Covid 19 Check-In

How’s everyone doing? So much in the world has been changing, and at such a fast pace. Are you safely ensconced at home, or do you have to go out and work? Are you managing to stay healthy? I’m at home with Little Man, Hubby is working, and so far, knock wood, we’re all healthy.

You may know me by mariner2mother, which I created because I used to be a merchant mariner who left working on the sea to become a mother. Well, I met my husband on a ship we were both working on, and he’s still a working marine engineer. Mr. Mariner. His job is considered essential, carrying people and vehicles across Puget Sound, and fortunately, his exposure to the public is minimal because he spends most of his time in the engine room with his crew of four. We are lucky.

Here in the Pacific Northwest, we were affected early on by the Covid 19 virus that’s circling the globe, and our public schools are now closed for the rest of the year, moving to a virtual learning style. My heart is sad for the unbelievable stress teachers, parents, and students are all feeling while they sort out this new learning platform. When so much pressure is put on shoving a ton of information down the throats of growing children for fear of them missing out on something or being behind, I want to give them all a great big hug and remind them things will all work out.

There are only two months of school left, and even if students don’t crack a book for those two months, left to their curiosity and given opportunities, they will learn something. They might learn to sew masks and donate them to their local medical center or neighbors who need them. They might watch YouTube tutorials and learn a musical instrument or how to cook something. Left to their own devices, they might learn a new computer program or two and create avatars in a virtual world online, socializing with friends over distance. (Little Man is a great counselor to his buddies online). Or they might finally learn to wash their hands properly.

They might learn compassion for those who have lost work, or they’re learning how to cope when income is suddenly gone. Or they might get in touch with an elderly neighbor to see if there’s anything they need.

I feel sad for the senior classes who won’t graduate as a group, throwing their mortarboards high in the air. And sad for the kids who will miss trips, camps and other activities they’ve been working towards, earning money for. My girlfriend’s daughter sold enough boxes (well over a thousand!) of Girlscout cookies to pay for a week of camp that’s been canceled.

Other than our school buildings being closed, some stores in my area that are still open to the public are recently limiting the number of people who can be inside at one time. And they’re requesting people wear face masks and gloves.

Because my energetic system has been so very sensitive, ultra-sensitive, for the past few years courtesy of Kundalini energy coursing through it, it shouldn’t surprise me that during a recent healing session part of my inner child who resonated with so much of the world’s stress at the moment, came up to be heard and healed. She was only two years old and was so overwhelmed by the pain of life, being hurt by things she had no control over, she chose to separate from the whole of me and “died”.

She didn’t literally die, but I saw part of my consciousness who looked like me at age two, lying curled up on the floor in complete and utter defeat. She sprouted little angel wings and floated up to heaven. But she left behind her physical body, who we were able to help. We asked for Divine help which arrived in the form of a giant fiery Phoenix. It’s always a surprise to see who shows up because when my hypnotherapist asks for help, it’s an open call to anyone Divine.

It brought me to tears as my inner child finally felt safe and supported, flames burning away fear in all its forms. Hugging one of the huge bird’s legs, my little self morphed before my eyes, growing stronger and becoming more mature moment by moment. She began to stand tall and proud, sprouting some of her own flames! Gone was all fear and despair. Gone were any feelings of weakness or defeat. Like the Phoenix rising from the ashes, my inner child was resurrected from the dead. Her consciousness and vitality came back to me.

My wish for those who may be feeling scared, unsettled, or agitated because of how their life is changing without their permission at this time, is to know you’re going to eventually be ok. No matter what. It might take time, and you may have to calm your inner child when they act up, but one day there will be a new normal.

In the meanwhile, know deep in your heart you’re doing your best, ask for help when you need it, apologize if your inner child acts out all over your family (if you blow up at them), wash your hands and keep breathing!

My Guardian Angel

I forgot I’d already written about one of my guardians, a spirit I knew in life as a classmate when we were younger. I wasn’t really a friend of his, but apparently that doesn’t matter when it comes to spiritual agreements. After this post was published, several months to possibly more than a year later, I was thinking about Danny and remembered a situation I wondered if he had a hand in. In my mid twenties I dated a fellow for a little while, but ended things when I realized he had a problem with alcohol. But while we were seeing each other, he asked me to spend a weekend in Atlantic City. Feeling adventurous and because I’d never been there, I accepted his invitation. Unfortunately, his car’s transmission blew and we never went. When I asked my psychic friend if Danny was involved in the transmission blowing, she saw that yes he had been. She also saw that if I’d gone on the weekend trip I would have either been gravely wounded or killed. She saw it as one of my potential exit points in life. Holy moly!! I believe the exit point was blocked because the trajectory my life was on was a desired one, and there was lots more to be done here.

Please read on and know that some of our guardians are people we knew in life, and as much as many are family who’ve passed on, some are not.

Life Is A Journey... Not A Guided Tour

Last month I spent several weeks away from home, visiting with a dear friend. One of the special things about my friend is that she and I have been sisters in several lifetimes. During a past life regression hypnosis session, I saw part of one of those lifetimes. We share a connection that transcends this lifetime, as soul sisters.

Another special thing about my friend is that she was born with a defect of sorts. The veil that prevents most people from being able to see energy and allows people to live in the 3D world, unable to see beyond it to the world of spirit, didn’t fall for her as she was born. She remains connected to spirit, able to see and hear beings and entities that most people can’t. When she looks at a person, she sees their spirit, their soul energy. She can hear, see, and feel energy…

View original post 1,164 more words

Guardians

“We’ve got to take the baby out. Tonight!”

“It’s too early!” I sobbed as an OB I’d just met broke the news to me mere hours after I’d been worried about the lack of my baby’s activity. Hours after putting off getting checked out, telling myself it could wait until morning. I rationalized it was already past three pm and I was just worried about nothing. But the more I rationalized, the more I felt like a caged tiger pacing back and forth. I had to take action.

After going to my midwife, just to make sure things were ok, I found out they weren’t. In shock and worried about my baby, the one I’d waited and waited to have until life was right, I cried. No planned peaceful hypnobirth. I didn’t have a bag packed for my baby’s birth and hadn’t bought a diaper yet. But when the OB was called in to do the emergency c-section I was all on board. There was no choice.

Lying on the operating room table with a blue sheet between me and the operating field, I was awake as the doctor did her thing. My husband sat by my head waiting. There was barely a word spoken as the doctor skillfully took the baby out. It’s not like on tv or in the movies where they deliver the baby and happily show the expectant parents their new pride and joy while announcing the sex. I was told nothing. Finally, I asked, “Is it a boy?” as the ultrasound tech had told us. “Yes.”

I heard a squeak and wondered why there was a mouse in the operating room. It was odd. A moment later I realize the mouse was my baby trying to breathe and the reality of it all hit me like a ton of bricks – that I was a mother – and I burst into tears. Suddenly a feeling of calm flowed over and through me as someone whispered into my thoughts, “It’s going to be ok. Everything’s going to be fine.” My new thirty-three weeker would be ok.

Years later as I was visiting with an intuitive friend, I recounted this story to her and asked who or what spoke to me that night filling me with calm? It was my guardian angel. Whether we know it or not we all have them. Beings who exist in a world not of this world, who communicate with us through signs, symbols, gut feelings, and whispers.

They move chess pieces around an invisible board only when needed. As much as I know I planned the possibility for things to happen in my life before I was born including struggle and heartbreak, losing my son before he was born was not in the plans. And my guardian angel let me know to give me the strength I’d need in the upcoming weeks.

Guardians in our life aren’t only angels that agree to look over us but are family who cross over, like grandparents, aunts, uncles, parents and even siblings. And they can be friends and acquaintances who agree to help us on our life’s journey after dying before their time.

I didn’t know until about four years after my aunt’s death that she’d been what I call an angel in life who looked out for me behind the scenes. Because of my mother’s mental illness, my aunt couldn’t get too close to me or my mother might have cut her out of my life. But she always cared a great deal about me and sent me love often. All the warm and loving testimonies I heard at my aunt’s funeral that left me baffled finally made sense.

When I have a healing session, these days I use hypnosis as the modality to help me connect within and create change. One of the most fun parts of every session is at the end after things have been shifted and released and my spirit team surrounds me in joyous celebration. There’s always a crowd of beings, from angels to guides, to family and friends cheering me on, supporting me.

One of the earliest lessons I learned about spirituality, even before I woke up or was interested in spirituality was we’re never alone, even when we feel like it. There are always beings in spirit with us, supporting us and guiding us. They won’t step in and do for us: that’s ours.

The living of our life, having experiences based on our choices and decisions is ours. They’re our gold nuggets, the juice we squeeze. It’s part of the tapestry of life that’s ours to weave.

But our guardians will step in when harm that’s not meant to befall us becomes imminent. (That’s a story for another day). They’ll shift this or tweak that to protect us or to comfort us. Otherwise, they speak to us through signs, symbols, whispers, and gut feelings.

Even if you’re not sure about having a guardian, in times of need or struggle ask for help. Ask to be shown what’s the next step, and when you hear a song on the radio that reminds you of something, listen to where it’s pointing. There are no coincidences and you’re never “just lucky”. Pay attention. Honor your heart’s whispers.

 

Love Is The Greatest Power There Is

In honor of Valentine’s Day, here’s a piece I wrote about love a few years ago that still stands the test of time. Have a great day.

Life Is A Journey... Not A Guided Tour

When I say that love is the greatest power there is, some people think of what they would do for someone they love. They would die for someone they love. They would sacrifice their life for someone they love. I was put in a situation once where I thought I would be seriously injured and possibly killed, to save my son. You could call that a fierce mother’s love.

Fortunately, the situation I saw barreling down on my son and me changed at the last moment, as a Suburban suddenly and unexpectedly turned into a driveway mere feet before I was so sure it was going to take out my toddler, who was racing for the road. My plan, that unfurled in my mind as time slowed down, was for me to continue running after my son, pushing him out of the way of the vehicle, which I calculated would…

View original post 509 more words

Stories

We pass down legacies through stories our families share over and over again. Like the story when Dad was fishing out in the Kettle for cod, and he looked down over the side of our 19 ft. motorboat and saw a shark about five feet longer than the boat. The shark he later described to a fellow at the local Department of Marine Resources, who confirmed it was a great white shark.

We teach lessons by sharing stories of success, triumph, tragedy, and mistakes. Like the time I mowed by blackberry canes, and even though I was wearing long pants, a thorn scratched me through them. After a few months, what had been a small cut in my leg grew and grew until it was about the size of a quarter. After going to a doctor and being prescribed a course of antibiotics, I discovered that I’d gotten a staff infection that probably wouldn’t have taken hold if I’d washed and disinfected the initial wound.

We create community through stories of shared interests. And we’re entertained and inspired through stories.

Stories are webs that bring us together and hold us together. As small as a shared anecdote, or as large as the story of the formation of our country that we’re required to learn in school.

I began sharing my story with nobody in particular; whoever wanted to read, almost ten years ago. This blog began as a bit of a journal while sharing things I felt might help others in my situation. A place to tell my story and build my little community.

One of the things I love about stories is how through sharing someone’s experiences, perhaps how they overcame adversity, others become inspired to rise up and overcome their own adversities.

I also love how through sharing a variety of perspectives, people’s minds can be opened, broadened, and sometimes changed. That’s my jazz. Well, one of them.

I share my story, my journey, because quite frankly it’s become filled with little miracles. And as much as some of them came completely out of the blue, creating others is something I believe can be replicated.

The path my journey has taken has caught me quite by surprise.

Beginning less than a year after I began this blog while being a regular and busy mom dealing with a special and very energetic child, magic began to creep into my life. Things happened, like having a spiritual awakening. Magic. After having how I see and experience the world change, what was a new and somewhat casual interest in this thing called energy healing suddenly became an obsession. Something deep within me woke up and I had to know everything there was to know about it.

Through this blog, I’ve connected with others who share an interest in the world of spirituality, photography, healing, parenting a special child, and the world of metaphysics. And it’s brought me such joy to become inspired by those who’ve cared to comment.

One of the biggest challenges I’ve faced more recently when it comes to sharing my story is the telling of the transformative experience I’ve been going through for almost three years: a Kundalini awakening. Half the challenge is because my actual brain and mind are gradually changing and there have been months when trying to string coherent sentences together has been impossible. I’ve physically been unable to write for beans.

And the other half has been the difficulty in describing something most people have never heard of and have no reference for. Because it’s proving to be the most difficult challenge I’ve lived through to date, I share as I can.

Parts of my story that have come to light over the course of doing healing work aren’t necessarily pleasant to hear about. Healing is about bringing up darkness, exposing it to light, and allowing it to transform. But I try to tell things in a way that lets people know if I can do this, so can you. Inner transformation can be easy. It doesn’t have to be hard or painful.

Like when I was working on healing food cravings, and through hypnotic regression when looking for the root cause of a craving I saw how food became my balm and savior when I was a toddler and my mother verbally attacked me. As adults, we bury memories yet they stay with us, affecting us for the duration of our lives. Hypnosis not only allowed me to remember something deeply buried from the past, but did it in such a way as to not produce any trauma. And it allowed me to essentially go back in time and set that little girl within me free from her pain. I not only understood why I used food to soothe myself, but many cravings that day were permanently dissolved.

If you’ve been part of my blogging community for years, thanks for reading my stories. Thanks for sharing yours. And if you’re new here, there are lots of stories from this former merchant mariner who became a mother later in life. And who, on a quest to be able to lose weight and actually keep it off stumbled into hypnotherapy, her current healing modality of choice. There are stories about the challenges and victories of raising a son with invisible disabilities, and how through looking for things to help him ended up helping herself and precipitated not one but two spiritual awakenings altering the trajectory of her life in ways she never saw coming.

As I move through this Kundalini awakening, it’s my hope to share stories of inspired wisdom, while scattering in a few snippets of the challenges I live with daily. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Thanks for reading.

Focus

As a photographer, I love to play around with focus. What to focus on. Some days I love to get up close on the tiniest thing like the seed on a strawberry. While others I’m all about the landscape. Did you know the most desired portrait photos keep the subject sharply in focus while intentionally blurring out the background?

This past week, we had a few winter weather systems pass through, bringing us freezing temperatures, snow, wind, and power outages. And then we had part of a day when the sun graced us while snow stuck to everything. My favorite winter wonderland. And even though it didn’t last long, the incredible beauty called to me and I snapped a few photos.

Other than looking at life through the lens of a camera, when it comes to how I see things in general, I tend to see what’s right in front of me, as do most people.

And most of the time seeing what’s right in front of me works. And sometimes it doesn’t.

After I had my son, life taught me a huge lesson of shifting focus. He had a lot of challenging behaviors that didn’t seem to change if I raised my voice or do things like take away his toys to get him to comply with my wishes. In fact, if I did this, his behavior just got worse. I had to learn to look beneath the behavior. Before too long I learned that my son’s body and brain weren’t wired like mine. I had to figure out what helped him feel better, and when he felt better he’d do what I wanted, and was able to learn what was expected of him without melting down into a tantrum.

Everyone has something in their life that’s a chronic challenge. For some, it’s their finances, and for others, it’s relationships, perhaps a physical or mental health issue, or like me, the struggle to keep a healthy weight. Our society loves to focus on a person’s physical appearance, and a huge part of that is their weight. Doctors use a person’s weight as a marker of physical health, so if you’re overweight, people assume you’re not healthy and you lack the ability to control yourself.

I can still remember being about ten years old, having my annual physical, and my doctor telling my mother I was about five pounds overweight. From about the age of thirteen, I dieted chronically and pretty much saw myself through the lens of my weight. If I was “fit” I was acceptable and was ok with myself. If I was “fat” I was unacceptable and was definitely not ok. My weight fluctuated down and back up. Down some more and up. I was the poster child for a yo-yo dieter.

In my mid-thirties I could suddenly no longer stick to a diet. Not for even a day. And I gave up trying. As my weight increased, I finally realized I needed to shift focus. Instead of trying to control something I was obviously not able to control, I began to look inside. I began to investigate what was beneath my behavior – what was causing the cravings. Using hypnotherapy, I saw how eating saved me when I was so very little, and that cravings were still trying to save me. Food was my balm, soothing my inner child.

As I worked with a few different hypnotherapists I had success healing food cravings. Some success lasted longer than others, and when life brought me new challenges, I’d go have a few more sessions to heal new things that were finally ready to be addressed.

What I didn’t realize years ago, was how my interest in dealing with a lifelong challenge with weight by using hypnotherapy would end up introducing me to a life-altering, consciousness expanding, healing modality. By focusing on what was right in front of me – weight problems – and following breadcrumbs of what worked, I was led to my ticket to easy inner change. A way to make changes in my life from the inside out. Shifting my entire perspective of life a few times.

After having been through two different spiritual awakenings, I’m now able to shift my focus fairly easily when looking at a situation, looking through the lenses of the various participants. Able to empathize and understand different perspectives while withholding judgment and condemnation.

Standing back with a long lens, I now recognize that my soul’s desire has been working behind the scenes, guiding and leading me to a bigger picture of my life. And where it will end up I still don’t know. But I know it’s going to be good!

Welcome 2020

It feels strange to be at the beginning of a new decade, yet here we are. In many ways, it’s just like any other day or week, yet it’s not. When I look back at the past ten years, I’m struck by how much has changed. Not only has my energetic seven-year-old son turned into a teenager who’d rather hide out in his bedroom and spend time online with his friends, but the person I was is long gone, courtesy of two different spiritual awakenings.

These days, my son, taller than his father, is plugging his way through high school requirements, and is little more than halfway through. Because we work with an independent study private school, what school looks like for him is much different than it did when he went to public school. In some ways, it’s much better, because he can get the one on one attention at home that he so often needs, living with learning disabilities. Yet, because of the grueling Kundalini awakening process I’ve been going through for almost three years now, there have been many a day when I wished my son was back in public school with teachers who aren’t me have proper training and having exposure to classes he won’t have at home. Nevertheless, we push on.

Ten years ago, I was a wife and mother with a passion for photography and writing. And just a few months into 2011, through a series of synchronous events, I experienced a very unexpected spiritual awakening. The process wasn’t uncomfortable at all, and in fact, felt like a curiosity that had been lying dormant within me woke up with ferocity. The desire to know everything about energy healing – and to know it yesterday. From 2011 to 2017, life sent me down the rabbit hole of healing and learning about healing. It was magical. And it was invaluable during the time of my parents’ demise, from September 2011 when they were both hospitalized, through my father’s and then my mother’s deaths in 2012, to emptying out and selling the family house early in 2013.

Upon my first awakening, I read voraciously, studied, watched interviews, took classes and workshops, had healing sessions, and every once in awhile practiced healing on my family. By the end of 2016, during healing sessions, I noticed that what was able to be healed was so much more than when I began working with this same hypnotherapist in 2013. Looking for root causes of emotional triggers usually took me back to childhood events that laid dormant in my unconscious mind, but from time to time my regression would end up in a previous lifetime. Leftover emotional pain (often fear) was still affecting me and we addressed and healed it.

By the end of February 2017, so much of my inner landscape had been healed that my soul conspired to create yet another massive shift in my consciousness, another awakening. This time, followed by Kundalini energy opening. The way I saw life began to shift quite dramatically, and Kundalini began its work on me. One of the things about my Kundalini awakening process has been unrelenting inner shifting, healing. Some people would say my ego is dying. It’s not dying, it’s being healed, belief by belief, Kundalini energy helping to bring it all up. Separated parts of my soul are being reunited with me, changing my consciousness. Changing how I see the world (with more compassion and understanding) and how I respond to life (with far less judgment and emotional reactivity).

Because I’ve never been a spiritual seeker and never in my wildest dreams expected to have a spiritual awakening, never mind two, searching for language to describe the hell ride I’ve been on for almost the past three years has been tough. Much of the language to describe what I’ve been going through comes from Eastern philosophies and schools of thought. Westerners are too much in our minds, needing scientific proof.

Yet here I sit, a science geek who needed proof before she believed things she couldn’t see, trying to describe a completely transformational process that can’t be seen or measured by current scientific instruments.

A few weeks ago, I found a YouTube channel of a woman who’s been through what I’m going through and is well out the other side. Keep in mind that each and every Kundalini experience is as unique as every person, yet there are similarities. So, if you’re at all interested in the topic of spiritual awakening, what they look like, and tips to help you survive a difficult one, check out Christina Lopes. She also offers coaching services to help people navigate spiritual awakenings.

I seem to have found the people and support I’ve needed to get through. And the tag end of 2018 through 2019 had me back to working in hypnotherapy after a year and a half break. Two of the biggest challenges during this intense process have been very literally rewiring my body and brain, creating havoc with my ability to think clearly and be energetic. As such, my ability to write has often been severely compromised. Hence, the dearth of posts on this blog over the past three years. It’s a temporary state, yet temporary when it comes to these sorts of awakenings can last for a number of years.

In the meanwhile, more of my postings have been on my sister blog, Remembering My Divinity, where I began to chronicle my healing journey in life back in 2016, and lately, my Kundalini awakening process. It’s real, it’s raw, and filled with spiritual perspective and wisdom.

Several years ago I stopped making New Year’s resolutions focused on my external life. This year, my resolve will be what it’s been for the past several years: to make it through what life throws at me with as much grace and ease as possible, without judging what that looks like.

And if I were to pick a word of the year (WOTY), it would be Clarity. To be able to see things clearly from the 30,000 ft. view of life, or as spiritual teacher Abraham-Hicks says, from a broader perspective. And to have very literally a clearer mind every day. Thinking through mud has not been fun or easy. Here’s to 2020 being full of clarity!

 

Eagles!

Here in the Pacific Northwest our winter weather is fairy temperate. Nestled between Puget Sound and the Cascade Mountains, we see a lot of cloudy skies and rain, which can get difficult when the sun hasn’t made an appearance for several weeks. But one of the rare treats we have here are eagles. Mostly Bald Eagles.

There are several lakes and rivers here as well, and with salmon beginning their spawning run up river, the eagles are returning. They feast on dead and decaying salmon carcasses, and perch in trees overlooking the rivers. Not far from our home is a river, and with salmon making their return we’ve had eagles return to the area as well.

The past several mornings I’ve heard eagles calling, announcing this and that. And a massive tree which is a favored perch, is once again populated by Bald Eagles, both mature birds with their white heads and juveniles with their full colors not yet displayed.

Here are a few photos I grabbed this morning in the drizzle and gray. Enjoy!

Pumpkin Patch

We live in a rural farm county in the Pacific Northwest, and every fall I love to visit one of a handful of local pumpkin patches. I’m not a big cook, so I don’t take advantage of their sugar pumpkins (although I dream that one day I might). But with the heralding of autumn leaves and kids running around in costumes, I feel the need to adorn my home with a few pumpkins and some pretty gourds.

Because my energy has been very low for a while, I wasn’t sure I was going to get over to a pumpkin patch this fall (hence the recent repost). But just the other day, after more than a week of rain and a few sunny days, Little Man and I visited a small patch. I love how the owners take pride in creating displays and making it attractive to families.

We came home with 2 larger pumpkins that adorn each side of our door and a handful of little decorative gourds that are sitting on my kitchen window sill.

Please enjoy this year’s pumpkin patch photos. And a favorite fall foliage shot.

Autumn Interlude

This gallery contains 8 photos.

Originally posted on Life Is A Journey… Not A Guided Tour:
It’s been quite a while, I know. Life has been… well, how can I put it? It’s been a lot of putting one foot in front of the other,…