pausing in the great between

and leaving the one eyed story

Dear ones —

I’ve been absent from posting. I’ve been in quite a lull, a pause….an in-between. Something has been budding, but something else shedding, shedding, shedding.

It’s been …a story…

I moved from Sedona, Arizona back to my beloved Boulder, Colorado. Moving in my fifties (even though I’m only at the very start of this decade) is a more challenging move than moving in my 40’s. Or 30’s. It feels like I’m finally starting to get my legs. It feels good to land. And, still, I’m writing this to you while sick in bed with a cold/flu bug.

I started a new job filled with joy and laughter, nature and art, singing and running with the most dynamic delightful group of first and second grade children. Whenever I work with this age group, (as much as I love it —and I love it so so much) I also feel as though it eats me up. It eats up my stories. I don’t mind. But also, it depletes me a little as I age. It nourishes me too. It’s a both/and bountiful cornucopia of gratitude. there we are —together in a yurt, hidden in a patch of elderberry trees. My idea of a kind of heaven. I tell them stories and they tell me stories. We laugh so much. And they keep me on my toes.

I had the intention to start a Sit By the Fireside story circle with all of you (paid subscribers) BECAUSE I LOVE TELLING STORIES TO ADULTS TOO and to say THANK YOU and offer back generously to your hearts and souls, for being so supportive of my work. My intention was to offer a story a month. Nobody came to the first zoom offering. But… I wasn’t able to generate the momentum to remind you all. It’s been a one foot forward, three steps back kind of feeling. I have to trust it is simply the natural cycle I’m on, and it is healthy to be in whatever natural cycle I am in, and own it fully. I am in a greater need of deeper rest, deeper TLC, deeper self-nourishment. I have generated a lot in the last decade. To my daughter (who is almost 14!) to the different schools I have loved and worked within; the children…and recently, to a group of the most amazing women in a writes of passage odyssey.

In my deeper listening to self, despite being a manifesting-generator and LOVING to manifest and generate as an integral part of my beingness, I also need to pause a little more. In between stories.

Image: Sandra Beickmann

So, I am pausing into the great between. Do you feel as though you also might need to pause inside of the Great Between. You know, as well as me, that there is still WONDER inside of this in between-ing. We’ve ALL been in the middle of some big stories (in our personal lives) and now, collectively. Pluto had his last hurrah in Capricorn and ingresses into Aquarius until 2044. Pluto —transformational Pluto, was last in Aquarius in 1777. When the times were undergoing BIG changes. Leaving an old story and diving headfirst into a complete unknown. From the monarchy. To the colony. French Revolution. American Revolution. Radical Change.

Revolution. Rebels. Radicals. We are just at the precipice of bigger than we’ve known changes. The kind we’ve never seen before. It’s exhausting to have already gone through so much of an internal dismantling. Phew-eeeee, wowzie. We are living cycles. Living currents. Living poems, rising and falling. growing. shedding. pruning. ripening. blossoming. returning. renewing. releasing. re-kindling. re-awakening. returning to the cycles and patterns. stories and scraps of our wheel. the one that turns round and round and round…subtly articulating the spiral of its inner divine intelligence.

Even the stories that I’ve journeyed with for so many years -the fairytales I love, the myths I adore, the BIG STORIES…they too feel as though they are undergoing some kind of something. A radical repurposing. A dismantling. A resurrection. Into new forms. New stars. Or maybe it is simply I/you/we being asked to take up a new way of listening and seeing. without our old way of seeing. seeing with an inner eye, with blind eyes, with wondering, listening eyes.

(changeling —by Stasha Ginsburg)

yet there are still a few that nudge me in my sleep. That wrestle me when I’m awake. That lift their voices and say -keep digesting us, keep digesting us..we’ll let you know when we are ready to be told.

And one of them did just that -here while on my sick bed, she said: just let them know it’s going to be December 1st. 1pm Mountain time. It’s a little gathering for paid subscribers -to get to know the storyteller in me, but also, to discover the magic doorway in you, to mythos, to meaning, to self-discovery. Because: we need to remember the hidden doorways to mysterious bridges. We need to travel the worlds. We don’t actually need drugs or plane tickets to travel the worlds. You can listen to a story by coming as you are, and leaving….changed. Trust me. Once upon a time takes you from the personal to the mythopoetic and back to the personal. It weaves the worlds. It offers sips of elixirs and alchemy.

My body is letting me know that I’ve written enough for a sick day. And so: Mark your calendar. Sign up and join me as a paid subscriber. Despite the pause in between, my hope is the words, when they return, will be deeper, wider, lighter, and contain more blooms.

December 1st: Leaving the One Eyed Story

aka —it’s a Siberian folktale. the one I intended to tell you a couple months ago. About a woman becoming a fox. But I’m inviting in a slightly different name. Because, it fits better in my mouth when I roll it around on my tongue and

Because gosh….shouldn’t we leave the ONE EYED STORY

and pave the way for something new?

Let’s see what happens on the path.

image: Alexandra Dvornikova