and squashes, ciders, root veggies.  Burn herbs of yarrow, rosemary, sage.  Place jasper, amber, citrine, cat’s eyes.  Decorate with sunflowers. Thistles and marigolds.  Honor Persephone on your altar. 

Medicines for this season are the following: 

Lavendar can be used as oil or burning incense sop that you can draw peace to you.  It cleanses wounds, soothes burns.  It helps to burn at nighttime for sleep, to burn when needing calmness.  It is good to use it to purify your home. 

Apples are water and earth fruits that symbolize love and eternity.  Apple leaves can be crushed and used as poultice against infections.  You can peel and dry the peelings, crush them and burn them, for cleansing your home. 

Cinnamon is of air and fire element.  It [promotes peace and spiritual attunement, besides drawing enough finances to you.  Bake with it, add it to teas, use as balm.  It is good for digestion issues, blood sugar issues and is said to help with cholesterol. 

In your art journal, create pages of releasing.  Do at least one page of “Letting go”.  Whenever worry or anxiety comes, do a page of things you need to release . Remember, this is the time of Persephone’s return to the underworld and the grief of her mother at the deal made that she would come in spring and go back to the underworld, to Hades who had kidnapped her, in the late fall.  I am a grieving mother.  I get the symbolism of the story of Persephone and her mother Demeter.     

I am going to Alberta to take care of my brother for a couple of weeks while his wife, bless her heart, gets some respite.  I am looking forward to the time with him.  I am looking forward to the pace and change.  I can have some respite as well.  I can process some emotions.  I will get healthy there, I am sure.  It has been a hard few months. 

Happy Mabon!

©Carol Desjarlais 9.24.23

My Mabon Bowl

https://www.morenascorner.com/2016/08/diy-leaf-bowl.html

 

Self-Soothing

 

 

“It is so funny that we women question our stress-relief strategies and feel shame around them: “Am I doing this right?  Am I doing this wrong?”  There’s no right or wrong way to live life or relieve pressure.  It is taking a break…the only measure that matters I, “Does this bring me joy?  Does this calm me down?” – Susie Moore, life coach and author.

Why do women feel guilty when they nurture self by taking time for ourselves?  Sometimes we need to self-soothe.  Look at all the extra stress that is put on us, in life, for these last few years. 

Sometimes, watching a series, sometimes right from beginning to end in one sitting, can afford us the opportunity to just be, to just allow the calming slow spread of the series to envelop us for a time.  One of my favorite series is Ricky Gervais, “Derek!”   It is such a sweet series.  It touches right to the furthest reaches of the heart.  It might bring a tear or two, but that too, is stress relief. 

And NAPS.  Once napping was such a guilty pleasure for me and I had little time to do it.  But, after being retired, I have learned how absolutely wonderful it is to rejuvenate early afternoon.  Even a twenty-minute power nap makes a huge difference in my health, my thinking, my emotions and my spirit.  Three quarters of my life, I could have used a real nap.  Had I known the benefits, I would have found time, somewhere, somehow, to have a nap. 

Arting is my best way of soothing self.  My little garden and its twinkling lights, soothe me.  Having a place, my own special sacred space in my gazebo is the place I go to self-soothe.  Not everything we do means life or death to anyone or anything.  We do not need to do it all all of the time.  We need to be able to decompress.  And, it is NOT a guilty pleasure.  Self-care is learning to decompress.  Decompressing is self-care.  If we do not decompress, we are creating pressure cooker and building up negative reactions.  When we blow, and it can be over the tiniest of things, we do something that we should feel guilty about.

Creativity through arting, in any genre, is a way to decompress.  I am addicted to creativity and know , absolutely, that this is a way to decompress.  For a time, in the creative process, the world goes away.

That is what self-soothing is to me – a time and space to have the world go away.  What does it mean to you and how do you get it?

©Carol Desjarlais 9.22.23