The discomfort of stillness

I was recently on a summer vacation at the beach with my family for the week of July 4th and I realized how uncomfortable I was with stillness. The beach is typically a relaxing place for me to be still, but lately my mind has been so scattered with the energy and events in the world.

It was our first full day on the beach and we had set up our tent and chairs amongst the hundreds of others. As my kids splashed down at the water, I watched a new mother sway and swoosh her infant trying to soothe the baby down for a nap. It was a hot day and I knew this song and dance all too well. So many of my beach days were spent doing the same jig to try and get one of my exhausted and overstimulated babies to sleep. These were the moments that I would crave stillness, I would have given anything to have just stopped moving.

At the time, it was miserable and even unbearable, but as I watched this mother grow more and more impatient with the wriggling child in her arms, my heart filled with compassion for her and I silently sent her love and admiration. I eventually struck up conversation and offered to help though I know I would have also declined the offer, but in that very moment, it’s all you want. Help and stillness.

As I struggled to spend time in stillness this past vacation, I found how truly foreign and uncomfortable it can be for me. My mind was constantly wandering to the fears and uncertainties of such tremulous times in our world right now. My brain has been consumed with shootings, women’s rights, and even a panic of being out in public with my own family. I am constantly scanning all areas for signs of danger.

The days and weeks leading up to vacation are always busy with the 3 P’s of vacation: Planning, Packing and Prepping. I figured once my feet hit the sand, I would embrace stillness!

The morning before we left, I took this laughable picture as I was thinking “how the hell did they do it on the Oregon trail?!”

But when I reflect on the question ‘how did humans travel with so little?’ It dawns on me that as we become more “advanced”, the more we “forget” our roots and our abilities to survive on our own, or rather- with the help and working WITH nature and not against it. Nature really does provide us with almost everything we need and yet we abuse it so poorly, taking and taking and rarely if ever, giving back to our beautiful Mother Earth. We don’t need all this stuff and I know how privileged I am to have all of it. It’s difficult for me to not feel guilt and shame around having so much when others in the world have so little. I try to switch my mind to gratitude but if I am honest, it is difficult. I find myself wondering “why me? why do I get to be so fortunate and others don’t?”

During the firework show on July 4. I was finding it difficult to celebrate independence with the recent over turn of Roe. V. Wade. I’m feeling the collective drain of women’s choices over medical procedures for their own bodies and it has conjured up so much anger and sadness in me.

I was observing how we “celebrate” our independence and freedom. With alcohol, meat, sparklers and fireworks that fill fresh air with smoke, and explosives that scare animals, not to mention the products will sit and pollute the earth in landfills for years to come. I know this is a “tradition” of ours and customary in America, but since we are faced with so much change, I wonder, where can we make small, conscious choices to shift to rituals that are less harmful and more beneficial to all. If you are interested in learning more about how Firework displays affect the environment, I found a few interesting articles here and here.

I really put a lot of thought into fireworks during this vacation because right out of our back door along the beautiful dunes were the Piping Plovers. The area was roped off and protected due to their endangerment. The owner of our beach rental had told me that some of the babies don’t survive the fireworks. I can’t imagine how their little bodies must react to the noise and vibration of the explosions. I got to see two little baby chicks prior to the firework display, and they looked like fuzzy little walnuts! The next morning I noticed someone tossed a beer can over the rope. My heart sank and I struggled to find stillness. Why must our freedom come at the expense of others?

It was also difficult to feel very celebratory when I read about the details of the Highland Park shooting the next day. “Coincidentally”, earlier on July 4th, I was driving down the strip with my sister to get to a grocery store and had the fleeting thought of a shooting but I quickly shook it off because the fear so often crosses my mind.

As much as I’d like to be like the crab and retreat into my shell with these heavy emotions and fears, I need to show up and show the kids and my family a good time. Life is meant to be lived after all and they don’t need this kind of weight on their shoulders. So, I put on the happy face and keep things light and fun, but my wheels are turning for how we can celebrate this day in a more mindful way next year. I am grateful for this wake up call.

How to be helpful

As I am struggling to find stillness and quiet my monkey mind, I resort to the one thing I find brings me peace in times of chaos; being helpful.

I am a helper by nature. As the middle child, I learned very early on in my life that I love to help anyone I can. A lot of the time I feel very helpless and this only further feeds my fears and anxieties. So I remind myself of how helpful I am and can continue to be. I hope this inspires you to ask yourself frequently “how can I be helpful?” especially when you are struggling to find joy or peace in life. I find when I am down in the dumps offering help to someone without any expectations or attachments in return raises my vibration and puts me in a better mood.

If the goal of life is to enjoy it and live it, but we live in a world of polarities, and the opposite of enjoyment is fear, how can I use both to create balance?

I started helping.

The kids and I started picking up trash on the beach. Each time we left the house we brought a plastic bag with us and filled it up. We had a blast hunting for trash and cleaning up our small portion of the beach. I only wish I had taken a picture of all the trash we collected over the week!
I sent a text to a friend who’s going through a tough time and asked if I could bring her family dinner.
I saw beauty in nature around me. I watched the land and the sea meet and change constantly, ebbing and flowing. Coming and going. Constantly changing.
I practiced yoga. I dropped into childs pose and let the emotions flow from my eyes.
I looked for the good in people; The mom carefully applying sunscreen to her child, the conversations of pies and cakes amongst retired friends, and the relaxation of a sleeping sun-bathing beauty.

I saw the good in life all around me and I reminded myself that like the ocean, life is rarely ever actually still and it can be scary and chaotic at times and also peaceful in it’s ebb and flow.

And of course I pulled out my trusty old Tarot deck and tapped into my Higher Self for a message:

”To have inner transformation, we must truly face our fears, look them straight in the eye. Sit with them as long as we need to until we use them to be helpful. To be kind.
We may only have so much control, but we can always create good karma”

HIStory to HERstory

I am currently listening to the book “Lies my teacher told me” but before you judge a book by it’s cover, the author James Loewen is a professor and has the utmost respect for all teachers. What he criticizes and brings to light in his book is the HIStory that we are taught in school. He thoroughly researched 12 of the most common history books taught in the United States on the history of our country and the findings are absolutely fascinating. I cannot recommend this book enough as one of the most eye opening historical pieces I have ever read in my life. I recommend downloading it on Audible and popping in your ear buds while you do those mindless chores around the house (like folding laundry and the dishes)

Loewen’s book starts with Christopher Columbus and the treatment of the Natives and other people living in this country (for thousands of years) prior to his “settling”. I have always identified with a more natural or Pagan style of “religion” and have been fascinated by Native Americans for as long as I can remember. My grandmother had two beautiful paintings in her living room of two Native American women and I would often drift off to sleep gazing upon their beautiful dark eyes and hair. Though, I have personally always struggled with organized religion even though I was raised Catholic, I respect those who follow religion and find it truly enriches their life. I know personally several people in which organized religion has served a great purpose in saving them, literally and figuratively! And for that, I am grateful.

While on vacation, I was feeling an immense sense of guilt for what happened on this land to the Natives that were here first. I felt guilt for what freedom meant on the backs of so many others and I felt anger that freedom was being taken away from women even today.

“Coincidentally” (I don’t actually believe in coincidences) a few weeks before vacation I had found a DNA kit that my mother got for me one Christmas several years ago and had registered the kit and sent in my spit! I got my DNA results on July 5th. My results were 87% European and 73% of that is French and German. This was not a surprise to me, but it did have me thinking about what role my lineage played in history.

One of the most fascinating things I heard from the book was how some of the people who came over to America would adopt the Native lifestyle and culture and found it improved their lives to the point where the only way to identify a European from a Native was by the color of their skin. I also found it interesting to learn that Natives found the Europeans to be the savage ones due to the fact that they lived more of a Democratic way of life with little to no looming hierarchy or power hunger.

So often we have tunnel vision and think our way, or the way we were taught is the only way. We cannot re-write history and though it has been tried and passed along to school aged children, it is a pivotal time in our culture for us to truly learn from our history and embrace culture crossing. To sit in stillness with the truth of our roots, as uncomfortable as it may be. But it is necessary because this is where the change will happen, within ourselves. When we bring to balance the masculine and feminine within us.

“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach”- Aldous Huxley

A sign from the ocean

On one of the last days of our vacation I was in the ocean with my oldest and we were splashing around and for a brief moment, the worries and weight of the world seemed so far away. I felt something hit my ankle twice and when I looked down to scoop whatever it was up, I found it was the most beautiful seashell I had ever seen, the purple hues reminded me of the Crown chakra. The chakra that connects us with the Divine, our Spirituality, our connection to the Heavens. I took this sign and gift from the ocean that everything was going to be ok.

The Astrology that ties it all together

A few days after we came home from vacation, I was sitting at my daughter’s karate class reading the astrological forecasts for the upcoming week and everything seemed to tie together as I read report after report. One in particular was from Pippa Kate and I quote her several times below. She writes of the Full Moon in Capricorn that we will be experiencing on Wednesday, July 13/14 will be the “most transformational moon" of 2022”

This (Super) Full Moon is in the sign of Capricorn which is the sign associated with consciousness, hard work, dedication to goals and being realistic. “Capricorn is a sign associated with a shift in consciousness, and in order for this to happen we ourselves must dive into our own shadows first in order to ascend”. This full moon is bringing us back to January 13, 2021 with the Capricorn New Moon, I tell all my clients to keep a journal so they can go back and see/remember what they were experiencing at that time. I invite you to go back in your journal to January 2021 and see what “stuff” you were working with at that time.

The Capricorn moon is inviting all of society to do the shadow work as well, showing us where we discriminate, assert power over others, suppress and use our entitlement to drive our actions forward. “Ultimately this energy is calling for us to deconstruct the patriarchy” and that starts within.

The Full Moon is aligned with Pluto and Pluto has been stirring the pot of shadows since late 2019 and this spiral of shadow work as a collective will take us through April 2023 when he moves into Aquarius.

“We are at a meta level going through a splitting of consciousness. There are souls on earth who will stay at the dense level it has been operating (often surrounded by fear), and those who are ready to shift into a new consciousness.” The shift is knowing we are responsible for ourselves and our actions. It’s a time to deconstruct the old systems that are no longer serving a purpose, or at least not serving the greatest good for all.

Are we moving backwards? It certainly can feel that way in the US as we experience our first Pluto Return and as we sit with the recent overturn of Roe V. Wade. I have trust that we cannot shift into a higher state of consciousness unless we first travel through the depths of our shadows and it is when we bring light to the shadow that the darkness clings the tightest due to fear of change. “Adding more fuel to the fire, we have the three aspects of the feminine- Maiden (Persephone), Mother (Ceres) and Crone (Lilith)- standing opposed this moon. They are lending their energy to it, and calling for us to realize the way is which the feminine has been repressed in our society, but most importantly within us”.

I invite you to work with this energy, to dive deep into the shadow self and to find where you are repressing feminine energy. We are made up of both masculine and feminine energy, regardless of who, what, or how you identify. Where can you support your feminine energy which is soft and nurturing, creative and spiritual.

Take a moment to explore the discomfort of stillness and what it is trying to teach you. Where can you make the shift inward that will reflect in the world around you?

All my love,

Amanda