Category Archives: Seasons of Healing

Subdural Hematoma, Valley of Death

Stopping

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Free-falling is the implied scenario when people speak of hitting bottom. You kinda can’t have one without the other. But what they don’t tell you, is there are two types of hitting bottom: one is when you hit the bottom hard and everything smashes to pieces, and the other is when the change happens while you are still falling. You look around and you either say,

This is too much abrasion, the deeper I go. I’ve gotta stop.

Or

No way. I know this place and I’m not going.

Or you simply get bored and want to do something else. This one is quite surprising. You learn that where ‘bottom’ is now, is way closer to the surface than it used to be.

But in the words of my friend Sue, in all of these cases it ends the same, in taking charge of your life.

No judgement here. The free-falling experience itself is all kinds of things to all kinds of situations but one thing it is not, is being in control. Life sometimes requires complete, descending annihilation for us to lose what we don’t need to carry around. At other times, all that suffering gets old, untenable. Because we know better about this particular storm. Fuck this shit.

Or something in-between.

All of it is the human experience, and the least painful way to live it is to endure. Keep moving. Keep processing. Keep loving. Keep crying. Keep on. Lie down. Get back up. Let what is sliding, slide off.

And stand up lighter.

Subdural Hematoma, Valley of Death

Back in the Tunnel: (reconstruction)

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I’m sitting in my car, the one I got last night to replace the totaled one from November’s car accident. This car I don’t really like but it’s the most practical thing right now after two hospitalizations, one extra trip to the ER and then losing my job and being thrown back in the tunnel. I am losing my health insurance. I even scratched the car this morning because it so very long and I am used to small cars. I look out over the Puget Sound and realize I have not been to the water in months. It is real nice.

I’ve had a white pillar candle burning pretty much all day, every day to remind me of what the spirits told me the night of the accident.

Keep open. Open. Open. We can’t help you unless you open yourself to us. This is what faith is.

Even the candle has been having issues. There was an air bubble, so the wick bored a hole downwards making a chasm, a situation set up to drown the flame. I called the shop and they are ordering another, but I need this candle now. I’ve been tending it.

Mom used to say, “God helps those who help themselves” but lately, I’ve been crumbling. I need someone to help me whether I can lift myself or not. People do come. I would not have this car if someone had not come. Less things to overcome now.

Have you had times when things were so hard, you didn’t think you could go on? Isn’t it incredible the way life does just that – going on?

Spirits gently tug me to shift my vision, to include the blessings with the hardships.

There is always darkness,

they say.

There is always, endlessly, more than darkness, too. This is the fiber your world is made of. Focus on only the dark, and a cycle of self-blame or hatred or despair is spawned, leaving no attention left for the rest of the colors. So many colors.

Stay open. Open. Open. Use your energy wisely.

Guidance and inspiration is all around me, though I am sometimes too numb to feel it.

Open. Open. Open. Rest.

Accept what is in the moment, then choose how to react.

People have gone through so much worse – war, torture, agony – and come back. I am in the dark where the sustenance is endless. It is ok for things to suck, with no comparing.

My consolation is that when this is over, I will have more depths to draw from. I will have more compassion. I will be a better hollow bone. My consolation is that I have the most beautiful, diverse, spirit-rich people in my life. My consolation is that I am alive. My mind is functioning and I have a place to sleep. My consolation is that I know there will be more good things in this life. I will have more opportunity to bring people together, always deeper, always more light.

With your mountainous support, I continue to pray.

white pillar candle surrounded by 'get well' cards

Thank you.

Tasara

Reverence, Subdural Hematoma

Gratitude: (the car accident)

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Last night, I miraculously walked away from a five-car accident on the freeway in downtown Seattle.

[This post may not be the best writing, because I just want to get it off my chest, as I will probably be staying home alone for Thanksgiving and it turns out, I have something to say.]

I entered the freeway from 6th and University onto a left ramp, the kind where you gotta get to the right quick, or you will be forced off a coming exit. My blinker is on. I am about to switch lanes, when I see an white SUV coming into that lane I from behind. It is going fast. I give them room; they zoom past me on the right, then crosses left, in front of me. Cursing a little, I merge right. Why couldn’t they just wait? Then the car merges back, hitting the front of my car and it is too late. I spin, clockwise.

I am spinning. I am out of my mind. There is nothing I can do. It’s over. My life is about to end or it is about to drastically change into a chapter of long hardship and pain. I have no control, so I let go. The car is spinning. This ride is about to end. I am about to die. And the car stops, smack on the other side of the five-lane highway.

My first reaction is surprise. I am alive. I am alive! I am not critically injured. And my door actually opens. I cannot see anything because the air bags are hanging in front of my face and my side. There is smoke coming out of my steering wheel where the airbag is attached.

Immediately, there is a man at my door. Am I ok? Can I move? Is there anyone he can call for me? He is insistent. He is there, and I do not have to experience this moment alone. He says there are five cars, total and he can’t believe I am ok. He says I may have even rolled. I say I don’t think I did. He stays with me for a few minutes until the aid cars come and then says, help is here. He will be in the way now, so he is going to go.

The police are here. I am out of my car, now. My glasses are not on my face. We find them, broken. And I grab the tiny stuffed Sasquatch that is right there…put it in my pocket, soft in my pocket. The tow truck is here. The aid car is coming. How did they all get here so fast? Before I know it, when I am not looking, my car is already on the flatbed. I beg a cigarette from one of the tow drivers. A Marlboro. Choice.

The week before I had been in the ER with a knee so back I could not walk. This was my first day without any crutches. I feel no pain in that knee.

All the paperwork and statements. I am bored. I decide that yes, maybe I do care about my belongings. I am stuffing all my maps into a Trader Joe’s insulated grocery bag. I should want these. I love my maps. I see a bear pin that I had tied to my steering wheel. Maybe that is not a good memory. Fuck, no! That was protection! I am alive! With my precious, black swiss army knife that I asked an ex-boyfriend to give me for my birthday, I cut it out. There is the remnants of my last medicine pouch that I’ve kept around. I reach beyond the cup holder, where I’ve looked two or three times in the past few weeks and bring out my missing protection necklace.

The look on the medic’s face tells me it’s not worth the money to take an ambulance. He’s seen a lot and I am… really fine. He says that I’ll be banged up for a few days but I’ll probably be fine. I want to argue because I’ve already said that I can feel the worst whiplash ever spreading in my neck but I can hear that his words are a spell and I will receive that.

They keep asking me if I have anyone to call. I live alone. I do not have family in the state. I hate that I have no one call, so I call my neighbor who is going through so much right now but I know, 100%, she will come get me. I tell her I can get an Uber but I don’t want to be alone. She is coming.

The tow truck driver takes me off the highway and my neighbor picks me up. She thrusts a pack of cigarettes towards me. (No, I am not an avid smoker but she knows this is the moment.) She gets me home and settles me in.

It is so easy to file an insurance claim online. Unbelievable. They have this down. I leave various messages.

I am waiting to cry but it is not happening. I feel elated. I feel held. Clear. I call a few people who love me, as an act of self-care. After ice, bath and more ice, I know, as I go to bed, that the only way I am not going wake up with a frozen neck is if I relax my body and open myself to the Spirits of Grace. I must let them help.

First time to the bathroom, my neck is frozen. Remove the pillow and try again. Sleep on my back. Don’t turn. Next time I am up, my neck moves. Each time is easier. By morning, I am going to work. If I had not already been on anti-inflammatory meds from the previous week in the ER, this could have been much worse.

I look at the police report. Every side of my car was damaged except for the driver’s side. I pull a contained salad out of my backpack and eat it for breakfast, until I bit into a piece of safety glass. Oh! I spit it all out but save the little bit of glass. This seems important.

(Google ‘swallow safety glass after an accident’ and you find some hysterical threads.)

Uber. Light rail. Talk with Mom. Bus. Work. Shut the office door. Phone calls from insurance, car rental, optician’s office… nurse. Nurse says go to urgent care. Fear of internal bleeding! Uber.

Long wait in Urgent Care. I am texting a lot of people, mostly my Mom. I don’t want to be alone. I have spent enough of my life alone. I give this to myself. The doctor doesn’t find anything worrying. I am set up now. Pharmacy. Long talk with insurance guy at the pharmacy. (I was the entertainment.) When I hang up, an old woman befriends me gives and me a ride home. Even waits for me to get flowers for my neighbor.

I am alive. I am held.

I put on some drumming to find out what this incredible strength I feel is. I’ve been feeling super-positive since I bummed my knee out and went to the ER last week. It is the anti-inflammatory meds? Am I still in shock? How long can you be in shock? Immediately, I am taken to the scene of the accident, in the spinning car, contained by the poufy, white air bags. Time has stopped and yes, there are soul parts there, still hanging in the air. One by one, I call them back, telling them the accident is over. Love.

I ask about why I am feeling so strong? This has been going on for the past few months as drama after drama has not rocked my boat…but this is incredible. I am told, ‘you are getting stronger’. And, the more you open to us, the stronger you become.

I ask how I can express my gratitude and they kind of laugh. They say, you don’t have to do anything but remain open to us. That is gratitude. Repay us that way. We cannot help you if you do not allow us to.

This, my friends, is the lesson I want to share with you. Gratitude, to me now, is the act of opening to the forces that take care of us. And it’s not just to the spirits. It’s to all the people around you who want to help. Let people help you. It makes the world go around.

Blessings to you and your kin. I hope your day is just perfect for you tomorrow. Thank you.

There is a cuddly Sasquatch in my coat pocket.

Tasara

Peace, Seasons of Healing

Letting Go

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It’s no great effort. It’s no effort at all.

It is letting other forces drift on, glide through if need be.
It is a sense of whisper movements, not sticking, as our gentle core,
more or less condensed, more or less whole,
remains in its own rhythmic movement,
the movement of life itself.

Melodies may pass near, around or in concert,
even altering our flow, but we always return.

We are made of our own song.

Reverence

11th Trip to the Redwoods

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When you come here,
you may be reminded of movies you’ve seen,
books you’ve read.
You may take impressive selfies.

While you are thinking,
your body will feel the weight
of the skyscraper-sized,
living beings who tower over you.
Your body will register the silence,
will sense the profundity.

You may want to run to your car and turn on some music.

You may see faces in the trees that make you laugh.
Dragons, hags, old men, spindly fingers pointing, goofy grins, drippy noses, penises and vaginas bigger than life.

You may silence yourself,
feel peace pour through you.
You may sit and wonder, why?
Why did my life come to where it is now?

You may see a shape in the web of patterns that surround you
and it reminds you of something important,
something you always knew, finally surfaced.

With every few steps there will be another, another.
You will want to fill yourself with all of them
but the wisdom here is infinite.
It cannot be done.

We mere humans are so small,
so small.

Reverence

Sea Hag

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Unfathomable,
ancient crone of the sea,
brooding
inexplicable dark silence.
Skies, silent breaths, above her.

Near the shore,
she boils over,
white foam spews on black rock,

black rock which itself was spewed
eons ago
hot, coursing, deep from the Mother.

This Ancient one does not use words.
She growls and foams and pounds.

The hill rumbles.
No one offers explanation.

She takes
in the flash of a sneaker wave,

and then under the morning sun
she floods the rocks,
again and again
– this time with frivolity.
Rivulets sing from every crevice,
streaming in unison.

Down the beach, her moods gentle,
force turns to caress,
ceaseless smoothing,
crooning,
whispers, whispers.

And in town, she lies docile
appearing domesticated,
plain as day
in a way

as we forget.

5 Lughnasadh: Reaping, Dismemberment

Essence

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Trial by trial,
stand strong.

Witness the layers peel
as you hold the mast of your being
your rock
your you
all stripped back
to reveal you
glistening in the light
unlike anything else.

It’s you.

There you are,
your power
completely familiar
and now impossible to forget.

Reverence, Seasons of Healing

Bow Down to the Power Within You

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“Ah, yes. This one,” I said as I bent over the wide rim of my cauldron, bubbling in cool, thick liquid.

For months, I’d been charging myself with intention,
reaching into the goop, and pulling out instruments of power,
with voices of the age, crying, “Find your power!” at my back.

I took a good look at the fiery sword of righteous anger,
remembering the times we’d spent together.
My stomach felt dead. I couldn’t even pick it up.

For a few days, I held a sacred feather. It smelled of elder wisdom but eventually, I let it slip back under the surface. It wasn’t meant to invoke power. Wisdom doesn’t work that way.

I pulled out a full loom, so familiar! I gazed at the threads of community which stretched across the beams– but there was something missing in it. And then I saw something I had been entangled in, so I let the loom go too, and watched it dissolve into a primordial state.

The sword of charismatic ego rose out of the liquid,
hilt towering over the bubbling surface.
It was infused with a power of societal expectation.
It was sparkling and it hummed.

But I wasn’t moved.
Time stood between us, me and charisma – a desert of isolation and contemplation.

I told it, “I am no longer tempted or even angry with your presence, you old saber.”

I was safe. I have ridden the storms that raged inside me. I have turned my back on battles and building, to cultivate the precious seeds of goodness.

How will I be called to serve next?
What will it be?
What kind of power is my song calling for?

Finding the answer elusive, I passed my hand into the cool and felt something brush against it, falling towards the bottom of the cauldron. Instinctively, I reached and caught a strong humming thing, a rod, a staff, a wand covered in pearl sheen.

Yes, of course it would be pearl.

Kindness.
Subtle, permeated with a gentle power,
quick to shift if I grasped too hard,
or slip if I held too loose,
this benign quiet force.

My heart ached with need-fire.
How can I feel passion for a power that will not be mastered?

Because there is no other power, no other path.
I can learn to hold my spirit just so,
not let kindness fall through a grip too tight or too loose.

To Enter the Power of Kindness.

There are many teachers,
mountains to listen to.

We span these distances together.

Tasara Jen Stone https://littlelight.info

COVID-19 Pandemic, Seasons of Healing, Valley of Death

Sacred Found in Holiday Blues

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If you are having a hard time today, whether you are feeling alone or actually alone, I extend my circle to yours, if you allow it. I do this because I have been where you are, many a year, hearing the inner screaming while the forces try to pull me down into a whirlpool of despair. I could be there right now if I didn’t maintain and guard my sacred circle.

So take my hand. Join me. I will show you how to get here.

First you have to make your own circle.

Draw it around yourself with your finger, perhaps a silly flapping sock, a butter knife, a piece of Lego. Dance a jig and say,

“This is my space, my place, my space!”

As many times as you want, but make sure you get the blood moving.

Light a candle in your space. If you don’t have a candle, focus on the lantern deep inside yourself and give it some room. Air it out. Let it glow.

Spin your arms and whoosh the circle out to protect your entire living space. Stamp on the ground or clap your hands and say it, with conviction,

“This space is safe! Only good cheer can stay near! And my kind good cheer, no other!”

Now, start naming the things you love in this earth. Say them out loud. Take your time. Let them embody you. Relive those wonders. For me it is always a particular forest, a time with a friend, looking at how far I have come in life, even when it doesn’t feel so great. What is it for you?

Good, now. Good. This is your good cheer. Not only do you have hope but you know what you have. Now you are strong enough to reach out.

There is a vast circle of people who hold sacred space together, consciously or unconsciously. Some call this space the web of light, some call it the Circle of Circles. It has many names and many interpretations.

Imagine your circle extending to this sacred space. Perhaps the edges will meet. Perhaps your circle will transport. You may get there by rattling or dancing, or maybe humming or rocking. You might close your eyes and feel the grounding cord from the divine above, through your body, to the divine below and know yourself there.

Just writing this for you is making me feel better. I will feel your presence on the other side. I will know you are there and be nourished in that knowing. We will shine upon one another, fueling our living rooms with the connection of tenderness and light. We will send out hope to others who are struggling, drawing them near, into the protection of our togetherness.

So.. join me. We are not alone. We are blessed.

Blessed Be, and fuck to the Christmas you didn’t want in the first place.

Tasara

(Modify if need be to make the most meaningful for you.)

Seasons of Healing, Untangling

How It Happens

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Sometimes we wrestle with demons in order to show them -and ourselves – who we truly are. The demon is annihilated or transformed or disappears into a mist.

Sometimes the battle coming on is old and too similar to ones we have fought before. In these times, we kick ourselves and murmur, “Let it go!” after which we can simply turn the page and move on to a new chapter.

Sometimes change comes upon us like an avalanche, an earthquake, a tsunami. We are torn apart and have no choice but to survive it and later, languish on the road, waiting for rememberment. We may find a few pieces and put them back together but more likely, we encounter ourselves in new ways, finding our flesh growing back over our bones all on its own.

Sometimes we hear a click in our mind and the whole world changes. Old patterns are no longer compatible, old friendships drift.

Sometimes the need for change, it’s shape and the way to it have been sitting our doorstep for a long, long time. An event in our lives pushes us into a situation where we have to make a choice. Allow the change to enter or endure a suffering that has nothing left to teach us.

I heard somewhere that wisdom is not a collection of knowledge but rather a shift in perspective, again and again until all the perspectives fit together in a great flow upon the earth that sings under the cosmos. I heard somewhere that peace is riding the wheels of change.