crown of violets

Princess Lotus by ~marumiyan on deviantART

I recognize Halloween/Samhain/All Hallow’s Eve as the end of one year and the beginning of a new one and a time to reflect.

Last year saw many changes for me as I sought to align who I was with who I wanted to be. A few months in, I set some goals to help me develop my courage and take more chances. I ended up working as an indoor sex worker, fulfilling a desire I’d been too scared to realize for over a year. I also ended up getting arrested, having to tell my parents about my chosen profession, and learn to navigate through a sea of assumptions, accusations, and stereotypes about the work. I’d been very lucky that my focus on honesty and courage had pushed me to be open about my work to most people I knew.

It’s been four months since the arrest, which literally turned my life upside down. I haven’t taken any clients since, surviving on temporary work in different places while I tried to sort out what I was going to do. I didn’t want to stop; I enjoyed the freedom to work only a few hours a week and having work that I enjoyed and challenged me, but it was obvious I couldn’t continue the way I had been. I’d also been experimenting with a raw and organic food diet for about six weeks before the arrest and unfortunately couldn’t continue without the income from my work.

I crashed, feeling depressed and stuck. I spent about almost two months trying to get myself back together. I felt angry and frustrated, unable to work the job I wanted nor really talk about what had happened for fear of retaliation from the police or attorneys handling the case. Near the end of August, I was blessed to be given the chance to go away for a few days to the mountains to re-center and get a break. During the trip, I had my nose buried in a fantastic book by Starhawk called “The Fifth Sacred Thing”. Feeling very inspired by the co-operative community and soulful living of the characters and Starhawk’s vision on how we can create a society that supports life and beauty, I threw myself back into the volunteering I’d done the year before with food security and community development.

I also felt inspired to become more involved in activism, joining Radical Cheerleaders and helping organize events and rallies on feminist issues. I’ve spent my time going to food security and community development events and networking with different people who have an interest or role in shaping the world into a place that is more fair and nurturing for all.

In my personal life, I’ve been learning what it means to create a nurturing home for myself with a chosen family, as we welcomed another roommate and two more furbabies bringing the total in our house to four humans and three felines. I’ve been trying to keep myself grounded by dancing daily and working through the angry and fearful emotions the events of the summer brought up.

This year brought a lot of new sexual and romantic experience for me, through work, crushes, and short-lived romances, leading me to ask lots of questions about my sexual identity, my female identity, and what inspires desire in me. I also felt the need to re-devoted myself to an earth-based spiritual path, something I haven’t done since I was a teenager. I’ve been working with the archetype of Venus as expressed through Aphrodite for the last couple of years and my focus this autumn shifted to include Ishtar, another divine aspect of Venus, as I felt the desire to learn to access the warrior in me and use that strength.

This autumn marks the end of an important cycle for me. It’s been seven years since my most influential spiritual awakening. I’m grateful for the experiences I’ve had and support I’ve received. The wheel is turning and it’s time to turn my thoughts towards a new year and new beginning.

The other week, at the “Love and Other Delusions” show, I met a woman from out west. I noticed her walk in and introduced myself when I saw her talking with a friend of mine after the show. She invited Roommate X and I for drinks with her, one of the performers and the performer’s friend. Roommate X bowed out and I went alone. I was so nervous I drank half my drink before finding them. In between conversations about the performer’s career, our various jobs, astrology, and hockey – our knees knocked. I took a big sip of what was left of my drink. She asked to kiss me. Then she asked me home. ♥

And later on, she asked me to go camping in the MOUNTAINS. I just about died. She was driving back home in a few days and wanted company. I had never seen the mountains before, except for afar at the airport in Trinidad. We spent about four days in total together, one in Winnipeg talking, taking her dog to the park, listening to Indian chanting and Tracy Chapman – who is a great artist, and more talking, three driving and camping. I learned how to put up a tent, that I’m destined to find older Taurean dames deliciously dangereux, and that generosity of love and spirit is a beautiful thing in a human being. She was so lovely.

I ended up spending a day and a half in Banff by myself, which was pretty fun. I stayed in a hostel for the first time. My roommate worked for as a juvenile corrections officer in an other country, which was funny since my first court date was swiftly approaching. I spent a gorgeous afternoon in a beautiful garden near the edge of town, reading a book she had given me. It was called “The Fifth Sacred Thing” and it was written by Starhawk. I’ve never read any of Starhawk’s writing before, but I loved this book. I read it a second time on the 22-hour bus ride back to Winnipeg.

It’s about San Francisco, known as the City or the North, in the year 2048 where it has become a place where no one hungers, no one thirsts, no one lacks a home or companionship, and everyone acknowledges the four sacred things: fire, water, earth, and air – no matter their religion. Madrone is a healer in the City and ends up taking a journey to the South, down to Angel City where access to food and water is dependant on obeying the Four Purities, women can no longer work, and speaking a language other than english is considered deadly. Bird, a musician who grew up in the North, one day wakes up in a southern jail after been missing for ten years. He escapes and makes his way home to the city where water flows through the streets and tries to heal from his broken hands and heart. On his way, he learns that military armies of the South are preparing to invade the City, sparking the question can a non-violent society stand against the anger and violence of a culture that seeks to dominate? What is stronger… violence or the fifth sacred thing – spirit.

Through the book, Starhawk shows a utopian vision of how we can create an abundant future… and the likely alternative. The book speaks to everything I worry about and question when I look at the world and my own choices. Which direction are we heading: the enslavement of all or the freedom of all? The lack or the abundance? What kind of choices are we making?

This trip was so fulfilling in so many ways. It was the perfect way to close my summer. I’ve felt more active every day, more able to give, more able to show love, stronger. We’re entering into the harvest and I feel that season of transition coming, shaking things up.

We are halfway through 2009, which I decided some months ago would be the year that I built up my courage muscles. Since I started, I’ve learned a lot about what courage really means to me.

When I first started this challenge, I focused on the ways in which I let fear compromise what I thought I believed in. I left a job that no longer served me. I told the truth about things that I’d lied about in the past. I even started telling everyone I knew about my work as a way to push past the confines that living a life of fear had placed around me.

As I set different challenges for myself and accomplished them, eventually I came to a space where there was no clear path. I had scraped away the first layer of things I wanted to change and I was left with much deeper challenges.

When we let ourselves be ruled by fear or the constraints of society, it’s easy to privately rebel. I used to spend so much time in other jobs writing about all the stories and art projects I could have been accomplishing. I would writes pages of notes that I would feel frustrated that I couldn’t develop beyond the small amount of time I had between other tasks. I felt resentful and frustrated that I couldn’t spend all day every day following my heart and passions. The first thing I thought I would accomplish once my time was free would be to barrel head first into completing these projects. After all, I would finally be free of all those silly restraints society had placed around me.

Once I changed jobs and started working in my chosen field with Sydnee and Winnipeg’s Finest, I had a lot of free hours on my hands that I could be doing anything with. Instead of being more productive, I found I was doing less than before. I ended up doing almost nothing. This went on for a few weeks before I decided I needed to understand what was going on.

After some time and thought, I realised that in the past I had been blaming jobs, peoples, and situations for things that I had complete responsibility for. Jobs, imperfect situations, or imperfect relationships had nothing to do with how much I was or wasn’t contributing to society. It was my personal drive and beliefs that dictated what and how much I was doing. I’d believed that we created our own circumstances for a long time, but now I was faced with the a darker side to it. I wasn’t acting in a way that I thought aligned with the beliefs I had chosen for myself. I wasn’t putting action to words because somewhere deep inside I was afraid to change.

We get comfortable with who we are, even if there are things we’d like to improve. We may dream of different things, but the courage to change is not something we always want to embrace. In many ways, I was extremely comfortable sitting on the sidelines, dreaming and not acting, and watching the experiments of others. Asking myself to change forced me to look at things I didn’t necessarily want to see about myself. The next step of acting on the desire to change asked me to call on compassion and will to rewrite a lot of the beliefs I carried around inside me that were holding me back.

Change like that doesn’t seem to come easy. It’s a constant process of shaping who I want to be in the world. It has to come from a place of love and strength. Strength to chose to act differently and continually embed new beliefs into my heart and mind, and love to forgive myself my faults and embrace what I am.

{For an introduction to Reiki, please visit the Wikipedia article.}

This past weekend I attended a two day Reiki workshop with Joe of Cosmic Tools. My friend Rae-annon had received her Level I and Level II attunements last November from Joe and ended up developing a friendship with him, often stopping by his shop to visit and have discussions with him.

Recently, she and I were talking about my work and some of the challenges I was noticing. I’ve always been sensitive and empathic and depending on the person, our relationship, compatibility, or strength of emotions my empathy at times would blur the line between what I was feeling and what the other person was feeling. At times, this can be a wonderful gift, leading to deeper understanding and connection with those I care about. Other times, it can be very distracting and even harmful to me, since I end up confusing where I’m really at with things I’ve picked up from other people. Since I would be seeing clients in a very intimate setting, with little to no knowledge as to what emotional and psychological baggage they’d be bringing into the space, we both felt it would be important for me to start taking steps to build boundaries between myself and who I was seeing and cleanse my spirit. Luckily, Joe was having a class the next week and I emailed him to sign up.

Joe became a Usui Reiki Master in 2005, a Karuna Reiki Master in 2006, and a Lightarian Reiki Master in 2007. He has participated in vision quests, sundance, Buddhist and Shamanic healing workshops, drumming circles, Reiki Shares, native sweats, motivational workshops and various forms of energy workshops. He’s currently studying shamanism.

The class started at ten Saturday morning, at the Natural Essentials space in Osborne Village on River Avenue. I arrived early and spent a few moments enjoying the sunshine on my face before heading to the class. I was the first student there, but the others weren’t far behind. There were three students in total: myself, a young man who we’ll refer to as A, and another young woman we’ll refer to as S. S and A had already met Joe, drawn to him by an advertisement for his class in a health magazine and having visited him a couple of times at his shop. We introduced ourselves to each other and Joe started the class.

His first step was to establish that he was a facilitator, not a guru. He invited us to chime in with our thoughts and experiences while he was sharing the course material with us, which set the tone for more round table discussion throughout the next two days which was very inviting. He asked us to share what had brought us there. We all spoke our individual stories on what had brought us there and what we were hoping to learn. The next few hours were spent learning the basic theory of reiki, a bit of history, but most of the teaching was shared through Joe’s personal experiences and stories of healing. We often found ourselves breaking away from the outline to share our experiences and discuss the ideas we were learning. It was a very stimulating class and I found myself quickly warming up to Joe and the other students.

Next we prepared ourselves for our attunements. We started with a guided sacred space meditation. Joe put on a cd and lead us through the meditation to establish a sacred space that we could return to during the course of our path. I hadn’t done a sacred space meditation since I was about seventeen and had some trouble at first silencing my mental chatter, but relaxed into it after a few moments.

By nature of what it is, a sacred space in your mind’s eye isn’t meant to be shared with others, so by necessity my description will be vague. My sacred space started off as a very earthy place, dark and deep in a forest. After a couple of moments, another completely different image filled my mind and I was torn between the two. I decided to relax and follow the second image, opening myself to the images and senses of it. It was a beautiful space, near the elements of sky and water, with a twilight light falling around it. It was filled with images and symbols that I’d often related to the Moon and I thought back to a day prior when I had been dancing and felt the desire to pray. I had been a bit perplexed at first, unsure whether I wanted to offer prayers to the Moon, who I’ve always felt a connection to, or Venus who I have been establishing a connection with. On reflection, my distress was a bit silly – you simply offer prayers where you feel drawn to – but at the time, I seemed to be very stuck on that question. During the meditation, I remembered those feelings and began to realize that the symbols I was seeing were symbols that could mean equally the Moon and Venus. I smiled a bit at that.

Joe finished the meditation and we kept our eyes closed while he walked around us, giving each of us our Level I attunement in turn. An attunement is a way of opening a new Reiki practitioner to the energy they will be working with. I focused on the different sensations I was feeling. I felt a heaviness around my forehead and crown, almost like a half-mask that felt tense and anxious. I also became aware of a heaviness around my shoulders and back that I’ve always equated with the idea of etheric wings.

After our attunment, Joe shared with us what he had felt and learned during the experience and we responded in kind. When my turn came, he spoke of a past life, which I’ve never had done before, where I had been a healer in South America and other talents. He told me something that I would find trouble with would be belief in my talents and blockages buried deep that didn’t necessarily come from me, but from certain people I’d spent a lot of time with. I found a lot of comfort from his words and the things that he had vocalized that I was struggling with. After that, we broke for lunch and I enjoyed a very good meal with my classmates at a nearby sushi restaurant. We continued our discussions and shared the different experiences and sensations we’d been feeling during the class. It was a lovely lunch.

After we returned, Joe asked us to pick out a quartz crystal to take home and it was time for us to practice and I volunteered to lay down on the table first. S had to excuse herself, so it was mostly Joe and A working on me. I don’t remember too much of my experiences on the table, except deep sense of relaxation and peace and the uncanny way Joe was able to identifying a blockage that has been veyr influential in my life within a few moments of me laying down. A shared some of what he had felt during the experience and different images he had picked up while working on me. We had gone way past the workshop schedule at that point, ending at seven thirty instead of five and I walked home feeling lighter and more like myself since I had before I moved.

The second day we started a bit later, at eleven instead of ten. We started off by finishing with the written notes, getting some background on spirit guides, symbols, and long distance reiki. Joe directed us to continue our practice and S laid down on the table to receive reiki from both A and myself. We closed our eyes, asked for protection from our respective deities, the attendance of good natured spirits, and invited healing for S’s highest good. We asked to become clear channels for spirit.

It’s hard to relate what I felt during my first experience giving someone reiki. I’ve always been aware of the sensation of energy across my palms and finger tips and the almost electric buzz. I started exploring with that sensation to see what I could pick up and learn. One of the points that Joe stressed during our class is that everyone’s experience is unique and that we should value our own intuition and instinct more than any written work or direction from a teacher. I soon became aware of the fact that I was feeling different aches in my body that I hadn’t felt a moment before. I asked Joe about it and he encouraged me to go to those areas and work there. The strongest sensation I felt during those moments was a deep sadness and a heaviness of heart. Tears gathered at the corners of my eyes and I relaxed into the work, feeling a compassion that was… serene. I followed my feelings, moving to different spots and whispering a few words to S when I felt moved to. I had a few flashes of intuition based on the nature of S’s role in her family life, similar to the sensations I pick up in my daily life but it was clearer and a little more concrete than what I normally feel. After the session, we shared with each other, delighted by the images and feelings we had shared and learning about the different ways our abilities complimented each other. We had had too many synchonicities during the class to really feel surprised by how our experiences were lining up.

A took his turn next and Joe asked us to pay special attention to his kundalini and develop our sense of that. I felt a little less nervous this time around and was able to enter the space a little more quickly than last time. The first thing I noticed with A and how working with him differed from working with S was that I felt flushed almost immediately, while with S my hands had felt quite cold. S experienced the same and actually had to stop at a certain point. Again, I had vague senses about A’s role in life and began identifying what a blockage felt like versus energy flowing freely. We were able to sense a change in vibration and heat when we actively sought to allow his kundalini to flow. At one point, Joe directed us to look at A’s face, which was unlined and seemed very young and peaceful. We finished the class by practicing long distance reiki on each other in pairs, with Joe participating due to the uneven number of students.

There’s no way for me to really express how wonderful my experience was. I took the class almost as a whim, thinking it would be a good skill to have in my line of work and with where I want to be in the future. I’m so grateful that I was able to experience this and learn the stories of Joe, S, and A. There’s so much that can’t be shared yet, but my understanding of what I experienced will unfold as I practice with my new skill.

I was born in Germany to a Caribbean mother and Canadian father. My father served in the Canadian army, which is why they were there. I spent most of my life growing up in Canada, but between my mother’s tendency to move around, my father relocating because of job and family, their divorce, and my own nomadic nature – I can count twenty different places I’ve lived since we moved back to Canada when I was three.

Last weekend, I moved for the fifth time in a year. I spent the last five days recovering from all the changes and the draining situations I allowed myself to get emotionally caught up in. I spent a lot of time thinking about the rise and fall in my energy and how I was responding to the new direction my life was taking.

I’m very good at living out of a suitcase. Sometimes I think I’m a little too good at it. I never really developed the habit of settling into a place, always thinking I’d wait until I was in a place I knew I’d be in for long. I’ve known this to be a weakness of mine for quite a while, but I don’t think I ever really felt the strain of it as accutely as this recent move.

I don’t think I’ll stop moving around – there’s so many things I want to see and explore – but there’s a better way to do it than leaving myself drained and exhausted. There’s an imbalance because of my poor skills at grounding myself. Even in nomadic people, there’s a way of choosing and setting up your campsite so that for the time you are there, it is home.

By nature, I’m very giving. This is a both a skill and a failing, because I give to others before giving to myself. I focus on others and give away my time, my power, and my energy – I don’t stay centered on my path or my pleasure. I think of what I can do to serve others in almost every venture and ignore how I can serve myself. This isn’t sustainable and when I become too drained, I fold in on myself and want nothing to do with the outside world. It’s like a pendulum swinging and causes more stress than growth.

This morning I took a look around my room and thought about what I wanted to create there. I thought about the people I am living with and how wonderful it is to share their home. I think of Pandora and how strange it is how much having an animal share your space makes it so much more special. I wanted to create sacred space, not just for a passing moment of connection or safety – but as a root connection that I can draw nourishment from as I grow into my dreams and learn to share myself with the world around me.

Even if I can feel the pull of places yet explored and dreams not yet realized, I have to learn how to be where I am and love it wholly. For all my awkwardness, my weakness, my uncertainty, my struggle to create something beautiful. The present is all I really have.

Broken Heart
Originally uploaded by Gabriela Camerotti

I decided this year would be my year to build my courage, while carrying forward my gift of a loving and compassiionate heart. The past months I’ve made challenges for myself and achieved them, building my strength and breaking free of the fear that once ruled my decisions. The biggest challenge so far has been one that I didn’t expect and couldn’t plan for, but has been teaching me some great lessons about myself and my heart.

One of my challenges was to come clean about a lie I’d told when I was sixteen. The last person I had to tell was one of my closest friends, who has been one of the most important people in my life for the past six years. I’ve always cared deeply for her, but something in our relationship changed that day.

We had actually been living quite separate lives for a while and I couldn’t get a hold of her to tell her the truth in person, though I’d left messages and sent an email. She heard it from a mutual acquaintance and called me to talk about it. I went to see her and after clearing the air somehow ended up in her arms in an intense kiss. I still can’t quite recall how it happened.

The next week or two was a roller coaster. Wanting her passionately brought up new challenges related to past relationships. She has been a catalyst for amazing growth for me. She mirrors my own giving heart and was the first person I could begin to open myself to. She has shared both the best and worst of my life.

I wrestled with the shadows of an open and receptive heart and fought the urge to push the whole situation away. After all, I’d just starting taking clients as a companion. Was pursuing a romantic relationship what I wanted? I’d never really considered how having a personal intimate relationship would manifest while being a companion. I had been so focused on what I was creating for myself, I didn’t think of how another person would fit into that. How much of my time and energy would go where?

Having an intimate relationship with her in particular would put us in unknown territory. We’ve grown up together. We’ve been witness to some truly messy growth spurts and energy cycles, many of which we’ve acted out on each other. Our greatest strength has always been that we’ve both made a commitment to love each other as unconditionally as we are able. We both lead very spiritual and independant lives, and have a history of codependant relationships. Codependency happens when instead of nurturing ourselves, we nurture someone else and expect that person to fulfill our needs. Instead of bringing a whole to the relationship, codependency is about halves. We energetically polarise and instead of completing the cycle of giving and receiving ourselves, we give and expect someone else to complete the exchange by fiving. Neither of us has chosen that in a long time, but I’ve been working with old ghosts of fears and releasing them, so that energy was very present.

I also worried about how a relationship between us would develop. We have been children together, each other’s mothers, friends, sisters. I had my first spiritual companionship and sexual healing experience with her. But my love for her never felt passionate until that day. I felt like something had aligned in me.

Overwhelmed by conflicting thoughts and desires, I sought refuge at a friend’s place to vent my fears and thoughts. I ended up forgetting a very special necklace there that Sarah at Glamourkin had custome made for me last fall to celebrate how much healing gardening had brought into my life.

After letting myself sit with all the things I was afraid of, I decided that I wanted to try. After all, it was my year to build my courage and not let fear stop me. The universe had chosen a challenge for me that went deeper than I could have imagined, but I wanted to meet it. I talked to her and asked that she think about what she wanted. I tried to act with grace, openness, and courage and was so proud of how I approached. I felt incredible.

And then, she turned me down.

I was heartbroken. It had seemed so perfect and so congruent with the growth I was experiencing. It had seemed like it took so much for me to more forward and open myself. But more importantly, I loved her deeply and wanted to see what would happen if we explored this new dimension to our relationship.

All of her reasons had been the same things that I myself had been struggling with and I had to respect that we had come to different conclusions. I made a commitment to love her unconditionally and it was that I chose to renew. I turned my attention towards processing the experience and working with the parts of me that it had unearhted.

It was difficult. The next few times I saw her, I tried to process what had happened and my attraction. I felt that she was attracted to me too, but honoured her decision.

A week later, I made plans to visit the same friends who I’d stayed with before. They returned my necklace and I realised that the new moon was approaching. I was mystified to learn the whole experience had occured within the cycle of one moon. I renewed my desire to let go of what didn’t serve me and to meet the challenges unfolding with strength. I sang to myself on the walk home. I mentally thanked her for everything she’d given me over the years, everything we’d shared, and asked for a more appropriate romantic interest.

She visited unexpectedly the next day. I learned that she had stopped by the night before, while I’d been out, and had spent the evening very similarily to mine, releasing her attachments and inviting clarity into some situations she was going through. She told me she’d been mistaken, that she wanted to try. We spent a lovely day together and kissed in the snow, under a tree.

I didn’t feel anything. For about a day and a half, I felt numb and sad. Wasn’t I supposed to feel happy? Even more confused, I realised I needed some counsel. I turned to another friend of mine, whom I’d know even longer than the one I was attracted to. She suggested that I was in shock and the change in our relationship, coupled with rejection and then the sudden change of heart had all happened too quick for me to process. I had to agree. I went back and forth, first shaken by her rejection and then, finally we both agreed to honour what the other was feeling in each moment and hold each other to nothing but that we explore what was going on with compassion and trust.

I wish I could tell you I’ve figured it out. I hesitated to share this story, because of the deeply personal nature and because I don’t know the ending yet. But sharing the journey as it happens, with all the ups and downs and confusion is part of opening myself to others and part of the reason I decided to start this website. I’ve learned from this situation that I can invite and plan, but the really tough lessons are the ones that come from opening myself to the mysteries of the universe.

So unexpected or no, I’m going to try to meet them with as much grace and courage as I can.