The house we’re renting sits up on a hill. It has a wall of windows and makes me feel like I'm in a tree house. It’s so different compared to the house we sold in the fall; it was full of timber beams and wide-planked floors and felt like being on a ship. Certain vantage points in our old house gave me a feeling like I could walk right onto the river’s surface. Now we’re nestled up in the trees looking down on the river. This perch offers a whole new perspective of and on the river and a new relationship with the wind. Where I used to sit with the trunk of the trees now I feel like I’ve climbed the trucks and am sitting in a nook where two branches meet.

I woke up Monday morning to a sense of anticipation in the air. The Woodpeckers are a peckin', the Osprey are perched back in their nests, the Geese are at the pond, the Peepers are a peepin' in the evenings, and the Robbins are hopping about in the growing grass. Change and birth is visible to the eye and tangible to the hands and feet. If you listen hard enough, you can hear the Earth birthing a symphony of new life. No wonder this transitional time from winter to spring feels like being in the in-between and always asks so much of my physical and emotional bodies.

Happy Spring!

It's hard to believe that we are approaching the last days of March. The transition to spring has always been a bit tricky for me. The shift in temperature and how it lands in my body and bones always leaves me a bit achy and rattled. My walks with Max are different as the landscape has shifted so dramatically. All the ice and snow has melted revealing what’s been lying underneath all these months. Dirty paws and boots from the mud leave me mourning the snow cover and crunch underneath my steps at night.

Wednesday marked a powerful new moon in Pisces. I took some time to sense into Pisces and saw images of connectedness, empathy, compassion and intuition. This particular new moon was deeply aligned with Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system with a magnetic field around 14 times stronger than the magnetic field found on Earth. Jupiter asks for expansion, expanding what we are planting through our actions, words and thoughts. As I sit witnessing our neighbors in the Ukraine being invaded by Russia and in return birthing more refugees to the world, the continued impact of Covid-19, radical political discord, and increasingly open acts racial injustice, I am left to question: what I am doing in this material world and what are my thoughts generating?

Max and I often journey through a neighbor's field on our afternoon walks. It's a great opportunity for exercising his nose and exercising my balance as I never quite know when that crunchy layer of snow is going to give way under my foot and turn into soft, hollow snow. As I move across the partially frozen field, I have to really tune into the moment to anticipate how my feet are going to be received by the ice and snow. Yet, the sound of the crunching snow as my ice cleats hit the surface of the ground often propels my awareness and memory back to the energy of another time, something distinct from my experience and memories in this body. This might sound crazy, but it isn't a rare occurrence for me. I've learned to ask- "Is this ancestral?" And then ask "Is this the energy of a past life?" And sometimes the answer is - "Both." I have seen through my own personal shamanic healing and through working with shamanic clients, that we can have a previous incarnation along an ancestral line. I have experienced how those energies can become tangled, perhaps even confused and amplified.

The wind spirits are certainly with us! It felt and sounded like the Ancients were arriving last Friday evening. I heard voices from the Tree People as they shook and swayed, voices that I've never heard before. I was in awe that these voices were sharing space and time with me. The woods were alive with sound and dance. It was simultaneously invigorating and humbling. That evening asked me to become fully present to Great Spirit and to the Great Turning we are now a part of.

Happy New Year! I hope you rang in the new year in the way that was just right for you! We had a fabulous fish fry and played many rounds of Golden Girl's bingo in honor of Betty White's passing.

I have been holding the vibration of the laughter and fun we shared as my intention for 2022. This time of year can be triggering, evoke anxiety, and at the same time be a window looking out to great change. I have been asking myself, "where is the love here, where is the lightness here," as I navigate through January's waters. Advertisements and the voice of the collective can produce messaging that targets some of our innermost insecurities. Perhaps it hits the right note to encourage change and on the other hand it might debilitate and paralyze.

Here we are, just footsteps from the year 2022. I hope that your holiday season has been filled with health, laughter and peace!

It's a wintery wonderland in my area. When the first snow arrived I was over-joyed. The snow cover brings me a great sense of peace. Even though I still struggle with the lessening light, I find that the snow lights up my evening walks - my favorite part of my day. I love listening to the snow and ice crunch underneath my feet, pausing to search for what is stirring in the woods, and looking up to the night sky. These winter evenings are when the veil feels quite thin for me. I feel deeply connected to the spirit and life within everything around me. The roots and lessons of the ancients and of my lineages are potent; they feel alive and tangible. There's a certain quality of mystery in the oxygen I breathe, yet there's nothing that needs to be solved in this mystery for me. It's a lesson for me of being okay with dancing in the question, living in the question, and knowing that there are moments, times, days, years, chapters, lifetimes where an answer isn't needed.

The stirring and power of the winds have ushered us to the midpoint of the month. To me it feels like a marker, a threshold of sorts, a threshold now crossed as the winds carry me to the end of the year. As I reflect on 2021, I have a hard time teasing out 2020. They feel married together in my mind and in my emotional body. It's a much broader and bigger sensation of good-bye then in other years. It feels like quite a grand emotional review, and I find potent grief.

Welcome December! Hard to believe we have arrived at the last chapter of the year 2021. What a ride, or shall I say, a read it has been. I find during times like holidays or in the approach to a milestone, many decisions can be made and storylines can be created energetically, either consciously, unconsciously, or both. These decisions impact us in a myriad of ways. They can cause us harm, protect and shield us, block vibrancy, or even let in joy and remove blocks that have been curbing us from walking our authentic path. Culturally powered occurrences like holidays can energize some and deplete others. They can open wounds and heal wounds. As I muse with the energy of it all I find myself feeling free and encumbered at the same time. How curious it all is. The fascinating tension of noticing and of growing.

Happy October!

I hope that the wind of this new season's arrival has been gentle. I’ve taken a couple of weeks' hiatus from writing, as Jason and I solidify the sale of our house. We arrived at the decision to sell only seven weeks ago. What a whirlwind it has all been! (Though we did hold out an extra three years after knowing that the time was coming.) Time has its own beat for each of us, and I have my own dance within the beats it plays for me.

As Jason and I cleaned out the garage this past weekend, memories and emotions flooded my system. My grandmother's treasured holiday ornaments and milk glass, Jason’s first grade class picture and well loved action figures, my wedding dress, all squeezed in amongst old cardboard boxes and the lawn mower. A garage is such a fascinating place. A place where we keep our cars and trash and then some of our most personal memories and keepsakes. Oh how it can become cluttered and then cleaned out just to be cluttered again. Every time I clean the garage out, I swear that I will keep it organized, and I never manage to do it.

This latest clean out has been different. We dug all the way back and opened the boxes that have been carried from one home to another, carried unopened, stacked and kept but forgotten. We needed, I needed, to be with and sort through all of it so that the mystery could lift and I could actually decide if this years long period of hanging on had come to completion.

Happy September!

It's hard to believe that we will be welcoming the fall winds and witnessing the grand changing of color in the trees in a matter of weeks. It still feels very summer here in Mid-Coast Maine. My mom was visiting for a few days and we were sweating it out cleaning up the gardens and strategizing on trimming trees and bushes. All of this activity and the anticipation of more changes that fall will bring leaves me in a space of grieving endings. With that grieving there's deep sadness of what was, and great excitement about the possibility of new adventures. The emotional waves I'm experiencing prompted my spirit guides to remind me that it's in endings that beginnings are birthed. They have asked me how I can be with change (both the growth and death spectrums) with integrity and with grace. I'm seeing that I need to re-learn, to unlearn and then ask to be consciously taught in the here and now.

I’ve been thinking of my childhood experiences at and in the ocean as August closes its 2021 chapter. I remember spending much time in the water when my family would go to the beach. Oh how I loved and feared the ocean. I always thought I was stronger than I was and was constantly reminded that the ocean has its own rhythm and immense power. It’s an entity, a world unto itself. I found that the world of the ocean was filled with moments, split seconds of time when I was asked to sense my relationship to and position in the water, and to sense the same for the tide, for those around me, and for the oncoming waves.

I don't know much about fishing. I've only gone a few times in my life, but I do have a deep affinity for fish flies and can spend hours in the fishing section at L.L. Bean - if that adds a bit to my meager experience. I mention this because the energy of the last nine months for me personally have felt like untangling a series of complex knots in fishing wire while minding the hook and mechanics of the rod as part of the uncoiling. And when the work is accomplished, I have all the parts of the whole mechanism in their natural state to launch out a smooth cast. The experience of untangling these personal knots has taught me the need to surrender to divine timing. It has asked me to trust that All is unfolding in its natural order.

The summer season arrived with a bang at our house. Backs thrown out, sleepless nights, old wounds, trauma and patterns were given life again. To say it was confronting would be an understatement. In the heat of it all, I knew that a very old story was revisiting to make a statement. A statement yelled through a bull horn. A statement to show what fits and no longer fits anymore.

I've been sitting with words from a new space of curiosity recently. I even noticed myself stop mid-sentence the other day as I realized that I didn't want to breathe life into the words that were about to pour out of my mouth. It was quite an interesting moment in time. It felt as though I were peering down on a word search puzzle and weeding through a collection of letters to create the right word, the right expression.

Nature in my small part of the world feels quite abundant despite all that stands against it. I realize I can now see this abundance because I am choosing to see it.

During my daily walks this week, I just listened and noticed. On Monday morning the River spoke to me. It said, "I am the the sea and the sea is me." This statement reminded me of the Jennifer Williamson affirmation I shared in last week's newsletter, "I am on purpose." This affirmation challenges many parts of me and lights up many parts of me. It invites me to take on and step into a new sense of responsibility for my life, for living.

For me, hollowing myself is daily life-long work. I have seen that if I am not actively working on becoming hollow, then more and more energy gets trapped, clogged and lodged in me. I can become more vulnerable to unhealthy attachments, falling into old patterns and living in and out of distorted thoughts of myself and others.