The only thing one can be sure of changing....

Ughghgh. So, here's the skinny.

I'm about to drop it in a heavy honest way, too, so I surely hope there is someone out there that will benefit from this confessionalism. I am just about on my moon and dig it gals, whether or not you have found this to be true I am going to tell you what I know experientially and from the heart as a fact of the matter: whatever incessant emotional nags or swirls, rages or guilts or issues that cause stress and tiredness the week or so before your period, these are the ones that are chock full with the messages of your soul. The ones with the gifts, these are actually the invites as to how and specifically where to honor yourself and love you a little bit better. Well. Don't you know for a week or so plus (since the second half of my cycle kicked in) I have been resisting doing the "Real Work", or at least one very specific aspect of the Real Work. Which would be dealing with one very specific nag. Instead I have been trying to control said nag with the same old codependent behavior that I am working on getting to the bottom of in the first place. All busy trying to fix what's broke with what's broken and mad as a buzzing hornet's nest of on their moon mama wasps that's it's not going my mutherloving way!!

What is the Real Work? To quote as explanation from the book I am using, put on me by a mentor whom I trust with my life, in order to move through some necessary healing of old behavior in regards to self and relationships, I will define it as "...focused work. It can be intense. (ha!) What are we searching for? The darker side, the side that prevents us from loving ourselves, loving others, and letting others love us--the side that blocks us from finding the love and happiness we want and deserve.....Often, present responses are connected to our unresolved feelings from the past. To free ourselves today, we must heal from yesterday's feelings...." A page later it says "And yes, healing is possible. We can heal at as deep a level as we have been affected." It is a step by step process, a process that I know works and with which I am familiar. But ooooh my god do I feel like I am in a big pot of midway meltdown and suddenly everything has just gotten stuck. In intake, when I meet students who are like just a handful of points away from the range they need at assessment to sit for their GED, I usually tell them some version of the same thing. I steeple my two pointer fingers together like a mountain, look down over my glasses at them with big stern pointed love in my eyes and I say now look here and listen good. Here is your goal (I indicate the top of the "mountain" of my fingers) Here's you. (I indicate the top knuckle just underneath my left nail.) (Over the glasses, re-engage the eyes.) Now dig it, dig how realdeal close you are. You are SO close, but these last steps are crucial to make it to the top, and I'm just gonna level with you, they are the toughest steps there are. See how steep it is here? (Indicate knuckle again.) But you've almost made it. (By now we both are usually misty-eyed.) It's gonna take some hard, committed work. I'm talking real effort, a real commitment to yourself, for yourself. Can you do it??

Can you, Kel?

(By the way I found out today that at least 21 students from just two of my 7 Adult Ed classes are receiving diplomas and walking in a cap and gown in June!! Holy sugarnuts what I do does count!! And I dont even have the numbers for the year from my other 5!)

In traditional recovery, where I am at has been defined as the searching and fearless part. Later on, from the same book as above: "This process became experiential. I began to live (it.) Life prodded and poked me until I looked so deeply within that, as last, I could truly see me...This fearless searching, this looking within, became a forced process, imposed on me by my recovery, life, and my Higher Power. I didn't like it, but I learned to accept it, to go through it..." Man I so totally, totally get this. It has been forced upon me but force is the total wrong word, and I dont think it's quite what the writer means either, it's more like when she says how you just do it, "go deep, start with the top layer and then let the process take you deeper" and that's what happens. Once you get in there holy shit there you go and it's like a spiral down down down that just sort of happens from within your soul. And all the coincidences as you're going along--all the outside circumstances as you continue with going about living your life, they seem to magically align to help reflect back at you again and again deeper and deeper exactly what you need to see. My pal Beth from Oregon when I told her the Real Work I'd decided to take on, she was like, holy shit just hold on. I remember when she did some of it, all the pain she went through. I HATE IT. I freakin really, really do. But holy shit, hold on cuz the only way out is through...

The first three or four weeks were miraculous my god I thought oh this is it! My intimacy shit is cured. No no that's just the sparkle allure the soul uses to hook you. Now that I'm here, with the legitimate nags staring me down with pointed stern eyes straight in front of me ohhhhhhhh I dont want to look, which sucks cuz it's times like this that you really learn wherever the hell you go, well, there you are.

I dont want to be stuck here on these same old things anymore. I will do this thing damnit. No matter what. I just hate hate hate that now's the time that I really, like it says, have to look at me. And look at how (gulp) it is me, and my old beliefs, AND NO ONE ELSE, that have caused me the most harm.

Great magic of being pray for me people.

And also, in case the real work aint enough, Walsh reminded me today that Mercury Retro's on Wednesday. And we got the rest of the week, here backeast, full a rain.

Put on your wastehigh waders kids, things about to get thick...

On Mercury Retrogrades, from nightlightnews.com, used with permission from Risa (last retro ended mid Jan, we get one a season and recall that each season stimulates a new phase, and all phases are linked quite circularly if i do wax esoteric a moment myself, of inner growth):

Wednesday night (May 6th, 10:00 pm Pacific time) Mercury turns retrograde for three weeks. We prepare this week (tend to details, plans, purchases, etc.). When Mercury retrogrades the information received since Mercury’s last retrograde must be reviewed and organized for our minds have become overloaded with data. Retrogrades allow us to “houseclean”, put thoughts and ideas in order, and bring closure to previous events. We all become detailed Virgos during Mercury retrogrades.
~~
Yea. So. Be about it.

(insert picture of me rolling my eyes at me in the mirror over steepled fingers and eyes full of pointed stern big silly love)