my daughter's wedding

We are five days away from the big day, my daughter and her fiancee will be getting married in England. I have been experiencing so many feelings about this event. There are memories that keep flooding in about Meredith. I am remembering the day that she was born. I had gone through four days of really hard labor, several trips to the hospital and finally a c section on the fourth day at 5:30PM. I was so exhausted and so happy at her birth. I feel like I have never stopped having these contradictory feelings. I would feel such intense  pleasures and tears at her accomplishments and life lessons. And here she is ready to go off and have her own life adventures with her chosen love, Jonny. I have always used Kahlil Gibran's poem on Parenting to guide my way as a parent . It is never more true than now.

"Your children are not your children,
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong  not to you."

For the entire poem, please go to the following link.
http://agutie.homestead.com/files/children_1.html

Depression and spirituality

I remember being a teenager and going through the serious illness and finally  the death of my father. After he died, it seems as though all of the happiness in the world died as well. I remember feeling very disconnected from everything.

Then  in my twenties, there were a number of deaths in my family  and again I felt those same depressive feelings. This seemed to be a repetitive pattern over and over again throughout my life . At some point, I figured out that   meditating, praying, practicing yoga,talking to good friends  and/ or sitting quietly under a tree would help the feelings of peace and hopefulness to return.
 So I am wondering if one of the best kept secrets in healing from depression is remembering  that we are spiritual beings. Have a great day.

animal communication

In previous posts, I talked about the value that my family places on communicating with our dogs, Pixie and Roxie. Sometimes, we do it spontaneously when we know that they are hungry or want to go for a walk or just need a grooming. When we need more specific information, than I usually call Whitney to ask my questions. I have found out that they do not like to talk to just any communicator. Like humans, they trust some people and not others. I have had one trusted and competent  animal communicator  quote our dogs as saying " We  are busy playing and do not wish to talk right now". She  tried four times and then gave up. While with others, they are very communicative except if it is dinner time.

Sweetness of life

For two nights in  a row, I have dreamt about yellow jacket bees.  One night the bees bit my fingers and would not let go. The next night, I used a bug spray to get rid of hundreds of bees in my Grandmothers kitchen. Needless to say, I don I like them very much. However, I  believe very strongly that dreams have important meanings for us.

Heightened sensitivities and 2011

2011 has brought in lots of gifts and challenges . I know that I am stating the obvious but sometimes we need a bit of a poke to realize that.There are so many  people  talking about heightened sensitivities to smells, dreams,  spirits, feelings, visions etc. These awarenesses   can often  feel more like an annoyance than a gift.  I talked to someone today, who was very unhappy with her ability  to  smell everything so clearly, from flowers to garbage. She stated that she  had smells that connected her to family members  that had passed on many years ago. I looked up the meaning of   unusual ability and  it " is known as the gift of clairalience, or as ‘clairolfaction’ or ‘clairescence’. These interchangeable terms all mean the same thing, namely ‘clear smelling’."  This perosn  was not picking up a real odor but  rather a communication from another dimension, place or time.
She and I talked about  noticing the connections and spending time through meditation or quiet sitting focusing  upon   possible meanings. For this person, the smell was associated with her Grandmother and she realized that she had never said good bye to her. This awareness brought her peace and a focus for using her gifts. Like the turtle , we need to smell the flowers while looking upward for meaning.

These are my two nine year old golden retrievers , Roxie and pixie (left to right) Roxie was from a breeder and she was a very active puppy. In fact she was so active and so lonely as an only dog, we had to bring in another dog. We went through a golden retriever rescue org. in Pa. They have been best friends for seven years except for the food fights that they have.
Pixie has a fairly large mast cell tumor and she is really slowing down. It is hard to see and often wonder what they are thinking about. I do have an animal communicator, named Whitney Taylor, that I will talk to every three months or so. I have gotten some great perspectives on my dogs. I definitely get that they are very sensitive beings and often are much more aware of what is going on around them than the non dogs around them. In the past, they have thanked us for paying the mortgage so that they could play in a big yard. They have also alerted us when one of us is sick and may need medical care. And they have told us about their own aches and pains but usually they are just happy to talk and make us laugh.

Snowy Saturday and fairies

Fairy Tale by Signe Pike


Last May, I was visiting Omega for a week long class that I talked about in an earlier post. I love walking around the campus at night and enjoying the beautiful landscaping, the lake front and the night sky. It happened that one of the nights that I was there, there was a full moon. So instead of attending a program on classical Indian music, I decided to walk to the lake. True confession is that I have been asking to see fairies for a very long time and I am always on the look out for them . It is known that there are special places that fairies tend to hang out more frequently, ie. by shore lines, in deep woods and in and by trees. I took several photos of the moon light in the lake and noticed a rather large reflection of the moon in my camera. After I got back to my cabin, I realized that it was a fairy orb. You can make out the outline of a fairy inside the large orb. I was thrilled. So when I found the book, The Fairy Tale by Signe Pike, I was immediately attracted to her journey. She takes three months and follows the recommendations of the book "The Travellers Guide to Fairy Sites" written in 2004. It is a lovely dream that she made come true and then wrote about it. Maybe someday soon.......

finally, I found my blog again!

I hate to admit this but I have a hard time finding my blog at times. Sometimes, I feel like there is a black hole on the internet and I simply lose things. Since, I have an hard enough time with technology, I just don't deal with it. As you can see I have ignored the blog writing since May and the groundhog eating the poppy event.
That was spring, and here it is winter. It is snowy and cold and the groundhog has been sleeping underground for quite awhile.
I have made myself a promise that I will blog daily so that I can overcome my fear of blogging. What do I fear? Well I fear talking about myself out loud. I fear that I do not have enough to say although that is truthfully ridiculous. I have a lot to say when I am interested. I have a fear that I will talk about crazy things that no one else is interested in. But that also has not been proven true yet.
So I will push through my fears and beginning writing. Tomorrow, I will talk about a new book that I was given by my Friend Jane, called Faery Tale by Signe Pike. It is delightful and chronicles one woman's search for magic and fairies. I dream about making a similar journey to fairy land.