It Shouldn’t Be This Hard

18 Jun 2025 Leave a comment

by writingforselfdiscovery in Bali, Portugal, The Farm, wisdom, Writing Tags: , , , , , ,

It’s a snippet from my latest vision board, before I knew what was developing on the horizon, back when unsettledness simmered just below the surface. It was preparing me, oblivious me, for the challenges ahead.

And here I am, sitting at my daughter’s monster kitchen island where the internet flows unhindered to my ancient HP.

The service here is vastly unlike at home, where I depend upon my Android’s moody hotspot to keep me connected. And when I’ve exhausted the 50 gigabytes of high speed, which I can do in less than a week, I’m suddenly cut off. Just like that. I have no television. No computer. I’m reduced to my phone’s data, using the tiny screen for movies and the minuscule keyboard for writing my books, my blogs, writing anything for that matter. Frustrating is too gentle a word for the inner rage.

There are options…

I can drive 45 minutes to the public library in Grand Rapids and use its wifi connection. I’ve haunted the place lately. The broad expanses of glass overlooking the Mississippi River and the soaring, beamed ceiling offer a stunning venue.

Or I could sit at any coffee shop, brewery, cafe, probably even Dairy Queen in that bustling town, and connect. I don’t want to appear ungrateful. It’s just that I would so much rather skip the inconvenience of the hour-and-a-half round trip and work from home.

When I imagined this week in Minneapolis, caring for Velo, the cat, who was not invited to accompany the family on vacation, I believed their dependable wifi would allow me to zip through the final steps of making my just-published book available for purchase to all my blog readers in no time. I’d design an Author’s Page, add some links, and presto! Done!

Reality can be such a downer.

Somehow, don’t ask me how, in an attempt to toggle a new page, I managed to mangle the website. It took hours to fix the mess. I made it private while I worked to redeem the wreckage so none of my subscribers (you) would witness my ineptitude. In my defense, WordPress is NOT the easiest platform to navigate. Come to find out, I couldn’t even accomplish the private part properly. Suddenly, my stats were climbing. People were accessing the site regardless of my frantic efforts to deter them.

Throughout the process, Velo probably heard words that aren’t allowed in this household, where my seven-year-old grandsons are strongly discouraged from voicing playground expletives. But my pressure valve sputters like a boiling teakettle when agitation mounts, and it’s crudely audible when I’m alone. Velo doesn’t count.

I persisted. At last my Author Page on https://writingforselfdiscovery.com/ went live. The cloud picture I chose to headline the site reflects my emotional landscape of the past several weeks, signifying the other thing that’s been harder than it should be.

The term, ungrounded, doesn’t do justice to my degree of inner chaos. Ever since Portugal, I’ve been out of sync with myself. I’ve gone through the motions of someone rooted to a place, trying to make it true. I created a huge flower bed, transplanted perennials, and bought a weed eater. I dug up oak seedlings and sowed them in my yard along with baby white pines. All the while, a thousand miles away and shimmering like a mirage, my new life was taking shape.

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I’m moving…again. It will be a radical shift, almost as jarring and liberating as the transition to Bali in 2012. This time it’s Minnesota to South Carolina, Midwest to eastern seaboard, Scandinavian brogue to southern drawl, country to city. It may be temporary – a blip on the landscape lasting a few months. Time will tell.

But what if…

What if I love it? What if it feels right? What if I’m needed? Wanted there? No wonder my head is a cloudy fog. But firm on the ground beneath is the certainty. Whatever this is, it’s what I want. It’s a leap into the unknown, and it’s just that kind of leap that, for me, makes life worth living.

SOLAR ECLIPSE: Compelled toward CHOICE

22 Feb 2016 2 Comments

by writingforselfdiscovery in Bali, Holidays, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

solar eclipse embodiedA Solar Eclipse happens the morning of March 9th, 2016. Energetically this is a moment of profound choice that will deeply affect your fate for the next 19 years.

When I read that statement, my body tingled and sprouted goosebumps.

The event is the equivalent of a monumental power surge supporting transitions. Actually, forcing is the better word. In this crucible of opportunity we are forced to choose only one specific and critically important area of focus in order to make use of the energy.

In recent months I’ve felt a minor irritation, like a wasp circling my head, not too close but close enough that I can’t fully relax into my life. I’ve noticed uncertainties toward specific writing goals and family relationships. The questions spin through my mind, searching but finding no answers.

In the past, these sensations have preceded major adjustments to the status quo. Evolution cannot remain static. It’s essential to listen to the sounds pounding in the psyche, the discomforts rattling through the nervous system calling attention to the need for change. On one hand, the past offers a familiar path, the karmic conditions that dictated what life looked like before. Slipping into old patterns is tempting. But ahead, in the strange mystery of the future lies limitless growth. It challenges everything and promises only to pay your experiences forward with wisdom and empathy.

solar eclipse islandMarch 9th is also Nyepi, the Balinese New Years Day. It follows a night of chaotic wildness as dark spirits are driven out and the island experiences a re-set of benign peace. The eclipse and Nyepi taken together are formidable in their potential for effecting transformation.

It’s entirely probable that this supercharged moment provides the ideal frequency to connect with life’s purpose and core soul unity, part of the answer to Why Am I Here.

On the morning of March 9th as the sun disappears and utter quiet reigns over the island, planes grounded, the airport closed, people confined to their homes for silent meditation and reflection, I’ll sit in waiting, acknowledging the power of wounds, empty spaces and the sacred darkness, refusing to re-live those wounds or identify with them. But as I sit, will I contract with the universe to discard karmic patterns and re-assert my agency in the process of consciously driven evolution? Will I re-examine my belief systems, questioning roles, rules, and narratives I have held as sacred, unquestionable, or absolute? Will I release and walk away from anyone or anything that isn’t on my energetic wavelength? Will I trust my intuition, gut instincts, imagination and dreams?

Will I resolve to do only what is mine to do?

I’m excited and more than a little apprehensive. I’ve enjoyed four years of deep healing and explosive joy, unequaled by anything in my former life. It’s been a time of sacred idleness, a holy reprieve and I sense the chapter ahead will stretch me. On March 9th I’ll seal my fate for the next nineteen years. Will I lean into the unknown, embrace fears and plunge headlong into the vortex of change? Or will I stagnate, immobilized by the immensity of my own power to choose?

 

Credits:  Quoted text from an article, The Eclipse – Another Roll of the Dice, by Lorna Bevan

Image #1  –  http://www.globallightminds.com

Image #2  –  Holly Sierra, American Magical Realism Painter

 

 

Drinking from Blackwater Pond

08 Jan 2015 5 Comments

by writingforselfdiscovery in Bali, Poetry Tags: , , , , , ,

black-water-pond-john-gusky

black-water-pond-john-gusky

Mornings at Blackwater
by Mary Oliver

For years, every morning, I drank
from Blackwater Pond.
It was flavored with oak leaves and also, no doubt,
the feet of ducks.
And always it assuaged me
from the dry bowl of the very far past.

What I want to say is
that the past is the past,
and the present is what your life is,
and you are capable
of choosing what that will be,
darling citizen.

So come to the pond,
or the river of your imagination,
or the harbor of your longing,
and put your lips to the world.

And live
your life.

I may have said this before, Mary Oliver is my hero. She surprises me. She uses common words in uncommon ways so I have to pay attention. I can’t get lazy and just assume I know where she’s going.

This poem is particularly significant as Ms. Oliver speaks of ‘the dry bowl of the very far past,’ and ‘the river of your imagination…the harbor of your longing.’ Then she urges that you ‘put your lips to the world and live your life.’

What I love about this is that you realize from her beginning stanza that the world is Blackwater Pond. It isn’t clean or clear. Rather, the trees weep their leaves into it’s depths. Wild creatures swim and feed in it’s murkiness. It’s gritty and real, and this is what she suggests that we put to your lips and drink. 

When we do that, as she did every day, you connect with the present and move beyond the distresses of the past. You begin to see things differently, to imagine, and to dream, until finally you are capable of making different choices. You begin to live your life.

Give yourself permission to let go of whatever is holding you back. Don’t allow the past, or your perception of the present, or your mistrust of the future, to confine you.  Your life can be so much bigger than that.