Queen of Swords

 I managed to forget for a couple of weeks that I have an account here. . . .

Work was exceptionally busy and frustrating last week. I got caught up in a misunderstanding between two different organizations about who was responsible for which tasks for a joint event that starts tomorrow. I thought my counterpart was responsible for nailing down details and then I would swoop in and finalize the arrangements with my corporate credit card. Indeed, she and I had agreed on this during a couple of phone calls.

Nope. Turns out I was supposed to be nailing down the details.

Even though I am not at all involved in the event except for having been volunteered by a manager on my team. I was really steaming last Monday afternoon when I got an email from an external manager asking me where I was on these tasks. He was perfectly courteous, but clearly his understanding was completely different from mine -- and the agreement with the person in his org. Who hadn't been responding to my voicemails or emails. 

Things got straightened out with "Don't worry, QoS will handle things." And I handled them. But there was some gnashing of teeth on my end.
 

The good news in all this was that the tooth gnashing wasn't anywhere near as intense as it would have been a few months ago, prior to my healing sessions. And I was able to let the anger and frustration drain away relatively quickly instead of continuing to seethe and feed on the negative energy -- both of which were symptoms of my depression. And I had lowered my antidepression dose by half (with my doc's approval) a couple of weeks prior to that. So the healing really is sticking.

This morning I had a natal chart analysis reading with Diotima Mantineia, and it was quite remarkable. One of her first questions was about whether or not I had done any work around past lives. I said that I hadn't done concentrated work, but I had some intuitions and impressions. "Did any of them involve focused spiritual or priestess work?" she asked. I almost laughed. Yes. . .   After the initial hellos, she led off with, "So let's talk about your very interesting chart. . . " Long story short, she knows nothing about me but my chart, but she affirmed every intuition I've had about my mission, and put her finger on my central challenges and had some good suggestions about working with them. I need to process some more and may or may not share more later. But I highly recommend www.uraniaswell.com if you need an astrological consultation.

Finally, my mom is having knee replacement surgery tomorrow morning (March 12). She's putting me up in a hotel near her so I don't have to drive back and forth across the lake several times to get her there and then take her back to her home the next day. I need to pick her up at 4:40am tomorrow. . .  Not looking forward to that. I'm a morning person, but that's a bit early even for me. If you have good thoughts or prayers to spare for her, they would be welcome. 

I am looking forward to the time off work and luxuriating in a nice hotel room for a couple of nights, however. . . 

Christmas this year was painful. It was the second one since my dad's death, and I think his absence hurt more because the first year I was still somewhat in shock. I always felt more akin to my dad than anyone else in my family (except my daughter), so his absence is not only its own grief, it makes being around my mother and sister less fun.

Writing about dissatisfaction with gifts is always perilous because of the risk of being perceived as petty and ungrateful. But I'm going to do it anyway. Because I need to unpack (no pun intended) some emotions and realizations. ( Read more... )

At some point during the past three years I stopped defining myself by my pleasure, my passion, my stories, and started defining myself by my duties. It's a cruel way to live -- at least the way I've been doing it.

A little while ago, in what started out as a light meditative state, I was inspired to do a descent progression: releasing those things which provide shape to my expectations of myself and my perception of my limitations.

First to go were my parents and my understanding of their expectations of me -- and immediately I felt much lighter. Next were my academic credentials: my BA from one of the most highly selective liberal arts colleges in the US and my Masters Degree that was supposed to be the start of my own professional academic career. With them went all my baggage around what kind of future those credentials were supposed to have laid out for me, those futures which I so often feel I've failed to live up to.

Next I let go of uncrowned_king, and then Wolfling. In my daily life they are non-negotiable, but for the purposes of this exercise I let go any and all obligations to both of them. It was kind of scary how much lighter I felt after that.

Next to go were priestess vocation and responsibilities, followed by everything that required money: lodging, food, insurance, car. . .

Six gates passed, and I was feeling almost bouyant.

I never got to the seventh gate. I was so caught up in realizing how much weight of "should" and "need to" that I carry around that coming up with a seventh 'thing' didn't seem important.

Without all my references of duty and responsiblity I felt like I was being reborn.

Somehow I need to balance my authentic love for the people I let go of in the exercise, and my very real need to continue to support myself and Wolfling financially, with this sense of expansiveness and openness to joy that emerged at the end of the releasing.

It's like the perception tests of "what do you see in this picture?" These days I see bars and chains everywhere. There must be other elements to the picture of my life that I can bring into the foreground.

This is directly related to the post I just made about pseudonyms (although interestingly enough, that word never appears in that post).

I was talking with my dad the other day, and he observed -- with clear relief -- that Wolfling "No longer seems quite as set on 'being different'" as she has in the last couple of years.

The specifics of this include: not doing a lot of body art with colored pens, especially lots of runic writing on her arms; and not wearing t-shirts with 'weird' things on them (like a funny little monster that says "Changeling"), and etc.

It took a day or so for my father's palpable relief to really sink in with me, and I felt a sad sense of confirmation of all the thoughts I've had over the past couple of years that more than anything else my parents wanted me to fit in, to conform to expectations, to be agreeable. I don't think they understood that they were inhibiting my chances of being exceptional and being recognized in a positive way for it. To them, success was possible only if one kept carefully within the boundaries and didn't make other people uncomfortable.

They had no idea that some of my core strengths were going to be things like thinking outside the box, asking good questions, and being creative -- all things that required getting out of step, crossing the lines, being different.

I am trying so very hard to encourage Wolfling to be herself, whatever that involves -- while being a courteous, thoughtful person. I want her to be empathetic, but not take responsibility for making sure everyone around her is comfortable with her all the time. I don't want her to hide her light under a bushel because someone else might feel intimidated by her.

I need to keep a buffer between her and her grandparents in this area.

And I need to continue to work on separating myself from their concerned, conservative voices in my head.

I'd been thinking that getting some activity might help my mood -- and I got my chance today. My 77 year-old dad, his retired neighbor lady, and the son of their neighbors and I were all out shoveling the shared driveway late this morning. There were only three snow shovels, so we took turns. I shot the photo during one of my breaks.



We were about to go in and take a break when an ambulance pulled up across the street and another neighbor called to see if anyone had snow shovels to come help dig a path to the afflicted person's front door -- so off we went. (Nothing like flashing red lights to get one's adrenaline going!) Fortunately the situation wasn't immediately urgent, but there's a path for the EMT's to get back and forth.

When I came back inside I was shaking from fatigue, but I felt much better overall.

I've been quietly fretting about what to get my mom for Christmas, but Amazon has just provided a rather unlikely assist: Rosemary Radford Ruether's Goddesses and the Divine Feminine: A Western Religious History.

She and my aunt have turned into real seekers over the past couple of years, and they both were whole-heartedly engaged in my "The Lamp and the Mirror" class. As many of you are already aware, Ruether is a leading feminist theologian, and this book looks like it has the potential to be a great survey of the topic, without tipping over into the myth of matriarchy.

Actually, I've just gone back and ordered another copy for my aunt. They've been having a spiritual book club together, and I think this will be great for them.

I feel so subversive!
;-)

I've been having a much-more-social-than-usual Saturday.

This morning I had the pleasure of visting red_the_squeaky -- and we went for a walk! It's been a beautiful, clear Fall day with lots of gorgeous colors to enjoy. It was nice to have a one-on-one conversation with her for the first time.

After visiting Red, I drove further north to a munch where I didn't know anyone, but ended up having some good conversations and connecting with someone who is interested in spiritual direction. I gave her one of my cards. We'll see if she follows up.

I had a nice talk on the phone with oakmouse on my drive home about some of the transformational stuff doing on and last night's dream, and now I'm taking a few minutes of downtime before going over to have dinner with my parents and hang out for a while. I've been feeling guilty because Wolfling and I have seen very little of them since school started. I haven't meant to shut them out, but I also haven't felt like going out again once I get home from work. I'm remedying that this evening. I won't be out too late, however. I need some alone time today!

Now that I've gotten through last week, I can finish answering the questions left in response to this meme. You can still ask questions there if you'd like.


Someone asked:

What is your strongest compass?

After knocking this question around in my head for a while, I'm coming to the conclusion that this is one of those symbols that for some reason just doesn't work for me. But I'll give it my best shot, and the person who asked the question is welcome to clarify or follow up here or on the original entry.

I don't have a single philosophy or goal or commitment that motivates me, or which I turn to for guidance more than anything else. When I was growing up (until age 22) I would have said that Christianity was that compass. Obviously my spirituality is still a powerful, fundamental force in my life, but I'm not sure I could call it a compass.

However I have two values which -- as I look back on my life -- virtually always outweigh everything else.

The first is responsibility to my family. When I was growing up, this meant that I was always conscious of the impact my actions would have on my family's reputation. (My father was a public figure.) Good behavior started at home. When I didn't live up to the expectations of good behavior, I "knew" that if my actions might hurt my family in some way -- either the external reputation or the feelings of my parents or sister -- I needed to be sure that I shielded them from those consequences. Even when my marriage was breaking up, I felt deep responsibility to my about-to-be-Ex to continue to treat him as well as possible, to not take advantage of him, and etc. Now, as a single mother, Wolfling's well-being is a fundamental concern. So is the well-being of my now-aging parents.

In short: I always consider the needs of and impact to my family when I make decisions. And I usually place those considerations very, very high. Even now, some of my decisions about how open and out to be about my "alt" beliefs and sexuaity are driven less by concerns for my own reputation than by how it would impact my parents.

The second value is passion. When my passions are engaged, just about everything else -- except responsibility to family -- goes out the window. And even the family responsibility usually gets compromised down to shielding rather than upholding.

I've made most of the major decisions in my life based on passion -- and when I haven't felt passion, my decisions have been ones of convenience and expediency. Which goes a long way to explaining the state of my career, since I never felt passion around any job opportunity or career except the rocket company. The biggest ethical violations I've committed have been driven by passion -- all within the context of personal relationships.

Passion is the fuel of my creativity as well, whether that be writing or gaming or other activities.

One of the huge downsides to being passion driven -- and smart enough to have most things that I want come easily to me -- is that I never developed discipline or persistence. So when my passion flags, it's hard for me to keep going. Where others bootstrap themselves and continue on, drawing on values of faithfulness, persistence, discipline, duty, ambition, or etc. I simply go dead in the water. Not all the time, but much more often than has been good for me.


So I don't have an external, objective compass, I have Jack Sparrow's compass: it points in the direction of what I want the most.

Which means that right now, when I don't have any passion in my life, my decisions and sense of possibilities are being framed primarily by a sense of duty to a dependent child and aging parents whose sensibilities are not in line with my vocational dreams.

No wonder I'm having a hard time motivating myself to step outside the boundaries of what they raised me to consider acceptable and responsible -- and which they continue to reinforce when I mention my ideas about pursuing additional opportunities. My father immediately tells me not to do anything that might compromise my position at or commitment to the day job and the financial security it gives me, and my mother expresses worry and concern that time spent pursuing my vocation will have a negative impact on Wolfling because I won't "be there for her." And those warnings go straight to my gut.


I guess the deepest question right now is: why don't I feel passion around my vocation? Do I feel too much fear? Too much inhibition? This is something I want. It's something that gives me deep pleasure and satisfaction when I engage in it. Why do those feelings seem to vanish shortly after the experiences?

My car is back in the shop for another one thousand worth of work.
It may be time to contemplate buying something newer.

We hear Mom's test results Thursday morning at 9:00am -- or rather, my parents will get the news from the doctor and then they'll call my sister and me.

I need to wash my dishes (left over from before I went on my trip), and then I'm going to spend some extended time in meditation.

I wish Wolfling were here to snuggle.