Teen Talking Circles

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Comment by linda wolf on August 28, 2009 at 11:56am

sounds superb, miss g - can't wait to see you. Teddy, is coming also, you don't know him but perhaps you could connect and come together??? his email is teddylw@gmail.com - since we're picking you both up from the ferry, it would be super cool if you came together. If you can't get an email back today, let me know and I'll give you his number tomorrow. xolinda

Comment by Georgia Cammann on August 28, 2009 at 11:20am

I will definately be there! Youthful energy is amazing to be around. I get the wisdom of that in exchange for any empowerment I can offer them in the way of added life experience! It's such a blessing to me to be able to hold up a vision of a young person's higher self for them to see until they're able to do it for themselves. Sometimes it's the very first time they're even aware of it's existence. Although I truly believe every kid is very special in their own, unique way, I'm also beginning to realize the kids I've met from Bainbridge are special in a particular way that's not always experienced in the greater Seattle area. Many of them feel like very old, wise souls...ahead of their time. Hmmmmmm...

Comment by linda wolf on August 28, 2009 at 10:46am

Everyone, FYI - this Sunday from 3 - 6pm is a time for the younguns to meet the olders over here at our Gaia House. If you've been interested in starting a teen circle, please come and meet us. We can give you directions if you live in the area. warmly, linda & eric

Comment by Daniel Deardorff on June 18, 2009 at 4:56pm

Just a note on "honoring the crones and elders in our society and the unique life-lessons they have to share"; check out the great work being done by Judith-Kate Friedman through her organization Songwriting Works

Comment by Georgia Cammann on June 18, 2009 at 4:08pm

Stephanie,
Thank you for your wonderful, expressive and insightful response. It has always bothered me that our western society as a whole, doesn't embrace our human experience throughout our entirelives for the gift each & every stage is and the wisdom it brings. The ancient societies "got" this and and you obviously recognize it as well, although there are gifts in modern, western culture (esp. technology), there are MANY things of Spirit on an evolutionary scale that have been lost....precious, meaningful things.
I have noticed in my life, when one door closes, another one opens and what can sometimes look like loss is actually just a shift. Your comment about "seeing with new eyes" made me smile because I have it on several of the pages of my website because I know the power and truth behind those words.
I love your willingness and independence to trust your body instead of modern medicine regarding your profuse bleeding. I experienced a very similar thing. I stood up one morning and was shocked to find I had literally created a big pubble of blood on my floor....disconcerting to say the least! I too, went to my Dr. and an appt. was set up to cauterize my uterus to stop the bleeding. It w/b a 2 wk. wait and almost from the time I made it, my gut began to tell me to shift my perception of the whole thing.
I know from my work as an energetic healer, our blood actually has an essence of it's own and holds DNA memory beyond the rest of our physical body. I'm also intimately aware of the very real power our mind and intentions can have in affecting our physical world. I began to meditate on this and to look at this blood as a cleansing and "opening up" of myself instead of the "sacrifice" it looked like previously. I started to see the gifts doing that emcompassed...freedom...creativity on a different, very inspired level....the strong sense of self that comes in at this stage of life....the clarity that brings me to speak my truth and stand in my personal power as the strong, loving woman I am....the fading need to put limits on myself by following social, intellectual and spiritual rules that made no sense...the ability to recognize REAL BEAUTY and celebrate it....etc.
My bleeding slowed and stopped as my perception changed and I started to feel deep Gratitude for the experience. I can truly say today, even with "perfect imperfection", my life is full of magic (which I shifted my perception on the meaning of as well!) and I wouldn't change a thing about my age.....56 years young!
I would love to see a conciousness pushed forward even more in honoring the crones and elders in our society and their unique life- lessons they have to share, esp. with the next generations. I have no doubt some of us are destined to be the pioneers for these shifts.

Comment by stephanie on June 18, 2009 at 11:37am

...i realized after I shared this poem that it is published as part of the Blue Melon Poetry Series here....

Comment by stephanie on June 18, 2009 at 8:09am

Hi Georgia!

Yeah, for my part, I think you are getting it just right. The changing of dress, the seeing with new eyes, the letting go are all images that resonate with me.

I have often contemplated the menopause as a return of the earth spirit to matter and the challenge one of psychophysico re integration of the spirit of matter into the soul of the world. So what women hold in the holding of blood may well be a negative capability regarding the potentially possible with this regard.

My own entry into menopause announced itself in a dramatic way. I began to bleed, normally at first, then heavily. And then, even more heavily until one evening when I sit down to dinner, forget my beverage and, getting back up from my chair, discover the seat of my chair is drenched in blood. At this moment, with things getting worse, I went to see the gynocologist. It had already been thirty days nonstop and I feared the worst. After extensive tests reveal there was no pathology of any kind I timidly asked what to do for the bleeding. The medical profession recommends hystorectomy and hormone replacement. THAT is the recommendation across the board for care of the womb in western medicine for aging women's bodies. When I said I didn't want to do that since there was no real pathology. I was told I had to do that because I would bleed to death otherwise.

I went from the doctor's office down to the local health food store and purchased an organic herb made from the chaste tree. The dried fruit of the chaste is central to the care of female reproductive hormones. I knew of it from the ancient Greeks, having found a notation at one time in researching something else that the Greeks used chaste to maintain female hormonal balance.

I took an overdose, what you do in the beginning to shock your body into an adjustment. And then, I took a regular dosage thereafter. My bleeding became normal almost immediately and stopped altogether a couple days later.

Like yourself I realize the value of images and dreams and as a poet and mythologer I return images to see what psyche is doing. So I happen to have poetry from this experience.

I went to one of these poems after I read your post this morning to see what that experience was like and how I experience this now. I am grateful for the poems because I had forgotten what connections psyche made that got me through the way I am not through it but in it.

It is my understanding that there is some attempt in union between the spiritual and material principle during menopause and that this is no signature but the voice of the thing itself speaking with images, itself.

The space that opens...what you are saying is as an 'emptying' and then 'letting go' I can think also as the vanishing of the anima/psyche/soul into the shape of itself at the dark or depth point in integration of the spirit with matter; an 'in/to the blue'.

Here is one poem and within the poem is a bidirectional linking to what must've been two major expressions central to re turning & further poetizing images going on for me in menopausal psyche. (I am sharing this because of the accent on dress, and eyes and your opening notion that this soul as muse is a wonderful teacher. So glad you posted with such care. Warmly, -stephanie


Elle (and the bird of dawn) At Midnight

Eyes become air and grapple Elle disabled—the ability of the unable eyes
3X darkened blue, her hue, Elle is the darkness darkened as
as deepenings in the darkened and deepenings in the darkened pupil
showing eyes student of Elle years—my eyes her airs
put on; repeat to no one what they cannot say for sure or see
for certain in...what will undress under sky's night when bent days
blue purple spilling over the edge in untidy messes
Elle in stepping, steps me over and into the porcelain midnight shower

always withdrawing, my parts pour over me and down
and couple with hers at the dark interval Elle draws
drawing the red us within ourselves & then, too
blue

draws the bath withdrawing
& the goddess bathes with red
something holy and sacrificed—Elle at midnight
will you make white again this blue leaky life
it spills in tiny years my bereft and tattered silkens
in worming threads of bled verticality down my thighs

does Elle see the way I do— in uneven eyes?
tincture blue the dark pupil into which the water
mixes red, turns, drains & re turns O

Elle, if my eyes see without matrix, then turn the water neither in nor on
turn the water into drunkenness slurring the way eyes see knowing Elle
& knowing along the edges of midnight, eyes

are terrified, too

Comment by linda wolf on June 18, 2009 at 8:05am

I love these posts. Of course, I love you Georgia, and am always amazed by you. And Stephanie, you are a treasure! When I wrote that I am in a menopausal like transitional time of my life, I meant it as a metaphor, but I love the way it's turned out. We women have bodies that so long to tell their stories!!!

My menopause was interrupted by getting pregnant at 50 years old, when I thought I was done with getting pregnant! I also fell in love with a young man 22 years younger when I was 48, and kind of did my 20s over again with him. Oh dear... so many stories. So much love spilled all over the air from my high flying bird-self...and so much blood shed into the steel pipes of hospitals, clinics, and those white porcelain thrones...and sometimes holes in the earth, and so many salty tears and Kleenex balled up and crumbling. Ahhhh life! What hurts and blesses us and burnishes our souls....

Sweet women, wombs a glow, bellies out, heads tall, all dark, light, full of dark, light - what a joy to be connected with you, two!

Comment by Georgia Cammann on June 17, 2009 at 10:25pm

Hi you guys...
I hope I was able to get the main context of this as I'm a little pressed for time but plan to read it in depth later. I do feel the "push" and I've learned to trust here right now though " for what it is worth"....I think menopause for women, is a wonderful teacher that can give us lessons that can be applied to many of my life experiences...
For myself as a female... a creator... a mother-bear warrior....I went through a grievng process of sorts, when peri-menopause/ menopause began it's process in MY body! By then, thank Goddess, I realized (at least at some level) that when one door closes, another one opens. I think that's true of many, many things. I personally emerse myself in the grieving process on whatever it may be....I mean really grieve it.. thru ritual, artistic expression, tears, self-care... whatever works for each individual...I honor it...I deserve it.... females esp. have never been encouraged to show our real feelings....men too for that matter! Anyway, even though it's a process and not an event, I finally got to the point where I'm willing to look at the whole situation through new eyes. That's kind of a "letting go"... and ta-da!! It never fails to bring forward something amazing!
My intuition opened up in a BIG way when my body went through the chemical changes of mid-life. Then the adventure began! I had amazing dreams at least once a month that were like nothing I had ever experienced. They would last the entire night, pick up where they left off if I had to get up in the middle of the night... full of information. I actually researched this to see if anyone else had these experiences. I found other women did have these or something else "out of the norm". I saw it for one of those gifts life sometimes gives us, esp. when we let go of "what was" and embrace the new experience. There's always fear in change but the silver lining is it always allows us to grow and gain courage to take more calculated risks that help us continue to grow. It's always seemed to me that I don't grow when things are going along smoothly and I have a hard time thinking there's anything about "complacency" that appeals to me!
I make a concerted effort to stay open to the experience and what it can teach me and then i "let go" and trust the process that it will turn out as it's meant to. It gets easier w/ practice but always seems to take somewhat of a concerted effort for me!

Comment by linda wolf on June 17, 2009 at 4:13pm

many thanks! I appreciate all the beauty I can walk in! Ditto... and more again.

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