Are you, too, screaming “FINALLY!” as you gaze upon the crocus, the dandelion, the tulips? Although the tulips haven’t actually bloomed yet, I have the leaves. The leaves have shot up in our perennial bed here at Avalon and there is just something that warms my heart to see them. Something akin to…well, relief. Spring DID come! Did we doubt it would? Well, if you’ve spent at least a few years in Maine, sometimes you do wonder!
Overnight (it seems), the forsythia bloomed and –be still my heart–so did the pink blossoms of the magnolia tree. The chickens appear to vacillate between fussy and punk-ass; Molly and Pippin officially have Spring fever. WE ARE WAKING UP! The world around us is groaning delight in colors, scents and sounds. The heart of the land, the sea, the rivers and the sky finally get to have a coming-home party and ask “Well, now, how have YOU been?”
Where will you meet them, these jesters of the landscape that surround us? Are you stopping–really stopping–to welcome the robin back? Have you eyed that bike of yours, promising to pump up the tires and take a spin but really aren’t sure you’re ready to “get out there”? Is your social calendar exploding? Sometimes, this can be a good thing or a not-so-good thing…
What do I mean by all of this? There is always a ‘flip-side’ energetically to each season. Although Spring does beckon us to awaken, come back to life, be re-born, the underlying message enveloped in those urges is one of ACTION. But maybe you’re stuck. Maybe ‘action’ sounds like a nightmare to you. There is an uptick in suicides in the spring, and there’s a reason for this: the transition is HARD for some. The unspoken (and external) pressure to crawl out of your shell means “bye-bye shelter.” When we no longer have the protective layer holding us together, keeping us “tucked in,” we are exposed, vulnerable to the sights and sounds (and demands) around us.
So I suggest easing into it. EASE yourself into the Spring season with a few markers of self-care, a few mantras that SUIT YOU. Here’s some gentle suggestions:
__Let your no be ‘no, thank you’ and your yes be ‘hell yes!’ As Anne Lamott reminds us, ‘No’ is a complete sentence. You do not need to explain yourself to anyone, if you decline an invitation.
__”My energy is my energy and only my energy” is a great mantra for anyone who is highly sensitive and tends to pick up the energy of others. Spring is a great time for boundary-making because the explosion of life sort feels like it knows no boundaries. Make your own.
__With the increase in light, you might think getting up earlier than usual (or doing more after 5 PM) seems normal. Well, it might be–eventually. But if you feel like you’re pushing yourself, use that early morning sunlight to journal, write your dreams down or take a quiet walk around your yard. SUNLIGHT does not mean “Ok, go!” This is a left-over vestige from the many generations of our ancestors who believed “the sun is up/time’s a wasting.”
__Get accustomed to asking yourself: “What would serve my body BEST at this moment?” We are now in the time of Taurus! The Bull. This energy is one of earthly embodiment, of stability [“four on the floor” like bull], of stillness. Does your body need to shake off a frustrating conversation? Then go dance! Take a walk. Does your body need to REST, unburdened, unbidden, under the covers, all freaking week-end? Then do that.
__Speaking of Taurus, this is the first sign in the Zodiac ruled by Venus (the other, Libra). Venus is all about the beauty of love and the love of beauty. Where do you find beauty? Taurus asks us to name the SIMPLE things in life we find beautiful. Counting your blessings is a sure way to stay in the positive lane and allow this transition into Spring to be one of ease.
Sure, Spring is a time to re-set. But remember: YOU know yourself better than anyone, and your pace might look different than the explosion of color and change around you. As DEER spirit told me at our recent drum making ceremony last week-end, “The relationship you have with yourself is the most important one of all.”
Shine On,
Mary Katherine
PS. The suicide hotline is: 988; if you are hoping to find a therapist, the best way is to: 1) check out this link [Psychology Today] or Better Help. You might also be looking for a different kind of healing and re-set. I recommend the following shamanic practitioners: Dory Cote, Martha Williams, John Moore,Nancy MacPhee or any of the others on my Resources page of my website. I am also seeing clients again, starting on June 1st!
I thought this newsletter would be difficult to write but once I sat down with pen to paper, the words came easily. Why? Because I believe the difficult experiences we have in this life are meant to teach us something, guiding us to a higher expression of our best selves. If you’ve had an experience that was difficult but were able to glean something valuable from it, welcome to your highest expression! The Ezee-Passes are for the toll roads, not life. No one is exempt from the hurdles that this human form requires of us.
My best self is one who inspires and teaches others; it does not surprise me that my Ostara newsletter would come out with a theme of reinvention and renewal…but also assertion. With Spring comes Aries, the 1st sign of the Zodiac and the essence of “I AM.” On March 19th, we will move out of Winter and into Spring, giving our thanks to the elders of the North Direction as we bid them farewell and greeting the new day of the East. This is a time of rebirth, emergence, and even revelation.
And there is no greater revelation than cozying up to one’s mortality.
Now I know a lot of people at this point in my 52 years who have had ‘close calls,’ unfavorable diagnoses and a flush of other 9-Lives type of accidents–myself included. But I want to share a Tale of 2 Cancers with you not so much as a warning tale but rather a gesture of inspiring you to show up and be heard, talk loudly if you think you’re being ignored, assert what you know is true. Because it may just save your life.
In December of 2008, I had a vaginal ultrasound for a diagnosis of ‘pain with sex’ or if you want to get fancy, dyspareunia. The ultrasound revealed a ‘burst ovarian cyst’ and my doctor said we’d watch things, that it was probably a one-and-done. Painful sex continued, and so I sought a 2nd opinion. This time, I wanted to go to an OBGYN, not to the facility where my PCP and 40 other doctors practiced. Luckily for me, at the time I was working at Portland Gastroenterology and we had good insurance–I could go see whomever I wanted. Specialists were covered!
So, in January of 2009, I went to see an OBGYN and had another vaginal ultrasound. This time, the radiology tech took one look at the screen and said, “It’s not your ovary that’s giving you the problem. It’s your fallopian tube.” She was quite candid about describing the ‘hotdog’ size of my fallopian tube, suggesting that it should really look more like a string.
Well they didn’t even let me go home without giving me a big shot of antibiotics in my arm and a 2-week supply to take home with me. The OBGYN said the fallopian tube ‘must be infected.’A follow-up was scheduled in 3 weeks so they could do another ultrasound to assess. Hopefully, this course of antibiotics would treat the raging infection I had.
3 weeks later, another ultrasound. No changes on imaging. Another course of antibiotics, with a 6-week follow-up. Back in 6 weeks, another ultrasound. By this time, I was getting a little impatient and worried. Although there appeared to be a slight decrease in the size of my fallopian tube, it didn’t look like the string formation they were expecting.
“This is a tough one,” the doctor said as she wrote out yet another prescription for antibiotics. I took the script, stuck it in my purse and asked her if we could do a biopsy?
“Well, that would just destroy the tube. I’d have to remove it in its entirety.”
I waited for more explanation. “Is there any harm in doing that? I can live with one, can’t I? I mean, these antibiotics don’t seem to be, you know, fixing the problem.”
She seemed to be contemplating this course although I could tell she wasn’t sold on the idea. Finally, she said, “I suppose we can just remove it. But let’s try one more round of the antibiotics first. And, let’s put you on my surgery schedule now because it fills up, just in case.”
Great. I took the antibiotics (again!), no change. So, on July 29th, 2009, the good doctor who I had to convince to try something different removed my fallopian tube. Results? Serous tubal intraepithelial carcinoma, if you want to get fancy about it. Fallopian tube cancer.
As anyone can tell you who’s had cancer, you suddenly have 5 new doctors and a LOT of appointments. On October 13th, I had an abdominal hysterectomy with cervix, ovaries, 17 lymph nodes, omentum from both sides of my abdominal cavity and the other fallopian tube removed. Lucky for me, there was not any more cancer to be found. Yah!
I was 38 years old, and it took me a long time to feel like cancer wasn’t going to sneak up on me and shout ‘Boo!’ in my ear. Anyone who’s had a cancer diagnosis and lived through it will tell this.
And then we have Jan 29th of this year. I had been walking around for about a month, noticing that a freckle on my face was bleeding. On and off, no biggie. However, I wasn’t doing anything to make it bleed. My grandmother, who was a nurse, used to say, “Keep your hands away from your face! That’s how germs are spread.” So I hardly ever touched my face, and knew I hadn’t scratched myself.
I called my dermatologist. I love this guy! He is so sweet. I go see him once a year because my mother, who is heavy on the Scottish genes, has had 3 melanomas. He got me in the following week.
A few pleasantries, a few light-hearted jokes. He always asks about the farm, so I told him about the chickens, the new kitty, the Sweet Suite. The whole time we’re having this conversation, he’s looking at my face with one of those magnifying lenses with the little light on it. Finally, he steps away from my face, slips the magnifying glass into his scrub pocket and says, “I’m not worried about this.”
Oh, ok. So, do faces just bleed, out of the blue? And you know what? I almost said “Great, see you at our annual visit.” But something would not let me hop off that examination table. Something would not let me be on my way. Just like with my OBGYN, I had to press for other options.
So often, in uncomfortable moments, it’s easier to make a joke instead of blatant confrontation. So I made a joke. “Well, what should I say to people when they ask me ‘Do you know that your face is bleeding?’”
He smiled and may have said something else but I wasn’t moving. He then said, “Well, let me just scrape a little off. It’ll take 5 minutes. We’ll send it off to the lab.”
This time, it was your garden variety skin cancer: basal cell carcinoma. Very treatable, very common. Great! And last week, I breathed through the cutting and digging and sewing-me-up at Plastic and Hand. I was lucky, again.
But that luck is BECAUSE OF ME, both times. In other words, if I hadn’t pushed, probed, asked for more, asked for something different, it is quite possible that I may not be here. Maybe not so much for the skin cancer but what if I had been satisfied with the supposed ‘burst ovarian cyst’? What if I had been ok with never-ending courses of antibiotics? What if I thought bleeding freckles were no big deal?
It struck me last week that of the 2 times I have had ‘cancer scares,’ I had to advocate for the best thing FOR ME. 100% of the cancer scenarios I’ve experienced in this life were because 100% of the doctors weren’t on point, I WAS. Don’t get me wrong–they get it right MOST of the time. But I am here to tell you that if something doesn’t ‘sound right,’ it probably isn’t.
Doctors do not have crystal balls (no one does). But Creator gives us a voice. We must speak up if we expect to be heard. What you have to say may not always be popular, but it may be the life-saver you give to yourself.
And: it will matter TO YOU TO SAY IT. This Spring, harness your inner Aries! Stand up and protest, assert your will, and make your feelings known. As my daddy used to say, it’s the squeaky wheel that gets the grease.
We can’t please her no matter what. The coffee isn’t Fair Trade, the bed a little too firm and the shower pressure “just okay.” We’ve overlooked the details this house guest of grief picks up on. Her particular tastes, wants–the needed things!–and her locked stare on the enormous hole that a loss has made works to make us edgy, out of sorts and above all, terribly vulnerable. It’s only in time that we come to thank her for her gifts.
She also comes with the gift that we may have been unaware was overdue: the stripping away of the mundane, as if our entire bodies were dipped in a bucket of turpentine and the weeks, months, years of chipping paint disintegrates in a second, burns our skin, forces our eyes to squeeze out their necessary brine. She takes the unnecessary completely away and then scours, scraps, santizes. She then beckons us to be the nurse on duty: How will we care for our cleaned-out wounds, will we figure out how to wrap the bandages and apply the healing salve?
Depending on the nature of the loss, and what it might trigger inside of us, will determine what must be rehabilitated inside of us. Instead of muscling through, we cave inwardly, silent, still, immobile. In that cave, we pick up a needle, a thread and start to sew a cloak, a cape of survival. If we are very lucky, it is a garment that BECOMES us, not one we don at times of devastation. We become the medicine beyond our grief that loss left. In this, that fussy, needy house guest is brilliant, wise beyond her years.
And so I was reminded of these things about ten days ago. Excuse all of the mixed metaphors of the above paragraphs but a dismantling of reality will do that to a writer. On March 9th, Michael and I went down to Boston (Cambridge, actually-) to see one of my favorite singer/songwriters, Emily Scott Robinson. The plan was to leave on Thursday on the 3:30 bus, hop on the T at South Station and find the inn where we were staying before dinner–all of which we did, although I just about had a panic attack on the T. NOT a fan of being tucked into small places made of metal with a bunch of strangers–but that’s just me! After checking into the Friendly Inn at Harvard Square (packed with spirits, BTW-), we hustled over to the Russell House for dinner, which was lovely, if not a bit loud. I had oysters and a salad (and a dirty martini) and Michael had a salad, veg risotto and some wine. I’d been looking forward to the trip for a long time, that Friday, March 10th, was the start of my Spring break from UNE. After canceling Thursday’s classes, my vaca had started early! Yah! Michael, having grown up in Newton and having attended MIT, was right at home and feeling the familiar vibes.
We got to the Sinclair about forty minutes before the show started. Hardly anyone was there, and so we got right up front, inches away from the mic. I was so pumped, so excited! However, to my great disappointment, Emily only played four songs all night. She was touring with other singers this time–Alissa Amodor and Violet Bell–and although the mixed talent was appreciated, I was going to see her. The crowd was a little weird, too. Is it the sober curious movement? Surely all those Harvard kids are used to letting their hair down. ‘Subdued’ was an understatement, and my hoots and hollers and singing along got me some eye-rolls and sideways glances.
The show ended at 10:50 PM, and, with my hopes dampened, we made our way back to the haunted Friendly Inn. I know it’s silly, but I was honestly, truly upset. I had wanted to be taken into the soul of Emily Scott Robinson through her music, her songs–they’d broken me open when I saw her on November 6th, 2021, in a little mountain town named Sparta, North Carolina. Emily is a NC native, like me. She grew up in Greensboro–where I was born–and moved out to Colorado chasing dreams (yup, me too). I’ve always felt a visceral connection to her and on that fateful night in Sparta, I got to meet her, chat, throw my arms around her and tell her that she was the perfect mix of June Carter and Joni Mitchell. So, yeah. ‘Disappointed’ is an understatement. We got into the room (roasting!) and I lit some sage to ban the ghosts, blabbing on about the ‘false advertising’ we’d been subjected to. (*Emily was the headliner so I do feel justified in complaining about the measly four songs). Finally, I washed my face, climbed into bed and shut up.
The next day, Michael said to me, “I’m sorry last night wasn’t exactly what you’d expected. What can we do to change the channel?”
“Just take me home. I want to get out of here and go home,” I said as I stuffed my backpack. “Like, now. No breakfast, no showers. Let’s just go!”
And so we did. We made the 10 AM bus back to Portland and got back to Avalon by noon. Gone for less than 24 hours. Our house-sitter texted that she’d left around 11:15 AM, and that Molly had been walked. I was looking forward to taking a long walk with Molly–too much sitting on buses and Ts! I went upstairs to change into my exercise clothes and that’s when I heard it: a wail I will never forget as long as I live. For a second, I thought maybe Michael had started to chop wood for the maple boil and he’d slipped and really injured himself. I did not know my husband could make a sound like the one I heard that day and, depending on your perspective, it may have been easier to take had he chopped off a finger.
In our absence, our hens who had been left in their cozy coop, had either been terrorized by an animal or had turned on themselves–they were all dead. Three of them had their necks torn out and two were just dead. We had not asked our house-sitter to do anything with them; they had food, water, a heat lamp that was on a timer. Plus, we knew we’d be back before anyone could say Avalon Acres.
If they got spooked, and freaked out, then they very well could have killed each other. When chickens turn on each other, it can be for a variety of reasons: Pecking order got out of hand, overcrowding, bullying (different than pecking ), a sickness/a sick chicken, boredom, not enough protein in their diet, stress. Chickens also need to get out of their coops at least once a day, despite not liking the cold or wet. They need things to peck at, to scratch; in our chicken yard right now, those things consist mainly of patches of snow in various stages of melting and refreezing. We also learned that once a chicken sees the sight of blood, they kind of go berserk and lose it– a chicken frenzy.
Instead of going further with details, rationalizing the mysterious circumstances or wallowing on the page in the canyon of guilt Michael and I both feel (it DID happen while we were gone-), I want to highlight those gifts the needy houseguest of grief left us with. On a personal level, I had to work through old feelings of perceived unworthiness: Who AM I to think we could pull off this farm thing? Look what happened because of us silly novices! I don’t deserve the privilege of the rural life (and on and on). Added to this litany of self-abuse, I was triggered from a past life, or lives: in several past lives, things had gone badly in my absence. Whether it was returning home from plundering, fighting or exploring, I have had plenty of experiences in past lives of coming home to find nothing left and the dead all around. With the backlog of guilt from not being able to protect what was mine from these past experiences, my invisible tee-shirt for this life announces, “Not on my watch!” I got you, don’t worry with me on the scene. I’ll be there, By God.
The tragedy brought to the forefront a need to re-evaluate the many different roles we’ve fallen into. In other words, we’d siloed ourselves in certain duties and responsibilities, all the while neglecting the ‘team-work’ aspect of running Avalon. This unfortunate event gave us a chance to review those roles and re-commit to doing more as a team–shared vision, shared responsibility. For many of you reading this newsletter, you know that Michael possesses the Divine Masculine so beautifully: ACTION, rational thought, building, weighing options and risks, seeing the long view with a very big dose of vision thrown in. Me? I could sit under my favorite tree and count pine needles, be contented to drum under the full moon and light the ceremonial fires round and round the calendar wheel. Had we not communicated effectively about what the chickens needed? Had we failed them, and ourselves, with some unspoken detail or undersight? How did falling into our siloed duties play into this tragedy, if at all? I gathered eggs, helped to clean the coop from time to time and tossed them scratch but maybe I was leaving too much for him to manage.
Maybe, maybe, maybe. Speculation is a game we humans can play all night long; as long as there’s human imagination and the force of guilt locked and loaded, that game can go on ad nauseam. But at some point, you have to stop. You have to have mercy on yourself. You have to forgive.
That is one of the hardest things to do, it seems. Many of us feel that if we forgive ourselves, it means we’ve moved on– a hint of exoneration seeping down our faces along with the tears. I can never, ever forget what happened to our beloved chickens, AND I will move on with a renewed respect for owning and caring for domesticated animals. I will move on with a refined sense of direct communication with my husband, and a deeper acceptance of our different communication styles. I will move on with even more willingness to turn my vulnerability into the medicine I need to grow. Death blows one open and urges us to move on with more knowledge, more skill and more understanding.
Because if you don’t learn from bad things that happen to you, what is the point of going through it? From the soul’s perspective, all it wants to do is grow. The last time I checked, spiritual growth and soul evolution generally require some pain, sometimes some suffering, oftentimes, some loss. We get to whittle ourselves down to the most concentrated version of compassion that our humility can withstand. And that stingy, fussy, needy houseguest of grief knows that all too well.
We had an awful thing happen here at Avalon and we are learning from it. I can be proud of my ability to let the courage of brutal self-examination set my course moving forward. Our hearts are still breaking for “the girls” and as with any trauma on this scale, things won’t ever quite be the same. Things will be different with how we work with this land, how we honor and respect the risks that come with a rural lifestyle. I must believe that is a good thing, and I truly believe that Fortune Favors the Bold. We were emboldened to leave our life in Portland, our tidy condo with zero responsibility, and our friends to begin a new adventure and to carry out a dream. I would not trade that for anything. The gifts, this time, for daring greatly have come in unsightly, uncomfortable packaging. But they are gifts all the same.
Thank you for reading this story of loss. If something has gone away for you, if something has been lost, if something has left or died because you couldn’t protect it, please do not blame, shame or speculate. Be Human, and know that you are not alone in your pain.
Welcome that house guest in. Her neediness will pursue you until you surrender. Trust me: She is wise in her peculiar ways.
Are you ready for EPITHEULIUS, the God of Wind, the God of CHANGE…?
Epitheulius.
[EPA-thu-lee-US]
No, you won’t find this one with Zeus or Hera, Hades or Persephone; you won’t find this with the historical Pantheon because this name, this God, came to me a long time ago, when I was about 14 years old. I stuffed it, not knowing what the “information” or “feeling” was about. I had no idea how to interpret how Spirit was speaking to me back then and so I ignored it.
I think a lot of kids must experience “hunches” of intuitive gifts, abilities to connect with the Spiritual world, heightened sensory aptitudes that all get buried because the world in which those kids live doesn’t reflect back to them value or validity in understanding or experiencing the world in that way.
Which is a shame. Sure, there’s some super cool parents out there who are open to allowing and permitting their child to be permeable to All That Is. I remember reading in Michael Pollan’s book, “How to Change Your Mind” some scientist who had studied brain activity in newborns and 1-year olds. The gist was that ‘basically these babies are tripping,’ meaning that they really haven’t received the dense plaster of the conditioned world yet. Their mental and spiritual follicles are standing at attention. They’re picking up ALL KINDS OF STIMULI, SIGHTS AND SOUNDS. Then, the controlling agents in the form of parents and the predominant values of society creep in, descend on their party, choking out even the possibility that there are forces and energies that dwell “just beyond.”
However, that doesn’t mean those forces are not there. Lately, I’ve felt a strong desire to honor “lost gifts of childhood.” In fact, I spent an entire week-end recently at the Marie Joseph Spiritual Retreat Center in silence to trace back and recapture some of my lost gifts of childhood.
When I got there on Friday afternoon, I dropped my bags in my tiny room and went to the beach. It was very windy–Epitheulius must have know I was coming–and I found myself ascending a rocky path to a peninsula of well-appointed houses, then cruised around the small, quaint New England streets until I found a Maine Audubon trail, which I sloshed down, dodging melting snow and mud. To my delight, there was no one else on the trail.
When I got back to the room, I did what I always do when I check into a hotel: I made an altar. I knew I needed to focus my energies, to have something to pray by, and pray with. Afterall, I was in a prayerful community with devout nuns who had the sweetest smiles and greetings you’ve ever seen. My Goodness, I haven’t been anywhere that quiet in a very long time! I wasn’t going to miss an opportunity to get on their station, if you know what I mean. And I did.
“No Candles” the rules said; I did not oblige.
But I did turn my phone OFF and made the altar with the different treasures of nature I’d found on my walk–pine cone, rock, two shells with various dried herbs and flowers from Avalon. I knew that I was to visit with the child of me, the child of 7. The one who still very much believed that her “babies” (aka stuffed animals) heard every word she said. The one who was forever coming up with some elaborate story, some elaborate game or just playing tricks.
I settled into my rocker, conveniently located right in front of the window. I held a crystal I’d brought and an old rock I found in Fort Collins the first year I attended Colorado State University.
The view was pretty sweet…
To my surprise, a guide showed up: My 2nd grade teacher, Ms. Belk. Now, I grew up in a small town (pop.: 2,000) in North Carolina. In 1978, when I was 7, Siler City was still pretty abhorrently racist. My own father was extremely racist. And Ms. Belk impressed on my little soul something that no one else at that tender age had done by doing an extraordinary act every single day.
Before I tell you what it was, I’d like to describe Ms. Belk: Long, ironing board straight brown hair. Bubblicious lip gloss, probably strawberry-flavored. Dangling silver hoops, lots of blue eye shadow. A mouthful of big white teeth that were always in an open laugh, and that laugh was LOUD. Can you picture her?
Now: imagine our little bodies, our faded Wranglers and stained cotton shirts from that day’s jello or pudding we’d had at lunch. There’s a certain smell, too, that goes with one’s elementary school. I’ll not attempt to describe yours but mine was the cafeteria, of fried food and a slight burnt-coffee tinge, some sort of sanitizer to clean up vomit. And little kid-sweat. It makes sense that I can remember the 1st school I ever attended better than all the rest (and there were many-). The first of anything really leaves an impression.
There we are, lined up at the end of the day, about to emerge onto the blacktop, to go screaming off to the bus or to our waiting moms, their Chevrolet wagons idling softly, a long cigarette poised in their fingers.
The bell rings, it’s time to go. Before we stepped over the threshold and into the hall, Ms. Belk kissed every single one of us goodbye, assuring us that she would see us tomorrow. She might throw in a ‘Be Good, now’ just to keep it fresh.
And this struck me as a radical act–that she would kiss white and black kids, girls and boys. She did not see color, or gender. And of course you can’t kiss school children in this day! I didn’t know why she did it but I knew that her indifference to race and gender made me think she was the coolest woman that ever lived.
So when she showed up to guide me back to my lost childhood gifts, I wasn’t surprised. When I was able to thank her for modeling this radical act of acceptance, I was able to drill down on what it was I so admired: She exhibited Love. Radical, fierce Love for ALL OF US. She was a living, breathing example of all the things I learned in bible study about how Jesus said we should act.
And you know what? ‘Fierce Love’ was the first stop we made on my tour of childhood. That LOVING FIERCELY is actually a super-power that gets its light turned down as we grow and mature. It may get tainted by hurt, or side-stepped because we’re too busy trying to secure a sense of safety. Whatever knocked mine out, Ms. Belk said: You can be like me. Let my example lead your 7 year old self right up to this moment, right now.
Because if we don’t need some FIERCE LOVE right now in this world, I don’t know what we need.
My Spring Wish for you is for Epitheulius, the God of Wind and Change, to blow out whatever it is that keeps you from knowing–intimately knowing–what loving fiercely looks and feels like. This break-Down to break-Through we’re experiencing has a purpose: for us to CHOOSE LOVE, like Ms. Belk did, without a thought.
Without any side-stops along the way.
Our children are secretly hoping that’s our top choice. For them, it’s the only choice.
Shine On,
Mary Katherine
FEATURED PRACTITIONER
Troi Boulanger is a LCSW, intuitive guide, dog-whisperer and overall fantastic human being. I met Troi [pronounced ‘Troy’] several years ago at a monthly shamnic gathering I used to co-lead called the Confluence. We became fast friends and began doing “reiki shares” every other Friday with another healer. Troi epitomizes Fierce Love, in every gesture, every conversation, every prayer. In fact, she boldly stepped out and rented her home in Westbrook for a few months to travel in the Southwest, hiking about in New Mexico with her dog Violette. In a few weeks, she’ll return to her therapy practice in Saco.
Troi has been incorporating energy work in her practice for over 20 years. She works with people to identify patterns that hold them back, and then works to develop skills to move forward in their lives as their whole being, bringing healing to mind, body, spirit and life. Troi is also developing a website for Intuitive Guidance where she’ll help people deepen their understanding of their whole selves, while learning principles of energy healing to keep themselves at their highest best.
This summer, Troi will be offering in-home pet services on Rover. You can look for her there for your furry creatures and on Psychology Today for counseling.
For more information about these services and more, contact Troi at: tboulanger1@me.com
ADD ‘WRITING COACH’ TO MY CV!
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It’s not always easy to write. In fact, for some people, it’s torture. Not for me! I love it and will always find the most creative way for you to enjoy it as well! Send inquiries to marykatherinespain@gmail.com
AND SPEAKING OF WRITING…
I’m co-teaching a new writing class! My friend and professional peer Jess Verrill and I have teamed up to offer a new 10-week class that offers you not only writing instruction and feedback from me but energy up-grades and executive coaching from Jess. Together, we will take your project and your confidence to its highest level of poise and professionalism.
To learn more about the class and see if it’s a good fit for you, click here. Hope to see you there!
A FEW MORE TID-BITS…
__My Established Client follow-up rate will be changing from $75 to $85 for follow-up sessions starting on April 1st.
__The Portland Office still has 1 or 2 slots available on Sat 3/26 and Fri 04/01. for healing sessions. Do you need a tune-up? Email me to get booked!
__Amy Chaney and I will be offering the Mayan Spirit Bathing Ritual and Ceremony on Saturday June 18th. This event was a HUGE SUCCESS last September! What better time than the Summer Solstice to meet the Mayan Fertility Goddess Ixchel and learn about ritual bathing? Interested in saving a spot? Email me! (*more details to come in my May newsletter!)
__My ‘Click Your Heals’ class has been a great success; while teaching it, I realized I’d like to gather regularly with Seekers and Light Workers to explore, witness, study and support one another through these changing times. Ideally, I’d like to co-host a ‘Shamanic Share & Care’ twice a month for shamanic practitioners or anyone who has foundational skills in shamanic practice. Interested in being a co-host? Have some good ideas? Email me!
And finally…Meet our new logo for Avalon Acres! Although the website is still being tweaked and fine-tuned, you’ll want to be on the look-out for our up-coming events, workshops, fire circles and more! Make sure you are on my newsletter list to recieve updates!
Happy Spring!
Avalon Acres is the home to many 9 Pillars events!
Embodying the Divine Feminine 