Money

 I watched this podcast recently about money and healing the masculine and feminine and I started to think about my relationship with money. This is definitely coming up as one of the toxic trees that I am trying to clear out. Growing up, my parents never had enough money and I often went without, even only having one pair of pants at a time. I did get lunch money so I stopped eating lunch so that I could save up for more clothes, starting with another pair of pants. They also took away from me to give to my brother. Now as an adult, that lack I had as a child has been showing up in how I spend. I collect things, I have bought a large amount of clothes and shoes, I buy whatever comes to mind because I don't ever want to feel that lack again. But I also am constantly thinking about money because, even though I make what should be good money, this world is more expensive than ever and I do still live paycheck to paycheck. Obviously, this is a fine line to walk.

As an adult, I now know that my parents did have enough money, they did not have much financial literacy and did have have their priorities in line. That knowledge kind of messes with my head even more. Them not having me as high on their priority list as other things makes me want to prioritize myself even more. The problem is that I don't know how to do that in a healthy way. So that brings me back to looking at my relationship with money. How do I prioritize myself but build a healthy relationship?

I've spent most of my adult life viewing money as a tool. In the podcast, Sorelle said that she views money as energy that just wants to be loved. That made me pause. It's a viewpoint that I had never heard. Money is abused in so many ways by people who view it as either a tool or something to hoard or something evil. What would happen if more people viewed money as a beautiful energy that wants to be loved? What would change in me, if I viewed money that way?

Honestly, I don't know what that looks like. I operate from a wounded fear of lack and the idea of money being a tool. Viewing money as energy means viewing it as abundant. It means that there is no lack, which is very hard for me to wrap my head around.

Clearing the Thorns

 My goodness. Clearing the thorns has been a really tough process. I haven't even made a dent. On some level I knew it was going to be hard. In a lot of ways, I've been working on this for years. I mean, it's quite literally the purpose of this blog. However, I had no real idea how strong these thorns were or how deep the roots are. They are basically trees but toxic. I seem to have been hacking away at leaves and vines, which is progress, and have finally gotten to trunks. I don't know what plants have thorns, vines, and trunks and are the size of trees so I'm imagining some mythological plant I guess.

Did you ever watch the show "Avatar: The Last Airbender"? It has been years since I saw it but I remember there being a scene that talks about the roots of the trees being connected across the world and communicating with each other. That's how I feel but in a bad way about these invasive and toxic trees in my inner world. They are connected and have taken over.

I realize that these kinds of deeply rooted issues can't just be cut away. I have to figure out how to stop feeding these trees so that they die and are replaced by something better for me. This is the problem I always have with changing my habits though. I know what needs to go but that can only happen if I replace it with something and I never have a good idea of what to replace the habit with. I wish this was discussed more when people talk about breaking habits. On a physical level, you cannot just get rid of a groove in your brain, which is essentially what a habit is. You have to make a new groove and I don't know what my new groove should be.

Quote: Frida Kahlo

“Don’t build a wall around your suffering. It may devour you from the inside.” 

– Frida Kahlo

This quote reminds me of a lesson I learned the hard way and the poem I wrote titled My Prison about how my own protection systems almost destroyed me.

I Need to Heal Old Coping Mechanisms

 Something that has become blatantly obvious to me in the past few months is that I have a big coping mechanism that I need to finally address.  I have become too comfortable in clutter and chaos. When I was young, my space was regularly violated. I am the type of person who very much needs my own space that is completely private and have been that way for as long as I can remember. It is very harmful to me when my space is violated. As a child, that space was my bedroom. However, that space was often violated. My brother would steal from me and my parents would do nothing about it. They would also kick me out of it whenever they wanted to host guests. I loved my room. I had a queen size bed but I got rid of it for a tiny day bed because no one would listen to my need to not have my space violated. This stopped the guests but not the theft. Over time, my solution to the theft became to make it impossible for anyone but me to find things by filling the room with clutter. It mostly worked. Everyone stayed out. However, it forced me to learn how to function normally in chaos. Now here I am in my 30s and I never managed to leave that coping mechanism behind. It isn't a coping mechanism anymore, it's actually incredibly stressful. 

So, how does one move on from a harmful coping mechanism that has become the only way a person knows how to function? I have absolutely no idea. I moved a month ago and still have so much unpacking and organizing to do. I live in this weird dichotomy where it stresses me to look at the clutter but I feel no urge to address it because it is what I am used to.

I think this is going to be a big part of my "clearing the weeds" year. I have a lot of bad habits that directly relate to coping mechanisms. They have been keeping me stuck and it is time to address them if I ever want to move forward.

Theme of the Year

This year has been hard on me emotionally. My theme of the year was "tending the garden" and it took me out. I felt like the second I started trying, I got hopelessly tangled up in the mass of thorns. It always amazes me what kind of mess I am left with when I come out of a depressive time. It always shows up in all aspects of my life, mentally, emotionally, and physically and this time it was made so much worse by a bad relationship where he just had no regard. It feels like all that is left in thorns and kudzu. I have been very overwhelmed. It feels like much of my progress that I have made since I started this blog is gone. I know that isn't true but I still have major feelings of resentment and failure. There's also a deep feeling of shame.

So obviously my new theme for the year needs to be:

Clearing the Weeds

For sure, this will include continuing to declutter and reorganize my apartment. I have been depression nesting for a couple of years now and I've been ready to clear it out. I started clearing things out back in December and the recent move really helped me clear some things out. I will be carefully going through everything I still own and deciding if I want to keep it or if it is time to move it on. I still feel like the energy needs cleared in a way that music, frequencies, tingsha bells, and sage just can't accomplish. 

This is also going to include detoxing my body. I still have damage from being on birth control for so many years. I was on birth control for PCOS and now that I stopped taking it, the PCOS has been making itself known. I also have not been eating very well. My skin looks dull, I've gained a lot of weight, and I have so little energy. I am going to learn about lymphatic drainage massage and I am looking into cleanses. I am working on changing my diet so that it doesn't take too much energy to make food but is still healthy. I've started taking some supplements as well. I know that supplements aren't the best but I think they will help as I rebuild my health and get my diet to a good place.

This is going to be a long process and not simple, so I am focusing on these two aspects and not thinking beyond it. The reality is that it will likely take the majority of the year or more to feel like I've made any progress.

Spring

Season of sex and creativity

Planting seeds to tend this year

Rested & rejuvenated, ready to create something new

Invigorated by the earth's renewal

New life begins to come forth

Grand celebrations abound

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Moving

 I am overwhelmed. For two months now I have been dealing with the roof of my apartment leaking badly. I have had to empty 5 gallon buckets full of putrid roof water multiple times. I have had 4 major leaking incidents with 5 separate spots in my ceiling leaking each time. It has soaked in to the carpets and floorboards and it has leaked in the walls as well. Most of my towels are ruined from mopping up the water. I am not able to get the smell out anymore. The property manager has been aware of the issue and maintenance has been in my apartment multiple times. It has been an exhausting experience and I might actually be a bit traumatized. Everything sounds like dripping water to me. The normal creaks of the apartment, my dogs licking themselves or drinking water, actual dripping outside freaks me out. I have woken up in a panic so many times, thinking I heard dripping water.

I finally lost it after coming home from a long day at work (this is the busy season) and finding my bathroom floor covered in water yet again. I left a very long message with the main office accusing them of exposing me to a major health hazard and demanding to know when they were going to fix the roof. Instead they let me know that there was going to be an apartment available that I could move into. Although it is not an ideal apartment as it is not on the second floor, it is a solution that works for me. Of course, they aren't going to help me move like they should, so that means that once the apartment is available, I will be spending every night moving myself until I can get people to help me on the weekend.

I had already started going through my things to try and get rid of stuff I don't want or need anymore but I was trying to be very mindful about it, only doing it when I am in the right headspace and trying to donate whatever I can so it has been a very slow process. Now, I am going to have to finish that up as I move and won't be able to be as mindful. I know that I have way too much stuff from depression nesting for a couple of years. I know that I will feel so much better once I get rid of a lot of it. But I am so overwhelmed thinking about this process and what it is going to take to get it done.

New Year, Sorta

 Last year I decided that it did not make any sense to me that we start the year in the middle of winter. This is a time when we are drawn to rest and reflect but instead we push ourselves to start new things and stay busy. I decided that I would start to view the first day of Spring as the first day of the year.

I still feel that way but I want to find a way to still make this time of year meaningful. I am taking a couple of Susannah Conway's courses. I am spending some time journaling in an actual notebook instead of on here. I think I need the act of writing pen to paper. I also received a tarot deck and workbook that scream late winter/early spring to me so I am going to work through the workbook starting February 2nd. I'm learning to live more seasonally so this is my nod to the winter ending and spring beginning.

I hope that this time will give me some clarity for the upcoming year and give me a head start on figuring out what I want to do, what I want to work on, what I need to leave behind, and what I want to call in to my life.

Theme of the Year

 Even though I'm doing things differently this year, I decided to keep an old standby. I have chosen a guiding word of the year for years now. However, they have been hit and miss. In 2020, I tried choosing a theme of the year. That was going very well and likely would have been quite successful if the world hadn't fallen apart. Once the pandemic hit, I did not get to hunker down and quarantine. I lost my job and had to find a new one. The job I found, still required me to deal with the public so after work I would just come home a rest. Trying to keep my job and my health were my only goals. 

In 2021, I didn't even bother. That year was more about recalibrating, accepting and getting used to the new normal. I progressed at my job but didn't really have the bandwidth for much else.

Now, in 2022, I want to get back on my path. I didn't get to really work with my theme of the year in 2020 so I am going to try working with a theme of the year that works with my desire to live more seasonally in 2022.

My theme of the year is:

Tending the Garden

If you have read this blog over the years, then you know that I have planted a lot of seeds but struggle to bring them to fruition. This year I'm going to try to change that. I went back over my posts and listed all of the seeds that I want to try to grow again only this time, I am going to spend more time creating a plan to properly care for the seeds. Some of them are quite lofty so I will focus on the basic ones, ones that will build a foundation (my theme for 2020) and create fertile soil. As you can tell, I'm really loving the gardening analogies.

Spring Equinox as the New Year

 Every year around the new year, I sit down and reflect on the previous year. I download Susannah Conway's Unravel Your Year workbook and sometimes other workbooks I want to try, get them printed, and try to work through them. I also choose a guiding word or theme for the year. Almost every year, it doesn't work out. I always find it to be such a struggle. I struggle to fill out the workbooks completely. I struggle to plan out the next year. Whatever I end up coming up with, I lose focus on it quickly. 

This year, I'm trying something different. The past couple of years, I've been paying attention to my natural urges and noticed that I tend to feel more eager to plan my year around March and April. Then last year, I really started thinking about the idea of living seasonally and decided to try it out. 

When you think about it, it doesn't make much sense for January 1st to be considered the new year. It is the middle of winter. The world, at least the northern hemisphere, it still at rest. Nothing is happening. It doesn't match up with natural cycles in any way. I started to realize that I tend to view the beginning of spring as the new year. So this year, I am running with that idea and I'll see how it goes.

This winter, I spent my time nesting and preparing for the spring. I finally broke up with my boyfriend and really felt the need to clean and clear the energy. I want to turn my apartment into my sanctuary. It's going to take some time as I am in the middle of paying off a debt, so it will take some time to bring in some of the things I want. In the meantime, I am focusing on clearing out what I don't want anymore.

For the Spring Equinox, which is what I will consider the first day of the year, I downloaded Susannah Conway's workbook again and I downloaded Erin Bruce's Wheel of the Year workbook. Erin Bruce's blog, The Seasonal Soul, is what made me finally decided to try living more seasonally. I rearranged the pages of the Wheel of the Year workbook so that the winter section is in the end. Then I broke up the Unravel Your Year workbook into parts based on what I thought I would like to focus on each season and mixed those pages in with the appropriate season in the Wheel of the Year workbook. I'll work with this workbook for through out the year to help me figure out this living seasonally concept and see if it will work for me.