Opening Portals

The thing about Opening Portals - especially in ritual - is that the Universe then mirrors to you everything that is keeping you from stepping through the door. And suddenly six months go by.

Hello boundaries, my old friend...

“Are you ready to try some?” they ask hopefully.

I hear it as chastisement. One of many lessons I still needed to learn. “Check back next week. Thursday, 2pm. I’ll be ready then.”

Turns out I wasn’t.

Or the time after that.

Or the time after that.

It literally took getting rid of nearly everything I own, moving 4000 miles to a new home and new life in a beautiful, soul nourishing place, only to experience my body crashing routinely at noon on Thursdays. Cooked. Toast. Down for the Count until Monday morning. For the first seven weeks I lived here. Bit by bit, the realizations seeped into my awareness.

It started with finally feeling brave enough to say “No.”

To things I liked. With people I liked. I discovered they didn’t get mad. They didn’t guilt trip me. Or exclude me the next time an activity was planned. And I started to feel braver about checking in with my body first before committing to something. I met a beautiful doctor who’s finally finally offering proper thyroid treatment. And - in addition to the prescriptions, supplements, and dietary changes she prescribed, she spent time talking with me about the energetic catalysts that cause Hashimoto’s (aka low-functioning thyroid).

Maybe you know them intimately like I do: life experiences where it was unsafe to express desires (what you want), your personal truth.

Experiences where you felt trapped, helpless.

Experiences where you didn’t have agency over your life, where you were disempowered.

We’ve not only inherited these behaviors from our mothers and grandmothers, many of us have experienced these same things in our lifetime. My doctora’s prescription? Sunshine, Breath of Fire/Wym Hoff breathing practice, mediation, walking and yoga - preferably outside, singing. The list made me cry. I’m a trained opera singer, and for the first time in my life, someone told me to sing for the health and joy of it. Not scales, not a role or a solo. Just me and my voice.

I changed my diet - and I’m not gonna sugar coat how challenging it felt, it still feels. I might have melted down. Because that same week? To take my thyroid healing to the next level, I started drinking roughly 2.5 liters a day of thyroid supportive crystal infused water left to percolate each night under the light of the stars and moon. I put an entire jar of crystals inside the water jar and marched it outside. I’ll give you three guesses as to what started happening almost immediately… because yeah, I opened another portal. Whoopsies...

Our truck broke down.

I stress dumped all over my spouse.

My children reflected painful truths back to me.

My acupuncturist gave me straight talk about how very depleted I am - a bit disheartening to hear after four harrowing years of shadow work and healing, especially in light of how good I feel... except for that weekly crash where I sleep for 4 days.

And the funniest thing happened alongside EVERYTHING that came screaming into my reality... I laughed. I just laughed.

I recognized what was happening - every trigger, every wound, every insecurity, all of it - big and LOUD and uncomfortable. FYI this is why people who work with energetic infusions tell you to only take a dropperful at a time - because for most of us, drinking the whole jar is a really bad idea. And if you do it, you better be prepared for an avalanche of healing opportunities.

I’m at a point in my life, I’m ready to get on with it. I’m ready to face the remaining wounds hiding out in nooks and crannies in my body. I’m ready to examine them, grieve them, own them and most importantly, love them. Befriend them and forgive myself for the crime of habitual self-abandonment in the process.

Which brings me back to boundaries.

The upside of drinking 2.5 liters a day of healing, crystal infused water, is that the “a-has” and mind-blowing realizations come at the same avalanche rate as the healing opportunities. I had one such realization about boundaries this afternoon. Most of us (cis women) grew up in a culture where we were expected to sacrificially give (thx patriarchal christianity - not) in every conceivable way.

It didn’t matter if we didn’t want to go to church, kiss the boy, give the last cookie to someone else every time, attend a dinner party when we’d rather stay home, say no to overtime, we had to do it even if we were exhausted or stressed, and with a smile on our face. Fast forward to a life where we don’t know how to say no, how to prioritize ourselves and what our bodies are asking for.

The great realization today was in recognizing the cause of the pattern. Of course I was spending energy as quickly as I had it. That’s what I was taught to do! How dare I shirk an obligation in order to save my energy pennies/spoons for fill in the blank?!?

This realization was immediately followed by recognizing a pattern in my finances I’ve been working to unravel for years - money flows in, money flows out. Like most Americans, we’ve been able to save some, but not enough… Because the car died, the cat needs a tooth pulled, our child needs a medical specialist, a family member was given a terminal diagnosis and requires help, and on and on and on.

Money is energy and mirrors our own. Our financial reality often shows us our wounds that need healing.

I’m gonna sit with this for a hot minute. For another hot minute I’m going to ponder the idea that my financial life might transform as I develop better emotional, social, and energetic boundaries.

How does my financial life change when I start “putting my energy pennies back in my body bank?”

I have a good friend who has a mantra: Boundaries for Success. It has new meaning for me tonight. Thank you crystal healing water. Today was day 9 of drinking it. And this past week (our ninth here) was the first one where I didn’t have a crash. I said no to lots of stuff, still managed to work out, write, and feel socially connected. Feels like a win-win.

Have you struggled with boundaries? How how you navigated developing them? How’s it going currently?

~A word about this newsletter... When I opened this Portal on Halloween, I had the very best intentions of bringing you weekly thoughtful, passionate, occasionally funny words on a variety of topics - all under the umbrella of reclaiming our inherent magic, recovering from the traumas of patriarchal christianity and other damaging systems and ideologies (all based in patriarchy), and navigating ourselves into a new paradigm.

This work naturally occurs in liminal spaces - the shadows and recesses of our psyche, our hearts, and our bodies. And because I’m me, this newsletter is going to reflect ALLLL the topics I’m passionate about, all the things I do, and make connections between a lot of seemingly random things.

And I’d really, really like to get it to you weekly, or just before the New Moon/Full Moon. But “me” is also neurodivergent - autistic, profoundly ADHD, with all the accompanying superpowers and behaviors that Capitalism (patriarchy) considers liabilities. The Autistic side of me that craves predictability and schedules, and the ADHD side of me that craves novelty and flow, bare-knuckle it on a daily basis, and it’s anybody’s guess as to which side will win the battle of Energy Levels and Nervous System Regulation.

Chances are I’m not going to be consistent in my newsletter delivery, though I’m going to try really hard. Consistency is really, really hard for me. Impossibly hard. I DON’T HAVE A CONSISTENT BONE IN MY BODY. But good lord, do I try. I’ve beaten myself silly over my lack of it. Now I’m just going to embrace it and be upfront with you about what that means for you.

My posts are likely to be long - I won’t apologize, I have lots to say. Take me in small bites if you must. I promise I’ll never be boring. My goal now, and for the foreseeable future, is to “make as many pots as possible.*” And I just can’t say yet what that’s going to look like. Because small executive function tasks like uploading newsletters to a platform... suck allllllll the energy pennies from my bank. And until I’ve found a person I can hire as my part or full-time Adult Babysitter who will help me stay on track with all the “small stuff” the World (patriarchy) thinks I should be able to navigate with a wrinkle of my nose, my newsletters are most likely going to be a delightful surprise like a card from a friend. But maybe not - sometimes I surprise myself. I will be posting several in the next few days - because some of these have been in a state of near completion since November. Neurodivergent time blindness is painful and real. It’s also a superpower, so I’m trying to be gentle with myself when I’m in that flow zone making magic but missing self-imposed deadlines.

I’d love to hear how you navigate all of the above- how it’s going, what works, what doesn’t... Let me know how you’re doing!

*Thanks to the magical, mystical, and very wise Sarah Faith Gottesdiener over at Moonbeaming for that amazing piece of advice! I bow to you.

*** Update: I crashed - after a 12 day streak, and only for about 1/2 a day. When I felt it coming, I slowed down, kept my date for a walk in the jungle, went to a Dr’s appointment, and parked myself on the couch the rest of the day. Boring, but I bounced back :) I’m learning!

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