Swimming in Glue

I recently stopped taking one of my drugs that my shrink has actually been trying to get me off of for some time now.  I'm not now entirely sure why I was so resistant, in hindsight.  When I first started taking it, I think it was doing me some good.  But after a while, it had...

Clean(er) Slate

When last I wrote, I was embarking on the ambitious task of transforming three different areas of my life: spiritually, physically, and metaphysically.  Let's go over how I did in all three areas. Physically, I started off well, and was then immediately hampered by injury.  It seems my hamstring tendons in my left leg get...

Clean Slate

It's been "make a change" week in my life.  I've had several changes I've wanted to make in my life for quite some time now.  Now that I'm in my early 40s, I'm feeling pressed for time on some of them, as though if I don't get them implemented now, they'll never get done.  Such...

Back to School

Today was the first day back to school for us here in Austin.  We've all been looking forward to it.  Just as everyone groans for the end of the school year, so it is at the end of the summer, when we're all sick of each other and the child is booooooored.  Even of her...

Patterns

My good friend B has been helping me with my memoir.  She was telling me that I need to make it more personal in places, and suggested there needs to be a section where I talk about myself and how I deal with the world: what my patterns are that help me cope with things....

Openness

As I was saying in a post last Saturday, there's been a lot of crying lately, either out of frustration or out of sadness or out of whatever.  Crying requires openness.  I can't be tightened up and still cry.  Being sad about the cats lately has taught me that I have to open up and...

How Do I Pray? Let Me Count the Ways

It seems to me that there are probably as many ways to pray as there are people on the Earth.  We also seem to group together according to how similarly we pray, I've noticed. When first I asked the question of myself, "How do I pray?", the answer was, "I don't."  Immediately followed by, "Bullshit."...

Stuck Again

When we last left our intrepid spiritual traveler, her altars had just reassembled themselves. Since then, I've just been letting them occupy their space and sink their energy tendrils into the house. I've also continued to work on my spiritual scrapbook like a madwoman. I don't know what it is about that particular project that...

Naked

I've been doing this groovy "make your own spiritual path" thing put together by Dianne Sylvan called Spiritual Nomad. I'm way behind, still on week one (everyone else is on week three). It took me a really long time to do the first exercise. I probably over thought it, or at least tried to be too...

Anger-Fear-Compassion

The spectre of anger has hung over my family for at least five generations.  Reading our genealogical history is like walking through a museum of dysfunction.  Alcoholism, drug abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, domestic abuse, emotional abuse, etc.  So much abuse that the word 'abuse' becomes non-sensical when I say or think it.  I think...

Breathe

Breaaaaaathe.  Seems simple until you can't.  About a week ago, I started having trouble taking a deep breath.  I could take one about every 15 breaths or so, but the rest of the time, forget it.  Coincidentally, it was the day after a great deal of smoke descended upon our fair city.  Suddenly a problem...

Hot Hot Hot

"I tried not to think about the words SEARING.FLESH." - Fight Club It has been blazingly hot lately.  On Tuesday, I measured a temperature of 110F on my back porch.  Some people get SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder)  in the winter.  I get it in the summer.  After all, there's not much going outside.  Not if...