(In this post, I'm including
pictures from a dreamy photo shoot I did with some lovely Denver ladies
back in March outside of Red Rocks, as promised. Enjoy.)
The lifestyle I've always dreamed of is finally, and strangely, taking shape. A nomadic path bridging city and country life, uprooted in order to respond to any breeze or need. I've been sleeping in a cozy four-person tent, bought cheap from Walmart, in my dear friend Amy's backyard. Picture her city lot full of fruit trees, elderberry bushes, volunteer vegetable plants and perennial herbs surrounding a fire pit, just before entering the back half of wooded territory, which I have made my little grotto. I've hung my hammock, although it's much too humid to avoid the mosquitoes. I have a basket for linens, a crate of clothing, a drum, a book, and a rain fly. My cooking tools and supplies are up by the house and my bulk herbs are in the garage. The rest of my necessities are packed down in my Chevy Venture.
Things as a medical professional are exploding. I was just accepted to the Office of Women's Health and Women's Health Leadership Institute's Community Health Worker (CHW) training, which admittedly changes everything. It impacts my doula work in a huge way, as CHWs are essentially public health "doulas" in a more broad sense in that they provide education and advocacy for a variety of different health conditions and populations (not just pregnancy and birth). This means that I will be able to widen my services to include many aspects of reproductive health. CHWs also have an interesting and critical role as their work places a heavy emphasis on culturally competent care- that is, providing it themselves as well as enforcing it from medical care providers. Part of this particular training is getting set up with a supervisor who helps the trainee execute a community project in their home community. So Sycamore Center will be heavily impacted by this, and it may even prove to give shape to the organization completely.
I've also started my volunteerism with the American Red Cross. I have distant dreams of being deployed in the face of natural disaster to set up mobile birth units, and I figure that climbing their ladder and getting trained in mass food distribution as well as shelter management is the best free way to do it (no degree!! woo!!).
And I've also met the man of my dreams. There's no other way to put that, really. He feeds my vision of escaping the troubles of the world to high atop a Black Hill-side, feeding my goats and staring up at the clouds with nothing but the wind to hear. Waiting patiently for the next mother to go into labor as I cultivate my herb garden, smoke out a hive of bees, or help him haul in the next project. He calls me his goddess, Nefer, and perhaps someday I will be his queen, yelling at kids from the porch he built. Through all of the hard work I'm doing these days, I'm walking on Cloud 99.
But tonight, with all of this spiraling around me (and not out of control, mind you, but part of the ever-changing cycle of my life which right now is busy, busy, busy), I am trying to stay mindful of the simple things. Sage infusing in white wine vinegar. Slow eating. Choosing to stay in one place for the moment. Walking barefoot on the earth. I need that reminder to be here now, but being on the right path makes it easier to give to myself.
I've never felt this self-assured of my own joy. It's pretty wonderful.
LIFE.
I've been full of it lately, feeling really connected again to my sexual power, my vitality. I am sliding down a little, intoxicating my body with coffee, smoke, and fatty foods, preparing my journey back inward on this slope toward the darker me in my cycle. Taking advantage of my wild heathen, getting a lot of good love-making in while I can.
I recently did my professional labor assistant training with toLabor (The Organization of Labor Assistants for Birth Options and Resources). I'm a doula! A doula with no births under her belt, but a few I'm holding in the hands of my future- a mama due in October, one in December, and I have an interview this week. I'm just so eager to put all of the wisdom I was handed into practice already. I'm being as patient as I can.
Just checking in, I guess.
Dang! I almost fell off the wagon. It's been a crazy week or more, and I'm finally on the upswing. I got my "period" (I used to hate calling it that but it's started to feel more like the end to my long and drastic cycle than ever). It came sweetly with the new moon, a time that symbolizes the shedding off of all my flustered film, all of the world that has clung to me in the last 50 days. My cycles are that long now. And some would count that as a blessing, but everything is more exacerbated now, all the highs and lows that I would normally flush out in 34 days just take their time and go higher and lower now. I miss my 34 day cycles.
I've definitely been feeling a lot of the dark mother in my life, manifesting through me. I am the dark mother. And I've been having to own all of the other stuff, too. I am anger. I am the car. I stopped driving. I'm letting Gregory take the van to work so that I absolutely have to bike, and it's a blessing. Driving makes me so aggravated, and I cuss and honk at people and bitch about how much the world sucks when I'm driving so I quit. I'm actually going on strike from a lot of things. Plastic bags being one of them. I hate them so much and all they do is sit there making fun of the fact that they'll still be around long after I'm gone. At least I know my car will die before me. I've actually been pretty unbearable about a lot of things lately. Now that I'm menstruating, I'm relieved of a lot of the guilty tension, but that doesn't change the fact that I've been a total shit to live with. I'm a great mom, but make a pretty shitty wife.
What did I expect?
Things ARE getting better, though. I just got through three weeks of cynicism, croney complaining, and sinister thoughts, and it's okay. I'm climbing the mountain again and it feels good.
