So, happy birthday to me! I gave myself a present today. I paid extra for expedited shipping for the proof of my first solo book, “Live Your Life With Attitude” so I’ll have a physical copy of MY BOOK in my hands in three days.

Part of getting this first book out into the world is pulling up the big girl panties and facing the demon doubts and fears. Shush! Be gone! Who cares what you say? If part of me made up all that ridiculous self talk, another part can say, “Shut the hell up!”

So, here along with the upcoming book announcement, is another ‘attitude.’

“I am not a bitch, I am THE bitch.” What you think? What if we all claim who we are to the max?

Let’s turn up the volume of our true selves and claim for the world to know who we are!

Happy Day, birthday or not!

I have been hiding. No new blogs for weeks, not calling friends, little posting on groups or boards. I could tell a very familiar story about being busy (which I have been, but not all the time). I could write about being overwhelmed, or scattered. I could go on about all the demands on my time, the various responsibilities in different areas of my life, which are fact and we all have them. And then there is the heat. It has been godawful in Baltimore and I am sure many other areas of the country. I sweat gallons and feel the effects of the heat. There are so many lovely excuses.

The honest to God truth is that I have been scared to take the next steps. I know what I want to do, what I think I am here on the planet to do and I am scared to start. I have been living it in my family and my small circle of friends. The next step is bigger, showing myself for all to see.

So this entry is the next step. It does take courage to be who you truly are.

What is it that you are here to do? Why are YOU HERE NOW? What is it that only you can give the world? How many people do you know that live each day fully present to bringing their gift forward for the good of all? Can you take a moment to imagine what this world would look like if WE ALL lived our gifts, living as the unique expression of the divine we truly are?

What can you do today to step, if only for a moment, into your magnificence? How can you share your gift with the world today? If you found the courage to be who you truly are and if we all did the same, what a ride this would be.

I’ll show you me even if you aren’t ready to show me you.

Here’s to shining our lights!

Today, the newest Heal My Voice book, Harmonic Voices, True Stories of Women on a Path to Peace launched.

To keep it real, I will share that I am more than a little nervous. Part of me is scared sh*tless. Keep breathing…

My story is titled, “Confessions of a Starving Fat Girl” and my stomach is doing back flips. My secret pain is no longer a secret. Anyone in the world can now read it. Even though in previous books I wrote about my sexual abuse, health issues and the challenges of parenting post-institutional kids, this story is the most disclosing and was by far the most difficult to write.

‘Confessions’ is about emotional eating and lack of self love. Deep breath.

In this Heal My Voice group, we started with the goal of writing about peace in the world. Generally, when one is ready to do the work, everything keeping you from the work comes up. So it was with the Voices of Peace group. Everything that was NOT peace presented. How can you focus on peace in the world when your life is blowing up, when all sorts of stuff is hitting the fan? Ahhhh….insight…..

Peace is an inside job. There can be no peace on the outside when there is no inner peace. How can I practice the Golden Rule when I treat myself badly? Yep, what came up was not flowers and fairy tales. It was a messy, painful wound that was ready to be cleaned out so the healing could begin.

We looked inside, healing parts of ourselves that were ready to be healed by sharing, feeling the feelings and learning how to accept what had been. No rewriting the past. Being honest with oneself is the work. What happened is fact. I can choose to judge or to view my past through the lens of understanding and compassion.

Coming to an understanding of this part of myself took work, seemed illusive along the way and was a conscious choice. I continue to integrate the learning.

I am, in many ways, an open book. Some family members think I am too uncensored. Transparency, no secrets. I am used to sharing with friends and being frank during interactions. I guess this book launch is the next step, into the world showing who I am.

Today is the one year anniversary of my father’s passing. The anniversary effects have been working on me this week. I have felt anniversary effects from many traumas and losses. It took many years to realize that my August sickness, some malady or other that disappeared after the 11^th passed was my body holding the trauma of rape and the onset of my first period.

Losing my mother in 2002 gave me another anniversary to acknowledge and remember. Now I am remembering my dad. This week has been rough. Anxiety has never been a major symptom until now. Breathing through what felt like the onset of panic attacks is how I have gotten through each day this week. Fuzzy-head and slowed word retrieval is more common for me under stress.

My father’s decline and death was relatively rapid. He was under hospice care for less than a week. One month to the day of his death, my sister-in-law, Peggy was diagnosed with AML (leukemia) and died nine months later.

It feels like my job this past year was to deal with Dad’s estate, what there was of it. I was the executor so it really was my job. I did not anticipate the emotional difficulty, the guilt, regret and sadness I felt over and over. Too many decisions. I had a standing weekly date with Reggie from Objects Found in Catonsville for her to come with a van and some weeks a van and truck to take items for resale. I gave metal objects to my friend Dottie for her folk art and vintage items to my friend Vanessa for her shop in Federal Hill. Thankfully, my husband took charge of some major cleaning out. Two dumpster later, four trucks of donations, freecycle give-aways and scrap metal pickups, the house, garage and out buildings are empty. Repairs are complete. The house is ready for a new family.

Dad’s death marked the beginning of the year in which the most difficult work was supporting Peggy, my brother Dan, and their adult daughters. I had helped my mother, my aunt and my dad in their dying. I spent a lot of time with Peg in the beginning, in the hospital right after her diagnosis when the reality of limited time was present but there was hope of additional time if she could receive a bone marrow transplant. Once the possibility of more time faded and the discussions shifted to quality of life, I said what I thought Peggy needed to hear and focused on Dan and the girls so they could do what they needed to do during Peggy’s final weeks.

And life continues. We had two bathroom remodels for our hundred year old house. We took a fabulous trip with David’s family in and around Italy. My sons, Anton and Sasha are finishing their degrees and interviewing for jobs. David was able to check off ‘seeing the Northern Lights’ from his bucket list. Birthdays, Christmas, Mothers and Fathers Days celebrated in a different way. Keeping some rituals, letting go others.

A year filled with receiving diagnoses and learning how to cope and manage, getting loved ones through broken bones, surgeries, betrayals and heartbreak. Normal life. Learning to navigate each year and each day as the new normal. Life without parents, life with loved ones creating their own lives and others coping with their current lives with diminished capacities and capabilities.

This indeed has been some year.

One never knows when, where or with whom one will have a meaningful interaction. I wasn’t prepared for the depth of the question or response I had with a checker at Trader Joe’s.

After the usual, “Did you find everything you were looking for today?” and “So how are you doing today?” he followed up with, “What plans do you have for the spring?”

Not one for perky repartee, I answered, “Nothing extraordinary.”

“Well, one person’s nothing extraordinary is another person’s incredibly extraordinary.”

Okay. Great line and so true. I was thinking of the usual tasks that are on the unwritten to-do list, to grocery shop, cook dinners, keep the house tidy, fold laundry, maybe look for some flowering annuals to plant.

I had not considered our just having returned from a trip to Iceland. Seeing the Northern Lights was on David’s bucket list. I did say, “I will be visiting a friend in San Francisco in a couple weeks.” He asked for how long and if it was for business. Then I added, “And I will be going to the Maryland Film Festival this weekend.” We talked about what will be showing, what I planned to see and the benefits of being a Friend of the Festival.

Pretty cool when I thought about it. I tend to get stuck in the minutia of the moment or lost in the overwhelm of everything to be done. But actually stopping to think about where we were just a few weeks ago, the adventure and pleasure of another film festival weekend and looking forward to visiting my California friend and having tentative plans while I am there is pretty extraordinary.

Add to that, Mothers Day is coming up. I have two amazing sons thanks to two brave women, their birth moms so on Mothers Day I can celebrate the gift that motherhood is for me and honor the other moms. I wrote stories for the three 2013 Heal My Voice projects. The first, Harmonic Voices, True Stories of Women on the Path to Peace, is coming together now and the launch has been scheduled for May 30^th. We will be visiting family in Seattle sometime in the summer and we are talking about getting away in the fall.

When I stop to think about it, my life is quite extraordinary. Thanks to a conversation in a grocery line, I had the chance to reflect and acknowledge that and truly appreciate how fortunate I am.

Okay Karen. Time to walk the talk. Breathe and take a step. Repeat.

Five years ago, a book came to me. Some people refer to ‘downloads.’ Others call it inspiration. I have experienced it as being open and ready to step into a stream of energy, consciousness, knowledge.

I stepped in, saw the book, knew the contents and have done bloody little with it since then. It is time. On Easter Sunday, I visited a friend who is embodying the message. So many others are living in the moment, from spirit or intuition. They are living this truth.

The message- The Answers Inside / The Answer’s Inside

The meaning- Stop looking to others for the answers. Inside each one of us is all we will ever need. We know the answers to the questions before we ask.

Take responsibility for your life. This is not about blame. This is not about manifesting and all the other new age, new thought constructs we have proposed and adopted to make sense of the sh*tstorm that is life. This is where language fails us. This is where societal expectations have led us very far astray. How long have we been taught taught to analyze, to figure it out because once we ‘get it’ we can fix it, solve it, make it all better?

We can operate in a different paradigm if we choose. People are healing themselves. Reality is shifting. Forget the rules. There is no right way. What works for me works for me. You have to do the work to find your own way. Others can support you but they can’t do the work for you. Personal Responsibility.

Gurus Be Gone. Most of it is a crock. Insight and universal truth is being packaged and branded for money, stuff and status. Teachers are great and the true teacher will always and forever be a student. When you hear that someone has figured it out, has THE way and can teach you the process, RUN AWAY. There is no right way, one way, ultimate process. These are the teachers who will turn on you when you question them. When their specific process does not work for you, you are not doing something right or your energy or beliefs or past lives are blah, blah, blah. Blame, blame, blame.

I have teachers I love and I have seen them succumb to ego. A few have come out the other side and others are growing their empires.

And so it begins. Stay tuned while tuning into your specific frequency, frequently.

Continuing to see the overlaying of past/present/future. This post is from Wednesday, September 30. 2009. I repost this on the day before I visit a friend, a visionary, an alchemist. She is following spirit and I am honoring her path, my intuition and the intersection of our journeys. Much more to unfold…

Clarity…Finally

Clarity has eluded me. I would think I had it, then realize, maybe not. For those of you who know about conscious evolution, I have been in the midst of figuring out what I am here to do since my ‘work’ is something that Barbara Marx Hubbard refers to as a job with no job title (yet). Many of us are doing work that in the future will be routine but for now, makes us what some would call visionaries while others would call us wacky.

It took a trauma, a physical threat for me to realize that my essence, the core me, what some call soul and others call higher self, is untouchable. Nothing can hurt the eternal me. The divinity that I am, beyond human form, is powerful beyond measure.

I have known for years that I have a gift. It is not easy to talk about because we do not have the language to support a discussion around the dynamics and physics of vibratory energy management. We talk about energy conservation and management when the energy source is a physical thing, beyond ourselves- electricity, gas, wind and solar power. For our bodies, we talk about physical energy levels and what we can do to support and manage them. What we do not discuss is our subtle energy, our essential energy, the fact that we ARE energy and that we, like everything in the universe vibrate. We have direct control over our own energy.

For years, we have heard pieces of the information. You are what you think about. You create your reality. You attract what you are. We manifest exactly what we need. What does all this mean? Since we are pure energy, our surroundings are an out picturing of our current vibratory state. As our vibration changes, so do our lives. The great news is that energy is accelerating. We can hold more energy and understand much more than we could even several years ago. Kids are being born today with different brain circuitry than we had at birth. What it took weeks, months and years to do and understand, we can understand and integrate in minutes. We can change in an instant.

We are on the brink of massive planetary change. To support that process, we must change. We must take responsibility for our individual well-being by becoming Well Beings. Being in physical form will always provide limitations. Disease and distress is a gauge of misalignment. By consciously managing our vibratory levels we change our reality.

And it all starts with…..Breath. Keep breathing. Be aware of your breathing. Try this: Breathe very rapidly and shallowly for a slow count of ten. Stop. Now take three very slow, full, deep breaths, one leading into the next, really push out your belly as you take in more air each time. Stop. How did that feel? How was each different for you? Where was your attention and how did your body feel with the different breaths? Just in that short period of time, you experienced how you can change your state. You have the power. We all do. We also have the choice to be aware of our power and develop it or be unconscious and let life happen.

More, later.

And so it is.   Karen

In reviewing old blogs, I find recurring themes and revisited issues. This post is from 2009. I have added reflections following the original post.

Is it really going to be May in two days?? Where in the world did April go?

I guess part of my April was spent in the blur of grief. I chose to be with the feelings instead of trying to escape them this year and I am on the other side of them now. It was not easy, and it did not harm me. Being with discomfort instead of denying or avoiding it is a new behavior for me. Now I know I can do it.

Something interesting happened this morning. A friend meant to reply to an individual and instead replied to the group. Not that this is a rare occurrence, people do it, it is easy to do. The interesting part for me was the follow up post that the first post had meant to be private. When I read the first post, it seemed totally appropriate to the forum and spoke not only to the intended person, but to me and I would guess to all the members of the group. It spoke of frustration, disappointment, anger, grief, and doing one’s best to be with what is happening in one’s life.

I replied that I was glad that the post went out to the entire group. For me, it served as a reminder that we all need and deserve to be heard, respected and held by each other, consciously. Appearances are deceiving and it is common to assume that someone is strong, has it all together and is without problems, and that is never the reality. We are living in a time of major shift. Financial, health and educational systems are not working. In this time of upheaval our lives are mirroring the greater shift. Just as the social structures are not working, our lives as they have been are not working. It is time to release what no longer serves us to make space for all that will. It’s not just me, it is not just you, it is all of us.

When we come together around a cause, we make connection. No matter what connection we have, being members of a group or club, being neighbors, friends, family, we touch each others lives. We can strengthen the connections, think of each other often, send good thoughts, wishes and prayers to each other. We can hold visions for each other to be happy and content, well and strong. The communities we create can strengthen and can hold us during our shifts. We are creating the new reality.

And so it is.   Karen

All still true. The story I wrote for Harmonic Voices, Women on the Path from Chaos to Peace, “Confessions of a Starving Fat Girl” chronicles my efforts to coexist with emotion. Same stuff, different day…same stuff, different year. I continue to be in process. I guess peace is accepting that I will forever be in process.

Originally posted on The Peace Sisters website in 2008. Holy Cow! I am dealing with the same sh*t…..

My favorite of our three cats, Kiwi, has become a killing machine. Anton, the older son, gets annoyed when I say I like Kiwi the most (even though Kiwi is ‘his’ cat), “It’s not fair to the other kitties.”

Anyone who has met our cats would tell you that they are several times removed from “kitties”. Kiwi, Adoree and Spike are very big cats. Spike was the runt of the litter (the three are littermates). He quickly became the largest in size but has retained his rank in the pecking order- poor Spike is everybody’s b*tch. Kiwi and Adoree have gone back and forth with the Alpha Cat role.

A couple years after we moved to our house, we had a patio built so we could use our sloping side yard. The cats came outside with us and started their individual explorations of the great outdoors.

I find it interesting that Kiwi, the friendliest of the three cats, has become the hunter. Several times a week, he presents his kill, which is probably proof of his affection for us. I have not kept a specific tally but he has mostly killed moles, then birds and alas, one poor cute little chipmunk.

Kiwi’s ‘presents’ go into the trash without hesitation. I can clearly label them as unwanted gifts, useless to me, thanks but no thanks. It is not always clear to me what to do with less bloody but still unwanted gifts. A look around my house will prove that. There are of course, lots of things I really love. Then there are the things I like and on some level feel I should love. Then there are the things I don’t even like and feel guilty for not liking because:

1. They were given to me.

2. They represent the money they cost and have value.

3. They represent who I should be or what I should be doing.

What I realized today was that Kiwi only presents his kill to us after it is useless to him. They may be a token for us or a presentation of proof of what a great cat Kiwi thinks himself to be but he gives them after he is finished with them. Without animation, the critters cannot be a plaything and are without value. He passes them along.

I am done with this, here you can have it. Could you use this? Do you like this?

For all the years we have been married, David has urged me to clear out, simplify, and I have either ignored him or capitulated with half-hearted attempts of getting rid of stuff. After years of appeasing David, I am ready to clear out what I do not need. I am in process. Throughout this summer, bags and boxes of stuff have left the house to sell, give and donate. There is still a ton (probably literally) to clear. I have not figured out the separation of “Love me, love my stuff”. I know I am not my stuff. I also see that my stuff is a reflection of who I am right now. Here and now, I am less about some stuff and still figuring out other stuff.

I am more comfortable with ‘being’ and not doing and stuff is all about the doing- I get that. I can have an idea and not have to do it, follow it through, not only to completion but mass production. I am getting that. What I loved doing twenty years ago is not what I want to do now. I can release those things. It’s what things mean, my beliefs around them, myself and my life that I am looking at and dealing with now. It is clear to me that the “stuff” is about my issues- self worth, confidence, security.

Kiwi’s gifts are about his confidence and his place in the world, too. Anton reframed my view of Kiwi’s giving us his playthings after they are dead and no longer fun. “He waits until they are dead because he knows you would be upset if they were still alive.” Kiwi saves us from having to euthanize the little ones. A gift on so many levels….

This one is definitely not figured out yet. I am in process.

And so it is. Karen

On the evening preceding this very fine day, it came to pass that upon our daily repast, I had the occasion to address my partner and spouse of twenty years and the two offspring of the male gender who having been birthed by others, nonetheless engender the reactions and emotions of those born of the self-same flesh. “It has come to my not inconsiderable attention that we, as cohabitants of this very domicile in which we enjoy social intercourse and various and sundry individual and mutually experienced activities and pursuits, we have need to revisit the prior enumerated, much discussed and previously agreed upon endeavors which we have entered into the doing of to our mutual benefit and comfort.”

Translation…..At dinner I said, “Guys, we need to talk about chores.”

Guess who just binge watched HBO’s Deadwood?

I am unapologetic about my love of TV and movies. I get lost in the mood of an alternate reality. I mark times in my life by TV shows. I accepted that I was different from the other kids when I clearly knew there was no comparison between The Addams Family and The Munsters. I witnessed the revolution in television storytelling with my unwavering loyalty and obsession with Hill Street Blues. The beginning of the end of a friendship started with my cutting an evening short to get home in time to watch an episode of HSB. When a friend, during a year-long process of spiritual practice, gave up watching television, I said, “Give up TV? I learned all my interpersonal skills from The Sopranos.”

I am a Hon from Baltimore, land of Homicide, Life on the Streets and The Wire. My husband, David, grew up in Seattle, land of Frasier and Say Anything. We share Sleepless in Seattle.

Binge watching series is a glutinous extravagance that I adore. Sons of Anarchy was my first binge watching experience when I discovered the benefits other than free shipping from Amazon Prime. Since then, I have occasionally binge watched series but my compulsion got kicked into high gear with this week’s Comcast Watchathon.

It is true, television watching habits are evolving and I love it. The short series format and independent cable productions not only give their audience more to watch, they give artists more opportunity to create worlds and tell full and rich stories. I am enjoying the bonanza. Pun intended.

I am affected by what I watch. My use of the two ‘c’ words has increased post Deadwood. I actually looked up the definition of ‘hooplehead’ and look forward incorporating it in conversation. I wonder what watching House of Cards portends….