sea

Lunar Wisdom

| Sheree

Hypnotised by the moon … I found the more I dwelt with her, the more I became conscious of her tides, and all my life began to move with them. – Dion Fortune

It was a full moon last night. A beautiful sight in a clear dark sky.
I’ve taken to paying more attention to the moon’s rhythms recently. Starting to believe in Her wisdom as well as becoming connected to her as a woman.

For example, the phrases of the moon are matched each month by a woman’s bodily functions. Just as the moon is full, my womb waxes full and then wanes, empties with each menstrual bleed, just as the moon wanes to nothing, to the dark moon, when She is no longer visible.

Before, I never really knew anything about a woman’s natural connection to the moon. There’s energy and power to be enjoyed if we as woman chose to use Her light as a indicator of when to be in action and when to be still. When to gather and when to release. Once we align ourselves with Her natural energy and movements, things could start to flow much more easily within our individual lives.

So I’m finding out through my recent readings, and I look forward to learning more about lunar wisdom, lunar phases as well as lunar rituals and becoming more in touch with my own natural rhythms.

Out in the sun

| Sheree

I got up at about 5.00 am. Ella was calling. I ‘d had a rough night’s sleep. Couldn’t get off. Too many things, ‘worries’, running around my head. So up and down tending to Ella, was annoying just something else to add to my disturbed sleep. This went on until 5.38. I’m thinking this was a sign that I should be up and out in the world. So I put Ella into our bed and got dressed and out the door before I could think about how tired I was.

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It was a lovely morning. The sun was up but still playing with colours as it graced the sea and rocks. I walked with a brisk pace, with purpose as it felt right to be up now and out, getting some exercise, starting my day with good intentions towards myself. I was out for 50 minutes. I got back and practiced yoga for 15 minutes. Then created a green smoothie for breakfast and settled down in my space to write my morning pages.

Before I knew it 2 hours had passed. This is an indication of how much time I need at the start of every day to come home to myself before I’m ready to start the rest of my day with others and responsibilities. I am being honest with myself here, and if I want to see out the rest of my day in a balanced, happier and truer way, I need to make sure that more times than not this is how I start my day, even if it means getting up at 5.30. It’s not a luxury but a necessity.

‘ The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives. It is within this light that we form those ideas by which we pursue our magic and make it realized.’ Taken from Audre Lorde, ‘Poetry Is Not A Luxury.’

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The Dark Goddess Collection

| Sheree

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I’ve been on a journey. Some days it feels like to hell and back. Other days, it seems like I went dark. I ventured into the underworld to the Dark Goddess. I’m not sure what or who the Dark Goddess is but I do know she is within me. She has always been within me, but I have failed to acknowledge her, or feared to spend time with her.
Over the past year or so, I haven’t had a choice but spend time with the dark Goddess. Associated with death and avoided, She also holds the power for life, and transformation. Before this can occur there has to be death. The natural cycle of every thing is life, death, life cycle.
Anyway, I’m working through things at the moment, working to become more empowered from within and part of this journey does include embrace the Dark Goddess, my Dark Goddess. I chose to document this process and share my practices through poetry. The Dark Goddess is the focus of my next full collection of poetry. What shape this will take is left up in the air. I jut know in my core that this is the path I must take.
Here’s a poem that I think will fit well within this collection.

Forecast

I had a friend once, Fresh, who could talk to the weather.
She tuned into their energies or something.

She could persuade a seafret to stray away from the Scottish coast,
turn back a storm before its even thought about which Caribbean isle to hit next.

She had a certain way when she looked at you,
numbed you to the core,

yet when she smiled it was like the sun glistened
through her pores.

When it rained, she’d be out there for hours arguing
about which was the best colour of the rainbow.

And when a wind blew she came into her element.
She grew in size, raised her arms in welcome

blustered through the cracks of light and disappeared.

From the WSW vault: the sea is my medicine

| Sheree

September 2015, I write:

“People who know me would say I am a positive person. Usually a positive person. Lately, my moods have been dark. In the past few months, disastrous things have happened which have left me feeling worthless, victimised and suicidal. I will start to document the experience here over time. But I understand why people haven’t wanted to be with me. Hell, I haven’t wanted to be with me either
I’ve been walking the line around the edge of depression. My husband suffers from depression and low self-esteem. Has done so for years. So there’s no room in our household for me to be sick also. I cannot go down there as it is I who holds our family together. I’m not trying to big myself up. It has been the truth, until now.
Now, I’m just falling apart, been doing so gradually over the last few months. At the same time, I’ve been attempting to build my life, myself back up. I see now my mistake has been to hold on too tight to how things were in the past, how I was in the past, resisting change at the same time as wanting these difficult times to pass.

Robert Frost wrote:

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

I first came across this poem in the film, The Outsiders. Ponyboy recited it to his friend Johnny. Then on his death bed, Johnny told Ponyboy to ‘stay gold.’ I loved that film. I think Johnny was trying to tell Ponyboy to stay good, stay innocent and pure, to not let the harshness of this world change him. That’s a difficult request to fulfill. There is more ugliness in this world than ever I feel, but I have to acknowledge that there is also beauty.

I have to remember that how I behave, act or speak originates from me. No one else can or should control how I act and behave. I do want to be a positive person but I know that person has gone. Changes occurred. They had to. I want to be whole. So more changes will have to come. I’ll be a positive and good person but a wholly different positive person than before.
Why the image of the sea to accompany this post? Because I got back into the sea today after weeks of avoiding it. The sea is my medicine. I’ve been refusing to take my medicine. Maybe because I didn’t have the energy, or maybe because I didn’t want to heal. Today, I dived into the cold sea releasing a little of my pain. I smiled while I luxuriated in her cold watery embrace reminded why I love being in the water, that feeling of freedom and what I’ve been been missing. The sea saved me.”

Sea film

| Sheree

I believe in all that has never yet been spoken

I want to free what waits within me
so that what no one has dared to wish for

may for once spring clear
without my contriving.

If this is arrogant, God, forgive me,
but this is what I need to say.
May what I do flow from me like a river,
no forcing and no holding back,
the way it is with children.

Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
these deepening tides moving out, returning,
I will sing you as no one ever has,

Streaming through widening channels
into the open sea.

Rainer Maria Rilke