I received my copy of your Wise Women book. For now I’m content to open and spontaneously read a section. Each one feels like sitting on a Grandmothers lap, listening. Miigwetch
I am 64, the same age as when my mother passed. I see good friends leaving, spiritual leaders, who I thought would be on the planet as we went through “the change”. What ever that is..
Thank you for sharing your 16 yo self with us. I’m honored and now feel your depth even more palpable. So thanks again for sharing and being you!!
Lovely to feel you bubbling with happiness about your new book; while remembering some of your roots with us. Happy travels ..keep breathing (and singing)
It has been a week of devastating happenings and experiences in many lives. Poverty, whether it’s physical, emotional, mental and-or spiritual, leave deep traces. To heal, life creates happenings in which the scars, who unconsciously cover the splinters causing inner inflammations and broken bones, are ripped open again. It enables us to live through the raw and intense grief of being excluded from the ones and things we truly love. From feeling erased out of our own lives. It will all emerge, to bring the lost parts of our own being back and allow them to return home, to open ourselves so we can let them into our hearts again. And heal at deeper levels and in dimensions we never thought of before, present beyond our conscious imagination.
This week I created myself unconsciously such a happening that caused a pain and harmed someone else. Although unintended the harm was done. And I became excluded from a community I was just finding my way in. Reality is that whether an act is unintended or intended the action itself is harmful and pain inflicting. Whether one steps intended or unintended on a toe; it hurts. It is as simple as that.
The happening shocked me and at first I felt devastated. I should have noticed something was going wrong, but I overlooked it completely. Ignoring unconsciously reality, I didn’t act as needed. I tried everything I was able and could do to undo and repair the situation that caused the harm. It was too late and it was already out of my hands.
The embarrassment I felt evoked a rage and intense sadness. I couldn’t get my mind around what just happened. Going through the motions of my inner life I found a way (with support by being stopped and forced (invited) to turn inwards by my partner and love of my life; Ans) to open myself for my own and the realities of generations of my family. Living in poverty, through wars and being excluded from all that brings one to life … tears came from underneath my feet and opened me for the painful reality of feeling lost, being treated as a non-human, not belonging to anyone or anything.
Not being and feeling welcome(d) in my own life and the family I was born in, I was better off dead.
A thought I have had many mornings of my life while waking up. Based on pains that created a mindset who, with a deadly silence, where unspoken ignored and giving forward for generations.
A splinter I was still carrying with me.
For the first time in my life I realized it was and it is not mine and I could consciously distance myself from it.
I apologized to the one I harmed, received an answer and realized there where boarders we individually had to respect for our own well-being and both couldn’t cross.
The insights I gained made me forgive myself. I would have loved to be a part of the community, life decided differently and I can see now why this had to happen. I hope the one involved is fine too and if not that she will find her way to reconnect with herself too.
Minor incidents can cause great harm, or bring great harm to the surface. Imprisoning each other into towers where the light doesn’t shine and one becomes uprooted, creating another wasteland, as happened in Maid Maleen’s story, might be a first reaction. It isn’t an answer though to the underlying question ‘What ails thee?’.
A few weeks ago I wrote the following down on a piece of paper:
I want
no longer
be burdened
by the pains of yore.
Of my parents and
my ancestors.
I want to be
who I once was.
Free,
ruthlessly
Me.
I stared for a long time at the word ‘ruthlessly’ because it sounded so loveless. I know however it can also be filled with love, when it is used to heal from the scars and pains in togetherness with ourselves and the ones we respect, care for and even love for their being and the gifts they share. Even when we as humans have never met in person.
Dear Sharon, I am grateful for all the beauty and insights you brought through your writings and actions into my life and awareness. I would like to thank you for all of it. Reading the introduction and the first story of Wise Women made me smile again. It might be that the wind is changing and I have to let go of the shore to become the river, the sea, the water … the well I once was, I emerged from and cared for.
To enable myself to return to the place and the one(s) I truly belong to, so the ‘reincarnation’ of toxic, addictive patterns can transform into healthy ones and I can become one with all of myself and the spirit of life. Maybe the essence of the story of the Bone Mother …?
I'm 62 and I've been noticing and feeling much the same thing about artists like Lou Reed or Bowie as Dr Sharon has about Kris Kristopherson. Worst still, people whose work I adored or whom I felt a connection to - people who made my world a better place by being in it and making or writing things I loved - seem to be dropping off at an alarming rate. In recent times, Steve Albini and Mark Lineman hit me particularly hard.
Wise Women is an absolute gem! I loved 'The woman who became a fox' in the fairy tale salon back in the early Spring - was so thrilled to see her in your new book. That was a wonderful Newsletter - I'm almost ten years older than you and the importance of that time in life (mine in the the swinging sixties) can't be underestimated. So glad Chase has settled in - collies love being in a clan - and all those magical moments of snuggling up this winter with a rug of collies by the fire to look forward to!
Congratulations on the release of Wise Women! I have received my copy in the mail and look forward to reading it. Not all at once, but with breaks to allow the tales to sink in and tell their wisdom. 💗
So lovely to hear that Chase has now settled in Sharon and getting along with his new friends. What a lucky gentleman he is to have found you! Good luck with the forthcoming book tour and may you find many more wise women along the way! 🥀
I received my copy of your Wise Women book. For now I’m content to open and spontaneously read a section. Each one feels like sitting on a Grandmothers lap, listening. Miigwetch
I am 64, the same age as when my mother passed. I see good friends leaving, spiritual leaders, who I thought would be on the planet as we went through “the change”. What ever that is..
Thank you for sharing your 16 yo self with us. I’m honored and now feel your depth even more palpable. So thanks again for sharing and being you!!
Thank you for this, I've been going through a lot of late in my personal life, but this has given me profound hope to somehow keep going. Thank you.
‘There’s no way through it but through it’. - this could easily be my mantra moving forward!
Yep, don't let the bastards get you down, RIP Kris. You never walked alone.
I LOVED reading this post! Thank you >3
My copy landed this week and am loving reading it! Thanks for sharing your story about The Room, and for the collie update, they look happy souls.
What a wonderful tribe you found and they must have loved you ❤️
Lovely to feel you bubbling with happiness about your new book; while remembering some of your roots with us. Happy travels ..keep breathing (and singing)
Growing up and growing in …
It has been a week of devastating happenings and experiences in many lives. Poverty, whether it’s physical, emotional, mental and-or spiritual, leave deep traces. To heal, life creates happenings in which the scars, who unconsciously cover the splinters causing inner inflammations and broken bones, are ripped open again. It enables us to live through the raw and intense grief of being excluded from the ones and things we truly love. From feeling erased out of our own lives. It will all emerge, to bring the lost parts of our own being back and allow them to return home, to open ourselves so we can let them into our hearts again. And heal at deeper levels and in dimensions we never thought of before, present beyond our conscious imagination.
This week I created myself unconsciously such a happening that caused a pain and harmed someone else. Although unintended the harm was done. And I became excluded from a community I was just finding my way in. Reality is that whether an act is unintended or intended the action itself is harmful and pain inflicting. Whether one steps intended or unintended on a toe; it hurts. It is as simple as that.
The happening shocked me and at first I felt devastated. I should have noticed something was going wrong, but I overlooked it completely. Ignoring unconsciously reality, I didn’t act as needed. I tried everything I was able and could do to undo and repair the situation that caused the harm. It was too late and it was already out of my hands.
The embarrassment I felt evoked a rage and intense sadness. I couldn’t get my mind around what just happened. Going through the motions of my inner life I found a way (with support by being stopped and forced (invited) to turn inwards by my partner and love of my life; Ans) to open myself for my own and the realities of generations of my family. Living in poverty, through wars and being excluded from all that brings one to life … tears came from underneath my feet and opened me for the painful reality of feeling lost, being treated as a non-human, not belonging to anyone or anything.
Not being and feeling welcome(d) in my own life and the family I was born in, I was better off dead.
A thought I have had many mornings of my life while waking up. Based on pains that created a mindset who, with a deadly silence, where unspoken ignored and giving forward for generations.
A splinter I was still carrying with me.
For the first time in my life I realized it was and it is not mine and I could consciously distance myself from it.
I apologized to the one I harmed, received an answer and realized there where boarders we individually had to respect for our own well-being and both couldn’t cross.
The insights I gained made me forgive myself. I would have loved to be a part of the community, life decided differently and I can see now why this had to happen. I hope the one involved is fine too and if not that she will find her way to reconnect with herself too.
Minor incidents can cause great harm, or bring great harm to the surface. Imprisoning each other into towers where the light doesn’t shine and one becomes uprooted, creating another wasteland, as happened in Maid Maleen’s story, might be a first reaction. It isn’t an answer though to the underlying question ‘What ails thee?’.
A few weeks ago I wrote the following down on a piece of paper:
I want
no longer
be burdened
by the pains of yore.
Of my parents and
my ancestors.
I want to be
who I once was.
Free,
ruthlessly
Me.
I stared for a long time at the word ‘ruthlessly’ because it sounded so loveless. I know however it can also be filled with love, when it is used to heal from the scars and pains in togetherness with ourselves and the ones we respect, care for and even love for their being and the gifts they share. Even when we as humans have never met in person.
Dear Sharon, I am grateful for all the beauty and insights you brought through your writings and actions into my life and awareness. I would like to thank you for all of it. Reading the introduction and the first story of Wise Women made me smile again. It might be that the wind is changing and I have to let go of the shore to become the river, the sea, the water … the well I once was, I emerged from and cared for.
To enable myself to return to the place and the one(s) I truly belong to, so the ‘reincarnation’ of toxic, addictive patterns can transform into healthy ones and I can become one with all of myself and the spirit of life. Maybe the essence of the story of the Bone Mother …?
I wish you (your) well and good fortune!
Wholeheartedly,
Alja
I'm 62 and I've been noticing and feeling much the same thing about artists like Lou Reed or Bowie as Dr Sharon has about Kris Kristopherson. Worst still, people whose work I adored or whom I felt a connection to - people who made my world a better place by being in it and making or writing things I loved - seem to be dropping off at an alarming rate. In recent times, Steve Albini and Mark Lineman hit me particularly hard.
So good to see contented canines!
His death hit me too for nostalgic reasons.
I ran away from home to the Kootenays where I first heard his and Rita Coolidge's music, and it reminds me of that idyllic summer of discovery.
After many moves and adventures, I'm happy to have moved back to the Kootenays. Like so many others, I love it here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciSeDZHoQvE
…Or a room on the South Island of New Zealand with Māori men listening to this Pakeha tell her story…
Wise Women is an absolute gem! I loved 'The woman who became a fox' in the fairy tale salon back in the early Spring - was so thrilled to see her in your new book. That was a wonderful Newsletter - I'm almost ten years older than you and the importance of that time in life (mine in the the swinging sixties) can't be underestimated. So glad Chase has settled in - collies love being in a clan - and all those magical moments of snuggling up this winter with a rug of collies by the fire to look forward to!
Glad you’re enjoying it!
Beautiful! I love your tribe! Also, congratulations on Wise Women!
Congratulations on the release of Wise Women! I have received my copy in the mail and look forward to reading it. Not all at once, but with breaks to allow the tales to sink in and tell their wisdom. 💗
So lovely to hear that Chase has now settled in Sharon and getting along with his new friends. What a lucky gentleman he is to have found you! Good luck with the forthcoming book tour and may you find many more wise women along the way! 🥀