Category: spirituality
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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 attaches, 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 