Celebrate

Celebrate

I chatted with my therapist yesterday.

Why do you need to know that, you may wonder.

First and foremost — it is imperative to me to illustrate to others (you, if you’re amenable) how we humans can be.

No, that’s actually second in importance.


First, is that I demonstrate to myself how and/or what it’s possible to be. Then to you.

It’s great to have a therapy session the day after your birthday. Especially if you’re me.

Because if you’re me you are in the process of giving birth to that self (or selves) in you that have been denied, malnourished, abandoned, neglected, abused, misused, maligned and hated.

You are also in the process of giving birth to that self (or selves) in you that have been magick, desired, adored, accepted, abundantly nourished, cared for, praised, honored, respected, and loved.

After 8 major episodes of being homeless in my rather short life — 57 years may be long-lived from a medieval times viewpoint. It is short in comparison to the linear measuring of the life of earth. It’s all in your perspective — I have relatively few pictures, ones that you can hold in your hand.

In fact, I have — four. I am extremely lucky in that they all mean something dear to me.

Oh, allright, I have five. If you count the fact that one of them I have two of.

That’s a tale in itself.

And, why yes! Yes, I will, thank you for asking — I will share it! :)

The same exact picture, of me 1 hour after birth.

One I was given in a hush-hush moment by my maternal grand-parents while I was still a teenager. It was one of the very few moments when a feeling was allowed to be shared from them. “Don’t tell anyone (meaning their daughter) that we gave you this.” It was just the picture, ripped out of an album, remnants of tape are on the back of it, if you flip it over.

The other I was given 12-20 years later when I met my biological father for the first time. (I was 32 at the time) He gave an exact duplicate of the picture to me in an exquisite frame amid ebullient expressions of “look at how wonderful you were”.

Both pictures were given because the givers celebrated “me” for those brief moments.

The unframed picture, resides in a protective plastic cover. The framed picture resides in my living space for anyone to see. Most particularly, for me to see (on a daily basis) and remember what a delightful spirit I was when I was born.

Imagine all the pictures that have been taken of you in your lifetime, to have four in your hand that represent your life — and one of those doesn’t even show you, it shows a dog that you barely knew when you were born.

What would you feel?


Moving on …

You release (by having to give away, throw away, give to thrift shops, or having them wrenched away) a number of things when you go homeless. No matter who you are. No matter where you are. No matter what you had or didn’t have.

You can view it as loss, or you can view it as releasing.

The choice is yours.

We all release things. We all feel.

The dismal facet of that is we often bury what we feel. Like a cat buries it feces. “Get your odour out of my mind.” “Get lost.” “Begone.” “Out damned spot.” “Somebody dump this trash.”

What I’d like you to consider transforming or encouraging others to transform is:
Evaluating your feelings as waste.

They are not waste.

They are not wrong.
Not a waste of time, space, or breath.
Not wasted moments.
Not wasted life essence.

Feelings are extremely valuable.

Celebrate them.

You can use them for an endless variety of things. You can create with them. You can transform with them. You can understand another with them. You can grow with them. You can communicate with them, or about them. You can … well … this could go on for pages.

You’ll find recent digitized pictures of me all over the internet. They show how I am physically now, how I was when I was homeless recently.  They show you a piece of me.

But these pictures … these four … show you, if you look at them with my perspective, bits of my spirit, my essence, my be-ing.

What in your life shows you your perspective? Your spirit? Your essence? Your being? How would you honor all those “represents”?

It’s okay to be … no matter what anyone else has told you in your past … it’s okay to be.

On your next birthday, do not hesitate to celebrate you. In fact, on this, -- what is most probably your unbirthday — NOW, at this moment

Celebrate you.


I adored Three Dog Night, it is meet that I end this piece for my birthday with the ritual of listening to them.

Here from the 70’s, This version allows the shaman in me to entrain -- a YouTube link

I make no secret that I am shaman. In fact, I celebrate it.

Some drumming, particularly shamanic drumming is about entrancement, repetition and entraining. Experiencing “the groove”.  We gravitate ... feel drawn ... to particular genres of music, have you ever explored why?

... and a comparison of the group much later in life (a much shorter, with way less repetition version)

Three Dog Night ..

Celebrate