I have struggled for a very long time with acknowledging the value of the work coming through me. People say, “Wow…love your work!” and I’m like….What work?
Over the past ten years I haven’t held a regular job…you know where I punch a clock and sit at a desk and fade until Friday. Since young adulthood I promised that if circumstance allowed, I would give myself completely to the work that wanted to come through me. I would do it and forgo the ‘security’ of a regular paycheck. And then it happened.
A land sale gave me the opportunity and I leapt into the Unknown, following up on that promise. Yet I have struggled with the value of the efforts put forth. There’s not a lot of financial payoff and so I find myself stumbling with it at times. But not always. There are moments of complete clarity and I release the fear and ego’s cynical voice and surrender…and walk forward….fly forward on wings of light.
We are so conditioned in our culture to assign value to work based on money. It has been a struggle to continue creating books, photographs and paintings, not because I don’t want to but I wonder….am I wasting resources by following my wild heart? Many other questions arise that lead me to doubt the Vision that calls me forward in perfect trust and love. Sometimes there’s doubt. Other times….those wings of light grow bigger.
“How do we become people who perceive a greater story unfolding, of which we are an inextricable part? In order to see the web of wholeness and healing, we must have the capacity to acknowledge our value. If we cannot, or do not, acknowledge our value, we walk around like the living dead…..We all must know our value, our important and humble place in the order of things. We must know that we matter to a larger story. If we do not acknowledge that we matter, we throw a wrench in the whole extraordinary process, that relies, so very simply, on the fact that all things exists, and thrive, in healthy relation and relevance to each other.” Christiane Pelmas.
The next time you wonder if you make a difference on this planet, stop and know….You! Yes, YOU! are part of the greater whole and like Christiane reminds us, “we thrive in healthy relation and relevance to each other.”
I was seated on my mat waiting for class to begin. Behind me I heard a voice whisper, “I love you, Simone.” That’s when I began to come out from under a cloud. I turned around and gave Caitlyn a quick hug. “Thank you,” I whispered back. Finally, breath returned as I inhaled deeply and refocused on the yoga instructor.
The past few weeks have been heavy with hate. From Orlando to Minnesota, Louisiana, Texas, Iraq, France….the killing, bombing, acts of hate built up a dark cloud that felt smothering. It didn’t help that I was bullied and learned what it felt like for hate and meanness to be directed at me during this time. I came away from the situation with more compassion and understanding for those who are hated…for any reason but perhaps something like their skin color, who they love, their religion, their gender…education level….size of bank account….species… every day I went out on my back porch and sat in the hammock swing under the shade of a grandmother oak tree and stared into a lush courtyard. How can hate be so rampant? What are we doing to ourselves, each other…the planet?
Times like these are when my choice to be single really weighs heavy on me. This is when I want a man’s strong arms to embrace me and tell me it will be okay or if it’s not, at least I have someone to share the pain and grief of a world gone psycho. When the world is imploding on itself is when I most want companionship…not to fix the insanity of the world but to help me keep from slipping into the dark hole with so many others.
Toward the end of the week I was struggling. My self-talk was getting progressively more negative and I was quickly slipping into old behaviors of self-doubt and admittedly…self-hate. I mean, everyone else is doing it….
The cloud began to lift on the way to yoga class. A rainbow appeared in the sky. Rainbows have been very prominent in my life over the past few years, especially when a message is trying to come through. Then in class my friend reminded me there is love in the world amid hate. Then this morning’s sea turtle beach patrol brought more peace.
The darling dog boy awakened me at 3.15am. My alarm was set for 4.30 so going back to sleep wasn’t an option. I quickly jotted down a couple of dreams, fed the critters and then headed to the beach. It was far too early to begin walking the patrol section but the need to connect with the Gulf was great.
In yesterday’s meditation I saw, in my mind’s eye, a man holding my hands and then placing them on the white sand of the beach and then standing beside me as I knelt in surrender. When I arrived over 45 minutes before sunrise the beach was far too dark to see turtle tracks or nests I had to check. So I stood and then knelt and placed my hands on the sand and surrendered.
Waiting for light…what a perfectly timed teaching to receive. How agonizing it is to wait for change….of self, others, the world…in those dark moments before the light returns fear can grasp the strongest mind and heart.
The street light in the distance was brilliant as I stood in near complete darkness at the water’s edge. One light can illuminate such a large area. And the sun…well, that can illuminate massive areas of our Ocean planet. Like the beach this morning….every small bit of light increased my range of sight. Yesterday’s mediation reminded me to focus on light and love every time doubts, fears and grief surfaced.
As the light grew, moment-by-moment, peace returned to my mind and heart. As I began walking, a chant arose. Peace to you, brothers and sisters, peace to you. Love to you, brothers and sisters, love to you. Joy to you, brothers and sisters, joy to you. To every gull, tern, ghost crab, great blue heron, dolphin, shark, human…Peace to you.
At one point I looked out over the Gulf and saw a very high blow from a cetacean…too big for a dolphin. Who then? I glanced behind me and there was a cloud forming a big okay symbol, like a hand. That brought a smile. And then the large rainbow as I neared home brought even more peace.
During this time where hate is being exposed, where the insanity of darkness seems to fuel hate, it’s important to let nature heal our hearts and minds. And it’s a time to join together in harmony and love and build upon peace by living it with those ready and willing to be in that space with us.
Trying to communicate love isn’t always easy. The word has so many different meanings. For some, it means sex. For others it may mean possession. Others might think of love as obligation. Everyone has a personal spin on what it means resultant of their own experience of relationship.
When you tell someone you love them, their filters of personal experience can possibly change what your intention was. And then things get messy and people might respond as if you are the one who originally taught them about love in relationship. Painful experiences can follow us throughout our lives and we expect love to bring the gut-wrenching punch we first felt when someone we loved acted in an unloving way. It can be confusing.
Dion Fortune, one of my favorite writers, wrote this, “The personality must be healed so the power can come through clear.” This has been my quest for decades now…heal my personality flaws so that I can be a clearer channel for love. This isn’t easy. It’s not a path for the faint of heart. We must be willing to open ourselves completely and make horrible fools of ourselves when, in our openness, we stumble. But if we have the courage to be that open, to be that vulnerable and to feel so deeply to clear our personality flaws, then only good will result.
When I say, I love you, think of the chimpanzee hugging Jane Goodall when he is released after she rescued him (see video above). That’s just pure love without expectation or labels. It’s the nameless experience of unconditional positive regard…light manifested through action. The monkey isn’t asking Jane for anything. He is simply allowing an energy of pure love to move through his open heart with nothing attached, nothing expected.
Romantic love doesn’t interest me nor does possession of anyone or expectation of anyone. I want to live in the space of open-hearted communication and communion with the world. To those that mean the most to me I wish to be able to clearly show love without it being misconstrued as something it’s not. We can’t control how others receive the love we express so the only thing I know to do is to keep loving…purely, without expectation and with my whole heart.
I think animals are such channels for love because they don’t live in the past. They simply allow their open hearts to bring forth the magic of light manifested through action. When I watched mother humpback whales and their calves interact this past February it was crystal clear that love was guiding them. It was the most exquisite expression of love I’ve ever seen.
Perhaps this is why I have always appreciated animals so much. We understand each other without thinking about it or wondering what it means….I love you….and you….and you….and you…….I love you.
Decades ago I had a vision of living alone in a cottage as an older woman. I can’t remember the exact circumstances but it was a very strong image.
Society has certain expectations. If you are single and choose to live alone, and have the audacity to be happy, it can make others uncomfortable. One of my long-time friends recently pointed out that living alone, choosing to be single, and being happy is a lifestyle. I had never thought of it that way before and it was quite eye-opening.
I love living alone. There. I said it. I find fulfillment and happiness by myself.
New friends I met diving the Sea of Cortez last autumn.
I have friends and I travel a bit and meet new friends. It would be awesome to have a traveling companion to enjoy nature with but if not, I’m still happy. I don’t really want a live-in relationship.
It seems the world is geared to people who are in relationship. I was listening to a playlist while cycling this morning and every song was about being in a relationship…with another person. What if I just want to be in a relationship with myself? Can someone please write a song about that? And make a fun one, a happy one…please.
Not to say I haven’t been in love or that I don’t still very much love a man. But who says love has to look a certain way? Can’t I love another person without wanting a romantic, rose and chocolates kind of experience? Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But are Cinderella and Snow White really the fairy tales we want to base our lives on? We never know what happened to their happy ‘ending’ after they became self-actualized. Maybe they discovered they really wanted to live in their own castles and find joy in solitude and just invite the prince when they wanted to take a fun journey.
Creatively I am my most-productive when alone. I ride my bicycle alone with rare exception because I enjoy being out in nature with no distractions. My friend wrote me the other day and reminded me that I can choose to be happy in my life, but I have to consciously take that step. Today it all made complete sense.
Yesterday was the craziest day I’ve ever experienced but it opened me to this realization: I am happy. I like living alone and having a relationship with nature and my four-legged companions. I love and appreciate my friends and love a man that still brings wisdom to me even though we have been apart over four years. And I’m not closed to a relationship but I envision more of a traveling companion. But if he doesn’t show up, I’m still happy.
I wrote to my friend last week: I am clear that cultivating relationships with trees, ocean, earth, animals and learning to love…period…is my path. Love to depths that clears way anything that keeps me from being open to bringing through unconditional love and light.
Sometimes we need a reminder that we are already happy with what we have.
Into Great Silence: A Memoir of Discovery and Loss Among Vanishing Orcas, was written by Eva Saulitis. It’s a very personal story of over twenty-five years of connection with transient orcas in Alaska. In this touching account Eva shares the life and death of a pod of orcas that lived near the Exxon Valdez spill area. While it is beautifully written, it’s also incredibly sad for not only does she tell the story of their death, she tells the story of her untimely death due to cancer.
And it makes me wonder…..what about the Gulf Coast? What will happen to those of us who worked to clean up the spill or document its affects?
The BP Deepwater Horizon spill was far worse in volume that Valdez. The coverage area, humans exposed, wildlife exposed….what will be the long-term story that unfolds along the Gulf Coast?
Internet image of orcas
While reading Into Great Silence, there were many times I paused to contemplate the profound love Eva had for the whales and their waters…the forests surrounding them…the bears….salmon….seals….dolphins. Here’s a excerpt from page 92:
9 July 1989–Yesterday, Mary and I hiked on Crafton Island, not realizing it had been heavily oiled. We found an oil-coated river otter skull. Even the grass above tide line was black. I told Mary about the first time I’d come there. One spring day in 1987, a fisherman friend had invited me for a skiff ride. It was an old, wooden skiff, and he’d perched atop the outboard’s cowling so the engine wouldn’t fall off. Here, I told Mary, was where we’d searched for glass balls among bleached driftwood. Here’s where we’d found wild irises. here’s where we’d sat on the wreck of an old boat and talked all afternoon. I’d never met anyone so earthy, so entirely of a place, embodying an all-out, organic love for the Sound. I’d only begun to recognize that in myself. “Why aren’t you married to him?” Mary asked. I told her I was married to the place.
I remember walking on a beach at the Alabama coast that was heavily oiled– my eyes and throat burning from the smell of crude oil and dispersant– asking myself why I was there. For a week of each month for a year I left my home in Asheville and my husband to travel to my place of birth to document through photography and writing the effects of the disaster. Why am I doing this? I asked.
It was grueling, depressing, hot, horrible work. I had the freedom to leave whenever I wanted to escape the black death that coated the beaches and the stench of hot fumes filling the air. Every time I began to drive into the mountains of North Georgia, on my way back to North Carolina, I remember feeling relief, feeling I could breathe again. It felt as if a weight lifted off of my chest as I made my way home. To safety. To clean air.
Adjusting to being away from the disaster was difficult though. I was so depressed it was almost impossible for me to invite laughter or pleasure into my life. I felt guilty for enjoying myself given the dire circumstances at the coast. It felt as if the world was ending and life as I had known it was gone due to a needless, careless catastrophe.
So back to the question: Why am I doing this?
The only answer that ever came was….someone needed to witness the disaster with an open heart and mind. Not as scientist or politician or oil company representative….just a witness that loved the place.
So I visited seven beaches for a year and walked them, photographed, took video footage of them and wrote about them. My tears mixed with the oily waters of the Gulf of Mexico and I stood as witness to the pain and suffering of life there.
This kind of experience changes a person. Something happens within the mind and heart that shifts the perspective so completely that life can never return to how it was before. A person cannot return to ‘not knowing’ what they know. They can’t un-see or un-feel the multitude of visual images and emotions that were experienced on those wounded shores.
My heart broke for the ghost crabs and blue crabs, the flounders, shrimp, fish, dolphins, string rays, sea gulls, terns, osprey, pelicans….for the humans that would eventually become sick from exposure to such high-levels of toxicity. Nothing is the same after witnessing this.
I was certain that humans would awaken and create immediate and lasting change after the spill, but it didn’t happen. This was incredibly disappointing to me.
After documenting the spill and its aftereffects I noticed people responded strongly to images of beauty and stories of nature depicting the profound relationship experienced with wild places and wild life. It felt like a natural evolution of my work and efforts to shift from death and destruction to beauty, specifically the beauty of the Ocean.
I haven’t forgotten what awakened my own sense of urgency to protect our planet, our Ocean. And the deep sense of place it instilled.
Eva reminded me of the love we develop for places that touch our lives. We become a part of these places and the more we invest our time, energy and work into them, the deeper the connection we have with them. Their wounding becomes our wounding. Their health, our health. Their death, our death…metaphorically and literally.
Why do we risk our own safety to help? The bottom line is love.
Photograph by Brent Durand of me diving in the Sea of Cortez.
I have struggled for a very long time with acknowledging the value of the work coming through me. People say, “Wow…love your work!” and I’m like….What work? 
A land sale gave me the opportunity and I leapt into the Unknown, following up on that promise. Yet I have struggled with the value of the efforts put forth. There’s not a lot of financial payoff and so I find myself stumbling with it at times. But not always. There are moments of complete clarity and I release the fear and ego’s cynical voice and surrender…and walk forward….fly forward on wings of light.
Today a story popped up on my Facebook feed from my friend Christiane Pelmas. She so eloquently writes about value of who we are and what we bring to this wounded world. Here’s a bit of what she shared:
The next time you wonder if you make a difference on this planet, stop and know….You! Yes, YOU! are part of the greater whole and like Christiane reminds us, “we thrive in healthy relation and relevance to each other.”
