branches up, roots down

This is a particularly challenging solstice to be a therapist. Usually during this time I can rely on my fierce optimism to not only get me through, but to be a beacon and ballast for my clients who are in the depths of despair. This season, I've had the experience of several of my clients being my messengers of hope, shining their light to guide me through the dark. When I got to work yesterday there were several cards from past clients, all wishing me well and extolling praise and gratitude for my past sturdiness. One of them, from someone who moved to the Rockies over twelve years ago, asked; "Have you dumped that husband and gotten with a woman yet?" I laughed and laughed. I could hear her voice in the words. She was a complete handful as a client, a challenge and a joy. What a mystery, this thing that prompted her to write this card, when I hadn't heard from her in a decade! As the hours went by, and I sat with clients who are currently struggling with depression...

I cancelled my clients this morning. Nobody needs a therapist who’s breaking into tears unexpectedly. What’s up with me? What has this trip to the coast broken loose in me? This week is the anniversary of my father’s suicide, a time I tend to be battling the blues, so that’s definitely a factor. Reya says I don’t sound depressed, just sad. There’s some mighty grief running thru me, and I’m giving it free rein, not trying to busy myself out of it, or numb it with glasses of wine. Curiously, I find I’m envying LeeAnn her one love, her long years of battling and making up with Max. Maybe, finally, I’m grieving my marriage. I know I’ve grieved the loss of my husband, but the loss of my marriage, that’s another kettle of fish. That marriage had it’s beginnings on the Oregon Coast . Cannon Beach is such a crucible of love for me. All the great loves of my life, except my last one, hold some history in this place. I went there to heal, drawn by the power of the elemental forces; ...

I’m back at the airport, waiting for my flight to San Francisco . I just left LeeAnn at her gate, and she’s heading back to Idaho to an empty house. The phone rang somewhere before eight this morning, and it was her. She was outside my motel in a pick-up truck, and she couldn’t climb the stairs to my room as she’d sprained her ankle. Clearly, the wake for Max had happened. I threw together my clothes and went down to join her. She’d decided we needed to drive down to Cannon Beach , the place I’d fled to after my father’s suicide. At the time, it was a funky little artist colony on the coast, dead in the winter, and catering to the tourists in the summer. It was a place where half the waitresses and bartenders were either working on a novel or painting in their spare time. When they weren’t drinking, that is. We cruised down the coast in the large truck, and I noticed all the changes. There’s a huge outlet mall in Seaside , and the patches of wild are smaller all around. When we...

I’m in my motel room in Astoria , overlooking the water. Below me, the Columbia river widens to meet the Pacific. LeeAnn booked the room for me, and when I got here I found out she’d paid for it as well. It’s perfect, not a chain motel, but one with distinct character and a sense of place. I’m deeply touched. Touched. How right that word is! Moved and touched by the power of human connection, by this incredible day. Picking up my rental car in Portland , I headed off after consulting with the rental guy about the best route. I promptly got lost in the wastelands of industrial Portland , driving this way and that until I finally found my way back to the place I’d gone wrong. I’d taken a wrong turn just blocks from the bridge I needed to cross. I noted the crossing of it, hoping that it was a portent, that all the turns and wanderings of this life time lead me exactly back to where I need to go. This is a bridge I’d never seen or crossed before, this Saint John’s bridge. An...

I’m at the airport, waiting for my plane to Portland . I’ve made it thru the congested clutch of the security checkpoint and am at my gate. The plane leaves in about 50 minutes, so we should be boarding soon. It’s so darn early, not quite six in the morning, and I’m barely awake. I’m not on the plane, but the trip has begun. The cab came within five minutes of my call. I stumbled down the stairs with my stuffed overnight bag, and slid into the backseat. I’d imagined a quiet ride thru the darkness, but my driver was talkative. I’m a highly relational person, whose favorite animal is hands down the human being. Despite this, or maybe because of this, I like the indulgence of silence when in a cab, a salon chair, or dealing with dental hygienists. That indulgence was not to be. The cabbie didn’t pick up on my cues of giving short answers to questions, with no questioning reciprocation on my part. By the time the cab was coming close to Candlestick, mindful of how grouchy I was bec...

A few weeks ago I noted a change in language, a new term easily rolling off people’s tongues. It entered my therapy room twice today. In San Francisco people are no longer saying “biological mother/father”. It is simply bio-dad or bio-mom. So short, so friendly, so easy to use! This is going to make the term “real” mom/dad obsolete in no time. Having been surrounded by parents with adopted children, and being the mother of a child who has both a dad and a bio-dad, I know the sting the “real” can cause. Does this make the other parent “unreal”? Up until now, there hasn’t been anything to substitute the “real” with that hasn’t sounded clumsy or veering on too much information. “Biological” is just too damn long, too clinical, and somehow makes one think of science class and dissecting frogs. I’ve always stumbled over it in introducing/explaining Jay’s place in my son’s life. Once, I introduced him as “Casey’s birth father”. He kidded me about this later, making the good...

As I was rushing around the house this morning, getting ready to take my son to school, the phone rang. It was LeeAnn. The memorial service for Max will be this weekend in Astoria . It’s a rush job, due to the fact that their son is on a short leave from the military, flying in soon from Kuwait . When she asked me to come, part of me balked. This was the weekend I planned to devote myself to the making of solstice presents. I’m sure she could hear the hesitation in my voice as I said “I’d try”. There was short silence and then she said “It would mean a lot to me”. I took a deep breath and felt the hesitation leave on the exhale. What better solstice magic, what better gift to give, than to show up for an old and beloved friend in their darkest of hours? I bought my tickets as soon as I got off the phone.

I drove down Third Street today and into Hunter’s Point. The violence of poverty reverberates here, it’s a district my son is afraid to come to, one which the hungry homebuyers give wide berth. It’s predominately black. It’s also houses the largest colony of artists in the Bay Area, oddly located in an old navy shipyard. Studios are cheap here, out beyond cell phone range, safe at the moment from gentrification. There was a time that North Beach and the Haight teemed with artists studios. Now even Ferlinghetti, the poet king of Columbus Street , has his painting studio out here. The barrack buildings are rough and rickety, and even full of artists, there’s a feeling of dislocation in the air. As I drove down Third, I noticed that the new street car tracks are almost done. This street car will run from downtown thru Hunters Point. Once that train is up and running, the division between Hunters Point and the rest of the city will begin to erode. I give it a year until you ca...

This weekend I had planned to be up at my land in the Sonoma hills, land I share with old coven sisters and their partners. As I prepared to go, I found out that there was going to be quite a crowd up there. Robin and Rocky were going up with their troupe of Morris Dancers. At another time, this might have been a hoot, but not this weekend. The unsureness I’ve been feeling has led to a general feeling of vulnerability and unsteadiness. Things are in flux, and my roots are searching steady ground. Best to stay home. As night increases its reign, I marvel at how much has changed since last solstice, when the sun ruled the sky. My household is configured in an entirely different way, my office as well. Relationships which once were integral to daily life have diminished to an occasional phone call. Doors have closed, some windows have been cracked open. My son has morphed in front of my eyes from child to teenager. Puberty has hit, and hit hard. His voice has changed, he’s sh...

As I sat with a client today, my mind kept drifting to my friend Lee Ann. I knew it wasn’t anything my client was saying, and it wasn’t that I was bored. There was a tug on the line that connects us. I felt the tug, and I worked to re-focus on the man in front of me, who was in the throes of a career crisis. He needed my full attention, and during that hour, I struggled diligently to stay with him, but my mind kept wandering back to Lee Ann. She was on my mind. After the session was done, I dialed her number in Idaho . She answered, and her voice was shaky. Max, her husband for some thirty years, had died within the past hour. He died at home, where he had been battling cancer for the past few months. She kept exclaiming “Why did you call? How did you know?” Both in tears, we marveled at the miracle of our connection, at the mystery of love. We don’t talk often, sometimes not for years, but when we do connect it is uncannily at the ...

After returning from my uncle’s funeral, I cleared pictures of the dead off the altar and removed all traces of the festival of Samhain. With every day, the dark of winter encroaches. All last week we had beautiful weather here in San Francisco , warm and bright. On Thanksgiving, a cold front moved in. Winter is here. Putting away the remains of Samhain, I found myself hesitant to bring out the Solstice decorations. I’m going more slowly into this season, and I’m not quite sure why. Usually at this time, the house is full of a variety of craft projects, which started a week or so after Samhain and fill the house by the time Solstice comes. Instead, yesterday after clearing the altars, I finished up the last (for the time being) of the spirit bottles, and still am not sure what gifts I want to make. I’m settling into this time of unsureness. I’m unsure of my spiritual affiliations, unsure of what craft projects to embark on, unsure of whether to work on some relationships o...

One of the life themes running thru this past year or so has been the reviewing of my spiritual affiliations. This theme rears its head again and again, and hit me full force this last couple of weeks, and from a variety of directions. My son is in eighth grade, and is in the process of applying to San Francisco high schools. He’s decided he really wants to go to Catholic school. He can play football there, and being raised fully pagan, he’s interested in learning about Catholism. Going to Catholic school will perfectly suit him. He can pull my chain by threatening to convert, and I’m sure he’ll be asking questions at school such as “do we really think monotheism is such a good idea?” So, as I fill out the applications to the several Catholic schools in the city, I’ve found myself checking off the box for “Spiritual/Non-Affiliated”. There’s no box for Witch, Wiccan , or Pagan. As I’ve checked the boxes, I’ve wondered at the truth in it. I am spriritual, and m...

Before Samhain, I felt called to make a spirit bottle for Marie Laveau, the legendary New Orleans voodoo priestess from the 1800’s. One of the highlights of my last visit to New Orleans was seeking out her tomb. Power radiated from it, perhaps because of the vast array of offerings that had been left, making it a breathtaking altar. As I worked on the bottle, I felt I needed to know more about her, so ordered what books I could find online, all of them used and at a good price. When I opened the first one that came, Voodoo Dreams, my mouth fell open and a shiver ran up my spine. Written inside the front cover, in the handwriting I know so well, was my mother’s name. Having trouble believing my own eyes, I called my mother and asked her if she had ever read a book on Marie Laveau. She answered immediately; “The Voodoo queen? Oh yes, I’ve always been interested in Voodoo!” This was news to me. She proceeded to tell me about a business trip she had taken years...

Today I had the strange experience of viewing my own heart. It was awesome. I don’t mean that in the surfer dude sort of way. Seeing my own heart filled me with awe, the simple beauty of the steady beat, the contraction and expansion, the emptying and then filling. The ultrasound technician noticed my tears welling up and smiled broadly. “It’s incredible, isn’t it?”, he said. Yes, incredible. Seeing it, I remembered so clearly the first time in pregnancy I saw my son’s heartbeat, looking like a little light blinking on and off in the kidney bean of his body. After my recent illness, I took leap and scheduled a doctor’s visit, something I haven’t done in five years. I have something close to a phobia regarding doctors. I don’t do an annual pap, and have never had a mammogram. My mistrust of western medicine is high. I generally regard it as something to use as a last resort, or in case of disaster, like broken bones and non-stop bleeding. The paper gowns and lon...

What a Samhain season! The days have been jam packed for weeks. After my illness,I had a burst of creative energy, feeling compelled to make more and more spirit bottles with all my old Mardi Gras beads, which then brought into focus my old connection to Voodoo. With that percolating in me, I flew with my son to Minneapolis to be part of the weekend long wedding party for Reclaiming priestess Donald Engstrom and his beloved Mark. We stayed at what my son called the Haunted Mansion and alternatively, the Hostile Hostel. Then back to San Francisco just in time to put on a big party in honor of the Day of the Dead. At the same time, Anne-Marie arrived from England to join Georgia, who’d also traveled with us to Minneapolis , in preparing for their Reclaiming Feri initiation. I initiated them last Saturday, and they left on Monday. I have several blogs in me about all of the above, and hopefully in the coming days, I will have time to write them. So mote it be!

Death serves to make us appreciate life, and sickness serves to make us appreciate health. Today I've been giddy with gratitude for my health and the incredible energy of this living body. Wow! What a miracle! Ever since the full moon I've been battling the flu. Actually, it pretty much won a few hours into the initial skirmish, and then I fell into bed. Taking time off from my practice is always hard. Besides the loss of income, it means a massive amount of work in rescheduling every appointment. I don't remember the last time I took three days off in row. I was really sick. Today I woke up and was delighted to feel something other than ill. I felt like myself!!!! I've been savouring that all day, just how fabulous that is! I know I'm not totally up to speed, but just to feel the level of energy that I do now, to feel an appetite again, to have a clear head; that's making me feel like a million bucks! Rich as rich can be! The weather co-operated with my elation...

Yesterday the day started with ten young co-eds from a Jesuit college descending on the house as part of a city wide volunteer fair. They came to create blankets for the project I had started with a few friends in response to hurricane Katrina. Our website, theblanketproject.com is up and running, and hopefully soon people will be able to upload pictures of the blankets they are doing onto the site. It’s just the kind of pragmatic magic I like. It serves a purpose, and it’s a spell to blanket the country in warmth, kindness and compassion. The blankets that have come in have been beautiful, with great designs and powerful sentiments attached. The young women jumped right in, and in a few hours there were several unique blankets that not only will keep those who survived that hurricane warm, but are works of art as well. It was a warm day, and with that very specific golden thickening of the air that is particular to this season. The dead are pouring on in through the...

The longer I’m a witch, the less need I have for the formal casting of circles or raising of cones. Every inch of this planet is sacred space, and each second we’re involved in casting some spell. The trick is remembering this, and that’s where Buddhism and Witchcraft meet. The more I’m mindful, the more I’m amazed at the magic involved in mundane life. Rose told me often; “the mundane before magic”. I’m beginning to feel there’s absolutely no difference between the two. I set out to my place in the country with the intent on diminishing the rat population, getting the composting toilet working properly, and planting trees. Clearing out the vermin infesting the house, dealing with my shit, and planting trees that will bear fruit, these are all so called “mundane” tasks that are fraught with the power of changing consciousness at will, and are each the most potent of spells. You don’t really need to be anointing candles with oils to be make things move in your lif...

The new moon with its eclipse has time and space slipping and sliding, there is feeling that literally anything can happen! This week the wheel clearly turned and the air is different. For one thing, it’s full of noise. There’s something always surreal about the week in San Francisco when the Blue Angels are flying overhead. It’s such an aberration in this left of center city to have a sky full of jet bombers showing off, it’s truly disconcerting. The city is full of people like myself muttering in disgust or dismay. Gus the dog got so upset he climbed the fence and some poor guy came home to find him cowering on his couch! He could be Houdini reincarnated into a hound. Dealing with this was part of Ilyse and my last minute preparations for the big RAN party. Dressed in our finery, we took a cab to the event, and walking in, I knew it was going to be fabulous. And it was! The city that had dive bombers overhead all day had also dedicated the day to the Nigerian activist who ...

Tomorrow night I go to the 20th year anniversary celebration of Rainforest Action Network, the organization that my ex-husband was director of thru the late 1990’s. Kelly was one of those instrumental in the environmental community in linking forest issues to globalization and RAN played a big role in the magic in Seattle at the mass mobilization against the WTO. Up until he was unceremoniously let go of as director, we had both considered RAN a locus of cherished community. Victories, such as Home Depot stopping using old growth, were beginning, and a strong network of friendships was being built. In our years together, I became close to many of his colleagues and cohorts who worked at RAN, Greenpeace, and other environmental groups. I taught workshops to longtime activists on using magic, coining the term “magical activism” and incorporated using magic in the teaching of civil disobedience tactics. After Seattle , Starhawk took this on as well, and I eventually turned my attentio...

In popular culture, it’s only the full moons that grab attention. Associated with werewolves, love songs, and full emergency rooms, everyone expects something dramatic to occur on a full moon. But, living the shamanic lifestyle, the trick is to pay attention to the energies surrounding the new moon, where the seeds of the future seem to be planted. This is the best time to make wishes, to set intent, to pay attention and get down to some life interpretation of the dream we are leading. This new moon really packs a punch, being also the beginning of the Jewish high holy days and one in which there happens to be an eclipse. Fern had told me that given my astrological chart, to expect this new moon and eclipse to bring changes and transformation to my relationships - both to individuals and in communities. Now, change and transformation seem to be a constant in this e-ticket ride of my life, but I’m sensing the change right now is not in the form of the Tower card, there’s no catastrophi...

Tomorrow is the new moon, and Rosh Hashanah begins. In the giving up of monotheism, I’ve found myself open to working and being worked by a variety of other different tradition’s holy days. As newbie witch, way back in the late 1970’s, I pushed away from what I was raised with, and looked down my nose at any religion that centered around one male deity. I was pretty darn monotheistic in my polytheism! Now I invoke the wisdom of twelve step programs in regard to other religions; I take what I need, and leave the rest. I was raised as a Episcopalian, but it’s the Jewish holidays that have been drawing me over the past year. Passover lent me it’s spirit of liberation in the spring, and these High Holy Days look like they will be generous to me as well. They are working on me, making me review old resentments, and what I’m ready to let go of. I’m looking at too, what I have to atone to and for. At Beltane, we have the moment of jumping over the cauldron, where we are symbolically purifyi...

I’m exhausted. This has been one tiring turning of the wheel. Here in San Francisco, the door that opens through which the dead pour in usually produces a wave of heat. That door swung open today and the temperature rose. In my office, every session seemed to involve the dead. Those who weren’t actively grieving were mulling and musing on their relationship to the afterlife. I could feel the city get a little denser, a bit more crowded, as the dead began their steady stream over Twin Peaks. The power of the Spiral Dance, the Samhain ritual that Reclaiming has performed for well over two decades, also made it’s appearance. I’ve responded to two posts of Macha, that mighty priestess of the dead, on a Reclaiming e-mail list, about “community” dynamics and history regarding the Spiral Dance. It’s kind of great to be able to speak my mind, and not have expectation of result. What a difference it makes no longer being invested in things changing, or even being invested in being heard. What a...

Over the weekend, I began to work on my garden here in the city. I'm clearing out what was planted by others that doesn’t suit me, and putting in plants that do. For my land in the country, I’ve ordered a battery operated ultrasonic rat repeller and bags of owl friendly rodent poison. I also bought a fig, avocado, and pomegranate tree at the farmer‘s market and have full instructions on their planting. Roots down, branches up! As I invoke the work of inhabiting myself fully, the universe cooperates. I’m being reconnected to old friends and reminded of the array of things that make my spirit soar. The last two nights there's been a fantastic documentary on television on Bob Dylan, made by Scorcese. I love Bob Dylan. His music has been a steady contributor to this life's soundtrack. Full of interviews with incredible beings, I was particularly struck by the treasure of Allan Ginsberg. Both he and Bob have the trickster working thru them, both are natural shamans, both are...

Yesterday morning I was awoken with yet another phone call from an old friend. Lee-Ann and I hooked up on the Oregon coast in my early twenties. We started a crisis line together for women which dealt with both rape and domestic violence. I was fresh out of college, and she was a mother and housewife on the front lines of domestic violence. She’d walk into a bar, talk to guys she knew who had a history of wife-beating, and come out with enough money for us to pay the rent and phone bill at our small office. Over the years she’s gone in and out of her great love affair with her husband and the father of her children. Their battles have been the stuff of legend. In Lee-Ann, he surely found a worthy adversary. I woke to the news that he is now dying of pancreatic cancer. Years ago Lee-Ann dropped her husband’s name and took up Jones for the woman she admired so much; Mother Jones. Like Mother Jones, she’s had more than her share of personal tragedy. She’s lost a child and her fortunes ha...

Today was a quintessential San Francisco fall day. The air was as crisp as a granny smith apple, the light had that honeyed hue I love so much, and there was the occasional gust of wind to picturesquely toss around leaves. The energies of the day turned out to be all about reconnection. Operators were standing by, and the calls came pouring in. I called a friend on her cell phone and she just happened have just run into my old coven mate, Gwydion. Gwydion and I rarely see each other any more - but I trust him to show up in my life when I really need him. Today, by so called coincidence, I found out that he was about to embark on a trip to Iceland. I’m glad to know it, Iceland figured into some of our coven’s fantasies, spurred on by Reya and her desire for a puffin farm. It will be good to imagine Gwydion there in the coming weeks. So strange that at this juncture one of us is actually heading for Iceland! A call from another friend prompted me to call someone I haven’t spoken to in mo...

Today was the equinox. I saw nine clients today. Every one made me mindful of the door we were stepping thru into our descent into darkness. The couple who had recently delivered a stillborn child, the fifty seven year old who was breaking up a 17 year old relationship, the couple who were scheduled for a c-section who just found out the placenta had moved and they were free to deliver “naturally”, the client who was struggling to let go of the substances he’s used for over twenty years; every hour today I stood with clients who stood on some threshold. And then I came home. My son’s father was scheduled to come over to work out our calendar for this fall’s perusal of possible high schools for our son. My housemate Ilyse was leaving for a 10 day trip to Canada. When she returns, she will no longer be inhabiting her flat, but will have moved up a floor into new space. Fern was recovering from an intense spate of cramps due to her struggles with endrometritis. In this mix, I’d invited my...

Tomorrow is the equinox, that most unusual time of balance, where for one brief day, dark and light are in equal measure. Then darkness slowly claims it’s reign. Already, I can feel that pull downwards. I kept getting the image today of standing in front of a door that leads down to a basement. I’m savoring this moment before we step thru the door, loving the last of the summer’s light. Darkness will come, soon enough. I’ve had five calls since Monday from old clients who want to come back to therapy. None of the calls involved tragedy or loss, all seem to be coming from an urgency to get back to work, a need to attend again to old patterns and demons that have been rearing their head. They are ready to go down to the basement. There's a big work bench down there, I just know it! It seems we are entering a time for attending to and dealing with what needs repair. And there’s a general sense right now to take care of business, that something is coming. Or perhaps it's already c...

This past weekend I spent up at my land in the Sonoma hills, within crow fly of the ocean. I haven’t spent any time there for a year and a half. Being there was all mixed up with memory of the great unraveling of my last relationship. It was just too painful. It was there, while I was celebrating the spring equinox, that my lover’s brother committed suicide. That suicide, an ending for David, turned out to be the beginning of incredible heartbreak for me. Going there this last weekend, as fall equinox approaches, was a ritual of closure. As all of those rituals are, it was also a ritual of beginning. The time of heartbreak is officially over. The healing has been well under way for awhile, and it’s clear what the remaining work is to do. Being there, it became abundantly clear that if you don’t inhabit a space, somebody else will. The cookhouse and other dwellings have been taken over by the rodents. To get them back, I or others will have to once again inhabit them. I cleaned up the m...

I’m in love with San Francisco. It was love at first sight. I was eight when I first lay eyes on her, flying overhead, preparing to land on my family‘s move to California. We were moving south of San Jose, but the imprint of looking down on the bridges and the hills is so much stronger than any first impression of that city to the south. As I grew up, San Francisco lay north, a shining jewel I treasured visiting. Carol Doda, beat poets, Victorian houses, cable cars, and of course, the lure of the love-ins in the Haight, all seized my imagination. As a teenager, I came to the city as much as I could, and in the summer, I baked in the heat of the Santa Clara valley and longed to be enveloped in San Francisco fog. I snuck away to the Fillmore to see Janis many nights my parents thought I was spending the night with a friend. As a city, San Francisco truly has always had my heart. I’ve lived here now well over two decades, and I’m a San Franciscan thru and thru. I’m a witch, a psychotherap...