Dragonfly Totem...My New Tattoo

As a child Dragonflies were as fascinating as Faeries to me.  Their various sizes, colors and body shapes still amaze me today.

While pregnant with my youngest child, Dragonfly visited me often and so I was called to find it's meaning. What I found was that the Dragonfly is a gateway between mundane and mystical.  They are mystic messengers of wisdom and enlightenment from Spirit and communications from the elemental world.  Which totally spoke to my heart, as I have mentioned before, in my Faerie post, I've been told that I'm surrounded by elementals.  So when I see them now they remind me of that magickal realm again.  

The Dragonfly lives a short life and it knows it must live it to it's fullest with what it has...

which I believe it's a huge lesson for all of us.  At the time we were burning the candle at both ends sort of speak...we had just invested in our Alpaca Ranch and focusing on building our retirement plan, seeing our oldest off to college and our youngest close behind, when all of a sudden we were bless with this pregnancy... and so Dragonfly came and reminded me to live my life to it's fullest...I ended up using Dragonflies as the nursery theme, which made it feel magickal.

Every summer from then on Dragonflies became a new friend in our backyard, with many visiting and always bring with it, some wonderful medicine.  I came to learn that Dragonfly is the balance keeper between the "little me" and the "God/Goddess self".  She is a reminder for us to pay attention to our surface thoughts...that there are lessons to be learned there.  Also, that what we think is directly proportionate to what we "see on the surface", thus all our thoughts are responsible for what we see in our lives, once again reminding us...

 that what we think, we manifest...

Dragonfly inhabits two realms, that of water and air.  Starting their life in the water they symbolize the subconscious mind, intuition and thoughts...the thoughts we have during sleep, meditative and subconscious states.  When they mature they move into the air realm where they symbolize change, spiritual awakening, and much like the butterfly transformation.  

When mating, they form a beautiful heart shape, so they are also a symbol of love.  

And then I came across this...

Native Americans believe that Dragonflies are a symbol of renewal after a time of great hardship. people who have the Dragonfly as their totem have had emotional and passionate early years, but as they get older they achieve balance with mental clarity and control.   

And so...I came to realize that Dragonfly has always been one of my totems, and I finally embraced it.  This year has been all about healing, growth and spiritual awakening for me at many levels.  

My Dragonfly tattoo not only reminds me of my transcendence...

but also blesses me with all it's wonderful medicine, reminding me of very important lessons.

My daughter came out to attend a friends wedding last weekend and she made plans for us to get tattoos together.  Last time we ventured out to do something wild and crazy...it was piercing our noses, but that's when I found out I was pregnant with my youngest, and it was a no go for me.  So this became our wild and crazy venture. 

This was a wonderful gift from all my children...

my son who's a wonderful artist drew my tattoo for me, my daughter gifted it to me as my early birthday present as well as shared in the experience of getting it (in other words kept my mind off the pain :) and of course my youngest awakened me to it's medicine.  It turned out perfect with lots of meaning to me.