It has been some time since you have heard from me. The story below reflects why. For those of you who know me personally, I would be so honored if you would witness this momentous time of my life. In so doing, you fortify me during this huge transition.
For those who don’t know me personally, this tale reflects the nature of my work and how I apply it to life… and how it richly rewards me in return.
Thank you.
Kathleen
I am in the Alchemical Cocoon… the place where new life is shaped out of the old. Metamorphosis.
My life is changing. Radically.
I am transitioning from my home in Los Angeles where I have raised my sons over the last 19 years to move in with my Lover. We’ve been engaged in a passionately ardent long distance relationship between Los Angeles and San Francisco for the last 12 years. And we finally made it! Finally grew our kids enough that we could come together.
I am leaving my sons who I have been raising for 27 years, the last 19 here in this home. Whereas most young adults leave to go to college, mine stayed to take advantage of what fulfilled their wild genius here in LA. We transformed our relationship many times over these last years. My sons are magnificent WILD criaturas and needed to be given their space to grow into their manhood and genius… as I did mine.
Messy. Ferocious. Profound. Not for the faint of heart!
We carved out that space in this home. Each of us has our own creative haven. I have many doors to separate my own wild criatura from theirs. Yet no matter the space we honored for each other, we have fully supported each other in our growing process. And though we are separating from the 24/7 reality we have lived all these years, our support and engagement with each other will continue to weave itself in a larger tapestry of life.
Laurence (in back), Nate (front left), Chris
I am leaving my beloved El Scorpion Canyon! the place which has support my sacred wild nature and for which I would otherwise not have survived this heavily populated land.
Climbs to Castle Peak where the Chumash performed their solstice rituals for two thousand years. Rituals in the the cave of Munits. Women’s mystery rites. Daily runs. Encounters with nature which are engraved on my wild soul.
I know this place and its inhabitants like most know their human communities. Mine is inhabited with great horned owls, coyotes, cottontail bunnies, rattle snakes, ground squirrels, tarantulas, honey bees, dragonflies, sage bush, live oak, El Scorpion creek, the winds whoooooshing songs in the trees and howls in the canyon gullies. The torrential rains reshaping the earth. The 118 degree scorching heat. The fires.
I am leaving my work as a music and movement teacher of hundreds of children I have taught over the last 17 years.
I am leaving the community, mostly made up of my sons gaggles of friends who have grown into brilliant young men and women who have shared in the many parties and solstice rituals, mural paintings, music happenings and numberless community feasts.
I am leaving my home… and the room I call a Womb of my own…
“I live in LA with my three sons, my snake and my canyon. I have a room of my own. I call it my ‘womb’. In it is my baby grand, walls covered with my paintings, my tree altar, and lots of floor space to move my body any way she wants. This is where I have been giving birth to the creations of my wild creative genius for the last 13 years.”
I am leaving the women I have taught the embodied arts to…
…and with whom I have shared years of ardent work with the deep bodypsyche, each of us supporting the other in our descents and ascents, our life challenges and joys of living more fully into life because of our efforts with the unconscious.
Of course we will continue. I love you!
I am also going through one of the most monumental changes a woman goes through in her life: the passageway to menopause. I am betwixt and between worlds…
No longer cycling but not quite there. Not many speak of this year passageway before one is officially in menopause. I have never experienced the metaphor of the cocoon as acutely as I do in this moment. The pain, the vulnerability, the bloating, the migraines, the ferocity, the weeping, the strength, heat, the power!
What is happening on a physical level directly links to the psyche… yes, bodypsyche. I feel the new self emerging like an Isle rising up out of the deep waters. And we know how islands are made. Can be violent at times! I see/feel/sense the new psyche embodying itself. Rad! And then at other times? The mists roll in and I dissolve back into the alchemical waters for more hidden metamorphosis to occur. Thankfully I know this is what is happening, otherwise I could think I was quite mad!
Big moment. Major changes. Metamorphosis on alllllllll levels of Being!
At the core of my changes is what I call the Bodypsyche. The deeper Self. The Wild Sacred Nature… ever unfolding, ever becoming, ever evolving itself towards Wholeness. Like a plant to the sun, it reaches for that which will nourish it and actualize its deepening intelligence. This is our Nature. And… it requires that we water it with our engagement for it to flourish.
I must tell you I hold this moment with such gratitude and JOY and AWE for allllllll that has transpired over these many years. I could not have imagined my life unfolding with such grandeur 19 year ago. On one level I felt its imminence! And yet I knew that it was going to require full engagement to create the life I sooooo desired.
When I arrived here in West Hills 19 years ago, I was anything BUT overjoyed to be living in the sprawling suburbia of the San Fernando Valley.
A death sentence to my Wild Criatura’s soul. When I chose this house to buy as our home, I didn’t know the canyon existed. It was one block away. I did feel something in this house though. I felt earth. Support. Strength. I turned to my husband that night and said.. “THAT is the house. We must get it.”
Everything I saw painted a different picture. Suburbia. Public school system. Chain stores and malls. The difficulties in my marriage which resulted in divorce. Raising three young sons with my wild creative temperament who wanted NOTHING to do with domestication and the ways of this world. I did not know how I could survive! I already knew my nature enough to know I could not betray it. And… my sons’ mothering was at stake. My life was at stake!
I suffered horribly at first… until I stopped and CHOSE my life and allllll that I had to face.
I then sought out the wisest teachers of the psyche who could help me work with the work in the unconscious for my personal transformation and the changes I wanted to make in the world. Through it I healed my wounds and my perception of who I am and my place in the world. I transformed my relationships and EVEN the place itself. Yes, this dire seemingly soulless land called suburbia changed into the most exquisite heart-filled reality!
Had it not been for my canyon… had it not been for my work with Marion Woodman, my thesis at the Insitute of Transpersonal Psychology, my training in authentic movement, my training with Aviva Gold, and my courage to live from my deepest wild creative nature… I would have died.
I would have left. My sons would be horribly wounded with the loss of their mother, or worse, lived with a dead mother in their midst, like so many others.
So no matter where you are… who you find yourself with… what you are doing… there is a POWER within you to transform the whole story… your life and where you live… into a Legend. One in which the heroine goes on an epic journey to finally come home to herself. To her sacred wild genius nature and live it in the world.
It is right here in suburbia, in those damn public schools, in the challenges you face with your child EVERY DAY, in the laundry, your blood cycles, with your friends, your job, the weather…….
Allllllllllll of it is the dark material you need to alchemize your existence into the true gold of living that the mystics, Marion Woodman, Carl Jung and Zorba the Greek talk about. This is the journey of embodied enlightenment. The deepest most profound journey of existence one can live as our one precious life.
It’s all here in this moment, in your life, waiting for you to wake up to its presence, to know how to unleash it, nourish it, midwife it, live it like the sacred wild human you are.
Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
~ Mary Oliver ~
It is out of this material, this story, this life I have alchemized, that my work is sourced from. And yes, it too is going through a metamorphosis. A new form soon to be offered to those who desire it.
My programs exceeded my imaginings last year thanks to the exceptional women who chose to journey with me into the wild terrain of their sacred psyches. They gifted me tremendously and I will be forever grateful to them. Thank you!
I am now changing the form… like all the other changing forms in my life right now. The work will continue to be with the sacred wild psyche I have been trained in and live my life so fully from.
These are the Sacred Wild Ways. The Tao to living the one precious life you have fully and richly and creating the legacy from which others will be blessed.
Thank you for witnessing to this very precious sacred moment in my life.
