Melissa's Musings

2011-09-08T08:50:00.000-04:00

I live by these words. Every day I remember that I am a daughter of the earth and these words are all I need to remember to embrace the cycles of my life. Embracing the ancient cycles of the earth and moon give us the opportunity to connect deeply to all the ways in which our life can unfold. Then the dark and the light are given equal honor and the gifts of wisdom within each experience can be integrated into the soul. Our souls have come to weave many different kinds of teachings into itself. Trust the processes that you are in no matter how they feel. It is all meant to be in the great big picture of your life's journey. Let die what must die and open the door to the opportunities that lie before you. It is a great mystery; your life! Make it so by believing it is so! Goddess Bless!

To Be of the Earth

To be of the Earth is to know
The restlessness of being a seed
The darkness of being planted
The struggle toward the light
The pain of growth into the light
The joy of bursting and bearing fruit
The love of being food for someone
The scattering of your seeds
The decay of the seasons
The mystery of death
And the miracle of birth

~John Soos

2011-03-31T12:21:00.000-04:00

Each year at the cross-quarter fire festival of Imbolc, I bring a large, tree branch into my home from the woods near our house to use as a prayer tree. Imbolc is an ancient seasonal festival that celebrates the first stirrings of the earth and honors the Goddess Bridget. Her sacred day of Imbolc is February 2. Around here, we celebrate it through the entire month of February and on into March! (She is my other favorite Goddess!)

This year I asked my son, Seamus to find the prayer tree for us. He chose a perfectly beautiful large branch. And now, after two months of being the recipient of so many songs, heart-felt prayers, gratitude offerings and healing wishes, it is one of the most magically infused prayer trees in New Hampshire; I am sure!

In the corner where we place the prayer tree, I also set up a beautiful altar draped in white fabric (Bridget's sacred color) and fabric with Celtic knotwork. On it I place objects that are sacred to Her. At the base of the tree, I always create a healing well for Bridget is Goddess of the Healing Wells and any place where three streams or other bodies of water meet! I create the well out of blue fabric of many shimmering shades and beside it I place a pitcher of water and a goblet shaped like a bee-hive for She is also known to have a sacred apple orchard in the Otherworld and Her bees go there to gather honey for Her.

Bridget is also a fertility Goddess. She is the Goddess of the herbalists and the poets and is a great inspiring force in my life.

This morning I dismantled the well, shook out the fabric off the side of the back porch and placed my sacred Imbolc items into a special magical closet I keep for just these sort of things.

Over the last two months women have come in and out for ritual and ceremony and resting time at the monthly Red Tent we hold on the new moon here at my home. There are all kinds of offerings in the well that have been left from the seeking, praying, healing hearts and hands of many of these women; there are coins, jewelry, birch bark, carefully-folded notes, small candles, and crystals.

There are so many prayer ties on this tree! It is so holy. A treasure!

Between today and tomorrow I am going to find a home in the forest for this prayer tree and all the offerings that have been left in gratitude to Her, my favorite Irish Goddess; Bridget.

My goal is to find a place that has a small stream near it. Just thinking about this prayer tree lying up against a larger, Mother tree in the forest with it's strips of white cloth and ribbon and scarves and lace blowing in the wind, going back to the earth, slowly composting our prayers into the soft pine floor of the New Hampshire woods, fills my heart with the deepest gratitude to the Divine Feminine presence in my life, to the deepest love of the Earth for her daughters and sons, to the Gods and Goddesses of magic and creativity and healing!

I feel like I have a sacred journey to take in the next two days. I feel honored to do this work. This is infusing my daily life with magic, mystery and joy; with prayer and ritual and ceremony and I feel a deep excitement that I am going out into the woods like Artemis with my prayer tree and bundle of offerings at the turning of spring!

With Her Promise in my Heart!

Melissa Potter

2011-03-16T11:07:00.001-04:00

Continuing on the Seal Skin, Soul Skin theme of this year for me, this morning I came upon a passage in a book about the dark of the moon that was talking about how seals are considered by ancient people to be important protection medicine for women. And I thought about how the sabian symbol for one of the planets in my solar return chart that merges with my Mid-Heaven is "A woman rises out of the sea; a seal embraces her" and of all my connections to the selkie stories and songs and magic in my real-life connection to the sea. It's as if I have risen out of this great, salty cauldron of transformation and that my seal-skin, my soul-skin has been returned to me. She's bringing me very deeply into my own soul then up again to float on the waves; a reprieve, a rest, a blessing from the bright sun before we return again to the magical depths. "I hear your voice everywhere I go, everywhere I go." (song on radio while I write this post.)

2011-03-14T08:13:00.001-04:00

I am Persephone ~ Still beneath the birthing earth but I can taste the spring greens on my tongue, can feel the wet grass beneath my feet and the mouth of the wind on my naked breasts. The heat of spring is calling me forth and melts away my night. I am Persephone; returning from the Underworld of my soul.

Open the door of the cave! Build a sacred fire. Prepare for me the mangoes and honey-bread and gather the bees to sing to me! I will have many treasures and a flowing river of ecstacsy to share with you when I return!

2011-03-14T08:11:00.001-04:00

I had a healing vision yesterday of a Mother Bear holding my Inner Child in a cave under the dark, winter sky. A friend encouraged me to draw this vision with pastels and to create the vision around me with fabric. I said, I can do this! I am good at creating things with fabric but I am not good at drawing. I create beauty in other wa...ys, other art forms. But I decided to create for the sake of creating because being creative is what my Leo heart loves to do more than anything else in the world in all the ways creativity can flow, whether it is making love or creating an altar or birthing my child. So I began the process. It was a fully, intuitive, process that I have written about in detail in my journal. But here, I can share that I did create a cave out of black velvet fabric and midnight-blue fabric, both with gold and silver threads running through them, that surrounded my bed. Behind it I hung golden fabric so I would feel fully contained, safe, protected. I created the cave within which I would use pastels on a cotton canvas to draw the vision I had earlier in the day when I had to tell my Inner Child that she is safe and sound even though I have to go to be the grown-up and work with clients and be a good Mom. I put her in the arms of a strong, Mother bear in that cave. So last night, in the deep night, I allowed myself to embrace the creative river and allow it to carry me deep into my child-heart where the wounded-one is, where the artist lives, where the most golden self in me, lives. I noticed that the fabric was in the shape of a real hug and the way the golden fabric behind it hung, like a hug, too, and how it was tacked to the wall, it was in the shape of a butterfly! And as is the way of Spirit, a moment later, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, who was talking from the stereo about the archetype of the Wild Feminine, began talking about the powerful symbolism of the butterfly! (In the candlelight later, I realized it sparkled, too.) My golden shadow, butterfly, transforming, spirit held space for me while I embraced the shadows and the shame and the art from the dark that ends up being the most sacred art of all and I felt so protected. ♥

2011-03-07T17:23:00.000-05:00

The moon is just beginning to wax from it's dark-moon, seed time and toward it's full expression at the time of Spring Equinox later this month. Would you like to feel more connected to the Moon as our ancient mothers and grandmothers had?

What you can do if you would like to align yourself with the moon is harness the energy of this darker-moon time of the lunar cycle to assist you in building energy for the goals in your heart. The dark-moon part of the month, which encompasses dark moon, the new moon, and the early, waxing crescent days of the month, is a time of great and powerful seed strength. You can allow these energies to assist you in birthing what you would like to experience, accomplish, complete, and bring to fruition. As the moon grows in the night sky, so too will you begin to see yourself making steps toward the completion of a goal or project you want to manifest.

The Universe is listening during the New Moon time of the month for your prayers, for your hopes, for your intentions!

What do you want to BIRTH as the month and the moon grows in the next two weeks? Can you visualize your goal being planted as a seed of hope into the earth? See and feel it sprouting. Know and trust that each step you need to nourish this seed to grow and blossom will be revealed to you.

This new moon on March 5 was in the sign of Pisces. We are also under the influence of both the sun and Chiron, the Wounded Healer, in the sign of Pisces. It's as if all of the unhealed wounds of us are being ripped open to allow a deeper, true healing to occur. It is a very challenging but healing time.

It can feel like drowning in a sea of grief. It can feel like overwhelming confusion. It can feel like unbearable emotional pain. And, it can feel like a divinely beautiful cleansing bath, it can feel like the embrace of the Blessed Mother, it can feel like Divine Ecstasy and it can bring a sense of and a deep knowing that life-long patterns and Karma are shifting and completing themselves - finally...There is hope and there are mystical experiences of synchronicity and joy.

I am ending a cycle in my life. I am literally in a brand new doorway and I have just stepped through with excitement and terror all at once. I am about to give birth to myself.

In my place of trusting The Great Mystery, I am embracing the darkness of the late-winter sky in this waxing-crescent moon time of our lunar cycle...I am embracing the pain and sorrow and grief and losses...and I am...Allowing the Pisces energy of Mother Ocean to wash it all away. She is washing it all away...

I hear the song of the seals singing to my soul. They know who is being born even if I do not.

Loving, Learning, Releasing, Hoping, Faithful...

~Melissa

Melissa is the Wise Woman University Mentor of Reclaiming Artemis: Calling Passion, Power and Joy Back Into Your Life!

Visit her profile and learn more about this course by visiting:

www.wisewomanuniversity.org/potter

But I had already been naked in rivers...

2011-02-17T08:27:00.000-05:00

There are places in our life when we can look back into our own eyes and at our skin and the age we were back then and remember exactly what had just happened and we can wish that at that exact moment when the eyes looked like that, when there was still time to prevent further pain - before the broken blood vessels from screaming in pain, before the crows feet that suddenly came when just yesterday you were so young - that exact day we should have walked away, turned the corner, changed the path we were on, called upon the 'Bold Forces' to save us - and how it rips the heart apart to know how much pain we knowingly chose to continue walking with. Herein lies the true nature of regret and remorse. And if you feel this, you are not alone. You are never alone. Love to you and love to me and love to all of us who know and will know this feeling.

From, "The Soul is a river ~ The River Has a Soul," by C.P. Estes:

But I had already been naked in rivers

and crossed land over ice lakes in winter,

and been baptized in creeks,

...and the dam could not say enough

to convince me, for I knew the mightiness

belonged to open water.

How could a dam endear me to its metal heart?

for when I looked behind me, all the water

was held up now, as though by robbers,

in not a lake, for it had not trees,

nor fauna grown up in the water,

nor flowering wands anywhere near,

nor fish in hundred year old holes,

but just a huge holding-tank of still water only.

How could a dam endear me to its metal heart?

for it had made the river

no longer churn properly,

no longer throwing itself into the air with joy

making rainbows,

no longer eddying.

And when I listened, there were wrong notes and

more so, missing notes, to the sound of water there.

The color of the water was not right, too cloudy-eyed

as with a fever, and the smell,

the right smell in the air was missing

at this endless asphalt cistern.

I learnt at the dam about building things

over wild things,

about holding wild things back,

and I learnt from the dam

how to never speak ebullience

but rather only on occasion, sometimes letting out,

yet only in the smallest measured ways,

and always over a controlled spillway…

just some little tiny bit

of something,

but never passion, never vanguard words.

And thus at the dam, I could see

it was meant to teach to hold the tongue,

and to wait and wait

till the gates were opened just a hair,

and only by authority’s say so,

and then just to let a modicum

of the most precious through,

leaving behind all the rest of the real water

and her children,

to rage or writhe or wither.

Artemis

2011-01-03T06:58:00.006-05:00

This was the northern quarter in our sacred circle of a summer solstice ceremony we did with our children. It reminds me of Artemis: Deer antlers represent her role as the Huntress and Goddess of the Crescent Moon; the Labyrinth which draws us to our center; the Turtle, symbol of fortitude; the Fairys of the forest remind me that Artemis is the protector of children; the yellow candle, color of our solar plexus, is symbolic of our inner strength, personal power and the light of the Bright Maiden; it's candle holder, in the green~of~the~earth reminds me that the earth is my Mother and she will always take care of me...Connected to Her, I rest for renewal and nurturing.

Artemis, Goddess of the Bright Crescent Moon and the Wild Forest, please remind me to connect to the Earth as a source of strength, love and hope! Please remind me to return to nature when I am stressed out and overwhelmed with the busy world around me!

I trust that I will remember everything I need to do at just the perfect moment in time!

The Goddess of Contradictions

Her many contradictions are one of the things that draw me to Artemis; this Goddess of the Moon and the Forest!

As above, so below.

As a young maiden of seventeen or eighteen, I found a piece of writing that I loved so much. At the time I didn't understand how relevant it would be to my life and to the work I do in the world but I knew it was important wisdom to always remember. And I did always remember this wisdom! It has sustained me a thousand times over. I do not know the author of it or where it came from. (Please let me know if you know!)

The tiger, beast made of fire and night, show's its teeth when it blazes with love; the lamb, orphan-wrapped in soft blanket of cloud, weeps to receive that same love. So we give and take, are strong and weak, guilty and innocent, wrong and right. So we are balanced, even when we seem to be in conflict.

In addition to Her wildness, Her refusal to conform to conventional or traditional ways in society, and Her fiercely independent nature, Artemis was also known to be one of the compassionate healing goddesses. Of all the Goddesses of the Greek pantheon, she was the most self-sufficient; she lived life on her own terms! She was at peace in solitude and she was the fearless leader of others. Though she was the Virgin Goddess ~ a woman unto herself and unburdened by the pangs of love, as they say, or child rearing, she was also the protector of children and women in childbirth.

Artemis is a Goddess who holds the energy of androgeny ~ a perfect balance of the divine masculine and the divine feminine energies within. She is the independent, self-sufficient, assertive one and the healing, nurturing one.

Today, may you remember to embrace all the sides of you ~ even the ones that seem contradictory! That is true freedom.

Be free and know that you are a Goddess with many sides to you and you do not have to apologize for this!

What contradictions within yourself do you feel uncomfortable with?
What contradictions within you do you find yourself judging?

The Blessings of Deep Winter

2010-12-29T09:03:00.000-05:00

The Blessings of Deep Winter

by Melissa Potter

Gratitude

From a deep place of gratitude I want to express my heart-felt thanks to the Creator of this beautiful earth I live upon for the teachings and blessings each season of our year brings to us!

Winter Gifts From The Mother

Pachamama, Mother Earth, is my greatest teacher and the nourishing provider for all that I need. At each turn of the sacred wheel of the seasons, she provides for my body - always - but also for my very soul. She is the water of my emotions, the fire of my spirit, the air of my breath and the home I live upon. As I dance at the threshold of winter, with Orion's belt and the cold, beautiful, white moon shining in her sky above me, I am most honored to receive the divine (albeit snow-covered) gifts that this season blesses me with!

Connecting Deeply with the Season of Winter

How can you connect more deeply to the season of winter? It's almost as if you do not even have to try. It's more about opening yourself up to the Spirit of Winter and allowing yourself to be taken by the hand and led down a beautiful, snowy path through a magical forest that is your inner landscape!

Winter is the deepening time. I love to begin my day peacefully by moving through my home in candlelight. This connects me to my ancestors and creates a feeling of deep peace and serenity to honor the birth of a new day. From this place it feels magical and inspirational to watch and wait for the young winter sun to rise in the east through my windows. As each day of winter passes by, the sun builds in strength and power.

On winter evenings, there is nothing as beautiful as the midnight-blue sky filled with stars! I am in love with knowing that this sky surrounds me as I cozy down into my sleepy, dreamy, long winter nights! I am drawn to building fires in my wood stove for warmth of body and soul. I don't like to travel much in the dark time of the year; during wintertime, my own back yard and the local, winding roads of the small town I live in with their open fields and spiraling rivers are my favorite places to be because this place is my home; and winter is the season in which I feel most at home in my own body and most connected to the rhythm of my soul. I love to surround myself with books, comfort food and family. Activities like journaling, creating small ceremonies and connecting with the sky and serenity of nature are most appealing to me. This is the natural way that I connect with this part of the seasonal cycle. Like many animals in nature, we are pulled into ourselves for hibernation and dreaming during the long, dark nights. We go within to reflect on our life and to find the treasures that tend to get hidden by the bright light of summer and spring when there is so much blossoming around us that we can forget about what lies hidden beneath the surface of ourselves! For me, a way-too-busy woman, this is such a welcomed time of rest and quiet reflection. In my spiritual tradition, which is earth-based, it is considered a true and sacred gift for me to stay present to my inner processes and to honor these dark times both in peaceful silence and with my family, friends and spiritual community.

The Spirit of Winter is, in ancient traditions, the Wise One, the Crone and Sage of old who live in our psyche and in our bones. They are always near, these Ancient Ones for they want and wish for the opportunity to teach us their ways. During the long, dark, cold days of winter, They come to us with peaceful presence to guide and witness our seasonal transformations each year as the Great Wheel turns to the North, the place where Winter lives!

As a woman who worships the Sacred Feminine & Masculine Divine, I call upon the Crone aspect of the Triple Goddess and the Wise Sage, Grandfather Winter to lead me to the deep storehouses of my soul where my original essence awaits. How long my inner self has been calling to me through the hustle and bustle of life's busy days and nights! By the time winter comes, I cannot wait to go within; within my home and most especially, within myself to hear my own sacred heartbeat, to feel my own rhythm!

"She's been waiting.

She's been waiting so long.

She's been waiting for her children,

To remember to return!"

~Women's sacred circle chant. Author unknown.

In these modern times most of us have to go off to work during the day. We have projects and deadlines. Many of us have children to raise, to teach and to drive here and there. But we do have a choice as to how we spend the sacred times on either side of our busy days! The morning and the evenings are both sacred to all ancient peoples for they are the in between times and the rest & heal times. May we use them well!

A Ritual To Call in Guidance From the Spirits of Winter

~This year gather cedar, pine, or other greenery, dried flowers and berries from your yard, neighborhood or local park, and tie them together with red yarn or ribbon into what is called, a Gratitude Bundle. The red is a symbol of our heart and is used in many indigenous healing traditions.

~Choose a peaceful place in your home to do your ceremony. I set out a white candle; white is the color of winter and the sacred underworld where we go for renewal and transformation during the dark part of the year. You can create a small altar and upon it you might place some evergreens, your candle, a bowl of incense or white sage, an image of a wise woman or grandfather figure that you feel connected to, and any symbols of the season that bring you a feeling of comfort, hope and peace.

~When you're ready to begin, you can visualize a peaceful circle of light surrounding you. Let this light come from without: the rising, building energy of the sun or moon and from within: the flame of love and light in your own heart. Feel the inner and outer lights magically blending to create a golden circle of light all around you. You are now between the worlds where magic lives!

~Light your candle and incense as you welcome in the Spirit of Winter and Wisdom and any other Ancestral Guides you wish to invite.

~Then, in gratitude for "blessings already received," sit in a comfortable position (preferably on a cozy chair with a blanket and a cup of hot tea beside you!) with this gratitude bundle in the palms of your praying hands and call to them from a silent, still place within you. Go to them with your prayerful requests and offerings of sweetness, faith and trust:

"Ancient Grandmothers, Grandfathers, I call to you from my deepest heart! It is Winter on the wheel and my soul seeks rest and comfort! I wish to harness the transformational power of the most reflective time of the year. May you lead me through the long and dark nights of winter. May I feel your loving presence guiding me along the rich, fertile, dark pathways of my soul and through the inner caves of my deepest self where I wish to walk with you as my teacher. I seek your wisdom and guidance; the treasures and the hidden gold of my own beautiful heart, the gemstones of my soulful self...And I come to plant the seeds of my future; the next step on my journey through life that will take root in spring! I come to you with gratitude for your wisdom and your ancient teachings! May I stay awake to the sparkling, star-filled nights and the special, spiritual blessings you will bring to me!"

When you feel that you have completed your prayers for guidance, you can close your circle by sending your blessings of gratitude out to the world and to everyone you love! If it feels safe for you, you can place your burning candle in a bowl of water so it can burn through the day and evening safely as it reminds you of the connection you will always have to the love, light and guidance from within!

The Fires Within!

With these guardians by your side you can dance beneath the stars, tend the fires of your soul and in small rituals, weave magic into the long, winter nights!

The Sun was reborn at Winter Solstice and it is building in its power and strength once again. That growing light lives within us, too and it flickers with each beat of our sacred heart. It will guide you through the winter nights and light the way into your future. Offer yourself to the cauldron of transformation that is Winter. Receive the great blessings that are promised to you when you come home to your own soul!

Always, there are fires, warm and inviting, and hot cups of tea from the kettles to welcome you! For they have been awaiting your return since the wheel turned to winter again!

Will you embrace this sacred mystery? The mystery that is You; the most exciting mystery you will ever solve! Know you are never alone! The Ancient Ones are here with you to guide you along the dark path.

"Sing!
Break out in song!
For within you is the light!
Sing, Oh, Sing!
Sing, Oh, Sing!
For, within you is the light!"

May you embrace this season of hope, faith and joy!

With Blessings of the Deep Winter,

Melissa

(This article was first published in the Winter 2010 issue of Spiritual Renaissance. You can view it there at: http://www.spiritualrenaissance.com/)

The Magic of Autumn

2010-10-21T08:37:00.007-04:00

This altar above was created by myself and a group of women friends for our Autumn Equinox Ritual. Building sacred altars is one of my very most favorite things to do in the world!

Autumn is the time of the archetypal Priestess preparing for her descent to the Underworld of herself during the darker, colder times of the Wheel of The Year. What do we need to release? What seeds of hope and goals will you be germinating in the coming months during the silence and stillness of winter? It is empowering to gather with others during this time to celebrate the ancient festivals of our ancestors and to have support on our inner journey. We've begun the autumn session of Roots Deep, Branches Rising. I love to meet every week for ritual and ceremony, for celebrating the Wheel of the Year and the cycles of Mother Moon and to teach and learn in a circle of women.

The Spiritual Renaissance Publication

Portland, Maine

I'm excited that an article I wrote was published in Spiritual Renaissance's autumn publication! You can read it below! If you'd like to visit the Spiritual Renaissance web site, here it is: Spiritual Renaissance web site!

I have learned through being alive long enough, that if I keep following my heart, my life will begin to look like my favorite dreams of childhood. I really believe that if we are looking for answers as to what we are meant to do in this world, we can look to what most inspired us as children! In other words, ask yourself, "What did I most want to be when I grew up?"

OK, it may be "too late" to be an astronaut but you can still take an astronomy class or study astrology. Or maybe you can volunteer at the planetarium or take classes at a local school. No matter how old you are, you can still reach for those stars that you longed for as a young child!

Picture yourself like Hansel or Gretel (minus the oven) (Though symbolic ovens can have a way of transforming us for the better at times! Just ask any fire Goddess!)....When you feel like you've reached the danger point, turn around on the path and head backward towards your innocence and safety. For little did you know that along the way to growing up, your Wise Soul scattered small pieces of the bread of your life along the pathway so that you would not lose your way back if you needed to retrieve some of that childhood wisdom one day in the future....

Follow your intuition home!

(And, I do sincerely invite you to e-mail me if you need help doing this. I am a great tour guide through the inner realms!)

The Magic of Childhood in Autumn

(or Autumn as My Magic Mirror!)

by Melissa Potter

Fall is my most favorite time of the year! I am excited to learn, to delve deep, to decorate for Halloween! I love Thanksgiving ~ both our American traditional Thanksgiving in November and the Neo-Pagan Thanksgiving, known as Mabon or Autumn Equinox, in September. I am filled with memories of childhood during this time of year.

When I see myself as a young girl, it’s from the perspective of looking down at my own feet as I walk through the brightly colored leaves on the city sidewalks. There are mounds of red, orange, yellow, and best of all, the multi-colored, fiery, maple leaves in the gutters alongside the curb. I am making a path with my swooshing and have to be extra careful not to step on a crack, lest I break my mother’s back; and to watch for the places where Mother Nature has pushed herself up through the concrete and made swells in the sidewalk where old beautiful tree roots burst through.

In my body-memories I can sense the magic and spookiness of Halloween. I can smell the scent of the apple orchard we visited each fall. I can feel the cozy fabric of my new corduroy pants and other school clothes and I can see the castle walls of Prattville Park (the ones I loved to walk upon) covered with autumn leaves.

My thoughts, back then, were revolved around what I wanted to be for Halloween. Should I be a witch (again) or a gypsy (again)? When I was a gypsy, I could treasure-hunt through my two, teen-aged aunts’ jewelry boxes. They were filled to overflowing with 1970’s wooden bead necklaces and bracelets and trinkle things in every color. I wore a bandanna around my head and an exotic mole on the left side of my chin. It was so exciting!

I vividly remember, in the very cells of my body, walking up and down the streets of our neighborhood in the Prattville section of Chelsea with my mother and sister, Kimmy on Halloween night. (I only had one sister back then ~ I now have three! Kristen and Kelly were still star-dreams in the quiet night sky of my Mother’s womb. Did my father ever go trick-or-treating with us? I can’t remember! ) I can practically hear the cold, October wind blowing, the leaves swirling and landing, the swish of our feet through the piles of them. And there was nothing more exciting than the heart-thumping thrill of knocking on the doors of the “haunted houses” that had scary music coming from their windows!

After trick-or-treating, we would go back to Jones Avenue, the small, dead-end street where my Nana’s house was. Into the front parlor we would dash with our pillow cases filled with candy! Onto the rug we would fall as quickly as possible to empty out, and count the candy bars. My favorite were the Sugar Daddy’s! And how I loved when my Mom and Nana asked me for a piece of their favorite candy!

If I knew better back then I could have held a crystal ball with my child hands and seen the gypsy woman looking back at me. She would have said, “Look into my crystal ball, Little Melissa. You will grow up to be an adventuring woman after all. You will be very intuitive and magical. You will, in fact, get a crystal ball by default from an eccentric roommate you will have who will disap¬pear without a trace one winter night from the haunted house you are renting with him in Nashua, NH...

You will begin reading tarot cards and collect them all of your life! You will become the witch you always dress up to be at Halloween, but a good witch, a wise-woman witch with circles of other women witches around you....look into my crystal ball and see that all the things you love now as a child, you will become when you’re a grownup, too!”

It’s so funny to me now that everything I always played as a child has come to pass in my life! I was forever playing teacher and school, writing poems and dreaming of keeping journals that would some day be published, dressing up as a witch and a gypsy (I’ve moved about fifty times in my life and Goddess knows I am a witch!) I always loved the Native Americans, called the “Indians” back then, in all the Western films and especially was heart-broken by the commercial of the Native American man on the bank of a polluted waterway with a tear in his eyes. To this day I love Mother Nature (which is what they referred to Her as, in the “Parkay Margarine” commercials!) (TV references fill my childhood memories!) and to this day I do whatever I can and whatever new things I learn about to help protect, honor and love my Mother Earth. It has all come to pass.

The childhood seeds of the things I loved most in life are the blossoming flowers and trees of who I am and who I am becoming in my life today.

Feeling My Autumn Essence

When I was in my twenties, I began recording my dreams and the fall is when they became the most potent, magical and colorful. Beginning at the first harvest festival of the year, on August 2, known as Lammas, my desire to write and journal and remember my dreams begins to fill my life with excitement. My connection to myself was always the deepest in the fall. I always say that fall is when I am in my “essence.” Friends from all over and way-back-when suddenly call me in autumn because, “It’s fall and I just thought of you, Missie,” they say to me. I was conceived in the fall and I conceived my own child in the fall as well.

I do believe that I did choose to enter the world during this most magical time of the year. My astrologer puts my conception date at October 31! I always hope that when I die someday when I am very old and a grandmother and healthy in all ways except for the old-age part, it will be during the season of autumn. It would be the perfect time to release one’s body, to offer it up to the blessed earth in time to transform, renew, and rebirth myself in the womb of some new mother in the springtime of the year.

Gratitude, Celebration and Deepening

This is a time of the beauty and abundance of the harvest season. It’s a festive time of giving thanks, feasting, and gratitude for all we have ~ our family, our friends, the fullness of the earth around us, our dreams and our hopes. I hope that you will take the time you deserve to rest and evaluate what you have harvested this past year. Have a bonfire, a campfire, a wood stove or fireplace fire. If you can do none of these things, light an autumn colored candle and feel the warmth of the fire element in your heart of hearts.

Autumn Equinox celebrates the abundance of the harvest time, gratitude and the balance of light and dark. It is a traditional time to gather in community with others in gratitude for all we have received. In the spiritual sense, it’s also a time to prepare for the coming dark & cold time of the year.

Autumn Equinox is the symbolic doorway that leads us into ourselves. In the fall we begin the journey down the double spiral pathway that leads to the inner realms. Deep inside our sacred self is the home we return to where, in autumn and in winter, we rest, renew and transform ourselves. We pull our energy deep down into our roots as the plants, animals and trees of our region have taught us to do.

It is also traditional in some cultures to have a Giveaway Ceremony. As the trees are releasing their beautiful, colored leaves and the ripe apples hang heavy on their boughs, we see all around us that Mother Earth is giving herself to us freely and fully. Look around your home and space. What is it time to let go of? This would be anything that comes from your heart, that you know you need to pass on, that you are ready to release. Wrap this gift up beautifully and gift it to a friend, gift it to a stranger, leave it on someone’s doorstep!

When I’m grateful for the blessings in my life, my heart is wide open with love, a feeling of joy, abundance, magic and well-being. Gratitude is the secret to living a life of true joy and meaning for me.

May you feel the love of the earth and spirit within your heart this day and always.

Blessed Be,

Melissa Potter

Melissa Potter, LMT lives in New Hampshire with her son, Seamus Raven and their cat, Jack. She is the proprietress of MotherRoots Healing Arts, a small healing center in Newmarket, NH that offers craniosacral therapy, somato-emotional release, therapeutic massage, spiritual counseling and inspiration! Melissa loves to sing, write and study astrology. Visit her web site at http://www.motherroots.com for more information.

Child of the Moon and Sea

2010-06-27T09:56:00.005-04:00

This is my deeply loved son, Seamus Raven, on June 23, his fourteenth birthday. The moon was almost full. We were on our way home from the ocean and dinner when we stopped here to look at the moon over the Great Bay. The other day it dawned on me that there were all these things that Seamus no longer did this past year. They were things that were a part of his life, and my life, every day and now they are...not: Being gently woken up in the middle of the night to have a cuddle for a few minutes before he goes back to sleep, playing with his cars and his little action figure guys, creating amazing Leggos structures and my favorite of all the childhood years; playing dress up all day long every day of his life; miraculously, a new outfit was made each and every time out of the same magical trunk of dress-up clothes and accessories! He was sitting across from me when I realized all of this. I cried. He smiled his loving, compassionate wise smiles at me. "I'd still play dress-up when it rains!"

He loves going outside in the rain dressed up like a warrior or some mythic character from his beautiful imagination.

Update!

OK, no one will believe this unless you know me and know that I would never make things up! Just this very SECOND Seamus called me, "Mom, Mom..." in a muffled voice. I turned around to see what was going on. I knew it was the "Mom, Look," voice. And there was Seamus, I swear to GOD, dressed up! He loomed over me at almost 6 feet tall with his giant, black, winter, down jacket zipped all the way up with the hood on but in place of his face was a green balloon (from his birthday party) with a face drawn on it with goggles on it.

I said, "Seamus, you are not going to believe this! I can't believe this! I am just writing here that you no longer play dress up!

And he said, "Yeah, I was just thinking that to myself as I put this on, "Oh cool, I'm dressing up!"

We are so connected!

I jumped up and hugged him and kissed him and squished his cheeks and said, "Thank you, Thank you! I love you!" a million times...

Green-Faced Man with Goggles and Down Parka

2010-06-27T09:25:00.003-04:00

Voices From The Heart

2010-05-24T10:07:00.010-04:00

I always knew I was meant to be on stage. I jokingly say, that because I was too afraid to become an actress I created a lot of drama in my life, instead!

This is true and not true at the same time.

For someone as passionate as me about living and for someone who feels so deeply ~ both pain and joy ~ I am a very, very expressive woman! I'm a woman of heart, soul, and depth. I may seem like a walking contradiction but I would have it no other way.

For am I not a woman as alive as this earth and all its elements? As shining-bright, brilliantly expressed and multi-faceted as a polished emerald yet as deep, dark and silent as a raw garnet? Am I not a daughter of the moon whose inner tides ebb and flow, moment by moment? Yes! I am the hurricane and I am the placid lake. I am the mysterious fog on a winding back road and I am the rising mist of sunrise time ~ pure inspiration!

And so you will understand when I say, that the thought of doing what I did was the most exciting thing in the world to me and it was the most terrifying thing in the world for me, too!

I've learned that life is all about sacred circle dancing with all of the parts of my self! In this circle of life within me, there is grace, and there is lop-sidedness. There is rhythm and there is stiffness, there is soul and there is so-not!

This past December I was moved to contact the director of Voices From The Heart, a 200-woman chorus that meets weekly at South Church in Portsmouth, NH. I have attended some of these concerts in the past. My son was under a year old when I was blessed to see their spring concert for the first time. We sat high in the balcony and watched below us as 200 women dressed in black and a hundred (or two hundred) shades of purple proceeded down the center aisle of the church. At one point, they sang the song, Motherless Child and my baby screamed at the top of his lungs. He didn't cry..he screamed! Like he did when he saw a ceiling fan for the first time while we lay together on the braided rug of my Mother's parlor. He just screamed.

Someday, I would join this singing group, I told myself. And so, this past December, Seamus, my son, being thirteen and able to stay at home alone (and excitedly so because it means being able to watch a movie on TV), was the time for this dream seed to send out its shoots. I contacted the director to let her know I was interested in joining if there were any openings.

I was thrilled when a letter came through letting me know that there would be and that I was welcome to join Voices From The Heart!

There is not an easy way for me to describe my experiences with Voices From the Heart. It feels like a midnight sky, morning light on my face as I awaken, snow falling through sunlight, my heart center opening up, my arms spread to embrace love, my throat filling with song, emotions, hope, faith, all that is good, all that is expressive and creative and beautiful.

I love being in the old Unitarian church. I love watching the women around me. I love looking at the outfits they wear and how they individually express themselves! There is a beautiful, older woman to the left of me who wears the most expensive-looking and beautiful and colorful outfits. Every time I look at her, I can hear my Irish-American Mother saying, "Now that's a sharp woman with her collar up like that!"

I have been challenged through this experience to stretch myself to new places. I do not read music but I am learning a few tricks from the women in my church pew. This makes me feel very smart. : )

One of the things I love very much about this experience is that it is a place where I can be my fullest self. I can be big without feeling the old, Catholic vanity-guilt and without the fear of The Thems of the world saying, "Who does she think she is?" We are all there to individually shine our light, sing our songs, and use our life force in celebration and joyfulness. While we are a unified whole, a chorus of hundreds of voices blending to make beautiful music-magic, we have to let our individual joy and heart shine out as well.

When we got closer to the spring concert date, the director began announcing auditions. I certainly would not be doing that! I am not a professional singer like these women, I thought to myself. I can't even read music! But something inside of me hoped for the "someday" when I would believe that I could do an audition. I had never auditioned for anything that I can remember! I may have, must have when we did plays in elementary school but I have no memory of them if I did.

One night I went early into Portsmouth for an appointment. I had so much fun dilly-dallying, going to the cafe for soup and gourmet coffee and visiting an independent bookstore that I had just discovered. I got to rehearsal early because I knew Joanne was auditioning for some of the songs. I didn't know which ones but I was excited to see what an audition was like! I sat myself close to the women who were there for the event so I could watch carefully for future reference, you know.

Joanne asked me if I was there to audition and I said, "Oh God, no. I'm just here to have fun! I only sing in my Goddess circles! I'm not a professional singer like a lot of these women probably are." She asked me if I would then, just have fun and pretend to audition for her so she could hear my voice separate from the larger group. I filled out an index card; two of them. She was auditioning for a Joshua solo and a Dance of the Nations solo. When it was time, the women and I circled the piano like a crescent moon in the night sky. We had no choice, now, but to shine as brightly as possible.

I was the last to sing the Joshua piece and the first to sing Dance of the Nations. She told us that she would let us know by the end of the night. A young and powerful woman with wild red hair named Rachel whom I just love, got the Joshua piece. No one was given Dance of the Nations that evening. But I had a feeling. A scaaaary feeling...that it was going to be me. The song was such a ME song. It goes with the whole energy and archetype of who I am.

The following week, Joanne called six of us up for a short meeting near The Piano. Five of the women she addressed first, asking them if they were willing to read lines from a poem by Wendell Berry.

One of our youngest members would read the first line: "We clasp the hands of those that go before us",
and one of our oldest, the next:
"And the hands of those who come after us".
The other three women would enter between and surround the others as they recited the rest of the beautiful poem honoring the never-ending circle of life.

Wait a minute, I thought to myself. Why am I here? Uh-oh. It was still so unbelievable to me.

"Now Melissa, you can say no. I know you're new here. But I'd like to ask you if you would sing Dance of the Nations."

Oh My God. I will if I can stop crying! I said. Yes. Thank you so much.

I had no idea at the time that this was the opening solo of the concert! We'd been given the outline of the concert but I didn't recognize the title song. Most of the songs are taught orally. This was one of them.

I felt so blessed and grateful to have been given this opportunity. My inner child self and my unfulfilled Leo-performer self was thrilled! With each compliment I got after rehearsing it with the group, I felt shocked. Are they talking to me? It was that wonderful, "being allowed to shine" thing again! How refreshing, freeing, exciting and awesome! It is not every day that we are allowed, as women, to shine... I have to really give myself permission to do this because I, we, will not always receive it from those around us. This is why we need to surround ourselves with people with whom we are celebrated and loved and who, themselves, feel dedicated to living life fully and expressively. This gives us a strong network of support and encouragement to be our whole, authentic self, whatever that may look like! I am eternally grateful for the love and support I had around me during this process!

Practice, practice, practice and finally the day was here! I wore black slacks and a black shirt with a simple but beautiful scarf of two shades of purple. My family and friends were coming to see the concert. How would I not cry hysterically? That was the question that ran through my mind a million times.

The ancestral theme of the Wendell Berry poem and Dance of the Nations moved me deeply. Three days after I was offered this solo, my beloved Mum was diagnosed with uterine cancer. She has surgery coming up in two weeks! We are blessed that she caught this early and that the outcome looks extremely positive. Her doctor assured her, "from my deepest heart, Donna..."

With the mystery and fear and hope and emotional depth of this experience sitting right in the center of my throat, and right on the top of my chest, I feared that I would cry the very moment I saw my Mother's face in the audience.

We were called early up to the front of the church as the group of us were opening with the poem and song. There in the first two rows were my family and friends! I decided then and there that I could not possibly look at them during the opening song because I knew I would cry if I did! I'd save that for when I was back with the chorus! For now, the pillars at the back of the church would be my pillars of strength and to them, my eyes would go.

I kept hearing my Mother say, "Call Nana to help you. She loved to sing. She had a beautiful voice." My Nana died on my sixth birthday. I was her first-born grandchild and she is still alive in my body, my mind and my heart. I called Nana to be with me. I "turned it over" to my Higher Power. I asked God, Goddess, All That Is, Guides, Ancestors, Nana, to sing through me. I could not do it alone up there!

The group of us sat in the first pew while our director, Joanne welcomed the audience and told them a bit about Voices From The Heart. This group is amazingly inspiring to me. In 2007, Voices From the Heart went to Croatia. Through concerts, CD sales and other avenues, they raised $140,00.00 to go toward clearing a minefield in Croatia! And then, heart be still, they sang on that minefield! Joanne shared with us that the Government of Croatia was so inspired by what Voices From The Heart did, that they decided that they would clear the rest of that area of minefields. She told us that it costs three dollars to put a mine in the ground and one thousand dollars to take one out. This April (last month), the project was complete! What an additional reason to have a celebration that day!

We were told by Joanne, from the podium, that there are rumors that our next trip may be to Cuba! My head instinctively whipped around excitedly to catch the eyes of my family behind me. How incredibly wonderful this would be if it were to happen! My aunt, who lost her voice during a recent surgery silently mouthed to me, "Don't you dare go to Cuba!"

I love my family so much!

Joanne showed us some beautiful hats from Nigeria and pointed behind the audience. "The artwork you see hanging is from Nigeria as well."

And then my stomach dropped into my legs!

It was time.

The five women headed for the central altar so they could recite the poem by Wendell Berry. I took my cue and went to the microphone where I turned my back to the audience, as directed. I grasped the pitch pipe Joanne had given me to use in my two hands. I've never touched one of these in my life! Goddess help me remember to blow in the "D" hole, I prayed.

The women began:

We clasp the hands of those that go before us,
And the hands of those who come after us.
We enter the little circle of each other's arms,
And the larger circle of lovers,
Whose hands are joined in a dance,
And the larger circle of all creatures,
Passing in and out of life,
Who move also in a dance,
To a music so subtle and vast,
That no ear hears it,
Except in fragments.”

Tears welled up in my throat...But I blew the "D" into the pitch pipe softly, hummed the beginning words to myself, and turned to face the audience...Nana, come to me now. Sing through me now, please!

Round and Round we turn.
We hold each other's hands,
And weave ourselves in a circle.
The time is gone.
The dance goes on.

I felt my throat fill up once but I made it through! I was never so relieved in my life, though, to "join the crowd" when I was finished! In walked the women, holding hands and singing Dance of the Nations with me, now. After the applause and a moment of silence, we began to sing E-FUO, a song to welcome the ancestors into a space.

Into the evening we sang many songs of many nations. It was such a beautiful and inspirational concert that came together perfectly. I was deeply honored to be a part of such a powerful and empowering group of women.

After the concert, my family and friends greeted me in the front of the church with flowers and hugs and we walked to Me & Ollies for dinner together and a much-needed break before heading back for the evening performance.

(That was much easier, old pro that I was by then!)

Two days later, the songs still wake me in the night with their beauty and I am repeating them over and over so I don't forget.

I remind myself not to worry. We've already made it through that night...

Now we can sing for the sake of singing and we can dream ~

of all the things that can come true,
of the miracles of healing that I pray for about Mom,
of the beauty that is all around me when I look for it,
of the amazing strength that is truly available for me, and for all of us, when we believe it is.

I will remember to know that we all deserve to shine brightly in whatever way makes us most joyful.

Equally important, is remembering that our loved ones, community and the greater world deserves all the love and happiness we can shine out onto them! It is a two way street that leads us home to our own heart, and out in service and love to the hearts of others.

May we all spread out the gifts we have into the beautiful garden of our loved ones, our community around us, and out to the greater world in which we are all children of this living earth wanting to sing and play and dance together in harmony and peace.

Yes!

2010-04-06T14:35:00.001-04:00

Yes
Yes to me
Yes again
Yes to hope
Yes to my life
Yes to healing
Yes to Simplicity
Yes to the fullness
Yes to my creativity
Yes to heart-felt loving
Yes to self-expression
Yes to emotional safety
Yes to deep connections
Yes to sharing the journey
Yes to taking responsibility
Yes to honesty with my self
Yes to my needs being honored
Yes to relationships that build-up
Yes to modeling positive behavior
Yes to maintaining my boundaries
Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!

Vernal Equinox

2010-03-16T23:41:00.002-04:00

Now we banish winter.
Now we welcome spring!
Saw farewell to what is dead.
And greet each living thing!
~Circle chant

During these late days of March in New Hampshire, we've had lots of storms, lots of rain and lots of opportunities to be grateful for electricity after losing it for so long! Great, giant trees have been uprooted by the winds of change, the rivers in every direction are swelling and roads are being washed out....But, ahhh....more birds are singing every day!

I am so happy that at this writing we are so close to the greening of spring!

Today, as I wrote, the hard rains were falling and the winds of March were blowing. (I thought I heard my name!) I like to look at this as Mother Nature cleansing and clearing away the season of winter to make room for the new. It's sort of like a Mother on a rampage through the looks-like-a-hurricane-hit-it house getting rid of broken toys, headless action figures and the mate-less socks! This Saturday, March 20, the great, seasonal wheel of the year will turn once again to Spring Equinox ~ a time of perfect balance and harmony! (Happy Birthday Auntie Raney!)

Despite the cold and inclement weather, there is a stirring in the blood, the quickening of new life in our bellies and an awareness of the primal energy of fire, movement and growth in the air as we move from the energies of winter, March and the sign of watery Pisces to the creative, fire energies of the month of April, the sign of Aries and the beautiful season of springtime. I can't wait to open those windows!

And I cannot wait to hear the spring peepers! Nothing is more exciting than the very first time I hear the peepers each spring or the very first crocus flower I see popping up through the brown, wet earth. New life everywhere!

For many years, I have found the deepest pleasure in connecting my body, mind, spirit and emotions with the seasonal energies of nature. In what ways can we weave small rituals of seasonal delight into our lives? What kinds of things do I think of in the spring?

Some rituals of spring....

We all know the ritual of "Spring Cleaning" and how good it can make us feel to shake out the bedding, change over the heavy drapes to more flowing, sheer curtains and clear away the dusty places we may not always get to. It is a feeling of relief and renewal. Everything feels fresh and clean and our homes are infused with new life and the possibilities inherent in spring.

While we do our spring cleaning, we can work some springtime magic, too! We can weave those seasonal rituals into the day! Magic is truly all about our intention. State what you want to happen out to the Universe, begin to act, "as if" if is already happening and it will be so! It is as simple as that. Energy goes where energy flows. That is the science and the art of manifestation in a nutshell!

~While you polish the furniture, set positive intentions to polish up your positive attitude as well.

~When you sweep the corners, sweep away your worn-out beliefs and self-limiting patterns into the dustpan, too, then toss them to the wind with a prayer!

~While you're shaking out the rugs, shake off the heaviness of winter..do a little jig on the back porch or dance across the kitchen.

~As you pour the wash-bucket water down the drain, see all your fears and worries going down the drain with the Murphy's Oil Soap!

~When you plant your spring seeds, let them represent some dreams you want to grow. Put them in the sun, water them and sing them songs of love and hope.

~And while you dust off your shelves, consider dusting off the younger part of your self; She or He is that Maiden or Young Fellow within you who was once so filled with the spirit of hope, adventure, courage, inspiration and daring. That part of you has a lot to tell you about what makes you the happiest.

~And last but not least, when you clean out your closets (to make donations of the things that don't fit you anymore..) take out some of the skeletons you put in there way, back when. Tell someone your secrets. Or write them down and burn them in a fire-proof container then throw the ashes to the wind, hold your hands to your heart and forgive yourself.

Dance if you will, sing what you may, help where you can and spread love, like seeds, wherever your adventures take you this spring.

In the Spirit of Oneness,

Melissa Potter

2010-01-27T22:04:00.002-05:00

Grandma Potter has passed over to be with my ancestors now. I feel so sad that I can not be there to pay my final respects in Wisconsin. Tonight I'll sing her, The Rose, her favorite song, out to the winter night sky where she can hear it and feel it...Just remember, in the winter far beneath the bitter snows..lies the seed, that with the suns' love, in the spring, becomes the rose...I love you Gramma!

New Year's Resolutions for The Perfectionist!

2010-01-17T13:43:00.004-05:00

What are my goals for this New Year, this new decade? I have several intentions in my heart right now and more than a few that have been yelling, “Pick me!” for as long as I can remember! Well, I can't have the tree without the roots, so, this week I asked myself, “What do I need in order to be able to grow and stretch and expand out to these dreams that are calling me and to the life that I most imagine myself wanting to live?” The answer came immediately. I thought," I'd like to share this in my newsletter because I can't be the only one who goes through this!"

I am of the breed of women who feel they must accomplish all of the “I have-to” chores and projects before they are allowed to do the things that aren't “technically” necessary…. Daily chores are peaceful for me and they connect me to the old days. I love this. I love to be home, straightening things up, cooking in my kitchen, hanging clothes outside on the line, brewing my herbal infusions and being, “Mama” to my thirteen-year-old son. Because of this love for the every-day simple life, I find it doubly-difficult to stop doing things around the house. Over time, though, I get so caught up in the doing of chores that all the other parts of me begin to feel ignored!

Suddenly I might find myself just a bit more haggard and jagged and edgy. I might hear myself melodramatically expressing to myself down the hallways, “I'm on sensory overload! I am so stressed-out! Why are those shoes there? Doesn't anyone care about how hard I work to create a peaceful, beautiful home for us?”

And I get hungry for something…anything other than the house, and my responsibilities. And all at once, it seems that the daily chores I loved so much last week have become the biggest burdens of the world to me, they are a monster-like presence with claws of responsibility that are hooked into my bones and they won't let me go. Oh, no. Why is this so?

It is so because I have lots more parts of me than this home-maker and Mother role can fulfill; many of which I don't pay nearly enough attention to as often as I would like.

These parts of me have names like, the Wild Woman, the Creative Artist, the Teacher, the Student, the Library Geek, the Hostess, the Writer, the Friend, the Volunteer, the Deep in the Forest Woman and there are many more! These are the parts I only get to see when I can break away from the household chores long enough to feel them, hear them and listen to what they want to be doing today, tonight, or next month.

Somehow, somewhere they got filed away with the things I want to do in an old manila folder with a sticker on its tab entitled, Guilty Pleasures. This folder calls out to me to sit with a cup of tea and go through it. So exciting and enticing and fun and nourishing! But I ignore it in my busy-ness….Months can fly by without my noticing and suddenly there’s this angst and upset in front of me!

Like a child who wants attention, these repressed parts of me will get it anyway they can. That irritation, that empty-within feeling, that mysterious hunger for something, anything, everything, is my sign that I am not paying enough attention to the whole of me.

If I can recognize this from the beginning I can open up that manila folder and get excited about all the different parts of me, my hobbies, my desires, my dreams and passions! I can set my course straight, have some fun, take a class, sing a little song, take a trip away to visit with friends, or do whatever I might need to balance myself out.

But…if I ignore the red-flag danger signs of a too-stressful, too-responsible, life….Look out.

Enter stage left from my past:

Mary Margaret Elizabeth O’Doole! (She of the old school ~ always the old-school ways!)

You should see what this inner, Old-school Nag looks like! She’s as scary as the hell she tries to scare out of me. These old school ways taught me to be relentless with myself! She comes from the ways of the tough-love, white-fisted, hard-core, hard-knocks, back-breaking, toughen-up, brow-beating, eye-brow knitting, eye-glaring, domestic warrior. She doesn't take “Stop and Rest!” for an answer....And She is part of ME.

At these times, I realize that I have entered into my “This must be accomplished now or the whole world will fall apart” addiction! I have entered into that horrible place wherein I begin to believe that my very sense of self worth comes from how much I can accomplish in a day in my house. Like any addiction, it takes me away from my center and it tells me lies; fast and furious lies that throw me right off center. Hold onto your seat!

~It’s OK to work so hard that I exhaust myself before I can reach step one of any heart desires I have.

~There are a million things that should get done before I can go off gallivanting here and there and traipsing through the woods, like:

Cleaning the house
Going to the market
Cooking healthy meals because God-forbid I eat anything quick and easy. It won't be as healthy
Dusting
Straightening up the counters
Setting the bookcases up by genre
Organizing the craft closet
Putting my lifetime worth of photographs and journals in chronological order in case I die and no one knows what’s going on
Going through my sons Kindergarten through grade eight school papers and art work to save the best and release the rest, so I can sit down with him, laugh and remember with him, and do some bonding over our past together! He’s gonna be eighteen soon and gone forever off to college, you know! And time is running out!

I‘m sure you get my point.

When I live this way, I’m a well-worn pair of dungarees by 3:00. My son’s about to walk in the door from school in 3 -5 minutes and all I can think about is taking a nap. Being the Recovering Catholic that I am, I feel guilty for wanting to take a nap! Napping in the daytime is “a sin” when a woman has so much to do! Yes, a sin. Even though I am a Goddess-worshipping, crawl before no-one, celebrate joy and passion, release-guilt woman, that relentless Catholic guilt still lives rent-free in my head when I am not balancing her out with all the other fun, wise, joyful, forgiving, objective parts of me. Believe me!

So, instead of being caught dead napping I just walk around for the next hour with my head fogged up like London and then feel guilty because I should have begun preparing for supper by now…

Exhausted from the seemingly endless activities I force myself to accomplish and with so much to do in front of me, how could I then sit down to write the dreamed of novel or dance myself into ecstasy and communion with the Divine or plan that longed-for trip to Alaska to see the Aurora Borealis?!

The more I push myself, the farther away from peace and balance I get. Before I know it, I can be so frazzled and be-draggled that I don't know which end is up. This sounds quite dramatic I know. But it’s all true; every word of it.

I know that when I stop moving through the house like Amphetamine Alice; when I can put Old-school O’Doole out to pasture; I have a much better chance of breathing deeply, connecting to the center of myself, hearing the instructions of the heart, feeling happy and relaxed and then….

From that silent, being place I will emerge with wings and fly off toward the direction of joy and personal fulfillment knowing that the housework fairies will come in the night to do the dishes and fold the laundry for me....or I can let the chores wait until I do something fun and I can even ask for help from people if I need to…

Could it be possible that someday in the near future, the vacuuming can play second fiddle to the dancing? Organizing the spice cupboard can take a back seat to writing? Answering another email can wait until I am done reading the book I want to read? Can you imagine how good life would be?! How great to have a balance like that!

And lest I be in denial that parts of me will simply disappear and never bother me again, I will state aloud that Alice and O'Doole can still have their place in my life ~ the back of the line will do just fine and I'll call you when I need you!

Therefore, with humility and hope, I call forth the presence of Divine Love to witness my deepest wish for this New Year, this new, beautiful decade of hope and joy:

I wish to be free from the harsh and seemingly unending pressure I put myself under to perform on the stage of my life perfectly, to always have to do my best, be my best, strive, and suffer through it, to persevere without hope of rest and renewal...

I wish to deepen and nurture the relationship I have with myself; to love myself so much that I would not ever dare to self-appoint myself to Slave Girl of the Year; to find the comfort I am longing for, in my own, strong arms as I lift myself up and above the stack of to-do lists ~ not in making the kitchen look neat and orderly, not in straightening out that last pile of papers on my desk.

I do have within me (we all do…) the archetype and energies of the Divinely Compassionate Mother. I commit and intend to reach my arms out to this ever-loving presence, to call upon my Higher Power with humble requests for guidance and to sit at the beautiful altars I create, and pray at them more often (instead of making them just a little more special, a little more beautiful, a little less dusty.)

This year may I go in silence, in reverence, with flower offerings and apple pie trust down the spiral path to the caves within me, calling on Bear for her strong medicine energy. May I gather, along the way, raw garnet and soft earth to ground me, healing roots for my pouch, songs to sing to myself in the night.

I want the words I use on myself to inspire me like a pumpkin patch in autumn, like the smell of an apple orchard at night, like the wind in my favorite month of October, the quiet, snowy mornings of January; the scent of the sea in my August memories and the newly ploughed earth in spring, does. I want to be a very best friend to myself. One that says, “Never you mind the housework! Let’s go out and play!”

May the Blessed Mother remind me that I am so worthy of kindness and gentleness that I am able to believe it with all my heart and soul! (We all are!) May She bless me with the courage to release my need to do more, more, more so that I am a full cup flowing over with loving gifts of peace and relaxation for others. When I speak to myself, may I harness the unconditional love of that Divine Mother within and thereby encourage myself and build my self up with positive words like:

You are good enough.

You are ENOUGH.

You have done enough now go out and play…

Release what you don't really want.

Stop doing what you don't want to do.

Release your Have-to’s and Should-have’s!

Don't apologize for what you feel.

Be You, Sacred You. Be only you.

Move peacefully; take your time.

You know, it’s OK.

All is well and everything is unfolding as it should!

You may nap and dream in the afternoons. You will live longer!

It’s healthy to do nothing!

You don't have to suffer!

It's OK to not suffer.

You may learn the easy way...

I give you permission to live joyfully.

You are not being disloyal to your pain by being happy!

You are perfect just the way you are! Just being you, you are perfect.

You are the innocent, white, Maiden ~ adventurous, risking, brave and free, a woman unto herself!

You are the life-blood red of the earth. You are Earth Mother, nurturing, whole, creative and caring even if you feed them Annie’s macaroni and cheese!

You are the wise woman, the black and quiet night, Crone Mother, sage magic, blessing all you do!

You have all you need to be loving.

You have everything you need to be loved.

You are lovable even with a messy house.

I wish this for all of us ~ That we take that pressure off of ourselves once and for all and that we love ourselves in a way that is supportive and soft-spoken and powerful and strong all at the same time.

I hope this for all of us ~ That we stop long enough to feel what we feel, to hear the messages our insides are giving us, and that we then go out and do them!

I pray this for all of us ~ That one by one we begin to believe that whatever has been placed as a dream inside of us, whatever has been placed as a calling inside of us, whatever thoughts, hobbies, kinds of people, places, or things that are joyful, uplifting and exciting to us, inside of us, are there because we are being given permission and given the birth-right to have them in our lives – now – not later some other day when the time is right and the dishes are done. Now.

When we relax into our bodies, breathe deeply into those peaceful, all-is-well, faith-full places within us and follow the strings attached to our heart wherever they lead us ~ we will, collectively create the world we want to call home.

May we live fully, express ourselves freely, love whole-heartedly and celebrate joy with a free-spirit wildness of the beautiful souls we were born to be.

We're all in this together.

In Gratitude,

Melissa Potter

Honoring Our Beloved Dead This Autumn

2009-11-06T09:58:00.005-05:00

Ancestor Altar honoring my Nana, Marion Williamson during these autumn weeks in which people all over the world celebrate their Ancestors and Beloved Dead with altars commemorating them, stories and memories shared about them, and Ancestor Feasts.
Photo taken November 4, 2009

Those who are dead are never gone:
they are there in the thickening shadow.
The dead are not under the earth:
they are in the tree that rustles,
they are in the wood that groans,
they are in the water that sleeps,
they are in the hut, they are in the crowd,
the dead are not dead.

by Birago Diop:

In Memory of Our Beloved Dead

My path has crossed those of many friends and teachers who no longer walk the earth plane with me but I will be forever thankful to them for the parts they played in the great drama of my life ~ however large or small it may have been. I also kneel with the deepest gratitude of my heart to my Ancestors, known and loved as well as forever unknown, who have made my life and the life of my child possible!

Would you like to honor your loved ones who have passed away?

Here are some ideas for you:

My favorite way to show this honor is to create an Ancestor altar. Your altar can be anywhere at all that feels right for you. If your dearly departed loved to cook, you might have it in the middle of the kitchen or on a windowsill above the sink. If they loved to garden, you could set up an outdoor shrine on a large stone or in the hollow of a backyard tree.

Wherever you place your altar, you might want to first lay down a piece of fabric that you find pleasing. If you have your Nana's apron, for example, you could use that as your altar cloth! If your Great-Aunt fancied wool from Ireland, you can lay your Irish knit sweater down as the base. Creating altars is so fun! Just follow your intuition...

Once you've got the location and altar cloth laid down, you can begin placing items on it that remind you of them; items that celebrate their lives.

These can be photographs of your Beloved Dead; personal items of theirs that were passed onto you; mementos of times shared with them during life; a bottle of their favorite perfume; Your altar will be a personal and unique creation of love.

Beside my Nana's photograph I place her thimble, some of her crystals and a ring of hers passed onto me by my Mother. Near my Grandfathers picture, I have put a piece of a hand-mirror from his country store in Wisconsin. A friend, last night, brought a hand-carved wooden cane that belonged to her father who passed away last month. She set his picture beside it. Another woman had a pocket watch; another a feather and ink for her father who worked at a newspaper.

Another tradition of the season is setting out an Ancestor Plate on your altar. This is like an offering plate for your deceased loved ones. Our offerings are symbolic ways we can say, "Thank you for all the gifts you've given us." In our family we gather with friends for an Ancestor Feast each year at this time. We cook the favorite foods of our Beloved Dead or something from a family recipe to show respect and honor for the gifts passed down to us through our family lines. A portion of this is shared with our loved ones on the Ancestor Plate. At the end of the night, we often put it outdoors. Will it be there when we awaken?

Everyone brings photos and mementos of their Beloved Dead for the Ancestor Altar and we gather in a circle to talk about the items we brought and to pass photos of our deceased loved ones around as we share stories and memories of them. We share our favorite autumn poems and sing songs of the season. Before you know it, the whole house begins to glow with happy stories, memories and laughter ~ not to mention the Spirits dancing about, and grateful to be remembered, I'm sure!

If you wish to have a quiet and peaceful visit with your deceased loved one, you could visit with them at their graveside or through your memory by going to a place in nature they loved during their life. If your loved one had an affinity with the ocean, you could sit by the seashore on a salty rock, close your eyes and remember them. You could also visit a museum, a restaurant, an old corner store or any place that reminds you of your loved one or special times you have shared with them.

An aunt of mine gathered flowers from my Nana's grave. She had them pressed into beads and strung as a piece of jewelry that will forever honor the memory, and hold the energy of, her Mother; a treasure that can be passed on through the generations.

During this time, it is said that the veils between the living and the dead are so thin that those who have gone on to the Other side can pass through to visit and bring messages of guidance to us, with ease!

Whenever I hear a Carole King song during this time of the year, I know it is my friend Rob who died thirteen years ago this November, speaking through the veils to me. He called me Gypsy, I called him The Breeze. I think of him whenever I smell cinnamon coffee. A stick of this autumn spice on my altar will honor him and the many mornings we drank coffee and talked around the red, 1950's, metal, kitchen table I had when I was 22 years old and swaying in glory to the "Tapestry" album as it spun on my record player was all that mattered.

So, listen to the whispers in the wind, watch for messages on Mack trucks, sweet nothings from the vanity plate of the car that cuts in front of you! Notice what songs pop on the radio, what books or memories jump out of your mind! Notice, too, what dreams you have in the night-time and pay particular attention to what the wee ones in your life say because it is true that children are very open to the Spirit realms and they often see and hear things we may miss at first!

However you choose to celebrate and commemorate your loved ones will be meaningful to you. Honoring them, also celebrates and honors you. It will remind you of your own life; with its' joys and sorrows, journeys and still points and the many thousands of individual moments and memories that have added up to create the story of your own, sweet life.

Light a candle.

I invite you all, now, to take a few moments to remember, honor and thank the loved ones who have passed into the Great Mystery.

Say a prayer.

A prayer that they may guide us and help us to live our lives to the fullest no matter how that fullest looks.

A prayer that they will help us learn from their mistakes and their successes.

A prayer that we be filled with a love that transcends all time and boundaries.

A prayer that we keep our hearts open to giving and receiving love.

A prayer that our personal gifts, our strengths and encouragement, be shared freely with those in need.

And a prayer that we may be the kind of loving presence in our childrens' lives that we will be worthy of having our own picture on the Ancestor altars of our descendants some wild and leaf-strewn magical autumn night one hundred years from now...

For....

We are the ones our children watch and learn from...

And some day, we will all be Ancestors!

May you be remembered well when your time comes!

And may fond memories, happy thoughts, deep laughter and full bellies be yours now and forever more!

Blessed Be,

Melissa

Seasonal Altars From Our Home

2009-11-06T09:37:00.005-05:00

New Moon in Cancer

2009-07-21T14:32:00.002-04:00

Tonight at 10:35 pm is the New Moon in Cancer. It is a very powerful moon! Being that I'm only an astrologer in training, I'll leave the details of it to the experts. I personally love mooncircles.com! I can say, however, that I'm excited to harness these energies so that I may use them to help me on my healing journey. The journey I have always been on and the one I plan on continuing!

During the New Moon, I set my intentions and desires for the coming month. Tonight I will think specifically of familiar patterns that no longer serve my highest good. I will then set an intention to release and re-set new and positive habits and choice-making abilities within my self and my life.

Cancer is also the sign of the Universal Mother. I call her Goddess and she has many names and many faces. She is a reflection of all of who I am ~ of all women in our varied and rich ways of being.

I read a beautiful message today from an astrologer named Pythia Peay. She shared that the message of the Cancer Moon is this...

Imagine that you are listening to one of the unconditionally-loving great mother archetypes ~ such as The Blessed Mother Mary or Quan Yin or Isis or Ceres speaking these words to you:

"Open up your heart center and feel, don't think, your way through life's problems. Find the honey in your heart, the sweetness that arises from loving your way through life."

May you find just the right symbolic New Moon seeds to plant this evening. May they really reflect your hearts desire. May you listen to what you know is the truth of what your deepest soul needs right now in your life.

I encourage you to visit www.mooncircles.com each day to read about what sign the moon is in and what phase the moon is in. It is such a beautiful journey to follow the cycles of the moon. I am continuously amazed at how much better my life is when I align myself and my activities (or lack of activities!) with the natural rhythm of the earth and moon.

Goddess Bless and Happy Summer!

Merry Meet and Happy Spring!

2009-04-03T11:39:00.004-04:00

Now I banish winter

Now I welcome spring

Say farewell to what is dead

And greet each living thing!

Springtime Greetings,

Winter is over! Farewell beautiful, snowy, restful winter.

March has marched on by. We made it 'round the Wheel of the Year once more from life to death to life again and spring is finally here! The crocus flowers are our sure sign. Soon the bright, yellow forsythia ~that remind me of my late friend Lenore~ and the tulips and the daffodils will come.

There is a beautiful, symbolic, flower-bedecked archway that leads from winter into spring and I feel ready to walk through it. This is a time for renewal and re-birthing when the earth comes back to life with color and newness, when the winds of the east are blowing, cleansing and clearing away the darkness of winter. I find myself hopeful and fully believing in the promise of the future.

Another Chance.

Another chance to live my life the way I want to live it.

Can you feel your spirit rising as the earth awakens?

The energy in Mother Earth's plants and trees is rising, rising, too. Spring is the time of the year that corresponds with the Maiden aspect of our Beloved Triple Goddess. It's a time for celebration, joy, self-expression, courage and new adventures!

Maiden Goddess teaches us to honor our unique needs, thoughts, opinions and desires.

She says, "I am me and you are you."

She is our core strength and the warrior within that is very good at setting the boundaries when necessary. She can inspire you to look about your home and space (and to look within yourself) for the things that no longer resonate with who you are today.

She says....

"Get rid of it all! Let it go. Make room for things that you really want. Release the situations, fears, belief systems, and attitudes that hold you down and hold you back!"

She's the part of us that just IS. She doesn't give her energy to worrying about what others think of her or about what she "should" be doing.

Love, wildness, freedom, risks, courage, adventure and enjoying the moment are her favorite words!

Holy Maiden Goddess come to us! Show us how to bring your energy into our lives!

If you could be any age right now, what would it be? And if you were this part of you, what would you do right now?

Listen to this wise voice and follow your intuition, your callings, your yearnings and desires no matter how far-fetched they may seem to your adult self!

"I give myself permission
To be all I can be
I give myself permission
To be passionate and free!"
~by ALisa Starkweather

Let the maiden in you laugh, dance, sing, go wild, and play for the sake of pure joy and happiness as we enter into the beautiful season of springtime and renewal.

In Her Name,

Melissa Potter

Woman

It's so exciting to know and believe that as a flower blossoms fully, as a tree reaches as deep and as high as it can, we, too are meant to fully blossom in our own, unique way.

Some flowers are gorgeous and showy. Some take over whole fields. But others are tiny and beautiful. Some make us feel like resting and staying a while and some are delicious to eat. An oak inspires strength but a willow makes me want to dance then cry then dance again.

So, Woman, even if you have felt as half-dead, as wilted, as lifeless, bent & broken as last years flower bed, life is, in fact, flowing through your veins. The flame of spirit and the spark of hope still lives in your heart. The seed of your truest self may be hidden below the moist, dark leaves...but it's Springtime now! And this is the perfect, rich soil to nourish and support your deepest soul-self rising, reaching, branching out, and blossoming completely!

What are you becoming?

It can be as simple an answer as..."I am becoming ME."

Like a tree, I stand,
reaching for the light,
gaining strength
from the darkness
at my roots.
My body is twisted
by the storms of life,
yet in my
uniqueness
I am beautiful!

~Author Unknown

So...Bless yourself for the unique woman that you are. Water yourself with permission and glory. Shine the sun of praise and love upon your sacred self and BE WHOMEVER YOU ARE because nothing is more beautiful than your own, unique essence.

Springtime Blessings to You & Yours,

Melissa Potter

March 9, 2009

The Invisible Blessings of March
By Melissa Potter

It is early March when I write this. This past weekend was warm enough to go coat-less. The hot sun called me to dance beneath it with hope. Deep snow melted. The moist air, the wetness, the puddles and sunshine sparkling within them made spring feel close enough to taste and smell.

“Soon the crocus flowers will burst through the cold earth! Soon the daffodils will spring up in that forest over there. I look for them every year,” I told my son this week.

But under those springtime yearnings was a deep pull from within. A call that said, “You aren’t ready for spring yet. Oh no, don’t get your hopes up too high because it’s only March and March is the true test of strength and endurance. Warrior month. You want to get strong, right? Come on, you can make it through another God-awful March and spring will be all the more sweeter once you do. There are things deep inside that still need tending and seeds that need to be planted in small, windowsill pots before they can be sown directly into the soil of your life.”

March is when all the leftover yucky un-dealt-with stuff that you didn’t want to heal in Scorpio time last fall comes up and you have to deal with it deeper than ever. It’s March and you have work to do!

And how on earth does a woman do the work she needs to do to prepare for the Awakening Time when she has so much of the mundane to attend to?

If there is any month of the year that I want to put up a “Do not disturb” sign, it is the month of March. I want to say, “March right on by my door and do not come in! It’s clean-up time!”

Today I woke to snowy whiteness all around and the gray clouds blanketed yesterday’s springtime dreams. It was all an illusion. Spring is no more here than summer is. “Where,” I thought, “is my Witch’s broom?”

The dreamtime of the year – the cold and dark days of fall and winter - are my favorite in many ways. I love the smell of woodstove smoke and curling leaves. Candlelit mornings journaling and the smell of coffee in a warm house can hardly be beat. I could stay in my inner cave surrounded by a healing circle of crystals and stones of deep earth till the end of my days if I didn’t love every other season as much as the next!

For where would I be without the hazy, lazy, nostalgia days of August, the abundance of summer and the Glory Be joy of springtime? I love digging in the Earth, walking on Her barefoot, swimming in Her waters, drumming ‘round Her fires and dancing with Her wild wind.

But March...

March has always been my least favorite month. March is the in-between time for me. It is the chaos time that precedes birth. To me, March is what they’re talking about when they say, “It’s always darkest before dawn.”

And those of us who dance upon the Wheel of the Year know that springtime is the dawn of the year – it is the Maiden inside women and the young fellow in a man. It is the New Moon time that spills forth possibility, daring and adventure. It is the season of rebirth and renewal and one of deep joy and happiness for many.

But that’s spring and around here it’s still March!

March is my personal Underworld time and as Persephone is on her way back to the Upperworld to reunite with her Abundant Earth Mother, Demeter, I fear I am without a guide down here.

I am neither here nor there. Neither dark nor light. I am too much at once. Can I make it alive until the snow melts forever and the sun stays strong and the sap rises in me like in the sweet maples I love to drink from?

Thank Goddess for Equinox and the balance it will bring.

In March I am under the influence of Pisces, my rising sign, and a lifetime worth of memories and experiences that occurred in this month of the year for me. I always say I will change the story because changing the story to one with a healing message (or at least a more positive slant to it) will change the emotions attached to the story or belief. I tell myself that it’s St. Patrick’s Day! It’s when the first day of spring comes! It’s the time of the Maiden and youth and adventure and more! But my body never believes me!

It’s kind of like my body is saying, “Say all the positive affirmations you want to but I am honoring the cycle. March is death time. It’s when death seems deader than usual. And without death, there can be no rebirth. Whether you like it or not, March is hard and deep and swelling. (Albeit with possibility.)

And my body never betrays me.

My body is of the earth and to be of the earth and connected to this Mother of mine means that I will feel her rhythms in my blood and bones. Not all of her songs are joyful songs. Some – like her March songs – are grieving songs.

March means that it’s almost time to come out of the silence and stillness of winter. It means leaving behind the closer connection to myself and the deep dreams of my heart for it means I have to hold open my hands in trust to let fly these fragile dreams of mine.

It means stepping forth to make all the things I have dreamed in the long winter come true. It means tending the seeds in the garden and no more excuses for staying cozy and warm and safe inside with these yet-unrealized stirring dreams…

For they are waiting to be born.

And I am the midwife of them.

And my mother would say, “Well then you bettah get crackin’ Sistah!”

And while I’m at it, I want to make another sign. I want to make a tee-shirt for myself. A Warning tee-shirt that says to people, “My inner life is pouring out of my mouth and my eyes and my body right now in an uncontrollable early springtime flood. The ice and snow within my heart is melting. Great rivers of emotions are rushing! Though there is much wisdom mixed within these muddy waters, you could drown in them unless you root yourself like an old tree while I pass you by. By May this river will calm herself, the path will be clear and determined and there will be a much better chance to sit near me, rest on the newly visible boulders of strength, reflect with me and into me, bathe in me, and splash around without fear of retribution or drowning. But until then, you must swim at your own risk!"

Oh Grandmothers, Great Grandmothers, Enter the Circle and Dance with me!

2009-03-06T09:29:00.003-05:00

I want to thank Pallah Stimpson and her friends for the beautiful reminder that The Grandmothers - the ancient ones - are waiting for us to call on them for help, for their blessings, for guidance. I was just reading Plant Spirit Medicine and in it the author shared the message of the plant spirits that he has gotten which is just this - that they cannot help if we don't ask. I related to this deeply. I know that my guides just love for me to ask for help. I always visualize them sitting around me a the tops of the trees watching over me. I say "I know you are sitting around me in the tops of the trees. I ask you to come be with me today; to work through me, speak through me, hear through me, love through my heart and guide me today. I cannot do this without you! And I thank you." I reminded my 12 year old son about this - that they are there, our ancestors, guides, God/Goddess/All That Is - just waiting for him and all of us to ask them for help and they will come right away to our assistance with love for us!

The Mother Oven

2009-03-06T09:10:00.005-05:00

This picture above was sent to me by my friend Karen a long time ago. It's of a restaurant that is owned by one of her friends. I've had it so long that I no longer remember the story of it, but it is called, "The Mother Oven" and it reminds me of the nurturing love of our Mothers, of Our Mother Earth who gives endlessly to us and of our Ancient Grandmother Mother's who were so much more connected to the rythms of the earth and the hearth than many of us today remember that we can be. It is so cozy and homey and beautiful. It makes me want to knead dough, feel earth, drink honey.

The good news is that we can all, again, reclaim our connection to the things that nurture our spirit and soul and bodies. We can relearn the ways of old ~ reclaim the natural rythms that run through our blood. There are so many women and men dedicated to teaching the old ways to us. One of the things I dream of most of all is to know how to knit, crochet and weave. This dream is very attainable.

Every single thing I do to stay connected to the old ways ensures that the old ways will never die. I may feel pulled into the whirlwinds of technology but if I keep the roots of my self firmly planted I can keep my center and I can keep all of the parts of life I value ~ old fashioned or not!

"Take what you want and leave the rest" is my motto. I love being able to research and keep in touch with friends and family online. I love to write. But I also love to sit at my kitchen table with the stamps I've picked out at the Post Office and address my envelopes by hand! I love to cook my meals from scratch most of the time and I love the sound of the kettle whistling when we have tea.

Put the kettle on the stove! Let it's whistle stop you in your tracks and remind you to hold on to some of the old ways! (And maybe even to throw your microwave out the window!)

Blessed Be, Melissa

Happy Imbolc!

2009-02-07T22:40:00.004-05:00

Invocation & Prayer to Bridget

2009-01-28T20:23:00.000-05:00

Invocation & Prayer to Bridget

Beloved Bridget of the triple flame,
Daughter of the Dagda,Guardian of the sacred springs
Whose voice is the soul of the harp
We call on Thee.
Teach our hands to heal and our hearts to sing.
We entrust our life's progress to your care
And ask that you shape us,
Bending and turning our hearts on your bright anvil of flame
Till we are made perfect jewels
Fit to be set in the Eye of your timeless harp
To play for the Soul of the people in times of sorrow
And times of celebration.
We thank you for your gifts to us of Poetry and Music
Of laughter and tears,
And for the healing balm of your Wisdom.
May we always remember to meditate
On the gift of your sacred waters,
Which surround us at birth
And sail us to our destiny.
Our hearts are open to receive your blessings,
Midwife of our souls, rain on us,
Shower your inspiration in curtains of song
And sacred waterfalls in the realm where you dwell.
Come to us as Virgin with the soft smell of flowers.
Come to as Mother and feed us your fruits.
Come to us as the Wise Woman in the stark blasts of Winter.
Help us see your Mystery in all creation,
That we may know gratitude and reverence.
Our hearts sing to you with love.
Teach us to change like the revolving seasons.
Teach us to grow like the green corn that feeds the people.
Teach us to fashion beauty like the stillness of the forest pool
And the roar of the ocean wave.
Teach us to heal like the soothing gem which cools the eyes andrestores the limbs.
With humility and bright expectation
We invoke Thee this hour!

From A Druids Herbal for the Sacred Earth Year by Ellen Evert Hopman

Imbolc ~ In honor of the Goddess Bridget

2009-01-28T20:00:00.010-05:00

Altar to the Goddess, Bridget ~ Imbolc

Circle Flow

Draw up bold power from the Earth,

Becoming one with source entwined.

Your roots strive deep to enter Her

To the center — feel — come alive.

Pulsing energy rises — breathes;

Your spine a trunk of circle tree

With branches bent to sweep the Earth;

Circuit complete the sap will flow,

From crown to source an ancient dance.

Be with the wind — become the dawn;

Rising — bursting — weaving –returning.

Such is the birthing of Her song.
Feel Goddess life beneath your feet,

Breath in the scent of yearning earth.

Hear the spring birds, love returning,

Chirping guide to budding — blooming.

Know Brigit joins the stag of morning,

Passioned union of love enflamed.

Harvest be quickened once again.

(I do not know the author of this poem ~ if you do, please let me know so I can credit this poet!)

The Red Tent Temple at MotherRoots

2008-12-02T14:58:00.005-05:00

Happy Halloween!

2008-10-31T14:03:00.002-04:00

This morning I woke up very early. It was still dark outside so as I walked through my kitchen and dining room I was barely able to see. But I could feeeel. Oh, my favorite day of the year is here! It's Halloween!

As is our custom, we keep the lights very low, candles being the usual way we cast light during the morning hours in this house ~ and the sounds barely audible to keep the peacefulness of dawn for as long as possible. But today I got to create an even more magical ambiance than usual.

I plugged in the glowing jack-o-lantern that sits on top of my refrigerator with its tall, pointy, black, witch's hat. The orange pumpkin lights were next! Their light led me on to the purple and orange lights and finally I lit the candles on the ancestor altar and welcomed in the Spirits of the Ancestors in honor of the Celtic holy day of Samhain! Then, it was time to make the coffee!

Because nowadays I am forever charging up one battery or another ~ the cell phone, the MP3 player, the digital camera battery pack ~ I am also having to unplug things like my coffee pot on a regular basis. Yesterday, after I charged up the cell phone, I plugged the coffee pot back in.

The blinking red light on the front panel of the coffee maker reminded me to fix the clock as it will blink incessantly and not allow you to brew a new pot until you steady it by setting a time. I didn't want to deal with it at that moment so I simply tapped once on the minute button and that was sufficient to change the blinking red 12:00, it's default time, to a steady, glowing-red 12:01. And that was that...or so I thought....But everything happens for a reason...And had I not noticed the blinking light and had I not changed it that very moment, what happened this morning, would not have happened....Someone or something was behind that seemingly unimportant event!

I forgot all about the clock and you know, it doesn't matter what time the coffee pot says it is because all I have to do is turn to the left and I can see the stove clock! So although all day long I kept thinking it was some time other than it was, I didn't care! Because I had the stove after all!

Back to this morning! After I lit my Halloween lights, I walked over to the counter to make the coffee. It was 6:00 am by the stove clock but on the coffee pot clock....it was...10:31! In other words...October 31!

Happy Halloween Everybody! Keep your eyes open for these little but magical signs from the Beloved Dead as we dance our way through another magical Samhain day!

Blessed Be,

Melissa

Honoring Our Beloved Dead at Samhain

2008-10-29T08:45:00.008-04:00

Ancestor Altar

The Ancient Ones
by Patricia Reis

From the beginning
We have been with you
We are the ancient ones
And we remember

We remember the time when there was only love
The time when all breathing was one
We remember the seed of your being
Planted in the belly of the vast black night
We remember the red cave of deep slumber
The time of forgetting
The sound of your breath
The pulse of your heart
We remember the force
of your longing for life
The cries of your birth
bringing you forth

We are the ancient ones
And we have waited
and watched

You say that you cannot remember that time
That you have no memory of us
You say that you cannot hear our voices
That our touch no longer moves you
You say that there can be no return
That something has been lost
That there is only
silence

We say the time of waiting is over
We say the silence has been broken
We say that there can be no forgetting now
We say
listen

We are the bones of your grandmother's grandmothers
We have returned now
We say you cannot forget us now
We say we are with you
And you are us
Remember
Remember

When I was in my early twenties I began keeping a dream journal. Every morning upon awakening I would get my coffee and my dream journal and I would write my dreams down, decipher the symbols and figure out what the meanings and messages for me were. What was my intuitive self trying to tell me? Sometimes it was like a treasure hunt or a mystery solving adventure. Other times the meanings were as clear and crisp as a bright autumn morning.

One day I dreamed that I was at a family gathering but was alone in the living room while everyone else gathered in the kitchen. My Nana, Marion Francis and Grandfather, William came to me. I said, "Nana. You are dead. But you mustn't be." She handed me a wooden box. I opened it and inside was a beautiful round, flat polished and large purple amethyst stone with the image of a great tree with roots burned into it in black. It was a powerful and magical image and I knew it was a symbol of the love of my ancestors ~ the family tree. Secondly, there was a teardrop shaped amethyst crystal in the box. I was very aware that I was being given a gift by her.

That morning I woke up, gathered my journal and pens and went to the City Room Cafe on West Pearl Street in Nashua where I often went for coffee and breakfast in the mornings to write. I was sitting outside at the cafe tables when I suddenly saw a kitten run out the door of a small boutique next door to the City Room Cafe. I jumped up, grabbed the kitten, turned around, bent down and gently tossed it back in the door. As I stood up I noticed to my left that on a jewelry display beside me was an amethyst tear-drop crystal on a silver necklace! I called to Joe, the dark island man who owned the shop. "Joe! I just dreamed that my Nana gave me this very necklace! How much is it? I have to have it!" Well, Joe came from a culture that reverently honored their ancestral connections and assured me that this was a gift from my ancestor. The necklace was $45.00 but I only had $30.00 or something like that. He allowed me to purchase it for what I could because he was certain it was meant for me to have it. To this day I keep that necklace, now broken after all these years, on my altar. When I look at it, I often catch myself saying, "That's the necklace Nana gave me," and to me, it will always be this way.

Samhain

2008-10-28T11:47:00.010-04:00

The Ancestor Feast and Ritual

Samhain

Last night was a dark moon; a perfect moon to gather in my parlor for an ancestor ritual and feast with our women's spirituality group! I have the house decorated for Halloween. People say that my house always looks like it's decorated for Halloween but now it is truly so!

Purple lights and burgundy red drapes cover the parlor windows, a black cauldron was placed on the (covered television) altar for women to place their donations in. I shoved the shiny gold, velvet-lined donation basket beside the couch for the night! A magical black witch's hat with iridescent polka dots and a scary folk art jack-o-lantern are hung on the banister to the two-steps that lead to the dining room where the Ancestor feast was and will be this week.

My dining room table has been transformed into a beautiful and whimsical place fit to host whatever benevolent Spirits may want to visit this week! A black velvet table cloth with the tiniest of silver sparkles on it covers this altar. A witch I hope to look like some day watches over the feast for us.

There are colorful feathered masks; one of a crow that I made at Celebrate Samhain last year, forest-green gourds, a basket of the years final harvest items, an autumn-gold candle, silver holders with purple candles, a jack-o-lantern for the forks and spoons and other hidden objects to delight the lovers of magic and mystery. Shall we have a Dumb Supper?

During our Cakes & Ale, we set a plate for the Beloved Dead. On it we offered half an apple with its five-pointed seed star, a beehive chalice of apple cider and a soul cake. What fun we had last night divining our soul cakes! Mine contained a heart shaped skeleton key!

Glowing, orange pumpkin lights, purple fabric over purple and orange lights, glowing jack-o-lanterns, and the beginnings of a ghost collection from my aunt Raney, (a folk artist specializing in primitive Halloween folk art,) set the scene for a night of story-telling about our beloved Dead, an ancestor feast, and weaving a ritual web to honor the connections of the past to these loved ones and to the future generations to whom we will be "The Ancestors." I wrote a fun poem about it that I think I will call "They've Been Waiting."

Twelve sitting spots
in a circle waited
for the women who would
sit in them!

Within the circle,
was a circle;
An honoring place,
An altar of black.

Bone beads of skulls,
Found-bones from the shore,
Sweet sugar skulls
In the corners of four.

A crooked bare branch,
A black candle for light,
A picture of Cerridwen
With her cauldron of Night.

Ah! Came the women!
With bundles and food,
Offerings, photographs,
And witch hats and cloaks!

To the altar they went,
One by one they approached,
With old photographs, crystals,
A costume-jewelry brooch!

Enameled pan,
And silver spoon,
An onyx ring and books and poems,
Soul Cakes and look! Fried Spam! (who knew!)

Bundled offerings of gratitude,
Libations of feathers and herbs,
Family stories, laughter, tears,
Favorite memories and wisdom words.

Glowing circle of candle light,
Held close to our hearts,
To honor the web of connection,
That's been there from the start.

And Then! Entered our Beloved Dead!
And The altar came alive!
Their Spirits swirling round our heads!
Like bees near the hive!

And more than one
Four-legged one,
Was caught from the corner of eyes!
For they are always near to us
And that was no surprise!

In memory of the friends, relatives and beloved pets who have touched my life but who are now gone ~ Marion Williamson, Chris Mucci, Barbara Sokup, Patricia Mesita, John Hilske, Rob, Gina Masiello, Lenore, Chauncey Potter, Ruth MacKay and Hawk ~ I set an altar this week and next to honor the life you lived and the gifts and lessons you blessed me with. Because of some of you ~ Chauncey, my grandfather, William my Grandfather, Marion, My Nana, I am alive...others of you showed up in my life at important moments in mine to teach or inspire me, to play some part for me in the drama that is the evolution of my soul, to bring me love. I honor you for all you were in life and I feel the pain for all you never got to do...

I sit here today and in ritual last night and I will again gather on Friday evening to celebrate this ancient and holy day of Samhain ~ Halloween ~ The Day of The Dead ~ Dia de Los Muertos ~ All Saint's Day ~ to pay homage and pour libations to the thousands of grandmothers, grandfathers, aunts, uncles and cousins from my ancestral line whose lives have influenced mine in countless ways, in ways I will never understand. But their blood runs through my blood! My grandmothers lived in caves, gathered food from the living earth, scrubbed clothes in rivers, baked bread over fires..and so did yours...Ancient Mothers and Fathers infuse me with the wisdom and deep knowledge you hold! Help me to bring forth the visions you carried long ago! Guide me! Watch over me and those I love! In honor and gratitude, Melissa

Those who are dead are never gone:

They are there in the thickening shadow.

The dead are not under the earth:

They are in the tree that rustles,

They are in the wood that groans,

They are in the water that sleeps,

They are in the hut, they are in the crowd,

The dead are not dead.

~by Birago Diop

Becoming Persephone

2008-10-21T14:34:00.006-04:00

Greek Goddess Persephone with Pomegranate

I choose to eat the deep red seeds.

To taste and breathe them into me.

With trust and reverence

I enter thee;

Underworld of Persephone.

I am now Persephone,

Blessing all the ghosts in me.

~Melissa Potter

Altar to Celebrate Autumn Equinox

2008-10-01T08:50:00.011-04:00

The Magic of Childhood

Fall is my most favorite time of the year! I am excited to learn, to delve deep, to decorate for Halloween! I love Thanksgiving ~ both our American traditional Thanksgiving in November and the Witches Thanksgiving ~ Mabon ~ Autumn Equinox in September. I am filled with memories of childhood during this time of year.

When I see myself, it's from the perspective of looking down at my own feet as I walk through the brightly colored leaves on the city sidewalks. There are mounds of red, orange, yellow, fire- colored maple leaves in the gutters alongside the curb. I am making a path with my swooshing and have to be extra careful not to step on a crack, lest I break my mother's back; and to watch for the places where Mother Nature has pushed herself up through the concrete and made swells in the sidewalk where old beautiful tree roots burst through.

I can smell the magic and spookiness of Halloween. I can feel the cozy fabric of my new school clothes and see the castle walls of Prattville Park (the ones I loved to walk upon) covered with autumn leaves.

My thoughts revolved around what I wanted to be for Halloween. Should I be a witch (again) or a gypsy (again)? When I was a gypsy, I could treasure-hunt through my two, teen aged aunts jewelry boxes. They were filled to overflowing with 1970's wooden bead necklaces and bracelets and trinkle things in every color. I wore a bandanna around my head and an exotic mole on the left side of my chin. It was so exciting!

I vividly remember, in my body, walking up and down the streets of Prattville with my mother and sister. I only had one back then ~ I now have three! Did my father ever go trick-or-treating with us? I can't remember! There was nothing more exciting then the thrill of knocking on the doors of the houses that were decorated as haunted houses with scary music coming from the their windows! I can practically hear the cold October wind blowing, the leaves swirling and landing, the swish of our feet through the piles of them.

After trick-or-treating, we would go back to Jones Ave. the small, dead-end street where my Nana's house was. Into the front parlor we would dash with our pillow cases of candy! Onto the rug we would fall as quickly as possible to empty out, and count the candy bars. My favorite were the Sugar Daddy's! How I loved when my Mom or Nana asked for a piece of their favorite candy!

If I knew better back then I could have held a crystal ball with my child hands and seen the gypsy woman looking back at me. She would have said, "Look into my crystal ball Little Missie. You will grow up to be an adventuring woman after all. You will be very intuitive and magical. You will, in fact, get a crystal ball by default from an eccentric roommate you will have who will disappear without a trace one winter night from the haunted house you are renting with him in Nashua, NH...You will begin reading tarot cards and collect them all of your life! You will become the witch you always dress up to be at Halloween, but a good witch, a wise-woman witch with circles of other women witches around you....look into my crystal ball and see that all the things you love now as a child, you will become when you're a grownup, too!"

It's so funny that everything I always played as a child has come to pass in my life! I was forever playing teacher and school, writing poems and dreaming of keeping journals that would some day be published, dressing up as a witch and a gypsy (I've moved about fifty times in my life and Goddess knows I am a witch!) I always loved the Native Americans, called the "Indians" back then, in all the Western films and especially was heart broken by the commercial of the Native American man on the bank of a polluted waterway with a tear in his eyes. To this day I love Mother Nature (which is what they referred to her as in the Parkay margarine commercials!) (TV references fill my childhood memories!) and to this day I do whatever I can and whatever new things I learn about to help protect, honor and love my Mother Earth. It has all come to pass. The childhood seeds of the things I loved most in life are the blossoming flowers and trees of who I am and who I am becoming in my life today.

Feeling My Autumn Essence

When I was in my twenties, I began recording my dreams and the fall is when they became the most potent, magical and colorful. Beginning at the first harvest festival on the ancient wheel of the year on August 2 - called Lammas to the ancient Celtic peoples - my desire to write and journal and remember my dreams begins to fill my life with excitement. My connection to myself was always the deepest in the fall. I always say that fall is when I am in my "essence." Friends from all over and way back when suddenly call me in autumn because, "It's fall and I just thought of you, Missie," they say to me. I was conceived in the fall. I chose to enter the world during this most magical time. I always hope that when I die someday when I am very old and a grandmother and healthy in all ways except for the old-age part, it will be during the season of autumn. It would be the perfect time to release one's body, to offer it up to the blessed earth in time to transform, renew, and rebirth myself in the womb of some new mother in the springtime of the year.

Gratitude, Celebration and Deepening

This is a time of the beauty and abundance of the harvest season. It's a festive time of giving thanks, feasting, and gratitude for all we have ~ our family, our friends, the fullness of the earth around us, our dreams and our hopes. I hope that you all take the time you deserve to rest and evaluate what you have harvested this past year. Have a bonfire, a campfire, a wood stove or fireplace fire. If you can do none of these things, light an autumn colored candle and feel the warmth of the fire elemental in your heart of hearts.

Autumn Equinox celebrates the abundance of the harvest time, gratitude and the balance of light and dark. It is a traditional time to gather in community with others in gratitude for all we have received. In the spiritual sense, it's also a time to prepare for the coming dark & cold time of the year.

Autumn Equinox is the symbolic doorway that leads us into ourselves. In the fall we begin the journey down the double spiral pathway that leads to the inner realms. Deep inside our sacred self is the home we return to where, in autumn and in winter, we rest, renew and transform ourselves. We pull our energy deep down into our roots as the plants, animals and trees of our region have taught us to do.

It is also traditional in some cultures to have a Giveaway Ceremony. As the trees are releasing their beautiful, colored leaves and the ripe apples hang heavy on their boughs, we see all around us that Mother Earth is giving herself to us freely and fully. Look around your home and space. What is it time to let go of? This would be anything that comes from your heart, that you know you need to pass on, that you are ready to release. Wrap this gift up beautifully and gift it to a friend, gift it to a stranger, leave it on someones doorstep!

When I'm grateful for the blessings in my life, my heart is wide open with love, a feeling of joy, abundance, magic and well-being. Gratitude is the secret to living a life of true joy and meaning for me.

May you feel the love of the earth and spirit within your heart this day and always.

Blessed Be,

Melissa

Roots Deep, Branches Rising

2008-09-22T13:42:00.015-04:00

Offerings to Our Divine Mother

*************************************************************

We are sisters on a Journey

We are sisters on a journey,
Singing now as one,
Remembering the Ancient Ways,
The women and the wisdom,
The women and the wisdom.
We are sisters on a journey,
Singing in the sun,
Singing through the darkest night,
The healing has begun, begun;
The healing has begun.

I am so excited that this past Monday, September 15, I was blessed to begin a sacred circle, a seasonal group for women at my home. We are going to meet every other week on a Monday evening. Our first gathering was under the Pisces Full Moon, the Harvest Moon. One by one, women entered the sacred temple I created for this evening's meeting. I had only spoken with most of these women on the phone so it was very exciting to meet them in person! When I decided to finally create this group, I was amazed at how many women responded to the call for members. The Goddess is calling all women back to herself.

"She's been waiting.
She's been waiting so long.
She's been waiting for her children,
To remember to return..."

Autumn came yesterday and with it the sudden memory, (as if I don't speak about this all the time! The turning of the seasons!)...the sudden memory and realization that the waters will be too cold to swim in soon (and I like cold water) and the comfort and privacy of my back yard will disappear slowly but surely as the blanket covering of deciduous trees lose their leaves. Back to being fully dressed on the back porch in the morning where I sit with my coffee.

I began to think of all the things I didn't do that I wanted to do ~ how I didn't camp enough, sit around enough fires, never went to the mountains but once last weekend and haven't felt the hot sand of the shore on the back of my legs as many times as I was called to do.

I turned forty this year and I can hardly stop thinking about the fact that it is time to truly get rid of the layers of guilt I walk around with. The layers I torture myself with; the must's, should have's, I regret's, I am guilty of's, why did I ever's?

Yeah, autumn is the time to grieve, as Demeter did for her lost daughter Persephone, to grieve the loss of time, the loss of hopes we may have had that did not come to fruition in the garden of our lives. (Yet!)

There are deep layers within us. In the fall, I can't ignore, even if I wanted to, the calling of the soul. It beckons me deep into myself, tells me to grab the wash bucket and my favorite old-fashioned broom. It's time for cleaning, clearing, releasing, letting go of....

But it's also the time to be, as Persephone was, as Inanna was, as Ishtar of Babylonia was ~ the adventuring woman preparing for her rich and magical journey to the Underworld of herself.

Autumn is the time of beauty and a celebration of the abundant earth, the glory of the Mother Goddess and her gifts of the earth to us, Her much-loved children. To fully embrace the joy and happiness, the gratitude and the magical nature of life, I must be willing to dance with the darkness within when necessary; to meet with it, embrace it, stand beneath a glowing disco ball of sparkling love lights with it, and to dance with those wicked shadows of myself until they no longer make me run and hide, until I am familiar with how they move, how they operate, what their secrets are.

And the light will make everything all right.

My goal this year is to deepen the relationship I have with myself, to find the comfort I am longing for, in my own, strong arms.

I wish to be free from the harsh and seemingly unending pressure I put myself under to perform on the stage of my life perfectly, to do my best, be my best, to strive, to suffer through it, to persevere...

I am from the old school, always the old school ways. The way of the tough love, white fisted, hard-core, hard-knocks, back-breaking, toughen-up, brow-beating, eye-brow knitting, what now?, eye-glaring, warrior.

Can I blame it on the way I grew up forever?

This year may I go in silence, in reverence, with flower offerings and apple pie trust down the spiral path to the caves within me, calling on Bear for her strong medicine energy. May I gather, along the way, raw garnet and soft earth to ground me, healing roots for my pouch, songs to sing to myself when I cry.

We all have within us the archetype and energies of the Divinely Compassionate Mother. I commit and intend to reach my arms out to this ever-loving presence, to call upon my Spirit guides and ancestors, to sit at the beautiful altars I create and pray at them more often.

I want the words I use on myself to inspire me like a pumpkin patch in autumn, like the smell of an apple orchard at night does; like the wind in my favorite month of October, the scent of the sea in my August memories and the newly plowed earth in spring, does.

When I speak to myself, may I use the words of the Divine Mother within me! May I bless myself, encourage myself with words like:

You are inspiring!
Create from your beautiful heart!
Let love flow from your open-wide heart!
Give it away, give it away!
Love life fully.
Life loves you fully!
Don't apologize.
Be You, Sacred You.
Move peacefully; take your time.
All is well, everything is unfolding as it should!
You may nap and dream in the afternoons.
You don't have to suffer!
You may learn the easy way...
It's OK to not suffer.
I give you permission to live joyfully.
You are good enough...
You are enough...
You are perfect just the way you are! Just being you, you are perfect.
Your heart is golden pure.
You are innocent, white, Maiden ~ adventurous, risking, brave and free, a woman unto herself!
You are the life blood red of the earth, Earth Mother, nurturing, whole, creative and cared for!
You are wise woman within, Black magical night, Crone Mother, sage magic, blessing all you are!
You are all you need to love and all you need to be loved.
Take up the space,
Speak all your truth,
Sing to the glowing moon,
Let flow the magical musings pouring forth from your trusting heart!
Forgiving,
Healing,
Loving,
Releasing,
Opening,
Transforming,
Connecting,
Birthing,
Magical!

I wish this for all of us. That we take that pressure off of ourselves once and for all and love ourselves in a way that is supportive and soft-spoken and powerful and strong all together.

This came in from DailyOM.com recently. It was the medicine I needed. I truly want to print this out, put it on my altar and read it every, single, day.

September 8, 2008
Trying To Please Others
Living For Ourselves

Most of us come to a point in our lives when we question why we are doing what we are doing, and many of us come to realize that we may be living our lives in an effort to make our parents happy. This realization can dawn when we are in our 20s, our 40s, or even later, depending upon how tight a hold our family of origin has on our psyche. We may feel shocked or depressed by this information, but we can trust that it is coming to us at this time because we are ready to find out what it would mean to live our lives for ourselves, following the call of our own soul, and refusing any longer to be beholden to someone else’s expectations. One of the most common reasons we are so tied into making our parents, or others, happy, is that we were not properly mirrored when we were children. We were not honored as individuals in our own right, with a will and purpose of our own, to be determined by our own unfolding. As a result, we learned to look outside of ourselves for approval, support, and direction rather than look within. The good news is that the part of us that was not adequately nurtured is still there, inside us, like a seed that has not yet received the sunlight and moisture it needs to open and to allow its inner contents to unfurl. It is never too late to provide ourselves with what we need to awaken this inner being. There are many ways to create a safe container for ourselves so that we can turn within and shine the light of awareness there. We may join a support group, go to therapy, or start a practice of journaling every day for half an hour. This experience of becoming is well worth the difficult work that may be required of us to get there. In whatever process we choose, we may feel worse before we feel better, but we will ultimately find out how to live our lives for ourselves and how to make ourselves happy.

**************************************************************************************************************************

The dreams I've been having are filled with enough messages that I can't deny there is a lot going on within me that needs healing. I am surrounded by all the support in the Universe any one of us could need. And so...are...you!

In the ancient myths, Persephone would be far into her journey through the Underworld right now. She has Hecate as her wise guide and I won't be alone down there in the dark, cold days of autumn and winter either.

I have always loved the dark, the deep, the magical, the witches, the wise women, the deep roots of the forest. And I call upon the ancient Root Women who live beneath the apple trees, who feed us up what we need to do next. Ancestors, the time of the thinning veils is coming. Prepare me, love me, hold me, guide me. So Mote It Be.

Like Persephone, may I care for the ghosts of myself so that they are nurtured, renewed and brought back to life again.

Stepping Into the Fullness of Summer and The Shining Sovereign Self

2008-07-13T10:05:00.003-04:00

On Sunday, June 29, I facilitated a fun and joyful workshop, ritual and celebration of the Summer Solstice!

The sun has just waxed to its fullest point on the Wheel of the Year. This is the perfect moment to call upon and harness the power and energies of this most abundant time of the year. The powerful summer sun is an inspiration and guide for you to be your fullest, brightest, most wonderful self ~ The Queen of Your Own Life!

Here are some lines from one of my favorite writings about the Goddess. It is called, "The Charge of The Goddess."

"I, who am the beauty of the green earth, and the white moon among the stars, and the mystery of the waters, and the desire of the heart, calls unto thy soul. Arise, and come unto Me. For I am the soul of nature, who gives life to the universe. From me all things proceed, and unto me they must return; and before my face, beloved of all humans, let thine innermost divine self be enfolded in the rapture of the infinite. Let my worship be in the heart that rejoices; for behold, all acts of love and pleasure are my rituals. Therefore let there be beauty and strength, power and compassion, honor and humility, mirth and reverence within you."

The loving message of the Divine Feminine Goddess is to celebrate yourself! The Goddess gives you permission to shine your light onto your life, onto your self and onto the people and things you love.

Sunday was a day of celebrating, creating beauty, standing in our power and joy, singing and creating sacred space & ritual together. We experienced the magic and inspiration of the Divine Feminine!

Together we created sacred space with a hundred flowers, candles, cloths of fire-colored magic, photographs of women in their power and joy, images of the Goddess, the Mother Queen's, crystals and statues of the Divine Feminine archetypes.

There was sacred music, healing chants, prayer flags of beauty and peace, sacred art making. Women shared their stories, their insights, their essence with each other and they participated in a beautiful Queening ceremony.

Stepping into our power, finding our voice, shining our light and wisdom; our highest, brightest selves out into the world, is one of the most challenging feats to accomplish. It is our birthright, our duty, dare I say, to do so ~ but it takes courage and it takes loving ourselves, over and over again, to walk the path that is lit by our own inner flame.

May you be blessed, may you bless yourself and may your blessings pour forth love and light onto those you love, your community and the bright green and healing waters of this earth.

The Goddess Athena visits us at the Northwood Transfer Station

2008-07-07T09:03:00.005-04:00

I was just talking with my partner about Susan Seddon Boulet. This amazing woman is the most talented artist I have ever been blessed to know of. I could wall paper my entire home with her paintings and never tire of the way they make me feel.

I decided it would be a good idea to put a link to her work on my web blog here since I am certain I'll use her artwork on this web log. I told her that I needed to find the one of the woman pregant with a raven in her womb. My son's middle name is Raven because I had been visited by many while I was pregnant.

After seeing the beautiful barred owl yesterday (see the full, magical story below) I have been reflecting on the first owl I had ever seen, which was when I was pregnant. A friend found a wonderful site for the Turning Point Gallery where prints of her artwork, as well as original pieces are sold. Her biography is included on these pages and it would be perfect to link curious readers to. Her artwork is the most magical, most spiritual, most beautiful I know.

As I browsed through the gallery, I saw one of our favorites of a woman with a snake on her head. Believe it or not, my friend, Karen just found this ~ and another framed print of Boulet's ~ at the Northwood town dump on Saturday! When I ever looked at the title of this painting I lost my breath. For I have never known what it was called.

Athena!

Athena who's totem is the owl. Wise Athena has come to visit us. What gift does she have for us? She has sent her owl messenger our way. On Saturday we prayed together over our scallops and haddock dinner that Goddess would bring us a spiritual sign, something that would remind us of the beauty and magic of summertime, of our lives. We had just come from the transfer station, the Boulet prints in the back seat brewing up their magic for us while we called out to the Goddess for synchronicities and magic! Little did we know!

Spirit of the Wind

2008-07-07T07:34:00.008-04:00

Spirit Of The Wind
by Brooke Medicine Eagle

Spirit of the Wind carry me
Spirit of the Wind carry me home
Spirit of the Wind carry me home to myself

Spirit of the Ocean, depth of emotion
Spirit of the Sea, set myself free
Spirit of the Wind carry me home to myself

Spirit of the Rain, wash away the pain
Spirit of the Storm, help me be reborn
Spirit of the Wind carry me home to myself

Spirit of the Sun, warm light healing me
Spirit of the Sky, spread my wings and fly
Spirit of the Wind carry me home to myself

Spirit of the Earth, help me with my birth
Spirit of the Land, hold me in your hand
Spirit of the Wind carry me home to myself

Spirit of the River, blessed forgiver
Spirit of the Shore, shows me more and more
Spirit of the Wind carry me home to myself

Yesterday, in the late afternoon, my partner and I stood in my driveway saying goodbye to our friend who had just dropped my son off after a weekend visit. I was in a rush to get packing for our camping trip this week and was anxious to get back to work so we could head back to our lake house for a swim. Suddenly, in the midst of our thank-you's and goodbye's, we heard a flutter of activity and the sounds of playing robins screeching above our heads.

I looked up to see a very large bird land in the branch of the pine tree in my yard. A barred owl! It perched on the big tree looking down at us. We called for the children to come to see! That wise messenger of magic and intuition stared at each of us with its dark, knowing eyes. What a blessing!

Along came the fun and playful robins and the barred owl flew across the street. We ran to follow it's path. My son, Seamus caught sight of it and after a few moments it swooped its majestic self back to the other side of my yard, higher up this time but in perfect view like a guardian of the dream time realm and in turn looked each of us in the eyes.

Besides a quick flash of flying wings on a back road here and there, I've only seen an owl once before. In the autumn of 1995, I was pregnant with my son. I was the Mother Goddess.

On my mid-day break I went to the back porch to rest. I worked in a beautiful, old farmhouse in Hollis, NH for a lovely couple named Toby & Richard. Overlooking the back yard was a giant tree and in it, an owl. The owl swooped down to catch a mouse. I was awe-struck and felt I had been given a great blessing to have finally seen my favorite bird in the world.

Now again, to have it visit my own home, to bring its energy of magic and mystery, I am truly grateful and graced by the Spirit of the Land and Goddess.

"What Goddess was known for having an owl by her side?" my friend Lez asked his son, Michael. Michael was not sure. Seamus, my son, answered, "Artemis." "It's Athena," said Lez. "The owl is the messenger of wisdom," he continued. I shared that I have always associated owl medicine with wisdom, too, as well as with intuition as the owl has the ability to see through the dark, through the night. It's deeply penetrating eyes can see straight into the soul of us to what is really going on within.

I told Michael about a book we have called, "Animal Speak" by Ted Andrews. We decided to take a look inside to see what messages it had for us.

In addition to wonderful information on various owls and it's association with wisdom and intuition, it said that owl is sometimes thought of as the reincarnation of the dead.

My son did lose his biological father last Wednesday, July 2. When I saw the owl almost 13 years ago, I was certain that it was my Ancestors and Spirit Guides speaking to me. I would dream of his Mic Mac grandmother and aunt ~ both long-ago-deceased ~ and other groups of Native Americans cooking and sharing food together. They were telling me they would watch over Seamus and I and that I should not worry.

Have they returned with this message of comfort and protection again? Looking over us through the deep eyes of the barred owl? Whether or not this is the case, I felt a strong presence of Spirit and of Love from All That Is when I saw that barred owl yesterday afternoon, in the stillness of almost-dusk.

"I wonder if it will come back," I said to my partner, this morning. "It will when you need it," she said, comfortingly.

Honoring the Maiden, the Mother & the Crone

2008-07-01T21:22:00.000-04:00

Goddess Prayer 2004 CE

by Glenys Livingstone

Mother – She within me who is deeply related
Virgin – She within me who is ever new
Crone – She within me who is creative return to All
Holy is my being

The Mystery pervades all…
May I understand my daily guidance and graciously receive the infinite daily abundance
May I forgive my insensitivities and lack of skill
and forgive others the same
May I respond to my divine passion
I am in awe
And give thanks to the light and dark within

Beginning Again

by Glenys Livingstone

The Mother within reweaves the fabric
The torn fabric
Torn in the weak spots
She sets to work with all her love and consciousness
Picking up the threads
Threads that go all the way back to the beginning
She uses these, yet makes new patterns

Mercifully, Erishkagal, Crone – her partner
Has destroyed old patterns
Erishkagel has washed away the debris
With her storm and tempest

Artemis, virgin, spiritual warrior
Fiercely guards and nurtures the new
She is faithful to the heart that seeks
Fullness, wholeness
She will constellate in the hearts night sky
And call forth right direction