ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!

Hello loyal readers,

This blog has been in existence going on five years, and readership has grown over that time. I’m very grateful for each and every one of you who have signed up to read my blog. 

I’ve been promoting my Patreon here since November 2016. I’ve held steady at four patrons, to which I am exceptionally grateful.

I’ve wanted to have more Patreon readers, but I realize there isn’t that much difference between blogging here and blogging there. 

So it’s time for a change.

Starting now, I will only be posting my work here once a month. The rest will be for my Patreon subscribers only. 

Since I already posted a blog post for this month, this means it’s so long until April…unless you want to sign up to be a patron today. Four tiers range from $2 to $15 a month, all with more writing from me, including a bonus post and a chance to chat with me about writing.

I’ve also been going through some subtle but important changes in my life that I don’t feel is fit for public consumption anymore. So let’s get better acquainted at Patreon!

If you decide that you want to stay here for the monthly blog post, I appreciate that you continue to read my writing! But I really hope you consider and reconsider monetarily supporting my writing.

Thanks again to all of you for reading my writing. As spring approaches in a couple of days, I feel like it’s time to blossom in a way that’s more supportive of me and where I’m at in my life. 

I look forward to you joining me at Patreon today.

Goodbye for now,

Deborah

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If you liked what you’ve read, I’d love your support as a patron on Patreon. Tiers starts at just $2/month. I blog about things that I don’t post here.

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Thanks for your support! 💘

 

squirm, squirm, squirm

It’s a long, cloudy, and tired Sunday.

It’s also, besides the creep’s punctuations of chronic smoker’s cough, a quiet afternoon.

This week, I’ll be taking a big leap faith that I’ve ever taken–and I’ll talk about what that is when I return. I’m not scared or apprehensive, but I’m not curious or hopeful.

I feel neutral and sober, tinged with a bit of swirling, ineffable disappointment (and I wish I could talk about that more openly. But I just at least wanted to mention and honor it).

This week, Uranus wraps up its seven-year-long transit in Aries, with all the upheaval and loss and discomfort that’s been brought to my home. And boy, am I glad. This sojourn into darkness has been transformative, but I’m not yet sure who I’ve become.

This uncertain, unpredictable planet moves into Taurus on Tuesday, moving into my sector of children, creativity, and romance. I am excited about that, but I also feel so tired.

Still, despite my soul’s exhaustion, I wanted to mark it with this long-awaited momentous occasion with an exploration into a possible new life.

And for right now, I don’t have much to lose, nor do I have all the answers. I just have months and months of signs, pointing me in an unlikely direction.

What’s strange about all this is how my faith in the Universe, and myself, has deepened through this strange season. There has been confirmation that this is the way to go.

I actually did a reading about this and was surprised by what I saw, mainly because it was so positive. I basically asked what was this week going to look like.

 

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This is from the Psychic Tarot app by John Holland.

Overall, that there are three Major Arcana cards means that this week is definitely significant.

The first card, Rejoice in Celebration, is traditionally known as the 3 of Cups. It’s the party with your friends card. I hope that will be happening. This card has been stalking me a little bit lately, and I’d love to have something to really celebrate, with friends.

The second card, Harmony, is traditionally known as The Lovers. I think that’s partly literal as the picture shows, partly harmony with everything, and partly about choices I need to make.

The third card, Wisdom, is traditionally known as The Hierophant. One of the things I’m exploring does have to do with higher education. But this could also be about finding my group of like-minded people (as the app suggests). I believe it’s a bit of both, overlapping.

The fourth card, New Beginnings, is traditionally known as The Fool. This is card, with the number 0 marks the beginning of the journey through the Major Arcana, which ends with card #21, The World.

I’ve seen The Fool come up a few times. The message here is pretty literal. I am searching for a new beginning, and the Universe is affirming this will happen.

Even if you’re familiar with tarot, the fifth card may be unfamiliar to you, the Heart Chakra. It’s unique to the Psychic Tarot, which has cards for all the chakras, from the red root chakra to the fuschia crown chakra.

This card reminds me that this journey will be lead by my heart. If you look at the first two cards, the color green is prominent. In the Harmony card, the hands pressed together are surrounded in a glowing green.

It seems that my heart will definitely get involved with people–known and unknown–in a really affirming, positive way this week. ETA: This tarot reading from Elizabeth Harper this week seems to echo the reading I did for myself.

Then why do I still feel so sad?

Because the distance between this reading and my current reality seems impossibly far and wide.

Enter my leap of faith (a phrase, which, by the way, stalked me for a while, too).

It could also be that today, in the final two days of this horrendously humiliating Uranus in Aries transit, I can finally cry about how hard it’s been.

There’s space to let the grief in and out.

Things right now are really bad, and that’s been a long-running theme–one I’ve become eneverated from.

It’s been strange, though. I have these moments where the awfulness of my life’s circumstances doesn’t drown me anymore. I can see myself apart from it all, not identified with my circumstances.

Even as I’m sad now, I can say that there’s still a bit of separation. I really am not my circumstances. And it’s taken a lot of work to get here, for me to be able to say that and believe it.

Yet sometimes, the absurdity of how bad things are really takes my breath away.

I still really can’t believe that I live with a racist, mentally ill, leathery bag of bones who makes my soul’s flesh crawl in disgust. And that it’s been over a year of this insanity, in my own home.

If I wasn’t so disgusted by this, I’d write it about it more, because it’s a really fucked up story, one that could only happen because people enable this terrible person.

I have no idea how I’ve made it here and have kept my sanity…except I’ve been in absurdly awful places before. Yet I only started going to therapy this past February because I knew I needed to leave, that this place wasn’t going to get better.

But really, I cannot wait to never see this house or that person ever again. Yet sometimes, it feels like I will never leave…

Still, my resilience astounds and frustrates me.

I ask myself and the Universe those really useless, unanswerable questions: What have I done to deserve this? Why is this happening, still? What am I doing wrong? 

And as that reading shows, I’m not doing anything wrong. I can show you reading after reading, from me and from others, which show a way out of this goddamn mess.

Still, as I squirm in this straitjacket of a chrysalis, as I feel exhausted from pushing out this new life (just one more good push, love–you can do it…)…well, that’s it, really.

I have to keep going.

Yet today, it feels good to stop for a little bit, to rest, to have some self-compassion for myself, to let myself cry over the rejection, the silence, the frustration, the abuse, the neglect, the confusion, the going without, the isolation, the drudgery.

The not-getting-my-way.

There’s no point in appearing to be strong–and maybe there never really was.

It’s been peculiar this year, to find this newer me emerging: to have a deeper faith that this stretch of my life’s journey wasn’t a waste, to be lead by unrelenting signs, to feel my heart break more deeply without having it break me completely.

It’s strange to be able to hold all these disparate emotions and experiences, and know, really know, that it all belongs. I didn’t think this was ever possible. It’s a new level of strength and maturity that I’m so grateful for.

This Tuesday, there will be a new moon in Taurus. The moon is exalted, or the guest of honor, in Taurus. So this new moon, along with Uranus in Taurus, will be a very potent new moon, especially for making dreams and desires into physical reality. Taurus is an earth sign, very sensual, all about the five senses.

What I’ll be doing this week will be planting seeds for a new beginning and a new life.

Soon, I’ll rise from these ashes, reborn. Until then, I will mourn what never was, what could have been, and what used to be…so I can make way for the spark of life, burgeoning inside of me, waiting to be released.

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If you liked what you’ve read, I’d love your support as a patron on Patreon. Tiers starts at just $1/month. 

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a frog’s life 🐸

So, last Friday, I needed to take out the trash because the bums I live with don’t do it often enough, causing this place to be overrun with stupid drain flies.

Every three months, it’s my turn to take out the trash and keep the kitchen and other common areas clean. The two bums barely do their part, but I’m not here to bitch about them.

I’m here to talk about what I found when I went out to take the very full and filthy trash on Friday.

I found this little guy:

I’m not really into critters, but this is Florida, where there are plenty of them. But seeing this particular critter was strange since I don’t see frogs much around, ever. Lizards and skinks and birds and hawks and opossums and raccoons? Sure.

It has been incredibly humid for what should be our dry season, so maybe that’s why this frog was hanging out in the lid of the trash can.

So yeah–not a fan of critters. I just didn’t want this frog to jump on me. So I dropped my trash bag, took a pic of the frog, and then braced myself to open the lid. I was panicking a little, but I opened it quickly, tossed in the trash bag, and let the lid clatter shut.

And the frog stayed on!

I tweeted this photo and went on with my day, weekend, life. Just a one-off, weird sighting.

So trash day is tomorrow, so again, I took out the trash this afternoon. Pretty quotidian stuff.

Look who’s back?

I’m actually shocked because I’m not expecting to see the same damn frog five days later. This time, I know it’ll stay put when I open the lid. So I open the lid, toss in the trash, and close the lid. And sure enough, the frog stays.

But this time, the frog and I have to take a trip to the curb. I roll the trash can down our driveway and the frog stays on for the ride.

I’m concerned, though. Our trash pick-up involves a mechanical arm that picks up the trash can, empties it, and puts it back down. Maybe the frog will hop away in time?

I’m not really an Earth Mama, but I probably should be. I do enjoy taking pictures of nature the most, more than people.

I’ve had encounters with hawks showing up in our backyard. I saw my first hummingbird hanging out by a camellia bush. I saw a black racer (a harmless snake) on the street and then in our yard.

Lately, I’ve befriended the squirrels in the backyard. They race back and forth on our wooden fence. And by befriend, I mean having staring contests.

It’s like Wild America! around here.

But to have a frog be in the exact same spot twice in five days–it’s a little weird.

There’s some symbolism and meaning related to the frog, but I’d rather just talk about what the frog means to me.

I look at this frog, with its big pale eyes, huddled in this trash can lid. Its front legs are tucked under its head. It’s not really in the mood to go anywhere. It seems settled. Anthropomorphically speaking, it looks contemplative and a little sad, like it’s almost sleeping with its eyes open.

The only message I got for me personally was that sometimes, we have to huddle in places that aren’t ideal, like inside a trash can lid, but we have to be patient. We have to hold on when our environments change (e.g., the lid opens and closes).

We have to hold on.

To see a frog near the end of fall in the dry season is strange for me, and honestly, unlike the squirrels and hawks and butterflies that almost accost me, I don’t even know if this frog was sent for me. He or she could be a sign of climate change, I don’t know.

But I do identify with the frog, so much, with its sad, melancholic eyes. My house feels like living in a trash can lid, and that my room has become that little crevice I can hide in and hold onto as circumstances change.

Seeing this frog is not that deep, and yet: it felt like an extension of myself, like some living allegory of my life in real-time. Maybe I’m just seeing and accepting the messages from the Universe more clearly and quickly.

Even today, the synchronicities have been crazy, like everything has become a self-referential loop–even more than usual. Repeated phrases and topics from unexpected places. The frog is a part of that divine loop now.

Maybe, just maybe, the frog could be a harbinger of needed positive change in my life.

Or maybe, just maybe, the frog is just trying to find a place to be left alone and is just trying to hold on.

All I can hope is that it, and I, hop away in time.

—

If you liked what you’ve read, I’d love your support as a patron on Patreon. Tiers starts at just $1/month. 

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Thanks for your support! 💘

 

 

“I accept that”/the lost tribe

Lately I’ve been binge-watching the outlaw biker show, Sons of Anarchy, and one of the minor characters, Chucky, says the title a lot. He’s got…some issues. If you’ve watched the show, then you know what I mean. It’s clear that he’s been in a lot of therapy that had some Eastern/Buddhist leanings. As a sidenote, I find it really intriguing how new age/spiritualist messaging has filtered through pop culture.

I woke up this morning thinking about that phrase: “I accept that.” As the new moon in Aries starts a new lunar cycle, I definitely feel the urge to start again, to leave the past behind.

What am I actually accepting today? That, in this Venus retrograde season, where we’re reviewing what we value, and that includes relationships, there’s no going back to the glory days of my relational life–and that would be college, where I found my people, people who valued a rich interior life, people who were really thought, really snarky, and really there for me.

I accept that most if not all of them miss me the way I have missed them. I’ve been living in mourning since I left and returned to college to finish. That’s at least 17 years of sorrow. Life happened the way it did, and even though I’m friends with people from college on Facebook, it’s not the same. We’ve all gone on with our lives–without each other.

Case in point: I noticed that my first year roomie, a fellow Capricorn, was in town on vacation while I was in grad school. I reached out to her, met her son–it was fun. But, it wasn’t the same. Later, I reached out to her during one of my many hard times down here, and I got some kind, almost condescending “there there” words, but no real help. Whatever real friendship we had dissolved in the seas of time.

Currently, she’s doing really well, working in municipal government. I’m torn between being proud of her, being insanely jealous of how her life has been so stable and rewarding, and just being tired of putting any emotional thought or concern into her or her seemingly fabulous life whatsoever. I’m pretty sure it’s all of the above.

Multiply that times a few people, and it’s a constant emotional drain, like a pipe that’s been leaking for a while, and then all of a sudden, a pipe bursts. I wistfully look back on these relationships that were supposed to matter–that’s the bill of goods you’re sold as you go into college and graduate school, that these will be lifetime friends. I don’t really have any.

Add to it that it’s very hard to make friends post-college, then I wonder if finding a lost tribe is possible, or worth it. Adulting is hard enough, but it does help to have some semblance of support.

Earlier last week, I thought of how school past junior high was always full of conflict. All these lifelong friends I was supposed to have do not exist. What I have instead are boring acquaintances. I get to see their babies and their spouses and their vacations and all the curated happiness they allow to filter through their Facebook feeds. No tinges of intimacy.

Another story: a friend of mine and I connected on Facebook a few years ago, and I spilled my guts about a mutual friend who basically cut me out of her life because I was a little too Mercury in Sagittarius-blunt about the death of her father. I said she must be glad about it. Maybe she had come up in conversation–I’m not sure why I brought it up. Usually, I don’t disclose things without a reason.

That other friend and I had seemingly parallel lives, and we bonded on that. Friend #1 reacted like I had uncorked bad wine–she was compassionate, but it just seemed like time had rolled on, and that I had spewed some irrelevant vinegar all over her. I had apologized to Friend #2, but it’s definitely up to her to accept, or to not accept, my apology, or to forgive, or to not forgive me. I did the best I could with my antidepressant-addled brain, making my way on my own painful journey. When ours intersected at her father’s death, we abruptly parted ways. And all I can do now is shrug. I’m done mourning what can’t be undone.

I don’t think I won’t meet people like the ones I met in college again, but there won’t be the same shared sense of mission, of collective awakening that seems to happen only in college. We were all writing our own bildungsromans, together, being the major and minor characters in our life stories. And with my family’s drama dragging me down, I missed out on the final chapters that my friends were writing. I had faded into an apathetic background, into obsolescence.

But this is what I accept: if my story was meant to be any other way, it would have been so. I fought hard to stay in school and get back into school, and most of those friends fell out of touch during that time. I did the best that I could with the resources that I had. And, if I had mattered more, people would have stayed in touch. The only person that kind of kept in touch years after I had left is dead. So, that’s that.

I’m frowning as I write this because acceptance isn’t necessarily some pain-free experience. I’m sad that a lot of the human condition I’ve experience involves losing a lot of people–or maybe never really having them at all. So much of my time was recovering from familial wounds. So maybe the better term is acquiesce. I reluctantly, but without protest, accept that I’ve lost way more people than I have kept.

I’ve been ruminating about how I had been framing my life here as an isolated one, as someone who is completely emotionally destitute. This support group I’ve been attending for the past few weeks at first seemed to be my local only lifeline. Now I’m not so sure.

I skipped two times in a row because of allergies and because of writing deadlines. I didn’t miss the group, and yet I made myself go last week and it was canceled when I was just 10 minutes away. I didn’t miss the group because the last two times I shared about my life, it just seemed to not land on any place of understanding. And it hurt, doubly. Sharing with strangers isn’t easy, but the lack of response is a sort of rejection. Yet I was definitely missed. I received text messages from a couple of people wondering where I was. It was nice, but there wasn’t a mutual sense of being missed.

I don’t know what that group will mean to me in the future, if I will go this week or ever again. And that’s 100% completely fine with whatever outcome comes to being (yes, I’m saying that more for my own edification). I probably needed this group to realize that I’m not as bad off as I think I am, even if these people will definitely not be the lost tribe that I am looking for.

And that’s why I have gone back to my college years, in my mind, when I was able to share deeply and intensely, for hours, and not get blank stares in return. It was a special time, but I live in a different time now. I accept that.

Also: I am finally learning some fucking discretion about who I share my life to. Those recent heartbreaking and honestly embarrassing group experiences reminded me that most people will not care about the quotidian details of my life. There’s something I’m currently going through that only one person knows about–which is not really normal for me, but it feels mature and normal now, to value myself, my life, my desires, my passions, and to share them with people who do the same.

Maybe, most of all, it’s that I do have good relationships with people online. It’s not the same as being in the flesh with folks, but it has been enough for a while. I kept making my life wrong and empty and less than by valuing in-person relationships over just relationships in general.

I accept that this is the path I’m on. It’s not the one I’d actively choose for myself, and many times it’s unpleasant and soul-crushing. But I’m doing the absolute best that I can. I accept that no other relationships are going to rise from the dead and be as awesome and as close and as meaningful as the relationships I have in my life right now. I’ve tried, and it’s just…never the same.

Having a tenderhearted Cancer moon that really values relationships and the past-I’ve wasted that precious emotional side of me exerting a lot of effort into dead things, like my past. As alive as it can be in my life, it’s so very, very dead. All of it. It got me to where I am now, but I’ve been living in the cemetery of my youth for such a long time. I accept that my life still looks like the remnants of a forest fire, still smoldering, still raining ash. I also accept that through all that fire, fertile soil is underfoot. Seeds have been planted. Sprouts are appearing and will continue to appear.

So, with the newness of Spring, of Aries season, and of this new moon in Aries tomorrow, I welcome more new life, new chances to be understood and seen and heard, and new chances to not waste time on trying to revive dead things. I can instead use the rich organic matter of pain and loss as the fertilizer for new dreams and a new life. I don’t have to wait. It can start right now. I’m not dead: only my past is.

P.S. I am baking apples because I hate Gala apples and I accidentally picked some up. I saw the number 55 (which means big changes coming) right before I returned my cinnamon onto a shelf. While I did that, I brushed passed a favorite mug of mine. It crashed and broke into a musical explosion. Holding onto my past is like holding onto a shattered mug. Instead of holding onto those broken pieces, or trying to glue them back together, I swept them up and threw them away.

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If you liked what you’ve read, I’d love your support as a patron on Patreon. Tiers starts at just $1/month. 

If you want to give a one-time gift or monthly gift, hit me up on Paypal.

Thanks for your support! 💘