samhain

happy samhain
happy hallowe'en
this is the time of the year when the thin veil between the worlds is lifted, when we can honour our beloveds who have passed on and honour those who have been born during this year.

every year i go to an event in vancouver put on by the reclaiming collective. each year it gets more inspiring and creative. i am not there tonight due to circumstance and miss my dear sweets who i usually spend this day with.
in thinking about this season i am recognizing that i have not experienced the death of a loved one this past year. it is a very important part of my mourning process to go to this ritual, where all 200 + people in the room have the sacred space to honour our beloved dead. grateful to not have lost this year.

i did celebrate samhain last night with a collective of folks. i was grateful to have the space to honour our beloved dead and chose to honour specifically my great grandmother elisa. i placed an amber bracelet of hers on the altar and when i held it in my hands i missed her so much. this woman....this woman i will tell you about one day. so grateful to have met her in this lifetime and blessed to have been her grandchild. grateful after all these years to still have the space to honour her and tell her i miss her.

in my neighbourhood there are firecrackers going of like haywire. there are the formal backyard firecrackers with familys gathered, clapping after each one goes off and there are the fernwood-hoolagans setting off firecrackers in the middle of the streets. some of them are far too close and i can hear far too much inside these thin walls...i wonder if falling asleep soon is a remote possiblity with all this activity.
oh, and after all this serious samhain talk...check this pic out

triggers.....

today one word was said that drew massive amounts of fluid up to my eyes and nose
ready to pour out in streams from both orfaces.
i held in in somewhat until i got home.
i'm not gonna tell the whole story because its not really the point. but it is good to recognize when we are being triggered. it allowed me to be present in the moment with my emotions but to also look at it in the big picture. it isn't really about that one word, the person who said it, or the context it was in. it is about why that comes up for me.
where does it fit in with the map of my life.
these are all concepts we are exploring in this lay-counsellor program i'm taking. but i got to experience the real thing today. real life emotion.
issues can lay dormant for years and then burst out in a second.
pretty overwhelming.
in my state of disarray i called a good friend. she helped me put it into great perspective. she brought up that a mere month ago i had spoken to her i didn't want to replay my trapped negative cycles anymore, like what came up today...issues of self-sabatoge in success, not letting myself reach my full potential.
i hadn't realized that i had actually asked for todays emotions. i asked for this change to occur in my life. i asked to establish new patterns. today my emotions were an alarm bell telling me that i was heading towards my old patterns. today was a challenge to see if i would listen or if i would hop right on into the cycle i've been in. thank the goddess for tears! thank the gods for friends who listen. and thank the universe for its ways of supporting and challenging at the same damn time!

bit o' heaven

i spent the other day in heaven....a small room overlooking a lake. inside this space was not only a grand piano and two upright basses but guitars, a banjo, drums, cases and cases of instruments that one just had to look in to see what else could possibly be in this room! i discovered within a dusty little case high up on a shelf...a clarinet... and fell in love with that sultry sound. i played clarinet in like grade 6.

during the day we had the sweetest jams and i don't usually jam on instruments, just vocals, cause there is usually a fancier guitar player around. lifechanging jams...so amazing to rediscover an instrument. i'm realizing how much i love and need to live music. i hope i have a room like that someday. i have a little (and i mean little) corner in my place where my instruments await attention. the guitar gets far more of that...but i think when i get my very own clarinet (i'm in love) there may be a bit o' competition.

so grateful for that day and that room. life lately has been consumed by work...homework...and trying to get a little rest in there somewhere so finding myself in such a beautiful room where you are asked to be creative...open a case, pick up an instrument and just play! heaven i tell you. heaven.