I had a big Transformative idea hit me in the head today. So I’ve text chatted with my offspring about it, after I discussed the thoughts with their father, obviously. One of the facets of my time with *A* is our discussions of Release. It seems that I’ve been holding on to who I think I am , as opposed to who I really am.
For many, MANY years my identity had a lot to do with my hair and my clothes. (And sure, my tattoos, too.) When my sister was dying, for our last birthday together, I gave her all of that hair. It was heartbreakingly sad for all of us. She would be gone in days after that gesture but the reminder would be staring back at me in the mirror for years. It was a major adjustment for my babies as well. These were young adults who did not remember their mother before she had those yards of messy long locks.
My car was also a part of my identity, apparently. And with very little effort (if you can call all of this biking I’ve done LITTLE) I have let much of my attachment to the Wee Walnut go. It will be heading out to my mom and dad’s place soon, and I won’t see it again until next summer. But I’m really fine with that. This afternoon it occurred to me that I’d probably also be fine without my growing-back hair.
I am actually a lot happier than I look.
(And of course I’m talking.)
That braid has simply gotten in my way one too many times this past week. And, it’s mostly always wet. I love the No Shampoo simplicity, and now I think I’d like that with the length of my hair as well. I’ll keep you posted, as this developes.
Parked in front of the place where we got our To Go food.
We were out the door and on the road pretty early* (for us) because Dan needed to be back in time to dress for work. I am starting to understand what 50% Chance Of Rain looks like now. And how to prepare for it, garment-wise. (All I need to remember, additionally, is to look at the temperature gauge.)
*Well before THREE o’clock!
Two and a half miles from home, most of it dry.
This is what that forecast means around here. Half the time it’s so freaking bright you can’t open your eyes all the way, and the rest of the time, it’s pouring. Being out in it has changed how I feel about our weather. Not that it bothered me all that much, ever. In fact, we’ve recently been talking about how these cloudbursts are totally a price we are VERY willing to pay, in order to live in such a gorgeously lush place.
Wanna hear how my emotional baking turned out? Of course you do. The wee darlings had to be eaten with a spoon. But NOT because they were under-cooked, this time. Merely because I was slightly too excited to make them healthy, and added perhaps a TEENSY bit more “extras” than the base ingredients could withstand. Some went into the lunch bag, and I just got this, from Mayberry,
“I don’t care what you say, I like the crumbly muffins.”
The opposite of traditional.
They were completely edible, as evidenced by the fact that I ate an entire BOWL of them (see, they have NO integrity, and clearly, neither do I) last night and again earlier this evening. On the plus side, I didn’t burn the house down!
And speaking of blessings, look what Corina sent us. A view from her Special Day.
Rare, amazingly rare.
She included the following note with her phone photo,
“…the whole pic is washed out, but that little tree is white in reality, too! (Except the brown parts, which are dead 
) ….only 50 of these on earth. Wow I am overwhelmed by the gift of being able to see this unique creation!“
Later I found THIS when I went searching, look familiar? (Ignore whatever all those words are on that site, I did. We just need to picture.) Also, HERE is a video, with words I actually paid attention to. (It’s six minutes, in case you were wondering.)
On our card altar we received something so very timely, and supremely uplifting, that I nearly cried. I SO needed this. What was really cool was that, just minutes before I flipped it over, I had checked my e-mail, and been given another sign. In the form of a letter telling me that one of you lovely JulieLanders had recognized and accepted her Miracle. Feedback like this, after readings I’ve done, makes me enormously happy!
“Angel Of Self-Worth ~
You are currently undervaluing yourself
It is time to regain your self-worth
You are so much more than what you are portraying to the world and those around you.
The Angel of Self-Worth is here today to reflect unto you all of the beauty, love, and light that you are, and to help you regain your sense of self-worth. Feel her healing light penetrate your aura this very moment and affirm to yourself:
I am a being of light and love. I love and value the many wonderful qualities I possess. From this moment forward, I will honour and value myself, all I am, and all I do, in the knowledge that I am part of God’s creation. I am worthy of love.
Repeat this affirmation several times each day either out loud or in the silence of your heart. Reflect upon each word and truly believe and own each one. Express each word with all your heart and soul. As you begin to value yourself, you will find that others also start to value you.”
Awesome, right? How about if we give this one just a small adjustment though, okay? Change that second-to-last line, if you feel the need, to read as:
…. in the knowledge that I am part of All Creation. I am worthy of love.”
Today’s Deck:
Angels, Gods, and Goddesses Oracle Cards by Toni Carmine Salerno
“You are so much more than what you are portraying to the world and those around you.” yes. I’m starting to realize how much I hide my light under a bushel. perfect card for me today, too. Or maybe it’s just a card everybody needs. Thanks, Julie. So how long was your hair before you cut it off?
~
Remember when we were sitting on the curb outside Paintball Palace? My hair would have been on the ground. It was past my butt, but not quite to my knees. The braid we gave her was pretty close to three feet long.
J
9:38 p.m.
10-21-12
This is a wonderful post, so full of life, resolve, energy. I promise to support you no matter what you do with your hair… but I wish mine were even half so long as yours right now. It’s growing…. slowly….! lol The tree is AMAZING!
~
I thought of you when I was typing this. That latest picture of your dress options showed how VERY much hair you have now! The waiting years of our tresses coming back only seem to take so much time when we look at them from the forward direction.
J
9:42 p.m.
10-21-12
Definitely a card that I can use. I know that I don’t value what I can do enough, so why should others? I need this.
I’m interested in knowing how short you will eventually cut your hair to. Is the no-shampoo always baking soda and vinegar or is there another way? I color my hair (yeah, but my natural color is dreadful and makes me look sad) and both baking soda and vinegar strip the red right out. Especially the vinegar.
Glad the crumbly muffins were tasty!
~
Off. All off. Very much like five years ago, gone.
(That’s the easiest answer.) Because, clearly, it grows back fast.
No clue about hair color damage or if there’s another way to wean our heads from the chemicals. I do know that the basic idea is to use ANYthing less and less. Until you just rinse and (later when it’s dry) brush. The general process is to lengthen the product usage times out until they are gone. Or like, only a few occasions yearly.
J
9:51 p.m.
10-21-12
The muffins looked great, even if they didn’t look like muffins. And I am glad they were tasty. Good messages in the last few cards, although I haven’t commented much recently (just haven’t thought of things to say).
My Dad was a weather man, and he used to say the only way to accurately forecast weather was to live in an area for a long time, take all the data you had collected, go outside and look at what the sky was doing, and make your best guess. He was one of the first weather forecasters in Oregon to be trained to use radar (back in the early 70′s).
~
Okay, way cool about your dad! And yeah, those muffins are gonna need to be made again, we’ll be eating the last bowlful tonight. It is yet to be determined how well I follow the recipe this next time.
J
9:56 p.m.
10-21-12
I understand the whole hair thing. My hair would go up and down, but always permed. No straight hair for me, no sir. My straight hair wouldn’t hold a curl no matter what, so I constantly permed it. I couldn’t -stand- any straightness. It so wasn’t me. But my kids were on me about 5 years ago and sicced my hairdresser on me to go short and straight. It took them nearly a year to get me to cut it. It was like I lost who “I” was. It took months for me to own my own face again. You’re ahead of the game if you’re mentally ready for the change. As you can tell by my photo, I didn’t go back. It was rather freeing to not have all that hair maintenance and that mental ‘have to have curls’ stress. I can’t wait to see what you decide to do.
Luuuuved the tree video. Do you like fossil plant stuff? The following link was sent to me (15 min long though) about how they are finding actual leaves in Clarkia, Idaho that are 15 million years old. They are stuck between shale layers and still have color in them. Did I mention I love this kind of stuff?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfRXDbtkEi0
I,too, can definitely use that card. It’s been a rough year or so.
~
My kids did not seem the least bit interested in what my hair is currently doing, or will be doing soon.
(They have always been entirely supportive of whatever direction I’m going though.)
J
9:58 p.m.
10-21-12
Oops, almost forgot. Thanks for the great link!!!
Wow, cutting your hair? Why, yes, you certainly are in a Transformative mode! It would be much easier to deal with, for sure. Definitely surprised me that you’re considering it, since you were once so weirded out by having it short, and so vested in growing it back. Of course, we will love & support you in any endeavor (except meth addiction or the like, and even then the love part will always apply
)
Those do look like tasty spoonfuls’o'muffins!
Thank you for finding better pics, and that wonderful video! Even having grown up here, surrounded by redwood forest in all directions, I hadn’t even heard of them, either until probably a little over a month ago! And then, of course, I went a-Googling, and wasn’t able to find directions to one (as the Historian Emeritus said in the video, directions to them are not published, to protect them).
I found out that one was in Women’s Federation Grove (which also has an incredible 4-sided stone fireplace that is soooo cool, designed by Julia Morgan, who also designed Hearst Castle… http://magickcanoe.com/blog/2007/10/18/the-hearthstone/ ), so on our last trip down Liza and I wandered around in that grove, hoping to stumble upon it… we didn’t (the grove is rather large, and we had no idea which direction to wander in). (That cute little feather pic I sent you was from that wander.) When I told my ex/boss about it, he said he had been to one (Spirit Tree), and gave me directions to get to it. Then Liza talked to a friend who knew where the Christmas Tree (the one in Women’s Federation Grove) is, but it requires a river crossing, so we decided that the Spirit Tree was the one to visit this time.
Wonderful, and wonderfully timed, card!
~
OMG, and to think,
some people still believe in coincidences.
Thanks for the link, I am now a Julia Morgan fan!
J
9:39 p.m.
10-22-12
Oh, i didn’t even tell you the biggest of the “coincidences” involved in Corina’s Ongoing Adventures in Humboldt Redwoods State Park:
(For orientation purposes, the Avenue of the Giants is what used to be highway 101 way back in the day, before the 4-lane freeway was built. It is the “tourist” way to go, because it you drive in amongst the old growth redwoods. It meanders along near 101, sometimes crossing over or under 101, but generally running “parallel” to the freeway. There are many pull-outs and parking areas alongside the Avenue from which to take trails into the forest. And there are multiple places along its 31-mile length where one can get onto or off of the freeway.)
My first trip there this year (May 6th) I was alone, and had planned to go to Women’s Federation Grove, but that segment of Avenue of the Giants ended up being closed off that day for a marathon. I was headed north on 101, and so ended up taking the Avenue exit north of the one I had planned to. At that point my planned destination had been nixed, so I had no idea where I was going, I just knew that if I drove along the Avenue I’d find a spot to pull off & take a walk in the woods.
I pulled off at one spot, got out of the truck, and checked for trails at the edge of the pull-out, but there wasn’t any marked trail, and the couple I saw weren’t very wide, and they were lined with poison oak, so I got back in the truck & continued heading north. I found an official trail head-type pull-out, with an interpretive sign and everything, so I decided to take my walk there.
The first thing that hit me was that this was the most beautiful/magickal-feeling redwood forest I’d ever been in. And that is saying A LOT, because every old growth or first growth redwood forest is incredibly beautiful and magickal! Like all redwood forests I’ve been in, there was redwood sorrel (which looks like shamrock http://www.flickr.com/photos/stormygirl/144652402/ ) growing on the ground, but this was by far the densest carpet of it I had ever seen! The only places where the ground was not covered in verdant, vibrant green, was where there were trails. The top of every single downed log was covered in sorrel. In places the forest floor was only covered in sorrel, and in other places there were ferns and other shrubs growing up through the sorrel. It was like wall-to-wall carpeting of vegetation ( https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=438606619517834&set=a.438606482851181.103268.100001054992338&type=3&theater ). Simply ridiculously, incredibly, indescribably, overwhelmingly BEAUTIFUL!
A little ways into the grove, there was an area with a lot of movement catching my eye, and I focused into that area and discovered that a little section of forest was completely a-flutter with tiny flying creatures. They were black and white, and I believe they were butterflies, not moths, about 1/2 inch across (https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=465524493492713&set=a.438606482851181.103268.100001054992338&type=3&theater ). Dozens and dozens filling the air, and even more covering the plants on the forest floor. Because in that little patch of forest there were a couple plants like the one shown in the pic, and they were blooming, and those flowers were clearly the butterflies preferred food. The small white flowers hung, with multiple flowers hanging from a single stem, and on every single one of these flowers were butterflies. Most flowers had at least three butterflies on them. There must’ve been at least 200 butterflies, all in this tiny little patch of forest, no larger than 40 square feet. I was overcome, verklempt, awe-struck, filled with joy and wonder and a feeling of Unity like I had never had before!
I continued down the trail after I had drunk my fill of the magickal tiny butterfly area, found a redwood trunk in a sunbeam, leaned back against it to connect into it & ground, in the way that I do, and just let the tears of joy stream freely down my face.
6 days later Liza came with me to the same trail (this is the Drury-Chaney Loop trail, in case anyone wants to add this to your list of places to see), and the butterflies were mostly gone. There were a few here & there, but the plants in the little patch had lost their flowers, and we probably only saw a dozen butterflies total throughout our walk. Not that the forest wasn’t awesome anyways! But I had wanted to share those butterflies with my friend. Oh, yeah, and pictures with my camera would’ve been nice. Because the trip down that day was to drop my mom off, and the hike was just a bonus that I got since I was down there anyway, and I had to get up early (for me) to take Mom, so I hadn’t thought to grab my camera! So two pics with my phone was all I got that day. The one I tried to take that showed the butterflies hanging from flowers is blurry as fuck, and I’d have to circle the butterflies for you to even know where they are. The magickal butterfly experience was just for me to experience, just on that one day.
So, I started this whole thing with how there was an even bigger coincidence… did you guess what it was?… That pull-out that I stopped at first, before finding the magickal tiny butterfly patch, the one where I checked out the trails & decided nah, I would keep going up the road… those trails I passed up were the ones that led to Spirit Tree. As soon as my ex/boss described the pull-out I knew exactly what he was talking about & exactly where it was.
How incredibly wonderful is this Universe in which & of which we live???
Another “coincidence” was that you pulled the Jesus Christ card the day before I went to a place where trees that were alive when he was are still alive.
And, just now, I went out to smoke before proofing this incredibly, ridiculously long “comment.” And the moon is out! So I sat, looking at the moon, and saw for the first time in my life the flash of far-off lightning, while the moon was visible! How frickin cool of a world do we live on? How frickin amazing is this planet we are so blessed to call home?
Freaking AWESOME !!! That’s how cool. Thank you SO much for sharing this. Because, holy crap…….
Wow, the difference between who one is in opposition to what one thinks one is, how true. I wrote for the first time ever on the occupation heading: administrator, student, writer. I felt very empowered.
Glad you are making progress with “A” and letting go. Much love to you, Julie.
~
And to you, Ms Writer!
Glad you had a nice time, and got to see
DIANA GABALDON,
again.
J
9:44 p.m.
10-22-12
You look so fit and healthy and beautiful!!
Thank you.
So very much.