I’ve been thinking a lot about the balancing of our inner masculine and feminine lately. I realized I simplified the process in my own mind and made it more of a generic one size fits all exercise than it is.

I don’t expect people to be the same, so I don’t know why I expected the balance of these two different energies within each of us to be the same either. Or to be finished as a dynamic after a balance point is reached. This balancing process is a fluid thing that never reaches a set point but keeps on evolving. A certain balance point of our inner masculine and feminine may work well for many years only to need rethinking and restructuring when our life changes or when something within us changes. It actually begins to feel a lot more accurate to say we are in a birth canal of birthing a new balance of our masculine and feminine energies all the time!

What has made me look at this in more than a cursory way? I have been hearing from a number of you who find your lives have called you to a radical new balancing of your masculine and feminine energies. One woman explains that she finds herself unexpectedly separated from her husband of several decades. The allocation of her inner masculine and feminine energetic strengths are now up for reexamination with the end of her marriage. All the outer roles that brought both comfort and confinement in their consistency are gone. In this emptiness, she has a chance to reexamine and eventually find a different understanding of herself and find a new balance of her inner masculine and inner feminine, one that may send her outer life in vastly new directions.

Another young woman tells me how she found herself at a dead end after several years trying to relate to men by dressing in ultra feminine clothes. She has zeroed in on a deeper truth that while the balance of her inner feminine and inner masculine doesn’t feel expressed by a pretty in pink moment, there is within her an authentic self who is a woman that has her own genuine way to express herself. She brings no judgment to the wardrobe she wanted to inhabit with ease. She knows it is genuinely right for some people. She wished she was one of them, but in accepting that she is not, she finds herself exhilarated with a new freedom to explore who she really is. And, as part of the fun, dress to express this.

Perhaps the reason I am following the scent of stories like these is because I am in a place of seeking a new balance for myself. I have had twenty five years experiencing myself as a person whose primary role was usually that of mother. Within that context was a certain balance of feminine wisdom about being a loving mother taken forth into the masculine action of being that mother as best I could. But it’s not as necessary a pattern of self expression anymore. As my children begin to joyfully dig into their own separate lives, I have come to a place where this role takes up much less of my time than it did. Who will this person Molly be as mothering takes up less space in my life? I can see a glimpse of where I am heading and it is new territory. Territory that will require a listening to my inner feminine for new wisdom and action from my inner masculine to manifest these ideas into a new life. I can’t get to the crone place quite yet. It looks to be a particularly exuberant expression of feminine wisdom matched by an equally liberated masculine energy. I can’t go there quite yet because I am still a bit in the world of the last twenty five years. It looks fun to be a crone though. Maybe that will be where my journey takes me. I can’t know just yet, but the possibility helps me when I miss the particular physical and emotional pleasures of those years with small children, the tumble of small bodies so ready for hugs. Knowing of others who have navigated this specific transition into new unexpected joys and hearing all stories of major rebalancing helps me head out to unknown territory with more confidence. I listen to your stories and find community.

As I think about the new balancing tasks on my plate, some things haven’t changed. I continue to think of the dynamic of the male and female energy in the same general way. I think of female energy as the receiver and container of wisdom as well as the aspect of self that perceives and holds our true self in consciousness. I like how Jungian Marion Woodman’s connects the idea of a sacred well of water to feminine energy. The water feels more and more apt an analogy for the self. I also like the Native American tradition of the moon lodge as an example of right relationship between the inner feminine and inner masculine, and right relationship between men and women in a manifest community as well. The moon lodge was a perfect construct to protect, honor, and enhance feminine wisdom and represents male energy acknowledging this feminine wisdom in right action. In the best of all possible worlds, masculine energy aligns with the wisdom of the feminine and her experience of true self and this masculine energy moves into action in the outer world in union and alignment with this experience of the authentic self. In the best of all possible worlds, the masculine within accepts the changing nature of the inner feminine’s self understanding and flows with expressing this changing inner reality in the manifest world.

More and more, I come to think of external events as showing us when our inner masculine and inner feminine need our attention. A young friend finds the boss of her new job highly critical of her every move. She may need to find different work, but this dynamic has lead her to examine whether her inner masculine is also harshly judging instead of warmly supporting her journey to articulate her authentic self. To see this outer dynamic as a helpful mirror is to feel empowered to seek a new inner balance. But I suggested she look at the dynamic gently. There is nothing like adding insult to injury by beating ourselves up for having a bullying inner masculine!

The patriarchal wounds carried by all of us are so old and deep. We need to go gently as we analyze external events to help heal our inner wounds. The cosmos lives by Emily Dickinson’s line, “Tell all the Truth but tell it slant” but sometimes we can get confused in the slant. What kindness to be gentle to ourselves and each other as we seek balance and understanding, seek to live as our authentic selves, and seek to see if today we can best express ourself in pink or best express ourselves in hip high boots and a man’s shirt.

Maybe it is silly to dwell on costumes, but really, aren’t our bodies costumes we are wearing for this incarnation? And the playfulness of finding our way to an authentic expression of self through trying on different dress ups certainly strikes me as just as productive and a lot less harmful than a lot of the other ways we try to know self and express it.

In this, the best of all possible worlds, the costumes, the relationships, even the jobs are there only to help us know self. They give us a freedom to try things on and then, if that doesn’t work or feel right to try something else on. It’s one big wardrobe of choices there to support the exhilarating, painful, amazing, scary, but ultimately joyful process of figuring out who we are and what we want to do about it.

And no need to wear clothes or relationships or jobs because someone outside ourselves defines those things as right for everyone. Our self discovery process is too vital to waste in generic costuming in order to fit in. Yesterday I heard Ashley Judd say that one of her affirmations is “It is none of my business what other people think of me.” I thought this was an amazingly liberating affirmation, as good as any Zen koan I have ever heard. It’s a powerful nudge to be our truest self right now, a nudge to just go for it!

It was a kind hearted thoughtful ill conceived addle brained bad idea.

Jim and I were out mulching one of the garden with hay two weekends ago. We loaded bales into the pick up truck and brought them around to the top of the garden. As Jim picked up a bale to fling off the truck, it broke apart revealing a clutch of baby mice tucked into the folds of summer grass. They were tiny. They were cute. They were three blind mice.

What to do? Their home was gone. Their mother too. Emily had said she wanted a hamster. Caring for mice was vaguely like caring for a hamster. This might buy us some time in the small animal negotiations department. We even had a hermit crab’s plastic home to give to the effort.

I scooped up the mice. They lay inert in my mitten. They looked on death’s door. Would this be another one of those noble rescue attempts that ended with lots of small children crying at an animal funeral? Ignoring this thought, I took the tiny mice into the house and handed them over to the youngest children available. They set to work making a home for these orphans and of course, they gave them Flower Essences.

I hate animal stories where any animal dies. I don’t think I am over the endings of “The Yearling” and “Where the Red Fern Grows” yet. And to be honest, Lizzy warned me about “Where the Red Fern Grows” so I only heard about the ending.

So let me tell you now, in case you are like me, that this tale involves no funerals or sad moments. None.

Back to our story, by the time we had read up on what to feed baby mice, the warmth of the house had revived them. The trio was racing around their new home with great abandon. During the next few days they only got zippier. They demolished five times their weight in milk, toast, nuts, and dried fruit. They showed no interest in an offered potato. I think they thought it needed butter.

Soon they were twice their size and looking at us with shiny black eyes. They were adorable, though it was hard to believe how often their cage needed cleaning or how scarce the children were when this needed to be done.

No self respecting tale is complete without an adversary or two for its protagonists. Our young orphans had three. The cats.

Each cat took a shift to guard their prey. The cage was never left unmonitored. Here we observe Mishka, six hours into her shift. I am not even sure she blinked while on duty let alone took her eyes off her targets. With the mice getting this kind of loving attention, we decided that the rock on top of the cage might be a lovely souvenir if you are a die hard Red Sox fan, but it was not heavy enough to protect our mice babies. We piled on many books. Just for good measure, we wedged the mouse home under a bookcase on Jim’s desk. Yes, St. Jim’s desk was appropriated by us for the orphans. As far as we were concerned, he could keep up with Green Hope Farm finances somewhere else! “Mice First” was our slogan.

Things went smoothly for almost two weeks. We were delighted with how well the babies were doing. It was clear they could survive without our care. Will, Emily, and I knew it was time to release them back into the wild. We decided last Saturday morning we would make a fabulous mouse nest down near the compost heap and let them go free. It sounded like a good plan.

On Friday night we went out to see Emily and her soccer team play a night game under the lights at her school’s new turf field. It was a very exciting game. We returned home cold but happy. As we walked into the house, there was an enormous crash. Running into mouse headquarters, we found that Mishka’s brother Gus had managed to push the cage and the many books on top of the cage off the desk to the floor below. Everything in the cage was on the floor. We had arrived just in time! Well almost. No mice were crushed by a book, but also no mice were waiting for us to grab them. Two of them took off at top speed under the couch and one headed that way.

One slow mouse got caught and redeposited into his cage. Three cats got banished from that part of the house. Two tired adults started to take apart the playroom. It’s just what you dream about at 9 pm on a Friday night; moving every piece of furniture in a room to search for two baby mice. Jim, who deserved to throttle me, couldn’t have been nicer. “This room needs a good housecleaning.” he said. I was full of remorse. I welcomed the blame and apologized profusely, however Jim never said “I told you so.” That’s probably why we are still married. He could reasonably have said this to me at least forty five thousand times in the last twenty six years, but he never has.

A couple hours later, the room was spotless. My knitting center had never looked as organized. Every surface had been cleaned and/or vacuumed. And there were no mice to be found. The conclusion was obvious. Our house is only twenty years old but twenty years is a long time for mice to find a way in. Even as we searched the last corner of the room for orphan two and three, I suspect they were being welcomed into their new adoptive family of house mice .

And mouse number three? He was moved out to his new home at dawn the next day. I left a pile so high of mouse gorp at his side that I think he too was welcomed into a clan of mice within minutes of the drop off. I hope so anyways. An outdoor mouse should have the same lifestyle as his indoor relatives, don’t you think?

Baby Glew is one month old today! Earlier in the week, August was ready for the two mile road trip from his home in Meriden village to Green Hope Farm so Vicki brought him up to do lunch with his fairy godmothers.

It was Halloween, so August was dressed in orange. Here Deb proves an old hand at burping a baby while Patricia makes silly faces. Though William would disagree, for those of in the office, a visit from Vicki and August was the best treat of our Halloween day!

Here’s William and cousin Taylor assessing what they considered the best treats of their day!

Ben is twenty five years old today! And look how the world of Green Hope Farm is celebrating!

We love you Ben! Happy Birthday!

As those of you who have been reading the blog from the beginning might recall, when one of my siblings made repeated specific threats to kill me and my children in order to extort money from my parents, my husband and I made the decision to drop out of my family of origin so we could no longer be used as leverage for this situation. We were aware at the time that this would have financial repercussions for us, as dropping out on the family meant being disinherited. My family of origin has enough money that any eventual inheritance would have helped with college tuitions and mortgages, stuff like that.

First of all, after thousands of hours rehashing our decision making process during the last six years, we still haven’t figured out any other way through our situation than the one we chose. When you are afraid for your children’s lives, nothing but their safety matters. No other considerations seem in any way important. And when you can’t get the other people involved in the situation galvanized to deal with the death threats and work with you towards a common solution, you can’t get them galvanized. You have to take action to protect your children, even if other people won’t.

So any real regrets? No. Sadness? Yes. A lot of sadness, but no regrets.

Throughout this unfolding saga, I spent much time seeking moral support and guidance from God and the Angels. I needed moral support at least every five minutes. Thankfully, God and the Angels are nothing if not there for us.

Sometimes our conversations were just me silently yelling help. Sometimes our conversations took me to a place of calm where I knew everything was okay and nothing was real but God. Sometimes I would receive guidance for the specifics of my situation and sometimes I would receive information that had a more generic feel to is. Today I thought I would share some of the more generic information I received about money.

But first, an odd little thing that happened to me on the way to this drama. About fifteen or twenty years ago, out of the blue, the Angels told me that I would not get anything from my family of origin or from the family home. I couldn’t make head or tails of this snippet of information. I was so unaware of the coming drama that I decided this was the Angels way to tell me that the family home in Connecticut was going to flood.

Much as my analysis of this message was completely flawed, I am grateful for this data being dropped into my consciousness so long ago, because it helped me in a weird way to accept what was unfolding as inevitable and not my fault. I can make practically anything my fault and so I can sometimes get myself into a frenzy, dwelling on how my choices have had financial repercussions for my children. Funny how I have to remind myself that my choices could very well have saved their lives, but my personality can so easily shame spiral into giving me a hard time about the financial repercussions of putting their safety first.

Enter more insight from the Angels. In this whole unfolding drama, it’s often been the Angels who have given me practical inservices about the energetics of what has happened. As we came to terms with being disinherited, the Angels offered very helpful information about this family money in particular and money in general.

The Angels explained that it was a great gift to Jim and me and our children NOT to inherit this money. The Angels noted that money carries unfinished business even karma with it, that some money has so much garbage with it that its best not to have to move it through your own life. When some people inherit money, the money is relatively clean. While they must take on the energetics carried by the money and transmute this, the money is worth the work. Other money, depending on how it was made, how it has been used, and so many other factors, is not a gift and is not worth the work.

For some reason, this family money I no longer will inherit was not a good value. The Angels said “To inherit this money is to have to rework all the lessons you have already cleared from your energy system and the family you and Jim have created together. Receiving this money would be like cleaning the chaos of a flood out of your home and then inviting the same floodwaters back in to wreck your home again. Think of the family river trio of Flower Essences Black Currant, Bloodroot, and Borage, think of your work to disentangle yourself from the emotional and spiritual confusions of your tribe of origin, and think of your conscious work to set your children free to find their own way without this baggage. Think of the literal decades you have spent to clear the family illusions from your electrical system so that you have finished with those illusions once and for all. Receiving this money would necessitate you doing this entire cleanse process all over again and would dump on your children the burden of doing this for themselves. Be glad that this money is not coming your way. Be glad.”

Now, in sharing this message with you I do not mean to suggest inheriting money is always bad news. I am sure there is money that is benign or significantly less loaded in its energetics than this money. It’s more that I hope that this information helps anyone who is facing what appears to be a financial loss. We really never do know when something is good news or bad. It seemed to be bad news to be cut out of money that would pay off college loans, when in point of fact, it was good news.

It’s surprised me how many tales of bizarre disinheritance I have heard from Green Hope Farm friends since this drama unfolded in my life. Of course, I am probably paying attention to this story line more than before, but still, there are some apparently extremely egregious disinheritances going on out there. If you are one of the people who are getting cut out of something that is rightfully yours, I hope the Angels inservice is a comfort. Not getting this money may be the greatest gift you have ever been given!

And please, take comfort as well in what the Elementals shared with me about money and flow in general. They note that when one avenue of flow is cut off, there are a zillion other ways for the flow to continue. When I looked to an earthly parent for financial flow, the flow could and did get turned off. In looking to an eternal parent versus an earth parent for financial flow, I opened the door for divinity to send money in other ways. It’s really the same as looking for love. How much better my life became when I stopped looking for love from people who could not give it and opened to receive God’s love however God wanted to send it.

Still, loss is loss. Sometimes I feel great sadness about what I lost. The family place in the Adirondacks has been the hardest loss for me. A friend recently told me that when her brother had died and her marriage had fallen apart she was berating herself for wanting to sleep all the time. Her therapist had said to her, “So sleep, what you are going through is exhausting.” Both this story and my friend ending the story by saying to me “So be sad.” helped me know it was okay to be as sad as I am about this loss.

As I inhabit the empty place of this sadness, I don’t know if there will be ever be a place in my life that is like that lost place. But I do think about how Green Hope Farm was born and that gives me hope.

Twenty odd years ago, the Angels told me that my love for Flowers would earn me a living. I can still remember that combination of happiness and doubt when I heard that message. When some family of origin members treated this notion with extreme skepticism and suggested I should keep my eggs in the basket of family, family values, careers acceptable to the family values, etc etc etc, I took a baby step towards trusting that the flow of love and purpose and money could come from somewhere else but my family. I picked up a shovel and started to dig Flower beds.

With every shovel I turned in the good earth of this place and with every seed or plant I put into the ground, I gave myself more fully to a life of Flowers, a beautiful life that flowed towards me from unexpected directions. I built my trust in the infinite flow of love and abundance one shovelful of manure at a time. Not a bad way to do it! And I am glad I still feel this way because I have some digging to do this afternoon. Garlic sets will wait just so long to be planted and this morning’s snow suggests maybe that moment has come.

So I will put on my heaviest wool socks and mud boots and go out to the snowy garden and turn over the snowy earth to plant the garlic. And I will remember with every turn of the shovel, that I never really know what new adventures, new places, and new people to love are flowing towards me with every shovelful of life I dig into.