SPEAKING YOUR TRUTH

 

                                       

Its a dream. This life. Its all a dream. I feel that more and more now. Sometimes I catch myself speaking and I don't even believe what I'm saying. I'm merely regurgitating someone elses opinion, or a value of societies or a fear of the cultural climate I was born into. I know when its truly me speaking. The authentic self as one might say. I know its me because I feel something stir inside of me and I can see more clearly. My mask as been stripped away for a moment and I am just me, connecting with you. The fogginess has gone and I feel the words I speak penetrate into the air around me and send ripples of wind to the person who needs that spoken word the most.

I strongly feel we should be questioning what we do, why we do it and what we say on a more regular basis. How often do we take the time to be still and just let precious truths rise to the surface like champagne bubbles, ready to intoxicate us with a much greater joy than the useless spilling of pretend opinions. We want to please, we want to be liked, we want to live up to expectations that come from someone elses need to control. I want to let you in on a little secret... you will never please everyone, you will not be liked by everyone and the only expectation you will ever meet is the law of this life and that is that sometimes it is wonderful and sometimes it is very difficult. Try to imagine everyone as big heavy dusty unfinished novels. Each one filled with chapters of heartbreak, dissapointments, euphoria, conditioning and experiences very different to yours. We judge others by only reading into the chapter they are showing. We forget there are so many words before that make up this being. So many words that perhaps we will never understand. It is not our job to. All we can do is be still and listen. It's all apart of the dream. We can only imagine and dream what treasures and poison this novel beholds by staring at its hard cover.

I, like you, get so caught up with the fucked up systems of this world and the lost who puppet us all into acting out their scene. They are some of the worlds most powerful yet to me the most dazed and confused. By speaking our truths we unearth our own artists easel and begin to paint a life that is bursting with our own unique strokes and colors. Then we step back and see that by listening to our inner voice a portrait of love, forgiveness and freedom has been created.

Channel your inner truth:

• Pray. Pray for clarity and truth.
• Practice active listening instead of reactive listening where you just want to say your piece without really absorbing what someone is saying.
• Question everything you do in life from when you open those beautiful gifts called eyes till you close them at night. Are you living by default or with meaning?
• Aknowledge your reality fully and honestly. This way we let go of assumptions and tone down any dramatic scenarios we make up in our mind.
• Listen to your gut. Mama was spitting some truth when she told you this one. If you feel something on a deep level then that is your truth.
• Reflect on your health. If you don't start voicing your truth or living it, your body will have a hard time keeping up with the lies. Lies are like poison to the body. 
• Just be still. For one moment everyday, close your eyes and just allow the wisdom to float up. Don't be scared, love, you're merely a lotus in the muddy pond water awaiting to rise and show the full expression of your beauty. 

Astrid xx

TREE HUGGING IN LOS ANGELES

Moving to Hollywood saw the same look of dismay on my face as a child who was prematurely told that Santa does not exist. The absence of princesses living happily ever after and people falling madly in love in cute little hipster outfits saw my romanticism of the place die in quite an instant. While there is beauty here it is snuggled up with a lot of litter, poverty, shit stained streets and souls grasping for the illusion of happiness from fame and fortune. Nevertheless, I love it. I don't want to leave this reckless town and its relentless heaving of noise and chaos. For all its filth, tacky glamour and prostitutes hollering on my 7am walk, there are the mountain walks, the many kindred spirits and so much for the senses to explore. The ability to escape and replenish the soul is as easy as heading up Western ave, taking a right onto Los Feliz Boulevard and a left onto Fern Dell drive to find yourself in a woodland paradise called Griffith Park. Deer and horses a plenty, cellphone reception and smog at a minimum. It's here I have spent many hours seated under tall trees gathering my thoughts into my minds basket, ready to sort out the weeds from the blossoms. I love watching the trees in autumn in this town. The branches bare and bent resemble a kind old lady's arthritic fingers pointing out to a distant memory. Chlorophyll drained leaves are plucked by the fall breeze and swirl down creating a fiery red and brown rug for its forest floor. These old woody giants stand tall and admire the seasonal loss. They do not wither or complain about the changes that occur but instead seem to look upon their letting go with admiration and go as far as to create beauty with their shedding. I always look to the trees when needing inspiration to keep going, to keep changing without resilience.

Los Angeles could beat you down. It could strip you bare with its capitalist teeth, exposing your naked bones which are splintered with insecurities, worthlessness and doubt. Or perhaps you could be like the trees. Feeling the weave of the winter blanket being stitched across your vulnerabilities and creating a hardy new skin on those exposed limbs. Swaying with the changes but always rooting down to seek life force and sustenance from the earth. Staying grounded in the storm. I think that's what has got me through this upheaval of moving from one country to another. I have not resisted or challenged the change unfolding in front of me. I have seen the lessons and beauty in the transitional times, and midwifed that inner child into the birth of a new chapter of her life when she has wanted to run away scared into her safe yet stagnant past.

I bid you to make like a 1960's Californian hippy and start hugging some trees when your soul is feeling tethered. The great thing about this place is you have to be really crazy to look crazy so be a free spirit! Learn from nature that speaks in tongues of beauty and time because they have and will continue to outlast us through their effortless meetings with change. 

Astrid x

THE BIRTH OF A MOTHER

It was fear that appeared in the window of my pregnancy test. Those two little lines represented the parallel that my life was running at that moment. In an instant I saw all of my hopes and dreams dashed and a new path carved out before me. I sat in the public toilets in Byron Bay and choked down the tears and looming responsibility that those two lines threatened me with and then I pulled up my big girl panties and I ran as fast as I could. I ran all the way to a grassy little hill and cried until I couldn't cry anymore. I closed my wet eyes, took a deep breath and placed my hands to my belly. Hello you......and then I was really in trouble. Fear was replaced by an ancient love. I already knew this little speck of shared reproductive juices. Her imprint had been lying within me since my beginning. It was if she had been echoing in my bones this whole time and like a powerful mantra,, had manifested itself into life. This manifestation came from the vibration of years of daydreaming, reckless love making and perhaps a little destiny. She was now submerged in her own watery universe, dividing, multiplying and changing. We were both changing. She into her physical form and I into a mother. My old self was slowly dying and I could hear the chain rattle in my inhales and exhales as I somewhat clung to my former life. But, I was excited about the birth of a new me.

Over the next few months my belly swelled, as did my day dreaming with my daughter. I would smooth my hand over my full moon round stomach and imagine I was caressing her sweet little head. I ached to just kiss those tiny toes that wriggled under my rib cage and prodded me awake in the depth of the night reminding me of her presence. Pregnancy is like one big acid trip. You float between moments of absolute euphoria, seeing colors, nature and people with new eyes and cosmic connection, then without warning you can be thrust into facing some deep dark skeletons which you have to deal with in order to melt back into a sublime state. There is nothing like pregnancy to hash up all those suppressed emotions and memories and to be made to shed them like an old skin before birthing a new one. And if you don't deal with your stuff during the generous nine months you are given then be sure it'll well up in birth and beyond.

During my labor with my daughter I had all sorts of denied emotions come up. It was like the more my hips and cervix expanded the more my embedded emotional dust got disturbed. Perhaps that why I opted out of my home birth and opted in for a spinal block. Numb the pain, oh god numb the pain. Numb the feelings, just numb everything. Yes said the doctors and yes says society. Suppress, deny, do not grieve, do not see the death of self as a rite of passage into birthing a strong grounded mother. I flipped the bird at vein chilling sedatives and detachment with the birth of my son. I stood bearing into the floor with bare feet and calling upon the millions of woman who had birthed before me, my birthing ancestors, to send their love and strength my way. Every contraction was met with a deep spiraling inside of myself. I can still see the place in my mind I went too. It was far far away, a small place that was filled with light and a glowing orange within its center. It was only in this place that I could handle the intense energy of my labor. Although I had wanted my husband to be my main form of support it was my mother holding me that felt most right. Draping into her arms and giving over the energy of my contractions to a seasoned birther and the woman who gave me the gift of life was one of the most poignant moments in my existence. It was like the contractions surged up through me from the earth, into her and then back into the earth. She was my copper wire, conducting all that power. Perhaps in that moment she became a new mother too.

I always liked the Christian notion of being reborn. But, I feel this does not happen once. We are constantly reborn on a daily, weekly and seasonal basis. Sowing our seeds of intention, shedding, hibernating and springing forth into a new life. I am not the mother I was four years ago or even a week ago. Its futile to think that this life is stable, we are constantly changing and evolving. Its merely the question of how do we flow down lifes river?

My birthing and motherhood experiences are shaping me in a way that I could not have fathomed. It is not what I thought and I have grieved those lost expectations. I am also not the mother I thought I would be. I'm weak in the areas I thought I was strong and strong in the areas I thought I was weak. I love it because I get to be creative and to be in touch with my inner child again. Birthing into motherhood has been a swirling pot of love, connection, dirty laundry, sleepless nights, loneliness, playing in imaginary castles, a lot of time outdoors, a lot of time indoors, a flow, a change, a constant rhythmic change consisting of high notes and low somber tones. In becoming a parent I have learned there is a constant teacher-student exchange. While we are mentoring our children through life we are also being taught by our greatest teachers. We grow and learn beside them. Welcome our babies to the world but do not forget to honor the birth of the mother.

Astrid xx