Woman got herself dry socket. Exposed bone and nerves after a tooth extraction happens when the blood clot for Porte took doesn’t form properly or get dislodged.
It’s painful and can lead to infection. Guess I’m one of the lucky ones. As mine is infected.
I thought the pain and bad taste and breath were part of the healing process. No pain no gain right?! Seems this level of pain and the foulness is a sign of dry socket and infection. Go figure.
Thank goodness for saltwater washes, walking and self-care. Looking out for myself has become a priority in a world that just doesn’t care.
I have a little series of poems inspired by fungi: mushrooms, toadstools and the like.
I’ve always enjoyed looking at pictures of fungi. I’d draw them from books and colour then in with coloured pencils. I started a collection of them, when a child. In real life, I’m not too sure, I like fungi up close. I think something the way they feel puts me off. And that they are alive!
Also the idea of spores frighten me. Obviously, the fear comes from a lack of understanding and knowledge about them.
What I do know is that they are vital to life. And that whole underground system they have going on of passing nutrients and messages between plants and ecosystems and other organisms is truly remarkable. And has to be respected.
Anyway, I was thinking of pulling these fungi poems together into a mushroom zine. I do love my zines. What do you think?
Of course I have to find the time to create it. But now I’ve stated it here, it lends some kind of accountability to completing the task.
Anyway, above is a brief extract from one of the poems. I think I have about 5 or 6 of them. So I’ll keep working on them and start thinking of some cool design to go with them.
Of course being here now, saying all this, is me thinking out loud. Making some kind of commitment to a dream and making steps to seeing it through.
Every year for the past 5 I’d say I’d spend time at the end of/beginning of the year to create a vision board of intentions and dreams.
I say this, for the past 5 years, except the last one. 2022 was the year I never set out my intentions, my dreams. I missed the window of magic, I felt, and just couldn’t muster the mojo to set things down.
I missed this road map, this visioning throughout the year. There were times during 2022, that I was questioning what I was doing and where I was going. But I realise now that I needed that low, down energy to heal and recover after the last two years of Covid. And it’s not over even now, but I know I have better coping and managing skills today.
So thinking about 2022, and my lack of motivation and direction, I knew when 2023 came around, my vision board practice was coming back. Not to get all productive on my arse but because I love to have this beauty pinned to my bedroom wall at the bottom of my bed and see it every day.
Vision Board, 2023
Having my vision board in plain sight, everyday, the first thing I see in the morn and the last thing at night, is a gift and blessing. I get to see and feel what I want to manifest within the present moment, each day. It’s not a bind in anyways, but it is a reminder and commitment to myself to love. Myself and others.
It brings me joy to see my vision board because it is a thing of beauty. I know everything on it has been placed with intention and love for self. With joy. And it’s not used as a to-do list of productivity and perfection. It is a beacon or siren to make sure I’m {being} in my life how my soul wants to be showing up in life for me first and foremost.
Vision Board, 2023
That’s why I call it a quiet Revolution. I’m revolting against the system, this White Supremacy Culture, from the inside out. I’m rejecting all those beliefs and practices and ways of being that have been implanted within me since being born into a system which indoctrinates us into being machines to the system. Where we repress our true selves to fit in and be accepted. Where we do not question or reject the system but uphold it and perpetuate it through our actions and attitudes towards others and ourselves.
Vision Board, 2023
So here I am sharing my vision board of 2023. Not as a ‘look at me, aren’t I clever’ kind of vibe. But to inspire. I’m always about sharing my practice to inspire. Last year I gave up early, without creating a vision board. Along with using excuse and excuse afterwards for not trying to create one.
I share with you mine so you might feel inspired to create one or not even a physical one but a space in your heart and mind for your intentions and dreams and ways of being. It’s never too late is my motto. Something I could have used last year, but some how couldn’t muster the energy to. But I think this might have been a demonstration of my lack of commitment to myself and my dreams last year and being content enough to just get by. I know I needed this time of rest in place to move onto 2023 with renewed energy and a massive intention to heal.
Swings and roundabouts. I just know everything sits better with me when I know I’m on a mission to heal from the inside out through this quiet revolution of a slow, listening, restful practice.
I’ve started again. I think it happened a couple of weeks ago now. But I’ve started walking out and searching for the colour purple again. I first started this last year during lockdown, when I would take a daily walk, but walk with intention. My intention was to search out purple, usually purple flowers, pause give thanks and snap a photo.
As Alice Walker write in The Color Purple “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it. People think pleasing God is all God cares about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.”
Walking is a meditation. Like breathing. When I walk my footsteps fall into a rhythm with my breathing. I always feel better after a walk. During the troubling times of the Coronavirus pandemic and Black Lives Matter uprisings around the world, I’ve been searching for purple, more often than not. Does that mean I’m been looking for God? Looking for the reason maybe for all this suffering? But maybe there’s isn’t any reasoning for everything that’s happening. Maybe it’s just a case that this is how things are in the natural scheme of things. How it’s always has been and will be? That’s there’s meanness in the world and suffering and pain as well as beauty.
As more and more in society reopens after lockdown, and more and more people are making demands on my time and attention, I’ve slipped back into walking and searching for purple. And I think this is not to just fill my creative pot with joy, but also to makes sure I keep moving through this world at my own pace. Slowly. And when I lean into taking things slowly, doing things at my own pace, I know I’m in control of everything that is happening in my life.
It’s me taking back me power. And I think that’s what purple symbolises for me. As a colour, for centuries it has been associated with power. Not just regal power, but also because it was so expensive to make, purple was only worn by the select few, the echelons of society.
To be empowered from the inside out is real power for me. Power isn’t how much money or status you have in society. For me, it’s how much you value your own worth, protect your boundaries, lean into what makes you feel happy, what brings you joy and continue to relight your creative fire.
Seeing in the end of the old year and into the new is a time I always take for reflection. Visioning and re-visioning my dreams and plans for the year to come is something I do to focus my energies for moving forward with purpose and grace.
As I mentioned in my last post, my guiding word for 2021 is SLOW. To support this process of living into my word with intention, I spend time working through Susannah Conway’s workbook Unravelling Your Year. This year, the pulling of a tarot card for each month of the year is missing from the workbook for some reason, but I’ve followed this ritual for so many years now, that I didn’t need anyone else’s guidance to do so except my own intuition.
So using Kim Krans’ The Wild Unknown Archetypes deck, I proceeded to pull a card for each month of 2021, and one final card as a guiding theme for the year. When I pulled the final card, there were two stuck together so I went with the two as my guiding principles. The Crone and The Hunter were the two cards that will become my over arching cards of 2021.
I intend to go into detail about what each of these cards signify and could mean for the year ahead in the following posts. I will also share about each card pulled for each month in a post within each month moving forward too. This is a good way to keep focused and coming back to the magic and potential that each card can offer as I journey through this coming year.
Living Wild Studios 