The Grace and Ease of 2014...

I have to start by saying that I’m in deep gratitude for having had a peaceful year.  I know it had a lot to do with living into my words of the year...Grace and Ease.  I mean shit happens and it did happen but the drama, high emotions and all that come with it were much more even keel and more flowing. They moved through me, I acknowledged them, felt them, lived them and released them…unlike the past.

My year started on a positive note...

as we were able to consolidate, reduce and rise above the expenses we incurred to make our 10 year plan a reality…May 27th marked our first year here in Southern Oregon.  Though the year went by fast…we were able to really settle into our new home.  Enjoying our property, it’s fruits, tranquility, and magick.  I've come to really enjoy my morning strolls around our land, as we’ve come full circle. I’ve watched each season change and enjoyed each of their unique offerings…

From the late Fall stillness
 of 2013 when we first moved in... 

   

          To peaceful frosty Winter
                 that followed…

To the magnificent Spring blossoms of the fruit trees to the various blooms from bulbs…

To the abundance of Summer fruits that our land yield…

To the stunning Fall colors all around us...
and back to the late Fall stillness again, as we welcome the Winter Solstice once more…

I feel very blessed to have a running creek...

in our back yard, it’s magickal offerings are limitless…from the peaceful trickling sounds to the rushing powerful gushing after the heavy rains…to the soft flow almost stillness in midsummer.
We feel much gratitude and feel blessed with our new home and have lots of dreams around landscaping and adding to our orchard…as we did this year with the addition of new plants and fruit trees. Our dream is with every year to add a little more…and ultimately become self-sufficient as much as we possibly can.

Mid January we welcomed home...

our new addition to the family...Kaia Arena (Hawaiian for Sea, Spanish for Sand).  She has been so unlike any of our other Labs, she's full of energy, but amazingly smart.  After 19 years of having a lab around...the house felt extremely empty...and after dreaming of my beloved Zia and Auraluna, welcoming a new puppy...I knew it was time to invite another fur soul into our home...

In mid-Spring just before...

our anniversary we deepened our connection…in a way that redefined our relationship.  As I said above shit happens…and life gets in the way, kids, jobs, stresses...and like some we tend to get caught up in the day to day stuff, that we forget to make connecting and sharing a priority.  We’re blessed we have a good foundation and strong bond beyond this plane, as he is my Anam Cara, my soul friend, and I his. There is a deep sense of belonging and recognition between us. We seem to understand and accept one another for who we are and what we are capable of becoming and we know we are at home in each other's arms.  That strengthens our relationship but we are learning the importance of making time for us in this crazy busy life.

Mid year I realized that in order to live into Grace and Ease…

I needed to let go and let be in many ways…one of which was to let go of having to finish a project before I could delve into the next.  You see, I have much to share in my heart but I get caught up in the have to’s…thinking if I didn’t follow through before dipping into the next project, I’d be a procrastinator…which is sooo not me, and it’s sooo not the case.  In fact, what revealed itself to me was that one creative venture will feed my soul and inspire me to go back and work on the other, sort of getting the creative juices flowing again.  Ultimately what I realized is that allowing the creative juices to flow in what ever means they need to, even if it’s not completing my first project before starting into another or even others, is a way for me to continue to share from my heart.  Sometimes it seems the inspirations and information come faster than I can make the time to put it all down into words…and so finding what works best for me allowed me to find Grace and Ease in it. I created my first eBook..."ll Steps to Creating Affirmations using 11 Principles"...with my first eCourse Creating and Maintaining Sacred Space close behind, it launched this month as part of a Holiday Happiness Virtual Retreat.

Grace and Ease showed up the strongest...

when I started my journey into Bloom True with Flora Bowley.  A painting course that was much, much more.  Amazing things started to happen as I learned to get out of my own way…allowed myself to be guided from my heart more while painting without a defined purpose other than to be open to intuitive guidance.  I have a quote I put up by my desk 2 years ago…”The more I live from my heart center, the easier it will become to live from there more often”.  I strive to let my heart lead the way but sometimes like most, I let my negative talk get the best of me.  But I’m learning and in doing so once again finding Grace and Ease within the unfoldings of my life.

Spider woman was my guiding Goddess this year…

her lessons around community show up for me as I connected with my local community and found like minded souls to share time with.  Our Art nights have been fun creating for just the sake of creating in community and my Yoga classes developed into a wonderful friendship with my Yoga teacher.  Spider woman also shared with me her teachings about our spiritual connection to one another and beyond.  

“In ancient times, Spider Woman wove together the reality of our world, casting a giant matrix of energy lines throughout the entire universe with fibers of light and power. When you dance on her web in one part of the world, your vibration is felt all the way to the other side. If someone is being negative on one side of the world, you feel it in some inexplicable way. When you create beauty and power, this also goes out on her web like a pulse of energy that recreates itself around the world. Shamans have always known how to use their luminous fibers to move along Spider Woman’s web to meet with another and with the great masters of enlightenment.” – Lynn Andrews

I nurtured my intuition a lot this year, in various ways, not only with intuitive painting classes (I’m also in the mist of Shamanic Trance painting with Pixie Whitehorse) to my certifications with Doreen Virtue.  Strengthening my Clairvoyance, I’m much more Claircognizance then the other clairs though.  As well as becoming a Advanced Certified Angel Card Reader…which really empowered my readings, and becoming a Realm Reader, which is so much fun and I enjoy doing.  It has shed light to understanding more about myself and others.

Fox, my Animal Spirit Guide...

for the year has also taught me some much needed lessons. Like thinking outside the box, she encouraged me to be more creative and approach circumstances differently then I would normally…which again helped me to move throughout the year with Grace and Ease.  I am starting to see my habits and ways of reacting and learning to take a different course of action.  I learned and still am learning how to go with the flow more instead of creating waves of resistance.  Or like Radleigh Valentine (CACR teacher) says, finding the good in the challenges…they are always there, it’s just about whether you choose to see them or not.

Which brings me to my Magickal Daily Blessings Jar…

which if you remember I started at the beginning of the year.  It's become full of my daily blessings…but I have to be honest and admit I did skip a few days here and there.  But what's most important about the exercise was that on those sucky days…when I could hardly muster up a smile…I did…I found something to feel blessed about and that helped the day flow with Grace and Ease.

The last few weeks…

have been pretty amazing too.  We were able to take a Holiday vacation down south and visit with our daughter.  This was the first time in the 4 years since she moved out that we were able to visit where she now calls home…Southern California…it was a wonderful family reunion...and it gave me peace in my heart to not only know but see how well she's done for herself. 

I also was invited to be one of the Spiritual Teachers for the Holiday Happiness Virtual Retreat…something that was new and different for me.  I’ve never participated in anything like this for my fear of “being seen” and fear of public speaking.  But I was able to offer my gifts through the written word and that brought me much joy.  We created a book with my Lotus Mandala art on the cover, sharing Spiritual Practices we, the Spiritual Teachers, do to help us get through the Holidays and beyond.  I look forward to working with Dr. Monique in 2015 sharing my gifts even further through the Spirit Guide Institute program she’s putting together.  More to come on this later!   

I’m still working on the “being seen” which I’ve now

come to realize that it’s more about “being heard”…since I’ve become pretty comfortable with pictures of myself…I even had to let go of my uncomfortableness with full body pictures this year. Despite my ambivert way of being I ventured out to a workshop in Portland Oregon, offered by my ARTbunance Mentor Marney from ARTella Land, I got to finally meet her in person, as well as my Mentor Nanleah and connected with some wonderful ACT alumni.  It was a fun day full of discovery and self exploration, I met some Amazing, Magickal and Powerful women that day.

But yes…being heard, it’s not about being seen so much anymore.  It’s taken me a while like I said to show myself in pictures but the past few years I’ve become comfortable with selfies and love the idea of capturing not just the magick in life with my camera, but also me in that moment or any moment in my life.  You see not everybody knows my struggles with self image.   I was petite and thin all of my life…up to the last 10 years.  At which time life got really stressful and scary for quite a few months and before I knew it,  I gain a tremendous amount of weight and have struggled with trying to release it for the past 10 years.  You’d think after these years of trying so hard to shed the weight only to fail over and over again, I'd accept that this is who I am now…but I haven't, as ridiculous as it sounds...after being thin for the first 40 years of my life, I’m not comfortable in this new skin.  I do my best to hold the vision of vibrant health and use my oils and other modalities to accept and move through life as I continue on my own healing path.  And yes...I'm still working through the being heard part as well, but that's a story for another time.

So now with only a couple weeks left in the year...

I bring closure to yet another year gone by, only this one was a little more magickal then the rest, cos’ despite all the stuff that happened, because life happens to all of us…magick happened too this year. I will sit with these lessons some more and reflect on anything else that wants to show up for me as the year comes to an end.  Then I’m taking the lessons and the tools I’ve been given this year and putting them into my Medicine Bag where there they will mixed and matched with my other tools and be readily available to me when I need them most. 

I hope your 2014 was filled with magick too, that you grew and expanded in ways you never thought possible...and if not, I hope you received the gifts you were meant to and that your 2015 is filled with Love, Joy, Creativity and Magick ❤︎