The circle of Juliet.

Sitting here attempting to rid my mind of thoughts, you swam across my mind in a endless sea of chaotic random knowing.  Feeling compelled to regurgitate the wisdom feeling immediately related afterwards I write this to you both.  

There is a cycle to things and they can be a never ending black hole or they can lead to the growth of more.  This dance you do at the expense of your daughter is not fitting for everyone in the circle.  The circle that I speak of is her circle, her dance, her life. Within this circle she has you, and her father, and her grandmother and grandfather and me maw and cousins and brothers and sisters and me.  She has danced this circle with us her whole life, learned from us all and tasted a little of every heart.  She has joined us all together within this circle. 

Now here she is about create her own life and you and your girlfriend still decide her circle isn’t that important.  You devalue every soul the divine has given her to guide her path.  You assume her path is yours, he assumes the same.  Yet no one, sees her path is her own.  You relive your distaste of fatherhood through her in resentment and bitterness and he looks for himself to be reflected in her eyes.  Your girlfriend takes from life the sweetness of her own fathers memory but denies the importance of his to Juliet in hypocrisy.   In his refusing to accept your lifestyle, you refuse to accept him to his daughter.  The circle continues….

My part in this circle only matters to her and I.  She and I dance together acknowledging the sadness of the others within the circle.  The healing that is needed and the understanding that time is not what we think it is.  Sometimes she pulls close to one of us and other times she faints away.  There are shadows in the circle.  You and your girlfriend swim all around them and often times try to use them to separate her from the others in the circle.  You hope to weaken the circle but not understanding you weaken her path in the process.  You keep her from being confident and strong and able.  Through emotional tug of wars she is pulled apart and learned a way of fear that will forever be hers.  So she goes along and she learns, how to use the shadows to recreate what she has learned.  Then you and your girlfriend and him, y'all look amazed when what she has become is everything that you are.  

All the gifts in tow that you lay at her feet will never measure the character you bestow.  All the fears you cling to of separation will never put her heart at rest, she will run.  I ask myself what if you and your girlfriend really don’t care about this little life and where she's headed.  What if you really don’t want anything but dishonesty and contempt to ooze from her heart.  Then all my words here seem in vain and not even God himself can wake you up to see, your only enemy is within your own heart.  How often the sins of the mother and father get thrown in the lap of the child. The child picks them up and has to learn her own walk and what tools have you supplied her with?  The open mind you swore she would have with the exception of closing it to anyone but you?  The disrespect for her father that you have for your own? How are any of these tools gonna make her heart sing?  How will she find her purpose among all the ashes?  

Release her.  Release her from your hate, your sting.  Release this little one and let her have her wings.  She dreams, such dreams of freedom from this circle.  This circle that was meant to protect and guide and now she finds this circle her cage.  You fight for independence and to be seen to be valued.  How can this be in tearing apart her circle?  There are others in this circle with you, your girlfriend and her father.  I speak for them, for us, that have certain jobs with this little one that no one cares about.  Look through our eyes just once.  Everyone is losing her.  Soon she will fly away.  The one that changes their life , the one that decides the hate must stop, that’s the one… the one that really loved her.  

My Creative Rebellion

     My statement of redefined new-age individual religion.  

I will not go down at the hands of a government insisting they know how to treat my disease with their chemicals and greed.  I will not suppose a church can house my faith yet withhold equality in gender without a mind/body/spirit connection.   I will not allow a popular opinion to seduce my mind and belittle my own thinking until I cannot think for myself at all.  No, you may not use the race card because if you ever truly want prejudice to end instead of punishing, no matter my color or yours or what ancestor did this or that to the other.  Move on, move up in consciousness.  I will respect my elders but I will not carry a single fear-based choice of life reason.  No, I will soar!  I will not look back to the traditions of men but forward to the heavens of eternal divine bliss.  I will clap my hands and I will sing and move my soul to the rhythm that is within me.   I will embrace all that God wants for me, planned for me and desires for me, without labels, poisons, or misinterpreted creeds.  My love will be free and not dictated by this movie or that one or any so called, "superstar".  I will wear my heart well and daily dust off the distractions of this world, the evil doers and the misguided failings of blame and ego.  I will dance in the sunrise and hold the broken.  I am in this world but not of it. 

I am free!

My Yesterday

The rain has found me once again, beating outside my window- hard like my thoughts /  Where is the religion that tells us how to fix the world and the terrible messes we've made without pointing at us? / I really need flowers today or A flower, or a remembrance of a flower--before I believe they are all extinct and hope is void. / She's fainting, failing, falling in the dark of thought and word, no saving / She says, "Am I alone?" Then, the world echoes back the same.../ In attempting to unearth the very core of me, hide your eyes and guard your heart, for I feel as much as God...

A page from my journal

A page taken from my journal some time ago... We often digress in life if but for moment and are left to wander in our thoughts/ dreams....  Not everyday can be ice-cream.  xoxo!

     Sometimes I feel like I am headed off into the abyss.  For all my life God has allowed me the saints patronage, one of safety and protection with vision to see him in my life and to feel his love all about me.   Now the time has come for me to know the dark of man.  To experience it and live it.

     As I know the journey among the shadow commences, I fear if I linger there too long on the shadow road---that it will swallow me and I shall not return to the light from which I came;  as if I am cast off from God to experience this dark of him.

     I am reminded of the dreams that haunted me for months.  Some sort of preparation to this choice that God my father seems persistent on me choosing.  If I return damaged and with blurry vision for the right things then know that I love the souls I led here more than air, food or any other thing in my existence.  May they be the soul tie that rescues me from this nothingness place where I can see no light. 

     Each day bares on my will to seduce and test and surrender to the desires of flesh, of want and to look upon the very things my bible foretold in warning.  I am drawn to every bad thing and escapism lures me like a gentle fog eluding to my hearts safety.  Has God released his hand from me?  I pray not.  I pray that if it is my duty to travel down these roads for experience or needed soul knowledge, that he be there with me, watching...helping...supplying his saving/ sustaining grace.  

     I fear I will lose more than I can bare.  Yet not walking forward into this leaves me alone and without on a deeper more fearful plane.  

     Life was supposed to be beautiful and full of enchanting dreams.  Yet it seems Gods plan for me is to cross the river of the forsaken as one of them and no longer as one at the mercy of them.  Will I lose myself to madness?  Will I gladly float to it's safe haven?  Is this God's plan for me or Satan's?  Which at this moment do I desire more?  

     Speak up my soul -- please speak up and do not cower beneath the unknown.  Perhaps if I cannot live in the light, in my rebellion will provide a home.  

-T

The dream of me.

     

     You know that morning when you wake up to the strangest dream ever but you can't remember a damn thing?  You know it meant something, some piece of valuable insight that might just expose the missing piece to your life puzzle.  That was me this morning.  Hundreds of images flashing in my memory but nothing to put it all together except a feeling, something pushing my knowing past my unknowing.  

     It was about me, my life as dreams often are, nothing special there.  Yet it took me away from everything and I gotta sneaky suspicion I was fully, actively, wholeheartedly chasing something that I loved more than anything.  Where was I and what was I doing?  UGHHHHH!!!!!!!  I know I was fearless.  I know I was moving at a crazy speed of "doing exactly what needed to be done at that exact moment".  

     Go back to sleep Tess.  Go back to sleep and find that place cause aint nothing here telling you anything but to go eat.  At least in dream-time I float my way through the puzzle instead having to physically move the pieces but wait... physically moving them is reality.  Or is it?  

     Put your shoes on girl, the world awaits.  Early morning sunrise and let this nonsense go the best you can.  I will put this dream in my pocket today then tonight in my meditation pull it out and take it to the light.  

     I've been repeating my mantra a lot lately.  "I am the ocean, I am the sea, everything opens as I open me." Thinking about it real hard, yanking down some cobwebs in my head that have hindered my real journey.  Feeling love and to be loved everyday is bliss. The divine light that is in me, leading and guiding and me here just trying to make sense of it all.  

peace,

-Teresa Ann

The mountain, the sisterhood and the girl.

Wa-La, just like that it’s Friday and all is right in my world.   I met the beast last night in yoga class that thought a girl with exercise induced asthma could just hop right up there on that mountain with very little warm up.  Then…she must have seen my costume because she thought I was wonder woman and decided to leave me on that mountain for FOREVER!  The decent down were asanas I recognized after years of study before in advanced classes, maybe toned down just a bit.   Whoever said North River classes were lame…*tisk*.  Ok, so now she’s my hero.  Now I will follow her around town like an adrenaline junkie.  You know it’s a good teacher when the the next day you wake up and nothing is too awfully sore but you feel like you can fly.  I’m not ripped to shreds but definitely that root chakra is opening and just like that, I’m back in childhood.  So let’s play…shall we?

I’ve another yoga class on Saturday morning while my husband is participating in his “Spartan” adventure.  Of which, they do rip you to shreds very quickly and not very forgivingly.  In yoga this would be considered violence against the body.  However, many men seem to prefer this madness method over anything else.  Let’s be fair, it’s not just men.  His teacher is a woman without any compassion whatsoever.  There are three other ladies in his class that can at this point go a little further than most of the men.  Do I lie and say this is so wrong!  No, I can’t lie because I deep down do get a kick out of strong women leading the way, especially in fitness.   We reclaim our bodies for ourselves and make them strong and beautiful, graceful just like our hearts.   I’m very proud of him for seeing the equality in a woman teacher.  

No matter what type of fitness you prefer it is good to choose one.  Choose anything that will be an outlet, a sacred place where everything else gets laid down and discarded.  To lose weight is one thing and sometimes needed but really just to hug your own self and feel alive.  Feel like you did when you were little and you didn’t understand grown up problems.  The only thing you cared about was what to play that day.  Yes Ladies, you can feel this way it’s not just for guys!  Yoga does open the energetic pathway  up your spine beginning at the base which can be extremely provocative but leads to love for all humanity.  Emotional traumas and false identity issues get thrown away by the second Chakra, the life-force hits the third and you’ve embraced all that you are.  Opening the fourth is an outpouring onto others that which you cannot contain, memories come rushing back of wounds and joys and a connectedness to all that is.  True forgiveness lives here.  By the fifth your starting to see a bigger picture and your voice emerges.  A powerful voice that you never knew existed.  This amazing energy hits your sixth and all your senses are heightened.  You smell everything more, taste everything more, hear the unspoken things, intentions of others and you come alive in such an amazing way.  The seventh is enlightenment and God is all around you at a moments notice.  Life moves this way or that but you are still and in love and full of bliss in this presence.  This is yoga.  

Moments in our life open and close our Chakras by happenstance.  Sometimes we have this or that sensation/feeling.  What yoga does, is a balance.  It brings these energies into alignment.  it’s not just a hit and miss anymore it’s a way of life.  Your gift of free will is directed and focused and your not just flying by the seat of your pants.  So yoga is not just looking really cute in tight pants and a tank top. ;)  It can be whatever you want it to be.  For me, it’s a tool to be here on this earth for a time in a way that expands, helps and heals and NO, my fellow Christians and faith chasers, Jesus is not excluded from my practice.  Jesus is the essence of it. Peace.

I am not my own today

I wonder if God will ask me how well I heard.  How well I heard the dream that he placed within me and how hard did I really tend to it? Did I assume too often that the world was more important than his faintest whisper?

 

How many days have I wasted, condemning my own ambition because I looked around and couldn’t find one like it?  Because it seemed other worldly and different and it meant something other than main stream and my how many fears this created.  My wasted days.

 

How many others came to me with their ambition for me to light or heart exposed when my own lie in the darkness uncovered and screaming my name?

 

What was the struggle for of unearthing my purpose and grand design to only turn from it when the moment came for me to pick a road, and why did I pick another’s instead of my own?  To love God is to trust him and what if the world needs but has never seen that which he has given to me?

 

How many stories have I written, witnessed and allowed to linger near my own truth so that the black and white became the grey and without vibrancy of color my life faded into barely there?

 

When did I stop dancing or needing to or even hearing the ancient drum pulse in my veins connecting me to all that is?  Why can’t I remember that in dance was sacrifice and spirit escaping my body for that moment of magical divine ecstasy, or the pain I felt when churches denied the spirit to move and teach others to move the way love makes you move?

 

Wake up soul, wake up and remember and respond to the questioning of the divine.  Feel the star dust in your body and the connectedness of others in happiness.  Lay down the rules and the boundaries that provide a realm of disbelief that taunt your imaginings.   When the drum beats and the earth sighs and your body moves, send up this prayer in blissful gratitude, for this rhythm and this flow is sweet to taste and so much belonging.  

Somebody has to say it..

Anyone that knows me well knows I'm dealing with a major Saturn opposition Saturn transit right now. (Sarcasm) anyone that doesn't like sarcasm should just go read something else because this post is full of it centered around all my life's lessons.  May the courageous in heart carry on...

A Saturn opposition is by far one of the hardest transits that an able mind and body can brave in this lifetime.  It's the mid-life crisis where you look around at how you've always done things and it just pisses you off.  You start to see in your early 40's what you did a certain way for 40 years was insane and got you absolutely no where doing it.  Everything you feared or danced around for others just becomes out and out bullshit at this point.  The best part is you can't control the change that's coming.  Yet, whatever comes is needed change and sets the course for the rest of your life.  Sort of a pause if you will to stop climbing, doing and being and assess your life situations, relationships and any other thing that Saturn decides to shift.  BTW, this will go on for about (2) years give or take.  

So, before this opposition I was the doer, the sacrificer, the martyred and the one that made sure everybody else was ok.  Oh I would fight for a cause but never my own.  So I have jotted down some quotes that just pop in my head as I free think about where I am today in my head and heart.  I'm sure something amazingly fabulous will be birthed at the end of these two years.  (Say your prayers for me plz)

It's not that I don't like kids, it's just that I'm "over" kids.  Next obsession please....

When someone assumes leaving my life out of some petty argument or jealousy is a punishment..."where is the logic in that?"  Trash that takes itself out???  Think about it...

She turned out to be fierce, speak her truth and has a mind of her own. 

Sure life is hard, as long as your looking at it according to the needs of everyone around you more than your own dreams.  Then it's fucking hard!!!!

I never thought I'd be ok without a man, without my kids and without my family.  Now there is an assurance that the sun will shine again and I will create a new.  There will come a tomorrow with completely new characters to dance on my stage. 

People will always hate you for the truth no matter how you say it because life says everything is supposed to be hidden and squashed...never addressed. 

If all your enemies, haters and evil doers in your life suddenly ended up in the same town, would that be a blessing or a curse?  I say blessing because like attracts like and good character doesn't hate someone so fabulous! 

I don't travel because I like spending money.  I travel because I like not thinking about it for a week.  "Lay that shit down!"

At her worst, life-changing moment full of betrayal and chaos she was the calmest she'd ever been.  Put on her lipstick and turned to flick the music up!

I used to carry regrets around in my pocket.  They seemed to define me.  Now they are against my religion.  I simply don't believe in them. 

There is so much freedom in making up my own mind about a thing without the influence of any other thing or person. 

I leave you with this..." Friends that sparkle are all that's allowed here and kuddos to my husband who's left standing with me when this is all said and done!". 

My need for Grace.

Happy Thursday. 
You should be able to tell by now that I definately have an Aries ascendant by the inconsistency of this blog, lol.  Seriously.

I want to write today.  I want to write about one area of my life that I need Grace more than anything.  I always have.  That area lies with my children.  It actually, is the only place in my life that I have stood up and determined my will along with Gods and often fell short in expectation  and deliverance.  I have felt more pain wrapped in joy surrounding these lives that have passed through me than in any single circumstance I have known.  No intimate broken hearts or failed relationships could compare to the physical pain felt run through my body caused by a single tear of one of these kids. 

I grew up with them.  I was ever so young at 18 having babies that we learned together just about everything.  From watching the same cartoons and liking the same fruity pebbles to music and rock concerts as they got older.  Everytime my oldest picked up a rock and looked at it for more than a few seconds I would get lost in his make believe world of amazement.  It was so easy for me to and I don't know why or how.  Then with my second son and man that baby could laugh.  It was utterly contagious and it was healing.  My whole outside world was dump.  There, that's the truth.  I had not dealt with a missing father, or being an unwanted child myself, much less knew how to function as a whole complete person.  So I circled myself off in the presence of these little spirits that could dream and love in a way I had never known.  When my last child Courtney came along, I had not attended to the outside world, not even yet.  I was still in that circle with only them.  This baby was wise and quiet and amazingly kind.  Why would I ever want to leave this space with them? 

When I say that I need Grace with them, what I'm really saying is I am incapable of feeling any other way but one way.  Which is probably extremely unhealthy and not even a therapist could heal or better this issue.  That way is only to protect.  It is only to go to battle against any and everyone who deliberately  imposes great pain upon them.  Understand that I am incapable of allowing them to hurt without feeling it in my own body.  If you physically abuse my sons, you are abusing me.  If you deliberately betray my daughter then you are betraying me.  It is not a show I watch go on in front of me, it is a duplication of the act within me and no one has that right.  I wish that I could look at motherhood differently because Lord knows my kids have needed me to, begged me to, and even gotten pretty upset with me for voicing my truth and defending them.  The truth is never what anyone wants to hear and there is no special time to say it that makes it go down any better...and unfortunately, there's always a price to pay for the truth.  

So give me Grace.  Understand that the people they are,  are directly linked to my life and heart.  Know that I've been fighting for each one in some way their whole lives and I don't see that ending ever.  Also know that if you are stripping them of their self worth, creativity and everything that makes them more, or their dreams.  It will send me into an oblivion.  I won't understand it, I won't know how to just allow it.  It is not within me to sit idly by.  No one said having children would be easy or watching them grow up a cake walk and I know that sometimes it's better to not be around then to feel such the urgency to right the wrong.  In my understanding of these things...Just give me Grace. 

15 minutes inside my head

Lord don't let him fall, you promised. 

 No sunshine again today.

  How healing comes along the way.  

Audit in two weeks, it's all ok.  

New friends and how to give.

  Charleston, SC next travel spot. 

 Charlie and the groomers, his fear.  

My brothers birthday, I'm glad he was born. 

 My sisters birthday coming up and I wish she was present more. 

 Childhood in Chatsworth, seemed to be more sunshine then.  

Getting the house ready. 

Juliet and her first boyfriend Jonathan.  

Why can't people just let things go?

  Anything you hang on to takes root.  

My future, my purpose, lots of words in my head today. 

 No boundaries, transparent.  

Need to make something beautiful.  

Wonder how cold it will be this winter.  

Ready for a life change.  

What should I have for lunch? 

 Reflexology article today, pinched my big toe and felt it in my temples, ok, I'm a believer. 

 Reiki music to help direct my will, surrounding Justin. 

 Grateful for just about everything. 

 What should I blog today?  

In my solitude I am free. 

 JCs amazing strength and determination. 

 These babies look to me for strength but It's me who wants to be just like them.

  I hear you Lord, keep talking. 

 So proud of Haley.  

What are people really made of besides what the world tells them they are?

  I need flowers for my office. 

 At least it's Friday. 

 Be brave bug, you got your whole life ahead of you. 

 She's more me than she knows. 

Hope my mama is good. 

 I would get off fb completely, but people I love need prayer.  

Where are my transits today? 

 The connectedness of everything.  

Circles.  I need a yoga class. 

 Funny joke to lighten my mood, ha ha.  

Maybe I'll see a movie to escape for a minute.

  I'm not crazy, just Mercury is dancing with me today.  

I work with some really good people.  

Why can't the ladies remember the sisterhood more? 

 I need to hold up in my kitchen and create.

  My niece Amy has no idea how often I think of her and her baby.

  Smile Tess, God loves you.  Sticky notes with hearts all over them.  

New book by Paulo Coelho is out, I need to read it.  

Where do all the days go and why can't I just measure them in moments and not days? 

He's always gonna be my baby first. 

Maybe Panera bread for lunch and help, someone get me out of my head.