Recently I heard someone talk about Stockholm syndrome and the virus, noting that as the situation improves, we need to get ready to leave all cages including our internally created ones.   This got me considering how we have gotten used to the constraints of this time and what internal changes we will need to make to set ourselves free. How have we become our own jailers and how do we unlock ourselves?

I heard the story yesterday of someone refusing to share space with a partner even after the partner recovered from the virus and tested negative.  The long term stress of this situation made it challenging for this person to process the good news that his partner was well enough to be with him.  These are the kind of circumstances we will have to contain with gentleness as we move forward.  We have all been wounded by this experience, some of us just hide it better than others.

We will also have to find our way to forgiveness with those we have disagreed with about protocols or personal decisions.  We have all been trying to find balance in our choices in an unknown situation. This bizarre experience has pulled up fears we didn’t even know we had, and now our job is to patiently examine these fears and our reactions, welcome the gifts of self knowledge they bring us and not send them scurrying back into the dark.

May we find a way to go forward with gentleness for ourselves and others. May we see with curious not judgmental eyes.  Let us acknowledge with kindness the complex feelings and experiences that made us choose as we chose.  Let us tenderly bind our wounds together in community with each other, knowing we all did the best we could and there was no one right way to navigate all this.  Let us reflect and in this reflection harvest the gifts of this traumatic chapter.

This time has messed with us in so many ways that we’ll be unpacking it for decades.  Each generation has different losses to grieve.  For the teenagers and young adults this time was a binding of their wings at the very moment they needed to take flight.  In my time of life, it is perhaps the inward journey that beckons most, but young adults need to ramble and explore the outer world and find their place in it. Yes, I know they and every generation will receive gifts, grist for the mill, from this experience, but it must be hard to be so constrained as a young adult.

Another group that has suffered is young mothers.  For young mothers there has been a loss of flesh and blood community just as they experience one of the most physical, flesh and blood transitions of life. Gathering with other moms at the playground while their little people crash around, making mom friends during story hours at the library, wallowing in the weekly experience of toddler playgroups at each other’s homes- for young mothers there have been none of these lifelines.  Watching faked up mom and kids images on Instagram is NOT like being at the playground with your mom friends while your kid eats sand with the other toddlers.  I do not know what I would have done without mom friends at the playground.

We are animals, more like a troop of baboons than not. We groom our babies. We find comfort in sitting together while our babies play at our feet. We like to watch each other and see how the other moms are handling cradle cap or sleep exhaustion. Screen community doesn’t cut it, and not just because it is manipulated, artificial and shaming.

Three young mothers in my family had babies during the last two years of constraint.  One had two babies!  A fourth has raised two small people as a single parent during this time. I am in awe of their courage.  Motherhood is stressful in any circumstance as it involves a disorienting shift in personal identity. Keeping on keeping on with the job in isolation with only fake online reference points is my idea of heroism. I wish I could send every mom, actually everyone, a bottle of Borage Flower Essence right now to help us all keep on keeping on.

Since we’re more baboon than droid, all of us of all ages want to feel in community and feel a part of each other’s experiences and not just our own. How exhausting that going to the grocery store or sitting in a café, experiences that connected us to others in benign ways, have been situations in which risk is the operative word.  Hyper vigilance has worn us all down and left us licking our wounds in solitude.

I heard a discussion on a screen about how introverts have not fared any better during this time of constraints than extroverts.  In this same discussion, the speakers noted that self employed people had some advantages over others at the beginning of lockdown because their work habits were self imposed compared with those whose daily structures had been created by employers.  I suspect that as we go into our third year of this, the playing field has leveled out.  We’ve all had to learn how to get on with it.  For me, no books written or anything too fancy, but I still brush my teeth. I see this as a real accomplishment.

All in all, I am looking forward to the problems of Stockholm syndrome versus more of the same.  I am looking forward to hearing more fully what this has been like for others.  I am looking forward to conversations more involved than a harried and masked hello at the local Deli mart.   We’ve shared a common event, but it’s been a different experience for each of us and one we haven’t had many opportunities to share with each other. I also don’t want to be told what we’re all feeling only from third party experts. I want to hear it from actual people in the flesh.

Yesterday I got to practice my sharing skills with a teenager I ran into. I listened all ears to his description of what he had to say about his life during covid.  The mask didn’t bother him nearly as much as the ways his freedom to move about has been curtailed. At his school, student are not supposed to go outside unattended by an adult.  It feels like prison to him. I can see why. He said he finds himself sneaking outside as much as he can to defy this rule. I get it. Sometimes as the rules, dictates and “facts” change hourly, I want to rebel right alongside him. I’ve explored the well behaved, rule following aspect of myself quite enough. There ARE other aspects that need exploration.

So I’m hoping it all eases up soon.  And in the meantime, I am practicing my breakout from Stockholm syndrome skills by pursing one small act of defiance.  I am going to wear my homemade masks versus the expensive ones suddenly mandated/encouraged.  I am a little suspicious at the fact that yet another big business is going to profit by having all the masks but theirs suddenly “no good”. It reminds me a little bit too much how no other tools for healing from covid are ever discussed or encouraged in mainstream media besides the ones that make big money for big pharma.

You get my drift. I am tired of wearing masks and I am tired of the particular “good little girl” aspect of my personality that these protocols have required.  Its time for a turn.

Even when I was a child and pursuing the persona of good little girl I had more freedom.  I was expected home to wash my hands and set the table in time for dinner at 5:45, the rigid moment dinner occurred every day in our household.  No one knew or cared that I was out before this moment riding my bike with friends and getting into adventures and misadventures. I was only a good little girl part of the time.  These days I am ready for a different balance, more free spirited adventure and a little less table setting.  How about you?

In closing, I want to applaud everyone. We have all had to become heroes in unexpected ways due to unexpected challenges.  It seems important to note these challenges that have caused such grief were already causing damage before this virus.  Modern mothers were already cut off from real community in ways I was not when I began my motherhood journey forty years ago. But the last two years made this and so many other community breakdowns drastically worse and very visible.  So much at the heart of the human experience had already been pushed aside for other patriarchal goals before lockdown, Lockdown just finished their destruction.

May we go forward seeing clearly the ways we can together regrow our lives individually and collectively in ways that are life affirming and joyous.

Whenever they can, my sons nudge my book choices towards science fiction.  The first sci-fi book they gave me was Dune.  This book hit it out of the park for me. I mean, does anyone not love Dune after the first fifty confusing pages? That was what they both warned me, that the first fifty pages were not that great but to keep going. I am so glad I did.

When the movie came out I became a big fan of Denis Villenueve.  To wrestle that complicated plot and world into a coherent movie? It astounded me. I watched the film several times, each time startled by all the details he had slipped in.  One moment I appreciated is the scene in the helicopter when Paul has a vision of a teacher from a possible future helping him in that nerve wracking dust storm.  The teacher says, “The mystery of life isn’t a problem to be solved but a reality to experience, a process that cannot be understood by stopping it.  We must move with the flow of the process.  We must join it. We must flow with it.”

In New Hampshire, January is a time of not much apparent flow.  The earth is locked in ice, a bitter wind whips down from the arctic and nights are relentlessly chilly. Yesterday on my brisk walk down our hedgerow, it was so cold that Sheba sat up like a rabbit holding out her paws to let me know it was just too cold for her.  I couldn’t think when she had bailed on a walk. If anyone uses that word “walk” in conversation, she is at the door ready to go.  Not yesterday though.  Yesterday things felt locked down even for Sheba.

Yet in the night as I considered this, I thought about all the flow that does happen in January.  Seed orders are sent and received.  Garden designs get scratched out on paper.  Projects for the coming season are tossed about. I hear whispers of new energies coming and the garden mandalas that will contain them.  All this reminds me that sometimes flow is a quieter thing, an internal thing.

What have we all learned in the last two years of contraction and diminished surface flow? What will be born from this time? What inner flow will now spring into outward expression? 

Have you noticed how many people found new talents and interests during this time? I think we are only just beginning to find out what actually flowed during the last two years of contraction. Why even the winner of the British Bake Off shared that he learned to bake during lockdown.

I’ve hardly seen anyone in what feels like forever, yet I’ve still heard many stories of people finding new ways to express themselves during this time. A friend I was texting with this morning mentioned she was just finishing the edits on a book. Holy cow!  I hadn’t realized she was even writing a book let alone just wrapping it up for a publisher! She, like so many, found flow beneath the frozen circumstances.  And it wasn’t as if her life was a piece of cake during lockdown.  She found flow while her husband was very ill and she was cut off, like the rest of us, from friends and family.  For all of us, whatever is born has not been born without pain and suffering. I doubt anyone went through this time without some experiences of loss, grief or isolation.

As we help each other heal the wounds of this time, listening to each other’s stories and sharing from the heart, I feel we will listen with more curiosity and less judgement.  Yes, the media makes us believe that judgment is our main activity and repeats that party line as the one and only story. Yet for me, whenever I have been lucky enough to talk to anyone during this time be it a grocery store clerk, a man delivering a load of firewood, the GHF staff goddesses or the librarians holding the fort at our town library, I have found open hearted sharing. I don’t really care so much about dividing us all into categories after all this and I certainly don’t experience others as caring either.  It’s like we know in the actual moment of connection that any kind of sharing is what we need to heal.  My belief is that even as we were slowed down or even stopped in external action during this time, the inner flow of love and creativity has risen in counterbalance. 

I look forward to all that will come to light now.  I look forward to reconnecting and discovering what unique creations were born within each of us. I look forward to see all the love alive and well and ready to blossom in each heart.

Yes, January can seem like a promise of eternal lockdown for all of us.  But seeds promise a different story of new beginnings, new life, spring. And the seeds of love in our hearts have already begun to geminate.

Moderator: On this magic day, the Winter Solstice, I sat down with some expert dogs (as opposed to dog experts) to talk about the last couple of years.  Here are my questions and their insightful answers.

Moderator:  Can I first ask you to tell us a bit about yourself?

Bailey: I am a Plott hound mix with a gorgeous brindle coat.  As a young pup I was hit by a car.  My back left foot got mangled, and I was no longer able to be a hunting dog.  This was an excellent twist of fate for me as I adore my new family whom I rescued in early 2021.  They let me run to my heart’s content and don’t mind that my favorite activity is licking their ears. I come to work at Green Hope with Vicki.

Bella: I am the ancient and wise one in the Green Hope office, and the others respect me as such. I was a super hero in my youth. Once in a while I surprise myself and everyone else by turning on the jets as I used to do. I come to work with Jen. I chose this photo as I may have lost a toe or two in my adventurous life, but I haven’t lost my sense of humor.

Sheba: My life is quite complex as I manage the comings and goings of the two families who live on the farm property, the UPS man and an office of staff goddesses of the human and canine kind.  I am the only one who doesn’t like Bailey licking my ears, but I always have time for a belly rub. I chose this action shot of me welcoming Bella to work with some fresh office gossip. My rescue papers say I am a miniature poodle.  I am NOT a poodle, thank you very much.  My terrier and chihuahua genes shine through in my chatty behavior, but I have other hidden depths in my lineage. For example, I run like a squirrel, AND I run with the squirrels. You can draw your own conclusions from there.

Huck: I was a guest lecturer in residence at Green Hope Farm for a number of weeks this year when my people had a new baby and asked me if I wouldn’t mind staying at Green Hope while they got adjusted.  I didn’t mind at all. I love tearing through the hayfields here, and Molly has kindly given me my own bespoke garden to dig. In addition,  Sheba and I are old friends and we don’t mind crowding people on one bed or another. I will be texting my comments today as I am back with my people in Massachusetts. The new baby is lovely, thank you very much. I chose this photo because it shows how handsome I am.  Dogs as well as people stop me on the streets to remark on this.  My rescue papers may say mutt, but a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

Moderator: Your people may sometimes refer to this time as “the pandemic” or “lockdown” or “a difficult time” or other mysterious terms.  How has it been for you?

Bailey: Wow!  Absolutely the best of times. Lots of teenage boys to rumble with and Vicki to always take me on bike rides so I can run like the wind.  What’s not to love?

Bella: The last two years have been fantastic.  I spend all my time with Jen, and she is better than any lady’s maid on Downton Abbey. Attentive to my every wish.

Sheba: I am one lucky dog. My people always worked at home, so I always got a lot of TLC.  However, for some reason they are even more mellow and seem to have a lot more time for long belly rubs.

Huck: I love my new life.  My people used to have to work someplace called the city, but now they are home all the time. Nothing beats this for entertainment value. There is always something going on and someone to let me in and out when nature calls. At night, they may be a family of four, but I still take up half the bed. Bliss.  

Moderator: How has the food been?

Huck:  One of my people is a toddler and the other a baby.  This means the food that falls to the floor is spectacular and abundant.  I am in hog heaven on a daily even hourly basis.

Bailey: Have you ever lived with two teenage boys? They open the refrigerator every few minutes and inhale the contents. Much to my delight, they always include me in their impromptu feasts.  Things could not be better.

Sheba: I particularly savor the many outdoor picnics the people here have.  There is nothing like a picnic for spilled food.  When the toddlers visit, the spillage is epic, but even the big ones drop copious amounts of food.

Bella: My maid, Jen, provides me with delicate snacks whenever I desire them. She treats me as the Queen I am.

Moderator: What did you think of the masks your people wear?

Huck: I don’t often chew things anymore, but there is something about a mask.

Bella: All super heroes have to wear masks sometimes.

Bailey: I pay no attention to the masks.  For me it is all about what the feet are doing. Kickball anyone?

Sheba: I was pleased when Molly made masks from several fabrics decorated with dogs. I could not understand the masks of sloths, dragon fruit, sushi or CATS, but the dog masks made perfect sense to me.

Moderator: What advice would you give your people for 2022?

Huck: Don’t worry. Be happy. And please pay no attention to the mess two little people generate.  I hoover up all edibles and pledge to continue to do so in 2022.

Bailey: I was bred to bear hunt. Ugh. I much prefer your bear hugs, so keep ‘em coming in 2022. And the snacks.

Bella: Don’t let my infirmities get you down. They do not get me down. I have a rich inner life, and I know I am loved.

Sheba: I pledge not to let the squirrels get inside my head in 2022.  Can you pledge to keep your heads clear of squirrels too?  

Moderator: This is very helpful.  What would you say to the general public?

Huck: Expect the unexpected like yummy things falling from above.

Sheba: When life keeps you outside, throw a picnic in the great outdoors, and invite all the dogs you know.

Bella: When you are as old as me you know life is not perfect, but it is pretty darn amazing.

Bailey: My life is an example of the old adage, “Good news, bad news, who knows?” so that is what I would say to one and all. 

I have spent a lot of time since I posted the last blog checking with the Elementals and Angels about what I wrote. These beloveds keep reassuring me that while the message was strong in tone, the intention behind the message was to break our bondage to fear and fear mongerers so we can be restored to a vibration of love, hope, faith and serenity.

This intention reminded me of our new Restore Divine Order and in fact the whole Sovereignty Set. This set supports us to have sovereignty over our physical, mental and emotional self. It is all about breaking the hold lower vibrations have on us so we are free to rise up into higher vibrations of love and light.

This summer, I read and reread a book about Australian first people healing techniques.  The healer at the center of the book first muscle tested patients to find out the belief systems that held them captive. He then worked to release these beliefs before moving on to physical healing.  Because western world people have such an attachment to words and give them such power, when this healer worked with people outside his tribe, he reworked belief systems into positive affirmations that he wrote out and physically placed on his patients. 

Sadly we are assaulted by others using words to lower our vibration and freeze us in fear.  As I consider these forces that hold us in bondage to our fears, I think back to yesterday’s blog’s references to the Wizard of Oz.  The man behind the curtain represents many forces holding us in bondage to lower vibrations.  One specific example is leaders that scare us versus uplift us.  There is a way to explain any situation that doesn’t preclude optimism and hope. Winston Churchill knew this.

Here in his speech after the fall of France in June of 1940, Churchill talks about what appears to be the imminent invasion of Britain by the Nazis.  He talks to the British people but also the Americans, seeking to inspire them to join the fight.

“We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender. And even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.”

Our family reads a lot of books about World War II. In fact there is a running joke that no family dinner goes by without someone mentioning World War II.  So naturally today I wondered what would have happened to Britain if Winston Churchill had relentlessly sown fear, despair, and pessimism as our world leaders appear intent on doing. How many would have thrown in the towel with him? How would this have lowered the vibration of Britain and increased the likelihood of invasion? He saw inspiring the people as central to his role as prime minister.  He wrote and rewrote his speeches then practiced them over and over and over again with his wife Clemmie. He recognized the power of words to uplift or defeat.

In June of 1940, many an analyst could have said all was lost for Britain and that any encouragement was misplaced.  Instead, Churchill inspired one and all with his words. Who can be sure that this inspiration didn’t save Britain and beyond from tyranny and fascism?

If we are not going to get any inspiration and hope from those we have put in the spotlight, then it is time to turn the spotlight from these people, make our own deep dive into ourselves  and look within for strength and encouragement.  That’s where we connect with our divine eternal self. It also where we can connect with the Angels and Elementals . Right now they are so very focused and attentive to our requests for help, love, light and encouragement.  The Elementals asked me to write rather firmly yesterday because they want to break our bondage to fear and fear mongerers.  But this doesn’t mean they leave us in a void. What is there within us is so much better, so much more beautiful, so much more light filled and true.

I have been thinking a lot about Divine timing this week. I’ve noticed how often my pushing a situation doesn’t work out so well, but when I let go and patiently wait, things often resolve themselves much better than I could have imagined.  So I was surprised when the Elementals asked me to write the following post without apology and with a rather strong edge to it.  The vehemence of the Elementals reminded me of the bumper sticker, “Mother Nature is Coming and Boy is She Pissed.”  Perhaps the truth is that while aspects of Creation feel we can wander down the primrose path at whatever pace we choose, the Elementals of this planet don’t feel this way.  At least today, they want us to get a move on.  

The Elementals want to talk about bridge building. They put aside the topics of bridge building between cultures, religions, genders, political parties and so many areas where we need to come together.  They explained that the first thing we must do will take care of all these concerns. 

We need to bridge the gap between our surface selves and the eternal verity of our inner beings.

The Elementals want us to look first at the whys of this gap.  Many forces work to keep our daily consciousness divided from our true self within.  Now that our media devices go with us everywhere, we are distracted by vapid and relentless media, 24/7.  We have less guile than the creators of this media maelstrom so we believe way too much.  Our love of horror movies has been hijacked by talking heads who make all life look like a horror movie.  This dissonance distracting us is everywhere, working to keep us disconnected and unconscious of our own disconnection. Too often we encourage the dissonance.

The Elementals reminded me who pulls the curtain back when the Wizard of Oz mesmerizes Dorothy and her companions with the scary routine. It’s Toto. AN ELEMENTAL . All dogs belong to the Elemental kingdom because all animals are Elementals.

Today the Elementals take up the Toto role again.  They called me to write this post.  They say it is time to remember who we really are as well as who the man behind the curtain really is. Elementals particularly in the form of the beloved animals, use every moment of connection to affirm our holiness.  They affirm our journey to reclaim this wholeness. They affirm the destination as real.

But today it’s not all champagne and candy canes.  Today, the message they are intent for me to deliver is one of calling us up short. The animals are very clear how far we have gotten from our true beingness.  Animal communicator Dawn Brunke notes that polar bears call us “surface people” because of our unwillingness to dive into the depths of our being.  We keep the dial up on the muzak so loud we do not hear the still small voice of our hearts.  We ignore body wisdom until our bodies speak so loudly we are stopped in our tracks. We let ourselves be talked out of our intuitions.  We hear the voices of the animals, yet because we are so disconnected from our own animal nature, we kill these messengers and lay waste to their homes. Why do we do these things? Because going to the source within us would mean change, and that is painful.   But the Elementals note that it is still time to go deep and grow up.

What is the significance of Toto pulling back the curtain? As a force of nature, he brings on the moment of reckoning.  We need to see what is going on.  We need to see if we have been manipulated.  We need to know truth so we can reclaim energies spent dealing with illusions.  When Toto reveals all, Dorothy faces the truth and faces her own fear.  She throws water on the witch and sees her dissolve. She reveals the great and powerful Oz for who he is.  This leads her to know herself and her own power to find her way home to self.  We need to do this too.

Even as we resist, our inner being joins the Elementals to call to us loud and clear over the manmade din. We are ever encouraged back to reunion with our deeper, truer self.  Dreams, intuitions, our creativity and our heartfelt knowings: all offer routes to this beingness where we experience the truth that all the universe lies within us. In the world around us nature and the beloved animals stand sentinel, ever guiding us back to rediscover who we are and to help us take our place as co-creators in oneness with them.

 The Elementals want us to pay particular attention to our dreams.

Our true self keeps calling to us with the gift of dreams.  They are a nightly offering to help us bridge the gap from surface to inner beingness.  For most of us, we discard our dreams as insignificant or weird or uncomfortable, strange stuff to be ignored.  The Elementals asked me to say that when we pay attention to our dreams they help us evolve more quickly. Unbound from the constraints of stage set Earth, our dreams can bring us realities dense with personally significant imagery and persona.  Dreams hold bespoke story lines that reveal what we need to see.  They bring things to our awareness so much faster than waking life BUT ONLY IF WE PAY ATTENTION TO OUR DREAMS.

The animals echo our dreams in their appearances in our midst, but often we don’t credit these synchronicities as significant or even notice them.  The Elementals explain they ARE significant, like a highlighter going over written words.  But it all depends on us.  The powerful evolutionary force of dreams is something we must take seriously. Dreams are a powerful tool of self realization BUT ONLY IF WE PAY ATTENTION TO OUR DREAMS   

I think it extraordinary that Elementals, the manifestors of the natural world we abuse and embodied in the animal kingdom we relentlessly harm, stay at our side encouraging us onwards. Right now we revere a few species and willfully destroy the rest. Here the Elementals are just asking us to go home to self, not even asking for us to see them clearly. May we take this journey at their behest.  May we heal all separation. May we recognize ourselves as one of the animals in community with all living beings. May we be worthy of their selfless love.