Category: spirituality
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My Belly is not for the Faint of Heart
My belly is not for the faint of heart If you don’t like roundness, don’t come here If you don’t like softness, lay your head elsewhere If you don’t appreciate the squish of love, move on If stretch marks intimidate you or turn you off: bye! If the belly of a woman seems gross or…
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Reclaiming Sensuality
Women are often given the message that their sensuality is too much for the world to handle. Hide it away, it is too much. Too much of a turn on. Too juicy. Too distracting. Too attention-seeking. Too dangerous–if you show that aspect of yourself you will be used, get in trouble, be attacked, etc. Women…
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Redefining Mother
I wrote this post a couple of years ago when I was coming out of the cocoon of what I now call “the Surrender years” of motherhood. That intense time of parenting young children in an attached and attuned way. Since there is a 9 year span between my oldest and my youngest (with the…
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Caring for the Dying
Several years ago, my husband came across a letter I had written when I lived and worked in a hospice care home called Enso House back in 2005. At the time, I was writing ‘back home’ to the monastery in Japan, telling the sangha there about my experience so far working at the hospice on…
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Loosening the Noose
When a friend recently told me that the word witch actually means wise, I was jolted into tears. All the negative connotations wrapped tightly around that word trembled, cracked, and dismantled. I could feel again what is at the root of it, what has been persecuted and in hiding in myself and others for so…
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When the Walls Fall Down
13 years ago, at a Zen monastery in Japan, I found out I was pregnant. Makes a pretty good opening line to a story, doesn’t it? Haha! I had been living and training there for nearly 5 years. It was the day after our monthly osesshin (7 day retreat). My period was late. I was…
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The Storm and the Ocean Mother
Come to me with all that you are, child. Show me how you feel with strength and boldness and wildness and clarity. I can hold it all, child. I can hold all of YOU. Show me what you feel and I will remain calm, huge, wide, caring. I will not be offended. I will not…
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The Tiger-Roaring Rose Dance
I want to tell you a story about my daughter, Rose. She just turned 12 years old. I remember the day she was born. I remember before she was born, the fierce tiger longing in me to be the best, most loyal, loving, dedicated mama I could be to this creature I had yet to…
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Gratitude
Last weekend, the Roshi was on the island, Shodo Harada, a Zen teacher who is Japanese, 73 years old and maybe 5’3″. I lived and trained with him in Japan for roughly 5 years in between college and children. Usually when he comes, he offers a weeklong retreat which I am too steeped in motherhood…
Sparkle and Zest 