Today I wanted to write a thank you to my daughter for allowing me to be a mother. But the words felt scrambled in my brain, and instead I had the gift of a wonderful walk in the woods with her, six feet apart. We live in different households a few more months as we wait to learn if her college will resume in fall and I find housing for us both. We are mirror images of one another in many ways, in our independent spirits, and I could not ask to parent a more suited child to me. She is unique as a fingerprint, brilliant, and I always say my greatest teacher, because she contains a wisdom I do not.

Enjoy these images from my own mother's glorious porch garden today. Grateful for mothers everywhere of all kinds, as everyone can mother something or someone. And I celebrate the bounty and restoration of the mother of us all - planet Earth. 

A day associated with flowers and protests in equal measure. I can do both. But really, my heart is not in the protest in this moment. It feels so small, when the needs are so huge and collective, and I'm not sure one group is more entitled than the next. If anything is a lesson of these times, it is that ALL humans are deserving and all have lost anywhere from something to everything in this pandemic.

(Although, I was on a group gathering with someone from Denmark who informed me her country has no more than normal death rates, and everyone has guaranteed health insurance and government support if they are not working ... For a moment, I wanted to throw a shoe at my computer screen, but instead, I chimed in dreamily how wonderful it is to know this exists in some universe, leadership and society based on public good).

I still have not received any of several pots of government assistance I'm "entitled" to, despite hours of trying to access, but honestly it feels a bit petty at this point. I understand systems are outdated and swamped, and folks are working around the clock to serve the 1 in 5 folks who've applied for unemployment in my state. And yet, to honor the survey I participated in, I am posting this little bit of advocacy. Many freelancers are actually in frontline jobs, whereas mine is about as back-line as you can get, so for that I am grateful, even if half of it has disappeared.  

Acts of kindness feel extra poignant right now. I was able to shift my "victim" mentality of helplessness in the face of all around me, and along with it a bit of my days of depression, thanks to being offered work-trade for weekly vegetables at Organic Farm School. Just being around what I'm calling 'farmer mentality' snapped me out of it. "Oh, this crop loss, this bad patch of weather? It's a learning experience. Today, we retool and replant." It also helped me tremendously to communicate with a few live, off-Zoom people, even through masks at a distance, and be outdoors for a day of my week. 

I also took advantage of a free 30-minute career counseling appointment with my former college and was shocked how much I could learn in a short time about how to reframe and honor my years of volunteer and life experience to create a narrative and collaboration springboard around what I want to do in my future, rather than a 25-year list of what I have done in the past in the pattern I'd like to change. Glad for the time now to work on refining this.  

Next, I want to share a knitting-related essay that rocked my heart with how powerful the instinct is to want to comprehend something as powerful and incomprehensible as number of stars in the sky in a physical piece of knitting. 

Grieving Our Collective Loss--One Stitch at a Time 

And now, some May Day Flowers for you, in my weekly series of shelter in place moments relishing the steady stream of nature being its marvelous self. My 12-year-old goldfish makes an appearance, because every day I wake up and he/she is still here, I am amazed. 

How is everyone? Having weekends and more than that not working for the first time in years, my entire being seems to be R&R'ing. I slept 15 hours after walking four miles. I'm hearing from other people too, that holding such extremes of just under the surface emotions is requiring extra care. Like seeing a neighborhood drive-by birthday for a child that is joy-filled but super strange and sad at the same moment, or any number of triggers to life being both beautiful and painful in the same moment - how it's always been, we're just super aware now.

In the past decade, I did a lot of mind-body integration work, but I find under our current stresses, I revert to strange physical clumsiness and plain feeling out of body most of the time. I missed a scheduled meeting completely, which is very rare for me. This morning I boiled water for my single-serving coffee French press, and where did I pour that boiling water? Over the coffee grounds in my coffee canister that held a pound of coffee. My choices were either throw out a pound of pasty coffee grounds or pour a ton of cold water over and stick in fridge to make a lifetime supply of cold brew. Being close to the money bone for food, I chose the latter, even though I am thinking I may have just made coffee cement rather than a delectable brew. We make do. 

In the BC (before COVID) times, I had a bit of spending money that I used to purchase a sweater quantity of BFL wool from West Yorkshire Spinners. It was the most quality wool for the lowest price I'd ever seen, cost being one of the things that makes me hesitant to make sweaters. The last time I attempted a sweater for myself, I had lost weight and kept it off for a year, so I thought that trend would continue. Wrong. By the time I finished the sweater, I'd gone up two sizes. End result is, although I've knit for over four decades, I do not own a sweater/cardigan that would make people say, "Wow, did you make that?" Pure ego, obviously. But in the BC times, I envisioned myself beginning to lead knit workshops and wanted to make a statement. 

Thus, when I saw the Chalkney Cardigan, and learned it was named after a specific woodland, I just had to make it. Anything named after a forest or woods, and I'm there. 

Now, in the AC times (after COVID), I have been struggling with a depression that has thrown me to the point where I have not felt able to do one of my main joys - knitting. So I definitely was not going to be finishing this great cardigan structure made all in one piece except sleeves, because 300+ stitches per row was just not motivating. 

Instead, in attempt to motivate myself during these AC times, I am going to use my mass quantity of wool to make Carol Feller's Transom Cardigan and if I feel up to it, join in the MDK knit-along starting May to further encourage me. Not sure. Another online group doesn't seem to be doing it for me these days. I'll likely snap myself out of it and just start with adjustments to the gauge since I'm using Aran weight for a pattern that calls for sport weight wool. 

I wish everyone out there no coffee disasters and plenty of self-care. Peace out to these amazing sky feelings I was lucky to witness morphing above the tide flats where I saw osprey, sandpipers, blue herons, seagulls, and ducks dredging for morsels. 

Thank you Gaia. May we continue to see the connections between ourselves and every being including Earth. 

​Sunlight
The sunlight filtered
through smooth and graceful trees.
Behold! There was life!
 
Stream
A crystal clear stream
frothing and fretting its way
endlessly running.
 
Leaves
Leaves! Drifting downward
carried and caressed by wind,
sliding to soft earth.
 
Clouds
The billowy clouds
floated above the blue sky
changing shape with care.
 
A New Day
The sun spreads its light
and dries the wet dewy grass
A new day begun.
 
Man
Buildings and buildings,
tearing and scarring meadows.
Will Man ever stop?
 
The Apple Tree
The apple tree stood
ornamented and serene
reaching for the sky.
 
Earth
The earth gave and gave,
until it could give no more.
And who was to blame?
 
Time
It is faster than joy, love,
happiness.
It is slower than death.
 
~ Erin Waterman, 1978 

Mindful walks lift my spirits. Sharing what I learned from 9 hours of meditation in three days. 

• I have an inner therapist who I can trust as much/more than a virtual therapist via my health insurance to tell me to be aware of my emotions, nurture myself with healthy foods, and do things that make me feel good in order to shift depression.
• Sitting in grounding position with open-palmed intention to receive inspiration and receive in general shifts my sense of contraction and hopelessness about future.
• Waves of gratitude washed over me where I suddenly saw my physical surroundings for what they are. Yes, I am barely able to sustain my living situation, but I could barely imagine a more postcard perfect location to weather the storm of this pandemic, and I can remember to trust spirit for protecting me thus far.
• A story I heard somewhere long ago bubbled up: A person attended a workshop led by a famous healer, and the healer did her work with each member in the circle. After the healer went to work with this person, they still had the splitting headache they did when they arrived. Their situation did not change and they asked for their money back. The healer said, "You have no idea what would have happened to you if I had not done my work." Allegory for quackery aside, I applied this story to my situation to trust that even though I can be depressed and frustrated and can feel hopeless about my future, shifting my perspective to see changes I may view as negative unfolding may actually be to my benefit and protection as I am guided to become open to other directions and inspirations.  
• Sitting with sadness is okay.
• I really, really, really need to do something else to earn/supplement a living than I have for 25 years, and I did not realize how imperative this is for my health until the workflow stopped. I need to pause if applying to jobs is fruitless and frustrating.
• It is okay to lean on the state or whoever I need to for support for a while, since I have tolerated an unsustainable, self-sacrificing situation way too long.
• I do not need to know what is going to happen to trust what is.
• There is no floor. I cannot fall.  
• Walking in nature as meditation instead of as exercise resulted in more animals approaching me than ever before, as if I was meeting their worlds halfway. 

When I find myself sitting on the ground beside a tree, I know belonging. 
​
"There are so many ways to reconnect with the sacred within creation, to listen within and include the Earth in our spiritual practice and daily life." ~ Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Spiritual Ecology: The Cry of the Earth 

Last week I was feeling 100% peace by applying my own resilience in coming through past trauma to today's circumstances. This week, I am feeling mostly foggy confusion, vague indirection, scattered.

In this moment with my biggest shift being unpredictable work and loss of income, I am turning to the inner work of becoming comfortable with "being seen." It's thrown me for a bit of a loop. My paid work is completely behind the scenes and invisible, and with the exception of volunteer work and two years (the past trauma years) in my adult life, I have not had an in-person interview for a job or worked with people in a team directly. Through two years of college and a year of grad school, I took service jobs where I would be invisible, delivering mail to an entire campus and doing interlibrary loan couriering, walking to 25 different libraries and physically making photocopies before library content was on Google. I loved getting information to people and being invisible. I think at one point before my 30s, I actually started to believe in the fantasy I was invisible. 

Not new information that folks who want to reach people with creative work need to be comfortable with being seen. I am forcing myself to record little bits of me talking in my halting way on camera, to overcome and get past the, "Oh my gosh this is horrible," feeling where my brain freezes up. For now I'm forcing myself to do no retakes. I hope my voice will become more fluid and stronger in future clips. It is my intention to have greater theme focus, but for now, I'm just doing what I can when I can, around a completely unpredictable workflow. 

Wonderful resource on growing our resilience. 

And in case any of you love poetry as much as I do, you may enjoy these Pandemic Poems from Kim Stafford, Oregon's Poet Laureate and teacher from my former college. Against the backdrop of the confusion storm, it has been amazing and encouraging to witness the incredible spontaneous creativity bursting out of the seams from many places in society, in countless forms. 

Slideshow of soaking in people-free nature during 3rd week of "shelter in place." 

Will try horizontal filming next time and sharing one exercise each week on our interconnection with nature. 

Interesting to consider how much more capacity humans may have than our education may tell us. I found a sheet I drew up from coursework in ecopsychology describing more than 5 senses, as identified by Aristotle. Food for thought how complex our sensory connections really are. This is only some of several pages of them grouped by Project Nature Connect into four categories: 

• The radiation senses: sense of color, sense of moods associated with color, sense of temperature.
• The feeling senses: sensitivity to gravity, air and wind pressure, and motion.
• The chemical senses: hormonal sense, such as pheromones, hunger for food, water or air.
• The mental senses: pain, external and internal, mental or spiritual distress, sense of self, including friendship, companionship and power, psychic capacity.

Here is an exercise to try to tap into your personal color sense. Make a list of colors out of a crayon/pencil box and make two columns. Felt sense (what the color makes you feel in connection to the natural world) and rational sense (what you've been told these colors represent) and see where if any differences exist. 

If you would like to connect as fellow isolation warriors, my offer remains to be present for as long as our quarantining lasts, each Saturday & Sunday @4:30 pm PST for Maker Circles, link on home page. Bring anything you're working on and maybe a cup of tea or coffee. Open to anyone. So far we've had a puzzle being made, weaving, cross-stitch, knit design, and crochet. I'm plotting out a pattern to knit my own face mask. Care to join me to help figure out the best shape?  

Wool is surprisingly suitable for a face mask for these reasons*:

• It's breathable, moisture wicking.
• Mold and mildew resistant. 
• Fire resistant. You never know when your face may catch on fire. 
• Warm when you need it, cool when you don't. Bedouins in the desert wear thin wool because of the layers of air pockets it creates. 
• Odor resistant. 
• Merino and some other breeds are soft on skin. 
• Biodegradable. You can compost your face mask after this is behind us. 

*Please know I understand enough about the mechanics of viruses to know a knitted mask is not recommended or protective against them. I find no masks available, and if I had one I'd give it to my sister on the frontlines (donate to Mask-Match, Masks for Humanity, DonatePPE, PPE Link). I thought I would attempt to make one for when I go into public spaces just because it's better than nothing to protect others from me.  I am 100% healthy at this time thankfully, but we all know we can be silent carriers. 

Yarn support arrived today from Canada! I am super grateful to be granted this luscious wool to work with for my next design, precisely when we all need a positive focus. I'll be posting little glimpses as I make the cowl, and look forward to releasing the pattern after tech editing. Amazingly, the yarn colorways match the new moon image I took while on a walk. I'm convinced synchronicities increase hundredfold with daily nature connection practice.

Please continue to take care of yourself. Making with our well-washed hands is a great gift to see us through these times. 

Things are a bit shaky as I adjust to my work timing being unpredictable and my workload cut by 50%. But I count myself fortunate to have shelter, food, and two daily practices that are not stopped by shelter in place order where I live: Meditation and nature connection. I figure, as long as we're not all hugging the same tree, I will continue to enjoy the woods in my local parks. I even saw the light at the end of the tunnel the other day!