WEavings on our WEb

Dear Phoenix on The WEb,
Oh my. Here we are two days before the ninth anniversary of your murder... and I am processing all that I have encountered the last two days. Let me begin with this photo. This is Storm. Storm is on your deck. See the slats on the gate behind her? Remember J. did that? See how the sunshine lights up Storm's eyes? I see you there, Phoenix, in the light of those loving brown eyes. Ok, let me back up even more...

This photo was taken in April of 2016. Storm and her schnauzer siblings lived there for at least three years(from what I can surmise) with their person Blake. I came upon this information after this Friday when I drove by the house after nine years. I was stunned by how abandoned it looked, so I researched if it had been sold again or what. Come to find the FB page of Storm's person with the posting of this photo on your deck, morning sunlight lighting those eyes and the slats behind. There's such a familiarity in that face. Of course, your phoenix spirit is still abides there.

And, the levels of Wu do not end there because when I googled a photo of Blake, I realized that I know him! We used to teach together in the same school years ago!  He's now a therapist who incorporates healing for people in Nature. I remember him being a gentle spirit as a teacher and I find it so important that Blake and Storm lived in that house where so much healing needed to happen. Thank you, Goddess. Thank you. Oh, my, thank you, Storm. Thank you, Phoenix/xShama.

I am stunned by this beauty of our WEb. For three years after we sold the house in 2010, it sat. The next three years, Storm was there. I know not what the last three years have been, but from the looks of what I briefly saw on Friday, no one seems to be there now. Rest. Heal. Rest.  That seems right.

I love you, Phoenix/xShama. We are an awesome force. Thank you to our WEb for bringing me to this incredible piece of the weave.
Love always,
ME XX

August 2018. Phoenix/x Shama

Dear beloved Phoenix and the Web,

It's been a little over two years since I have written you. I received a notification email connecting me back to this Weblog, so I wonder what needs to be said now, two years later.

I re-read the last entry that affirmed the best of my life is not over, that there are and will continue to be many 'best's.  Recently, I took an abstract art class and you showed up in a totally unexpected way one day. I have titled that piece: Phoenix/x Shaman.  It is totally you and captures US, our Phoenix/x layering together. Otherworldly and totally recognizable as US. That was such a best moment!!!

I'm turning again towards working with women in the Domestic Violence world. It seems time to shift again as I feel like I've been building strength these last many years with crones. It's been good work and I am glad for it, but I feel ready to make this shift. I'm still very active with women's music in all those ways I love. I'm grateful for my life and all the women in it

Hestia is good.  There are many times I see her channeling you. You two have most certainly joined forces! Most of the time, I do not feel without you.

Thank you for remaining close, my love.
It/we are never over.
All my love,
Phoenixx

Oh, Phoenixx

My beloved Phoenix on the WEb,
I have remained home all day today, clearing closets, drawers, files, boxes. It feels like it's time again to filter out what I no longer need. Of course in the wake of all that, I find grief again. I stumbled on something I wrote in May of 2009 when you and I made a trek to the ocean. It was a couple months after the passing of Hekati (my sweet black kitty from Lesbos) as well as a few months after J. was diagnosed with cancer.  You and I fled to the ocean for a couple of days to find ourselves again. There are photos on this WEblog of the happiness we found with one another and Her. The close up photo of us still hangs beside me here at the computer these seven years later. I also came across a collection of photos mainly of me during various experiences/travels with J. and before that partnership began. Last winter, I went through our huge crate of memorobilia casting out almost all letters and notes which I burned in a fire this summer. I organized photos and stored them as keepsakes of that part of my life with J. Today I have felt such grief for all that has come to pass in my adult life. I am aging, Phoenix, I am aging. My body will never be what it was, I will never have a partnership, my friendship with J. is dead/gone, my connection with K. also gone. Next month will be two years since Beetle has died and today Myrrh is acting very ill, not eating etc. I worry the best is done and the rest of my time will be biding it.

And, I know, there is so much more to my life than just biding time. My sweet soestre, our work, our sweet love, my friendship and tribe/herdmates, my darling funny Hestia, my incredible garden and home, The Heron House, my activism, my health and joy.  I have gone on with my life and my Living, Phoenix. I have. And, I'm still brought to my knees with such sadness and loss. I came across a quote from the movie, Labyrinth, that I recorded years ago:

               "Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered I have fought my way here to take         back what you have stolen." 

I think that is some of what this WEblog has been for us. It has been a fight to take back the life of you and I that was stolen: something of the joy I have lost or

given away. It's amazing sometimes that I still love and create beauty. It's amazing I still fight. I am Phoenixx in my own right. You and I are a pair to be reckoned with, our hope, our love and connection and determination to keep weaving something of this world and the next.

I love you and all the losses and strings of life that have been severed or stretched beyond their carrying capacity. My body will never carry me through all those particular and precious channels again; she reminds me I am forever changed and my life forever different. I walk forward, step after next step through the labyrinth, fighting, loving, preserving and letting go but not believing the lie that the best of my life is over, gone, dead. There are and will be many bests.

All of my love, forever and always through the veils and beyond time and space,

Phoenixx

It's July again, you would be 16

Dearest Phoenix on the WEb,
Your sixteenth birthday was a week and a day ago: July 2. Today was the day five years ago that J. moved out. This is a month of anniversaries, births and deaths. It is also the month of the Amazon. It would have to be, hm? Remembering my strength and ability to affect change in this messed up world is a daily act. I wish I knew how to better organize; I think that Patriarchy depends on my ineptness and of course other's ineptness too.

I'm feeling a mixture of strength and sadness today, so I come to write you again. So much intense hatred in the world, violence and hatred against the most vulnerable. It's what killed you six years ago: one man's hatred and violence and gun. Sometimes I just don't know what to do with my own hate and anger. Taking up arms is not an option for me; I must find my own revolutionary path. That is not easy because men's path is so well grooved, guns so readily available and encouraged, violence so well modeled. Hatred of women has never wavered in spite of good things that women are doing for women. There is still rape and as long as there is still rape, there is still male hatred of women. It's not a less or more thing; like somehow we are doing 'better' in the world because there is less rape or some such argument. If any woman is raped, we all are at risk in men's unstable world. The concept must be eradicated from the human heart and mind. And to do that takes men stepping up and saying enough. The burden is on them.  In the meantime, we Amazons continue to protect and defend.

So, that is my feminesto. As Andrea Dworkin said: I want a 24 hour truce of rape. That's all. 24 hours. Seems like that is doable. Wars succeed in truces: guns laid down. And yet, can men do that? Can rapists put down their weapons? Turn off their porn? Stop prostituting women? For a mere 24 hours?

Not likely. No one seems to be trying because that's what rapists do. They rape.

So, my dear Phoenix, this is my cry onto the WEb: despair and clarity and desire to find action that continues to protect and defend.

I love you. Thank you for your presence through the WEb. It/You never go

unnoticed.
M.E.

Six Years Today

Good morning, beloved Phoenix,
Today it is six years since you were murdered, cruelly taken from me. As the years have progressed, I have walked the labyrinth's weaving path of forwards and backwards, inward and out.  I have wept from the deepest grave beside your bones, incapacitated and hopeless.  I have scoured your silken remains and found no bullet to return, no restoration or rightening of this injustice. I have raged against ghosts and madness, having to stay mindful of my safety and preservation in the world. Beetle and I have found a loving shared path together somehow and now, she too, has died. I imagine you two have joined forces and sent me Hestia, my Bassett, who is a blend of your silly gleefulness, Phoenix, and your intensity, Beetle. I have found joy again, companionship and comraderie with this new four legged. And, I still weep at the injustice, the missing what was completely unique to us, Phoenix, and for the natural course of the rest of your life.  Of course, by now you likely would have died from natural causes of age, wear and tear. After all, you'd be 16 this coming July!  And, I still wonder what the rest of our time together would have brought on this side together.

What I know on this day, the sixth anniversary passage ('through the keyhole of the needle I must pass through all alone') is that not everything returns from the Deep.  Not everything takes new form. There are truly some things, some configurations between beings, that just live once. I have said goodbye to my relations with many over these six years since you have been taken and I realize for the first time that some of them, two of them in particular, will never Return. It's a very painful realization for someone who does have some deeply buried belief that Life seeks to return, to repair. I do think that is a natural Law; I feel assured by it just in watching The Wheel turn year after year after year.  And, I also now understand, that some threads of Life are too weathered, too frayed that they easily rot in the Deep. There is no preservation possible, Phoenix, no Repair, no Return. This too is a natural Law. And I'm not even sure about the compost metaphor anymore. In other words, I'm not even sure that the death/end of some relations serves as some ideological 'compost' for something new. It's too abstract a leap, it seems to me. It's a bit New/Toxic Age thinking for me. Some things just end/die/stop.

Clearly, though, you and I have not.  We have this incredible woven web between us that now includes Beetle and Hestia, Ferron and Amoja.  I am so grateful for this, all of this we have worked to create again in our Labyrinth path.  I am not the same womyn because of you,  because of us.  And I see the strength of weaving in this way, daring to go beyond the supposed limits of death, in ways that those relations that have ended/stopped/died did not have the courage or integrity to. I am proud of our tenacity, Phoenix. I am proud of me and of you.

My love always,
ME

Coming to the WEb again

Dearest Phoenix,
It is now 2016, three days now. You came to me in dream the other night, replaying the trauma of your death, though the conditions were different. You, Myrrh and I were taking a walk and I noticed how our path was getting closer to a busy road, so I tried to call you both away. You kept going, not on a leash, and I saw the inevitable unfolding. It was so painful of a re-living that even my dream self couldn't actually show me the event. There was a blank moment in the dream and then I am there seeing you in the road after you had been hit by a car, but you are not dead yet. You are trying to get up, clearly in pain and distress, and I am far away and cannot run fast enough to get to you to hold you in the last moments of your life. There are people around you acting confused by what to do; they are not your person and your person cannot get to you. I         cannot           get             to you. I run and run and run and I cannot get to you to hold you into your death.

It has been over five years now and also not even five seconds since that day, March 19, 2010.  Three weeks ago O's beloved dog Ferron was hit by a car and killed instantly.  The trauma of that is still with me too.  From the other side of the WEb, I have asked you to meet Ferron and help her find her way back to O...and you, along with other beloveds on that side, have done exactly that and more. Thank you, Phoenix. Thank you. We now have Amoja, Female Magic, to love and adore.  And you and Beetle have combined forces to send me Hestia, my beloved Bassett. She is 'the short one' as per Beetle (who died Sept. 23 2014 from tongue cancer).  I am grateful for my life with my life here on this side of the WEb and my life with you through the threads between. It is not always easy, nor does it always/often feel fair. When you come to me in dreams, I remember the pain as well as the lovely comfort of you in my physical life and I am grateful for that as well as the reaching across the veils to me. And I love knowing you are just right there. Right there. Never left my side.  Sometimes you come through Hestia, sometimes now with Amoja, certainly with Ferron and sometimes I just know you are there when I talk to you, your photo. I just know it.  Thank you, my beloved guardian Phoenix. I am so sorry you died there without me in that moment. And I know that all that we have done together over the years since then has been a repairing of that horrific tear. It is what She does...Life seeks to return, to repair.  And so, we continue to do so in the face of hideous and painful rips and tears on the WEb, on our hearts and lives. There is no 'lesson' to be learned, no karma to be paid. There is patriarchal violence/hate, there are terrible careless mistakes and accidents, there is death who comes in many guises all of which are loss.  And there is Life, She Who seeks to return, to repair.

I love you. I love you. I love you.

ME

Anger seeks Justice

Dear Phoenix on the WEb,
There is something I need to know from you that only you can tell me.  Do you think me a coward for not confronting your killer?
I so wish there was something that I did, something dramatic that I could hang onto in my memory for these times when I am so angry at the injustice of your murder and have nothing to show for, at the very least spitting in his face when I had the chance.

Last night I dreamed that I was walking up that hill that led to both our houses. I encountered a horse who was very friendly to me, kept trying to connect with me.  I followed her up the hill; she was leading me somewhere and I lost track how close I was getting to your killer's house.  Suddenly I was right even with one of the windows and I ducked quickly and headed back down the hill.  Your killer saw me and grabbed his shot gun, standing just inside his doorway.  He shouted: "Stop where you are!" I kept walking, ignoring his threats, daring him to shoot me. 

I don't know what that dream means except that it has stirred up again how unresolved this will always be.  I will never know if he has suffered enough, or any, for that matter.  I will never have a memory of spitting my seething anger at him.  I feel like a coward.  I had nothing to lose after you were murdered: what would it have mattered if, after I buried you,  I had gone to his doorstep and looked him in the face and just spit at him.  Just spit and said that he and his family were lucky I didn't own a gun.  Curse him. Scare him.  Give him a memory of me that would linger into his nights forever.  Be the Erinyes. 

No, I did not do any of that.  Phoenix, do you think me a coward? Did I not live up to the ferocious womyn I claim to be?  I know that had I done anything directly ferocious, it would not have changed the fact that you were murdered, dead, gone.  But, it would have given me some sense of having done something in your honor that might have stirred up some regret, some fear of retribution, some stream of justice.  That's what I want: justice. 

So, two things I ask: one, do you think me a coward, dear Phoenix guardian companion? And two: I ask the WEb to send me a sign, some Wu, that there has been some bigger Justice in this matter.  Justice, it's a lot to ask of this world. And I ask the WEb, that which has kept you and I connected these few years, these many days and months, for some information that could only come in these Wu ways.  Dear WEb, I need to know.

Open to the Wu and loving you always, Phoenix,
Me

Day of Mourning, Here Again at the Keyhole of a Needle

A day of mourning, March 19th.  It's been four years, beloved Phoenix on the WEb, since you were taken from me, since Hades pulled the trigger on you life, on the Life that was you and I. The original meaning of the word,  " to mourn" is "to remember."  Today I have dedicated the day to remember all of that Life that was you and I.   I've allowed the day to flow with whatever is needed for the mourning.

Right now, the light is changing in the sky and I feel my insides getting anxious, frantic and agitated, downright shaky, short of breath and scared.  The time of your murder is approaching and even though I was not home when he killed you, my body has some knowing it was around 6:30 pm.  This is the keyhole of the needle I must pass through all alone, to use Chris Williamson's words again.  A keyhole like a rabbit hole into the trauma vortex that feel like swirling rapids, perilous and dire.  I have spent the last couple of weeks trying to condition myself, my little girls, to be ready in spite of everyone's insistence that 'I DON'T WANT TO!'.  It is not possible to bypass this day, this month, this memory.  Simply not possible for this Being.  I am sure others know how to numb, drug out, deny, 'forget' and 'go on' but/and not this Being.  I cannot.  And, I won't.  I go into the keyhole, the rabbit hole, the vortex, surrounded by many images of Udegan, many lit candles, by my beloved Beetle and Myrrh, by photos of you, Phoenix, by altars, by the knowing of survival from the last three years of doing this exact same thing. I am alone,  yes, there is no one to pass through for or with me. And, there is a larger container holding this passage as I go.

Beetle and I took a walk in the woods today and at one point I looked around through the trees and called out your name. I have many photos of you racing free through the trees or standing still so very much camoflaged by your surroundings.  I imagined you were there watching Beetle and I walk and I just couldn't see you because you do such a good job of being undetected.  Phoenix, I miss you. You have come to me in dreams periodically and I have been so very thankful and touched.  May you have a bit of magic for us on this day, this evening? I hope so!

Soon after I imagined you in the trees around us today, I heard a snap of a branch and became on alert.  Then the worst thing happened: a dog off leash charged Beetle and I.  I kicked and yelled while his person tried to get a hold of him and for many minutes was unsuccessful.  In the midst of the fray in keeping this dog away from us, Beetle bit my knee.  Finally, the dog was apprehended.  My body is sore and my little girls are so very distraught. Being bit by Beetle is painful on many levels.  She is my beloved companion, my protector; I know she didn't mean to bite me, and my feelings feel so very hurt.

Interestingly, right before that happened, in between me imagining you in the trees and the dog charging us, I wondered aloud if it would be a good idea to get a puppy in hopes Beetle would help raise her, teach her how to be my companion, before she dies.  I had some good sweet chuckles asking Beetle what she could teach this puppy.  She said she could teach her how to protect me, how to let me rub her belly, how to lick the tears off my face, how to make me giddy, how to be in Circle, how to keep the cat away from me.... Then the snap of a branch and the charge and ensuing fighting off and knee bite.  When Beetle and I walked away finally, I just sobbed realizing that the answer was obvious.  No, I cannot have another puppy now.  There's no way I could have handled things with two dogs. Plus, Beetle's aggression (while righteous in this situation) is not something I want to be taught as much as I love her and want her to be part of the passing on of a lineage of how to be my beloved companion.  I feel so sad right now about that on this day, even though, as I have said over and over, I do not want Beetle to go.  We have a sweet rhythm and Life together.  Now, I am sure, however, it has to just be she and I. 

What else to say to you, love, on this day as 6pm approaches...I ache of this loss, of all that was lost, all over my body. I have remembered you through your photos today your gleeful nature, your intensity, your protectiveness as my guardian companion, your sweetness and goofy antics, your ease in relaxing on whatever surface is available and your ability to move in and out of visibility.  I am most struck by this, this year: your moving between foreground and background.  I greet you, Phoenix, on this day that calls forth into the foreground our last day together four years ago and the first day of my life forever changed.

May we find one another between the worlds always, forever, infinitely. I will continue to look between the trees.  Thank you for your devoted love.

Your beloved companion person,
Me

Back on the bench, oppossum ghosting by

Dearest Phoenix of the WEb,
Funny how just anything can take me.  Take me back.  Maybe it is more like the thing awakens the me who is still there, who has always been there for three and a half years now.  As the Autumn Equinox has passed, I find myself here, there, on that bench holding your broken body.  I am wailing, wailing....turning over all of life to this death. Today as I walked through the woods with Beetle, crying, being on that bench, holding you in my lap, your life force draining onto my work pants, I reassured myself that I see me there, I recognize I have been there for three and a half years and if it's necessary I will be there another of the same.  I didn't try and stop the tears, the deep grief, the remembering.  I simply sat down there beside me.  We wept together.  I am still weeping, whether or not others see it.

Being just past the turn of the Wheel towards The Deep, I have been reflecting on the Outward Time with Demeter.  How we have been together in new ways, how I woke up to Life and Living differently and decided to try and not be afraid of it.  She taught me the incredible joy of planting and tending my garden, creating and fostering beauty around my home, my sanctuary, Her temple.  And, here I am, just past the threshold of The Deep.  It's not an easy turn around from the Outer to the Inner time, even for someone like me.  I am feeling things differently this year, this turning.  As I step through this long hallway, threshold, I greet The Deep and what I left here at Spring when I said Yes to Demeter.  And, it's grief.  Still grief.  Still me on that bench.  I am the bereft Demeter holding the beloved vacant body of her Persephone who has gone into the Underside of the Wheel,  a shamanic Journey to the Grandmothers.  I am Demeter pledging my life, what remains of it, to this holding, this death, this separation. 

And, so, I walked today with Beetle, crying and sitting beside myself on that bench, and then I turn and say, "This story is not over, you know. This is the worst most excruciating part of it." We look up and an oppossum walks by, white and ghostlike.  We can hardly believe she is so close; surely she hears us, this wailing.  No, she keeps walking by, close by.  I say, "There will be more to this story.  There must be.  Persephone is not gone forever.  Demeter holds vigil, tends the broken, vacant body, wanders the land devastated,  refusing life.  One day, though, remember, one day when the timing comes, there is a Return.  We cannot possibly know when that will be.  Until then, I sit here with you. We will play dead in this life as long as necessary."

These last two weeks I've had an oppossum take up residence in my crawlspace.  Finally, we trapped her and have relocated her to a wildlife reserve.   I wonder if this creature has come to remind me, call me back to that bench and sit, hold, remind myself that the story of death is not over. 

It feels better to write this.  To you, beloved Phoenix.  To you.

My total love,
Me

More of Our Mystery...

Dearest Phoenix on the WEb,

     The Labyrinth led me back to you, your bones, your physical remains.  My hands and fingers searched for the violent metal that stole your life from me.  I combed every inch of you, of what remains left in smooth, velvety grey matter and white bone.  We employed a metal detector to find what my fingers and eyes could not see.  No bullet. I was ripped open again...how could this possibly BE?  No bullet???  Am I crazy? How can you be dead if there is no bullet?  How can this be your body here with no bullet?  I felt grabbed into another nightmare of the crazies.  How can this be??? S. and I stayed with the Wu of it all.  I asked her to scan my body with the detector...surely if it was not lodged in you, it must still be lodged in me!  Nothing.  No bullet.

   For three days I left you uncovered, rattling and singing the trauma gone, released and free.  For three days I was with you and myself and the Mystery of this Labyrinth, our Path together. And when it was time, S. and I began the process of covering you up again, but this time, this time, we did it in a way so that I could pilgrimage to you more readily.  S. was deeply present and asked me every step of the way, how would this feel?  and how would that feel? as we followed what would be Right.  Ultimately, the biggest Wu happened.

    I had precisely dug all around the bones, careful to expose all areas so that the trauma could be released.  The shape of the hole ended up being kidney shaped.  We agreed that the element of water would be a lovely conduit between Phoenix and I, so we decided a small pond would be good. We both looked at it and nodded, noting perhaps there was a pond liner that we might find in a similar shape.  We'd just see, we agreed.  So, as it turned out my work canceled itself for that evening unexpectedly and we both had time to go to the store and see what was available and what might be next.  Sure enough, the store had one liner and it was kidney shaped!
  
   Upon returned with the liner etc., I walked around the house out of sight for a moment to check on something.  When I came back, S. was standing with her hands on her hips, a huge smile on her face and shaking her head in disbelief.  "It fits perfectly."  I dropped to the ground in awe.  How could that be?  Exactly?  Exactly. 

   So, with a layer of dirt over the bones and some rocks around the edges, Phoenix rests beneath a small pond of water now,  hyacinths blooming and a small pump circulating.  And, a heron statue, of course.  Hugging the pond, is a snake mound, modeled after one S. and I visited in Ohio years ago made by the first nation Peoples there.

    How does one "explain" such a Mystery?  The search for the missing bullet got me there, but it wasn't the reason.  The freeing that happened was the reason, the freeing of all that was still lodged in those bones and in these bones.  I will never know what happened to the bullet, literally.   Metaphorically, energetically, I have sent it back to its Source.  Where it belongs.

   It is on this day, August 15, which on my personal Wheel of the Year is Companion Day, that I record something of this, our Mystery, here on our WEb.  You will always be the Light of my Light, the spark that I seek.  I miss you, my beloved Guardian Companion.  I miss you.  And, I do feel you closer, our connection dearer than ever.  I do want you back and have begun to feel into that possibility for our family.  Slow steps. Slow call.

 Yours,
Me

  

Lammas

Dearest Phoenix on the WEb,
     It is Lammas, a day of gratitude.  We have been through so much these last couple of weeks; so much to honor and record here on this WEb.  For now, though, I send out this exquisite image of a beautifully intact web that greeted me this morning on this Holy Day.  I am forever grateful for the repair we have been weaving these many months, days, moment by moment. 
     There will be another day soon when I will detail the incredible details of the last few weeks of reconnecting with you, dear beloved Phoenix.

Yours,
Me

The Bullet: How Perfectly Obvious

Dearest Phoenix on the WEb,

This is so very much our Journey together right now, isn't it?  I feel keenly guided by you to retrieve the bullet from your grave and send it back from whence it came.  It does not belong to us, never did. How clear that was to suddenly Know what to do next for us, for our healing, for our letting go of anything else from that awful night that is causing us harm.  How perfectly obvious.

So, S. (my trusted co-death priestess) and I uncovered you for the first time in three years yesterday.  You led me to your head, your sweet sweet head. How stunning.  My fingers passed through all the layers of grey. Oh, I just heard your song: I've been kissed by a rose on the grave....or is it grey?  The ornamental rose bush that friends gifted me after you were killed has 'died' but right now, there by your grave is a single small bright red blossom.  How you do this! This is your signal to me, isn't it?  Roses blooming from seemingly dead bushes.  Stunning.

We uncovered you mostly and I searched through your chest feeling for the bullet.  The grey earth that was once you, is so very soft, fine like ash.  My hands read through all of it around bones reaching, feeling, sifting.  No bullet.  Yet.  Tomorrow S. is bringing a metal detector.  We will find it.  Do not doubt it. And, I will continue the healing work you have guided me to do with your bones, releasing any trauma still locked.  That letting go of anything else from that awful night that is causing us harm.  Yes, we are doing this together.  I feel you so strongly, your guidance. How we have worked three years to be together doing this right now. How deeply moving this all is!  I already feel how freer I feel in my body.

So, I am continuing to Listen to you, dear beloved guardian companion.  It's been so unbelievably good to feel your physicality again.  I cannot even say the levels in me that affects.  I am happy to be connected to the physical of you again, even as different as you are. I feel happy to be doing this healing work, having this focus of reconnection and transformation.  How perfectly obvious.

I adore you. Thank you for the dream guidance, for the digging guidance, for the timing guidance, for the perfectly obvious focus now: the bullet and the release of anything else from that awful night that is causing us harm.

Blessed blessed be, beloved one.
Yours,
Me

The Missing Middle

Dearest Beloved Phoenix on the Web,

It is your birthday today.  You are 13 years old.  I cannot totally believe you are not with me; it just doesn't make any sense at all, really.  I am doing a cleanse this week and began the process with a huge drop to the floor again when gunshots flooded through my window on Saturday afternoon.  They were incessant for several hours and they took me back again to the moment when I found your body, lifeless.  How can it be?  That morning I said goodbye to you, patted your head, said I love you, be a good boy, Mama goes and Mama always comes back...and then the next time you are lifeless, gunshot wound through your left side.  It's not that I don't understand cause and effect; it's something else, something else.  The degree of sudden separation; some of me cannot compute it.  And maybe there's something to not being there for the last breath, the holding, the soothing, whatever was needed...and of course for not being there to protect and prevent.  The missing middle of this.  Yes, the missing middle.

Oh, Phoenix, why else do I not let that night go?  Everything else of our lives together was not filled with that level of sorrow.  There's something about that night that I cannot let go of.  The trauma of separation.  The missing middle. 

I can understand something of not wanting to forget; I do not want to forget that level of evil in the world and what it does and can do.  How can I remember that and not let it lodge in me?  Tis the question I grapple with: how to hang on and let go at the same time?  I have been working with the Y as a symbol of that.  Right now I am at the bifurcation point.  It's not an intellectual solution to this; I don't need to just change my thinking as the New Age decrees.  No, this needs to unravel from within me.  And I need your help.  I do not want to continue to hold on to something that harms me.  I know there is no part of you and/or our relationship in that which harms me.

It seems that this cleanse is part of this process for me that is taking place both systemically and locally in my ovary and uterus.  I ask for your continued guidance, presence and help.  I need you. Happy Birthday, li'l boy.

I love you.
Me

Returning Roses from Phoenix

Dearest Beloved Phoenix on the WEb,
Thank you for the rose from your bush that I was sure was dead!!!!  This one blossom is spectacular and there's a small bud lingering and will probably open soon.  Last Fall, remember, you sent me a few late bloomers.  I was so very grateful and had decided then that this bush was dying and would be dead by this Spring.  And, She looked dead with two brown stalks, no green in sight.  I placed a Goddess figurine a sister had made for me from clay at the base of the bush after I cut down the stalks finally.  I figured it couldn't hurt to have a bit of that kind of energy sourcing the roots, if in fact they were still alive.  Low and behold a few days later, green shoots began to come up from the base of the figurines feet!  Days and days I've been watching these green shoots grow into two new stalks, then leaf out and then two buds, one on each stalk!  I have been talking to them every day, encouraging them to open up.  Finally, finally a few days ago, this one in the photo curled open.  She is huge and so full of the most wonderful smell.

This bush has come back....maybe just for now, just for these two buds.  For them, for you, I am most deeply grateful.  I speak my love for you into the blossom every day as I breathe you in!

Blessed blessed be.
My love, my love.
MeXX

Change

Beloved Phoenix on the WEb,

      Tonight I see you in the photo beside my chair and I am washed over with incomprehension again.  How things have changed since that photograph was taken, there at that house, partnered with J., and doing all the things we did together as a family.  How much I loved that way then, how I don't consider the relationship a failure at all.  It was the best partnership I will ever have, I have no doubt. I loved J. through and through, we loved each other the same way and took great care and respect for maintaining that love.  It was perfect. And... it didn't last forever.  Sometimes I cannot integrate that; it just doesn't compute. I cannot understand why J. had to disappear, how that relationship has had to just go, disappear, die. It's not transformed into something different.  There was no tranformation, no reforming.  It's died in that awfullest sense of death.  A disappearance. Gone.

      And I sat there looking at your photo, allowing scenes and memories float in the stream of my grief again.  With each one, I comb with the questions: was I really happy?  Was it here I was 'missing' something?  Was it here things began to go? Yes, I was really happy with J.  I wasn't missing anything.  I don't know when things began to go.  It's heartbreaking to see how good it was in its integrity and acknowledge that it just didn't last forever.  And aren't we told good things last forever?  Happily ever after!?  And if they don't, where's the fault? 

      Here I sit now in my 'new life' pretty happy too.  I continue to love and be loved very well.  And the next thoughts move into what feels inevitable, based on the cycles of my life: what will be lost in the inevitable changes to come?!  Like a phoenix, my life seems to move through lifetimes and within each one, honestly, I have loved and been loved relatively well.  I am so very fortunate.  So very fortunate.  Sure, as I understood the world better, I saw through the lies of many parts of my life. And, I can say pretty surely that each part, each lifetime, was a privilidge.  The women, in particular, have been stellar women who taught me so very much.

     "Can the child within my heart rise above? Can I sail through the changing ocean tides? Can I handle the seasons of my life? Well, I don't know. I don't know. Well, I've been afraid of changing 'cause I build my life around you." sings Stevie Nicks...and I.  I feel afraid of changing again. It's been so hard; you know this as best as I do. So very hard.  Somehow I believe that if I see this one coming, I can mitigate it, not feel the blow so hard, maybe steer the ship a bit more away from the wreck. Maybe somehow stay outside it. I feel anxious much of the time these days because of this.  Tonight and last night I let myself feel the grief of what I've lost and the fear and seemingly helplessness of what is to come. 

      Change.  Can I handle more changing ocean tides? Can I handle the seasons of my life again no matter the cost?  Is there a way of reassuring myself of being able to keep the precious things/relations in my life without lying to myself?  I don't know.  Phoenix, I ask for your help.  You and I have maintained a connection.  Our lives together have transformed.  Together.  I need to keep threaded to that possibility.

My grand love for you, Phoenix.
Me

      

Spring Returns Amidst...continued

Dear Phoenix on the WEb,

I wanted to write to you again as the day as progressed.  I did go out to your grave at the workers' lunch break to rake and clear some more.  Then I decided to plant some beautiful bright purplish blue pansies I was initially saving for something else.  I needed beauty here because it looked so dingy and depressing just like I was feeling.  It was quiet, no chainsawing, I could hear the birds all around me and Beetle was happily in her yard watching me and chewing sticks.  So, I planted something beautiful on this day of Spring's Return, on the day I returned you to the the Earth.  Seems like the least I could do. 

I finished planting just as the workers started cranking up again to down more trees!  Something interesting happened though, I did not hurry in.  I took my time carting the leaves and debris away in the wheel barrow.  Beetle looked concerned and followed me all the way around the yard and back as if to say, "Don't you hear them! We need to retreat inside!"  I stayed as calm as I could, spoke lovingly to her about what I was doing, then came into her area.  She ran to get her stick and I felt like saying to her, "Don't YOU hear them! You really want to play NOW?"  She smiled at me and dropped her stick at my feet to throw.  Ok....so we played...amidst the chaos of more trees being taken down.  I laughed and cheered her on like I do and she responded in kind, happily and with zest.  We played for some time and then I needed to come in to get a phone call.  I felt some sense of victory, Phoenix.  It was a sense of being in two streams at once: the high state of alert and probably PTSD with the sounds around us as well as a playful state with sweet Beetle. 

So, I planted something beautiful for us, Phoenix, on this day.  And something ostensibly beautiful was planted in me...amidst.   And it wasn't denial...it was a twin stream.  Blessed be.

Thank you for your paw in the experience, as I'm sure it was there on our WEb.

Much love on this mixture of a day,
Me

Spring Returns amidst

Dearest Beloved Phoenix on our WEb,

Today is the day three years ago, I, and three other women, returned you to the Earth.  I remember C. (and I think J. though so much of some things were a blur) dug your grave there beneath the pines while I laid on the ground beside you in the sunshine, crying and looking over your body, sounding and singing.  It was the first day of Spring, the threshold of moving from the Deep into the Outertime, the meeting of Persephone/Kore and Demeter, the beginning of an entirely new level of Deep for me.

Last night, I read through my first journal of 2010 that included this experience three years ago. As I read, I remembered writing much of it and I felt such compassion for myself and my commitment to stay true to my grief, no matter the cost.  I read things about how the awareness at the time was some on the potential cost of my partnership, how I was not comforted by it/her in the ways I needed. That I did not remember writing, though it is not a surprise I wrote it.  I was immersed in the grief and devastation and only found ways to go to work work, to Priestess my class and to C. for support.  The rest was collapse. I know this WEb log has chronicled that. And today, I am sitting much with the collateral loss of my partnership that began in that year you were murdered and my inability to recover that relationship from the wreckage.  During the course of that first year, my heart closed to J. because I did not feel like she could meet me in the deepest wreckage.  How much that was true I do not know for sure.  I know she wanted to go on with our life together way before I could even decide if I wanted to.  I am being really careful to not sound like I am blaming her or myself (though that is certainly easier to do).  And, I feel like I am walking through some ruins again that are important pieces to the demise of things, some that were my 'choices' (ie shutting myself down), some that may have been hers, and some that feel out of my hands and hers simply because of the enormity of such a crime against us.

Currently, as it has been for three days now, there are men outside in my neighbor's yard taking down trees.  The sound of chain saws and cracking of big limbs is right now in the background of this writing.  In fact almost all the trees in front of her house are being cut down because my neighbor is afraid that they will fall on her house!!  Instead of trimming them, she has decided to categorically destroy them all! (by the way, she is ex-military!)  The impact that has on my nervous system is too much to try to articulate, especially in light of this anniversary.  Here again, I have a neighbor who has such little regard for Life and is simply having them mowed down.  It's insane, simply insane. I am trying to stay calm. And, I feel depressed.  Very depressed today.

I'm not sure what else to write.  It is the first day of Spring.  I am not joyous at this threshold.  I am quite deeply depressed at the state of the world around me.  This last weekend I was at a retreat and at one point I was stretched out on a bench outside the house looking up at the warm sky.  There towering above me was a tree, growing right up against the deck.  Tears flooded down my face feeling the calmness of having and trusting trees so close to the house.  What is happening to this planet that many like my neighbor have moved so far away from Relations with trees.  This is SO disturbing to me right now.  I feel uprooted by the whole thing and am having trouble finding some settledness.  The energy outside is so aggressive.

I need to stop now.  Phoenix, while they are on their lunch break, I will go tend to my land, particularly on your grave.  I don't know what else to do.
I love you so.
Me

Three Year Anniversary

Dear Beloved Phoenix on the WEb,
You have already come to me...in the dark.  The night before last, I awoke to silence and lay there wondering if it was going to be sleepless for the remaining dark time as it has been recently.  Then a few minutes pass and I hear outside my open window a shuffling and....howls, howls....like the time I last held you on my lap three years ago, our backs to the North, and howling my wretched grief and anguish.  Remember that moment?  Into my howls blended howls of coyotes at my back as I held your broken body, my broken heart and spirit.  Beetle and J. in the side yard joined the Call.  I remember everything about that night.

And last night, I dreamed of being in that old house; the lights went out in only part of the house. I was stumbling around trying to figure out which ones worked while also feeling scared of what/who I would encounter in the dark rooms. And sure enough, I encountered a man, neighbor, maybe your murderer, but/and in the dream he acted helpful reminding me where the breaker boxes were.  I remembering being concerned he was there and also relieved to know exactly where he was, no surprises.  Befuddled, I went looking for the breaker boxes as he described.  Then, beloved Phoenix, you joiined me, moving through the dark, trying to remember.  You were right by my side in and out of rooms checking panels of switches. At one point I remembered where the main one was (not at all where he told me!) and went towards that.  You trotted away to chase something and I called you back but when I voiced your name, it came out "Beetle."  But you were clearly in your beloved strong, brindled furry body and you did come back to be with me as I continued to figure things out.

Must I speak anything else? THANK YOU for coming to me, Phoenix, in both these ways.  O. reminded me this morning that anniversaries like this may also be hard and disorienting for you, depending.  Maybe we are both stumbling in the dark through the memories, trying to remember and find the main switches that light the way.  And, there we were together.  This is our day, marking both the horrendous violent way our WEb was broken, as well as the last day we loved each other in this Outerworld. 

Lastly, I found a picture last night of Demeter and Kore as twins/mirror reflections of one another. I've not seen them quite like that before and have been pondering, letting it sit and shift inside me because we often think of them as two different people: mother/daughter etc.  This image invited something different inside me: something of two linked consciousness happening at the same time.  Let me try to explain.  So, I am 'queen' of my Outerworld now: my life here with Beetle, with Myrrh, with O., with our classes, dances, tribe etc and it does not include you anymore as of 3 years ago.  I move through this Outerworld.  And, Phoenix, I still believe I move with you in another world that is elusive, moves in and out of darkness, grief, engagement with the unseen, the wuwu.  Clearly, like my dream, these worlds blend, they are not separate and...I am 'queen' of that Innerworld too with a different life/consciousness that calls and engages with you.  My dream of calling you back but the words came out 'Beetle' gets at this best, I think.  I am not split consciousness, I am twin consciousness.  Does that make sense?  I am still trying to get the words for it, but/and the image I found last night 'spoke' something of it. What if Demeter and Kore were not two different beings? What if they were twin consciousness (with Hecate, they'd be triplet consciousness!).  Then the story when Demeter and Kore 'reunite' is really a doubling that happens, an intensification of energy, crossing the thresholds of worlds, like we did last night and in other dreams together!

Here's the image to close.  I love you, Phoenix, and am most grateful to continue to have our lives together on the WEb.  He may try to confuse us or mislead us in the dark and we find our way to the main fuse box.  I love you always.

Forever repairing what was torn,
Me

3113

Dearest beloved Phoenix on the WEb,
Last night I found myself on the floor again. It has been a long time since I have collapsed like this. Cascades of feelings poured through me for hours, the core of which was that deep deep felt sense of loss, missing you.  This is the first day of March: 3-1-13, such a lovely symmetrical date.  March carries so very much life and death in my personal Wheel of the Year.  This round it carries in addition the first day that I will not be employed by GE.  Yes, my last day was yesterday, the last day of the month of February.  I know it was the right thing to leave, it was my choice and my timing.  I said my conscious goodbyes to folks and to the space over the last two weeks, so I've had time to let go in ways that I wanted to.  I have so deeply appreciated the employment, many of my co-workers and the folks that I served there.  That position was a container for me of so much personal change.  I had folks remind me of the time I chopped my hair off! One brought me a photograph of me when my hair was long and my uniform was green!  Now my hair is short and my uniform is blue!

 I arrived there 6 1/2 years ago planning only to stay a short while and months stretched into years over the course of which I lost you, beloved Phoenix, I let go of my partnership with beloved J., I began something new with O. and so much additionally in between.  These are huge life transitions in the course of these almost 7 years!  And it was the container of GE that held a space for me to continue to engage in life in a particular way in spite of the times when I would go there with swollen eyes from crying half the night before or when I would show up hardly 'there', a ghost even to myself.  There was a beloved sister there who was my link to what was real, no matter how bad it got.  I could go to her and she would understand.  I remember several days there after you were shot, I would have panic attacks between shifts. I carried a homeopathic remedy, Ignatia, with me which would often help mitigate them but/and it would take some time.  Those days, I would go to RW, my sister, and she would tell me to go, go! do what I needed to do, she would cover for me.  I would get myself out the door to the pond there and walk with such intensity as if I could outrun the awful panic that was chasing me.  And it worked every time, thank Goddess.  I have so much gratitude for things like this that were part of that container to hold me through. 

And so, I've said goodbye to that container.  I dissolve it as it has served us well, giving it back to the well of creation.  And now, I am in the Void.  I asked myself yesterday what that is like this time, this particular Void and the answer was startling: it is a place between She and I.  It is calm, it is connected, it/we is trusting.

So, then...how does one end up on the floor from that place?  Well, sweet beloved guardian Companion of mine... we have learned together that it is never just one thing, nor rarely a linear sequence of one things.  The WEb, we know, the WEb.  What I do think I understand about it all is triggers.  Even though I have and do feel that Void as all I have said,  the absence of something that has grounded me for so long through so much is triggering of the other intense times of loss when I could not access trust or She and I or anything but the HUGE cascade of feelings that washed me onto the floor last night, the bottom being the absence of physical presence of you, of J., of O. of my twin.  It was and will always be inconsolable grief. Such an easy thing to name, inconsolable grief, and the words don't even touch the enormity of the meaning/reality of the experience. Inconsolable grief: that which no one, nothing will ever be able to fill, mend, repair, soothe.  An endless gaping wound of loss that streaks through my heart, down my left arm, through my fingers that reach for some physical contact of memories of times when the missing match was there. 

So, that is where I went last night again.  I did not try to stop it or redirect or numb out. The cascade had its way and took me with back to you and the beginning of this month of life and death.  Sweet Beetle and Myrrh slept with me all night long even though their presence was not what/who I needed/wanted.  This morning, though, Beetle curled against me like you used to do, Phoenix.  It was not you, it didn't fill the missing match and...she is so my girl, my sweet devotee, offering me all she can.  I am grateful.  And...still in all of the feelings, not wanting to have to explain to anyone anything.  I am hoping today to feel better enough to go for a walk with Beetle and do some errands, gently finding my way in this place of Void, a Winter Solstice here on 3-1-13.

Much love to you. I am so grateful to have a place to come 'talk' to you, my sweet beloved Phoenix.
Me

Reaching out to you

Dear Phoenix on the WEb,

What is it that I have come to say? I miss you. This is one way I try to reconnect with you.  Yesterday while walking around downtown, I encountered a large brindled hound named Maizy.  As I was greeting her, she leaped into my arms, front paws and giant torso.  While at the time I felt immensely happy, I don't think the meaning registered right then. It was another experience of my body knowing what was happening before my mind did.  Later I cried about how familiar that felt for a large brindled dog to jump into my arms!  You, Phoenix, you.  I miss you.  And interestingly, this hound dog was a Plott hound (Beetle's people!) with your heavy brindle markings.

I am feeling discouraged.  There are many things that are unsettled about another class beginning, about a space for our dances,  some relations feel a bit uneasy and I'm having some physical pain with my ovary today which is causing me some concern/doubt.  Just overall I feel low grade anxiety, like there is someone just around the corner ready to criticize me and what I should be doing or not doing.  I know this is some of the 'old stuff' I am working to let go of my past.  Trying to replace it with Trust.  Trust amidst the anxiety.  Trust flowing down from my heart to my ovary.  What if I do it wrong? What if I do it right and it still doesn't make any difference to the outcome? What if something sudden happens and I don't have time to prepare?  Am I being foolish?

Oh, Phoenix. Oh, Ovary.  Oh, Goddess.

Reaching out/in to you.
Love,
Me