Existential Musings


 "Let the body think
Of the Spirit as streaming, pouring
Rushing and shining into it from
All sides." Plotinus

My dad recently sent me this picture of myself. "A charming picture of your girlhood." he called it. "I like your alert expression. It indicates that your beauty and strength have always been there."

I have no conscious memory of this photo being taken. The doll in my hand with the matching dress is not something I ever recall having. And yet, looking past the details and feeling into it, I see my eternal self in my little self. Before social conditioning had taken full hold. Before my personality was something to be identified with. I see myself mirrored back to myself and I smile.

"Spirituality is what is left when you stop performing."
Maryam Hasnaa

As I slowly untangle from the collective web, I find the quiet time alone unnerving and also exhilarating. Forever chasing that desire to merge with the Divine (Chiron in my 12th house y'all...that mystic wound is so present lately). My personality and my soul often don't feel aligned and sometimes I dont know who I am, who Im performing for, how long Ive been performing or if it even matters. All I know it is that I'm ready to embody who I really am and the little girl in that picture showed up to remind me that who I am is ever changing and also eternal. That I take shit too seriously and also have a great sense of humor. That its time to lighten up and get to work at being myself, in all the aspects that entails.

All I know is Im one day without a smart phone and it feels so good to type on an actual keyboard. More on that soon. 

Comments

  1. Kaline24 February 2021 at 09:55

    I remember that dress and the doll that matches. No surprise that your Grandma McGill made them for you. ❤

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Life After Drinking: a story told in many fonts

Image
"Sobriety is where you become who you truly are." Glennon Doyle  Two years ago today I stopped drinking alcohol. I was almost 39 years old and it was the decision that began my journey back to myself. Mine is not a story of 12 steps or one day at a time. I do not have a rock bottom to speak of (or perhaps my rock bottom was not the catalyst). I was ready, that's it. I was SO ready to be done drinking alcohol that I did and I didn't look back.  But it was a journey to get to that point. A long journey full of many stops and starts and shame spirals. I am so grateful for alcohol. It has been one of my greatest teachers. Its tentacles no longer tickle my temptation receptors, but I do see it for the very powerful  substance that it is, and I respect it. Aside from motherhood, nothing else has left me so humbled. Thankfully, motherhood is much more fulfilling than drinking. It was motherhood, ultimately, that led me to hear, with more clarity, the whispering voice of my s...
Read more

Child Led Learning

Image
 It's been over a year since I have written on this blog. My, how time flies, my how things change. A year ago, our son expressed, for the thousandth time, his vehement dislike for Waldorf education (see previous blog for the details). In that speech (which I didnt mention in that blog) he gave me an ultimatum: "Either homeschool me again or send me to public school." Public school was something that we had avoided up until that point and we wanted to keep it that way. My husband did and still does hold judgement around it because his own experience within the system and the fact that his younger brother fell through the cracks of that system. I admit that my anxiety around school shootings and my own opinion about rote learning and the rigid environment made me want something different for Max. Our experience homeschooling during his second grade covid year was lovely and cozy and fortiftying for both of us. Remembering that time, I inspired myself with unschooling insta...
Read more

Home. School? Life.

Image
  "Tips, tricks and techniques are not at the heart of education-fire is...Not merely the facts, not merely the theories, but a deep knowing of what it means to kindle the gift of life in ourselves, in others, and in the world. -Paker J Palmer in "Radical Presence" By Mary Rose O'Reilly "It's time that I have a say in how I am educated and it's NOT Waldorf. Maybe when I was in kindergarten but I'm not a baby anymore and it's bullshit." My nine year old son and I are in the hammock together in our backyard, the hot July sun is pouring through our fruit trees and piercing us through the dappled shade. His blue eyes convey a deep and earnest truth, that school as he has known it has never ever been something that he has enjoyed. It took us three open houses to get him into the the Waldorf kindergarten room when he was five. He hid behind trees on the beautiful, 13 acre campus, sobbing and full of anxiety. When we landed in the classroom, with i...
Read more