I'm sick with a vicious cold. Two weeks ago, I also felt ill, and between that date and today, I felt "off-track," "behind," and "thrown off ." It wasn't my plan. I said yes to things that were not planned and surrendered to things that were not planned, a velocity of being revved in and around me, causing so much upset to the plans. I reached a threshold.
This is a good thing. It's a sign of metamorphosis1. (READ THE FOOTNOTE) A month or so ago, I expressed to those close by that I felt itchy in my skin as if nothing fit anymore. My clothes, style, and hair all felt dull, pinching, and sagging in a middle-aged slump. When I asked a dear friend for glitter from her makeup boutique, she responded, "glitter?" "Yes, glitter for the me of 2023"
Have you noticed the pattern of ripples on the ocean water that look like fish scales? Do you think God did that to remember where they put the fish?
There are fractals and sacred geometry in everything as if the whole world or the universe is a set of nesting baskets fitting into one another.
"Fitting in" that desire we all have, also called "belonging".
Why do we question our belonging? Why do we instruct one another that we must do certain things to validate our belonging to this place, this world, this life, and this moment?
If we exist, we are a part of everything, inherently belonging, as a blade of sweet grass woven in a basket together.
I work with teenagers who wear their battle to belong emblazoned in every word they use, song they sing, and item of attire they don. I find myself in my mid forties and standard-looking. I no longer wave my freak flag looking for my tribe to accept me, and I sometimes feel lost without a crew of recognizable comrades. My colleagues and I have been recently discussing our appearances and what messaging we are sharing or not sharing.
Just before the new year, I ventured into the possibility of a sizable new endeavor. A colleague and I dreamed up a queendom that was everything we wanted for ourselves and everyone else. It was huge, magnificent, and cost millions of dollars of infrastructure! It was a world where brave stories are born; women are centered as creators and leaders of change, weaving history forward, creating a multicultural tapestry rejoicing in the victories of artists who imagined a new path of healing and regeneration while honoring the lifelong pilgrimage of wonder.
Then we paused realizing we didn't need the castle to be the queens in the world we dream of. In fact, we both want small abodes. We realized our dream was already here. It just needed us to recognize our roles so we could act as such.
Sometimes we are afraid to take action toward our dreams because we can't see them and so we don't trust them. Or sometimes, we see them, but they are so grand we don't trust our ability to sculpt and achieve them. In either of these states of thinking, we have forgotten that life is lived not controlled. Dreams emerge from the fog as we advance towards their sound, like a bird song calling us forward. They find us in the clay as we play, adding and subtracting a little here and there until something appears. They require our daily engagement knitting our imaginations with real-life materials.
The dream I saw this year was a place I fit into as my most authentic self. It quenched all my yearning. When my colleague and I said, "We don't have to build the castle. We can start being what we want to be here and now." We unlocked an invitation to play within our lives in small daily ways.
For me, this presents a challenge, hence the angst of these last two weeks. I've struggled with trust and feeling safe. I'm strong from gripping and grasping most of my life (and breathless). The challenge for me is to become more carefree, let go, loosen the slackline, and trust the process of play.
Within these two weeks, due to unexpected circumstances, I found myself climbing thirty feet to a ledge on a large pine tree with a silver line attached to my back woven over a chord held by the hands of the teens in my fellowship program. As soon as I was on top of the ledge, I wanted to climb back down, which also suddenly felt perilous. Everyone looked like specks of white feathery dust below me in the snow. I sat there terrified and knew I had only two choices. I could feel the gift of being held and caught when I free-fell forward, or I could strong-arm it back down the tree by myself.
I chose to fall forward!
It is happening, this metamorphosis, this becoming, is always happening. Our skin cycles anew every twenty-eight days, our eggs drop with the moon, and our blood regenerates after four to six weeks. But within all this cycling, there is something unchanged, innate. Our soul is waiting for us to see it belongs here now and has soul work to do, the work that calls us like the coo-coo bird, our soul whose pattern reflects in everything we most love like the fish scales reflected in the waters above its body.
Falling off course is sometimes a swift step towards being more carefree.
Falling off course may be a way to feel your soul soar.
Basket Full of Love
Love Note for Things I Don’t Do But Did
Love Note for Hoes ***a favorite***
Love Note for Daily Impressions
Love Note for Ravishing Beauty
Exercise: Go someplace this week where you may see spring flowers.
Note: What does seeing spring flowers make you think about? Feel?
Dare: Do something that commemorates spring flowers.
Tell me how it went!
Tailspinning
*Set your timer for 3 min. Grab a pen and paper. Grab a book from the nearest shelf with a book. Open to page 16. Take the first sentence from the second paragraph. Copy it.
Press Go! Now free write starting with that sentence.
* Share your writing with me & I will publish one at random in the wild and unpredictable spirit of Tailspinning
Directions to Get Lost
1.Ask yourself:Do I have to do this work?
If the answer is no, ask why. If the answer is yes, ask why.
*Give away! Enter to win a free Get Lost notepad by sharing this post with friends. (I’m lost as to how this will work, to make sure I don’t loose your email if you’ve shared it with someone please also email me: dawnbreezeart@gmail.com and let me know)
The word metamorphosis means the complete transformation of a form often by witchcraft and heralds its roots in Greek. I use this word versus our common term “change” who’s roots simply mean “to bend”. I think myself and most women have been bending too much and that our revolution will be a movement of transformation rather than flexibility.