Not Nice

Being nice has always been a personality trait that I have been associated with. My actions or habits have been a long suffering ingrained response within me that is hard wired to my very existence. Pleasing, accommodating, friendly, delightful, agreeable... Ugh! I can't help myself! My superlative in high school was "best personality".. how does that even happen right?

Niceties were bred into the very core of who I am from the time I was a little girl. Home, school, church.. "Be Nice, mind your manners, don't be disagreeable", I taught the same things to my own children, it's just the way it was, but WTH.. I know it is what we need for society as a whole and of course it is important, but being nice, at all cost, that being taught directly to a young woman reaches far deeper into the later part of her life and in how she deals with everyone and the world for the rest of her life..

Anyone have trouble saying "no" or being less then accommodating? That alone, brings a world of hurt to a young woman especially when she is set out into life with wolves in every corner and a raw steak cinched tight around her very nice neck.

At the cusp of 50 I have to ask myself, what does "Nice" mean anyway? I think if we were to look in the dictionary for meaning there would be a picture of a "nicely" woven door mat is my guess. I don't fein being friendly and agreeable as unimportant or unnecessary, it is apart of how we all get along. But... I do think instead of just being nice, we all could practice a little bit more patience, maybe a response, instead of a react kind of attitude, being present with others, becoming a better listener... That to me boils down into a much more life giving and authentic style of behavior, warmer. Kindness or being kind, to me that has a whole other vibe and it doesn't have much to do with being nice.

Kind is another four letter word that doesn't have the same connotations as Nice. Fuck Nice.. Truly. Who gets anywhere in life being nice. Not that I'm going anywhere any time soon, but hey.. this is more of what I'm talking about, a little to the left possibly? Oh God, I just lost an entire political party. Lol.. :) Maybe parts of my family, grateful that my husband is a part time reader here. Ha! Patience people, I'm getting there. :)

Moving from Nice to Kind is such a simple shift. It's like a softer overall sense of respect and love to be kind. Nice feels like a job. One that you don't like and are always trying to worm your way out of.

Moving forward, today especially as I am already backlashing from my niceness and am noticing that I stepped in to it knowing what it would be and BAM.. I'm already wanting to quit that job and run to the mountains to sit in the woods alone. I am learning. From now on, I want to be kind. I am going to try to pause before I open my well trained mouth and calm my knee jerk responses to "act" and with a little prayer, practice and opportunities for a "do over" I have every hope that this process will be better for everyone concerned. When it all boils down, what "nice" creates in its aftermath is in no uncertain terms, nice.

From this space today and into my present future I will begin with and seek kindness first. Not because I don't want to be nice, but more so because I want to be sincere and authentic, that doesn't sound so bad does it?

So to any of the folks that I may not be as friendly, pleasing, delightful, agreeable or jumping readily  to accommodate you at first sight, take no offense, be patient with me. I'm just trying to be kind.

In Love & Peace Always,
Denice

Making Medicine

Over the last week I have been putting together the twelve tincture medicinals that have been extracting and steeping at home since the last full moon.. It takes about thirty days to create a medicinal tincture from fresh or dried herbs and I've begun creating my pharmacopeia apothecary! Say that outloud!! I love saying that and I am in love with this folk medicine process! What a humble blessing it is to take what most people would perceive as weeds and create a healing tea, tonic or tincture without any need for the box store pharmacy establishments. I am learning so much about this process and am taking my time of course because it is also a process of patience, wellness and mindfulness. Oooozing GRATITUDE for the journey I am on.

Next month I will begin my Herbalist Apprenticeship in Rockport, ME. Up until now I have been self directed mostly through curiosity and self discovery. I have used my own concoctions and shared them with most of my close family and friends, all with very positive results and encouragement.


My upcoming apprenticeship will allow me to work with some amazing healers and medicine makers and I'll receive the knowledge and confidence to make and administer herbal medicine as a clinician if I choose to go down that path in the future. It is an ever evolving process and with spring fast approaching I am beside myself with all of the foraging opportunities that are coming and I'll be able to follow the growing seasons, learning and creating the medicines that will complete my array of offerings full circle..

It'll take digging up dandelion greens to a whole other level! That one plant in all of it's parts; leaf, flower and root support the digestive system, urinary system and the pancreas. It is  cleansing agent for the kidneys, a diuretic and targets the microflora in the belly to aid digestion! Who knew right!! Our ancestors did that's who ~ Crazy!

Talk about a Spring Cleanse after a long winter.

 So as a tea, tincture or tonic... this annoying little plant in all its powerful glory is amazing. I think about how resilient they are and how hard they are to eradicate from the lawns that we covet so. Lol.. Maybe we're supposed to notice that. They are powerful and fight back! A clue perhaps from nature herself.


So any who... :) I made my medicine this week and hope to begin to add more of it to my daily routine. I brewed a growler full of Chaga Ginger & Nettle Tea during the storm and with a little honey it's amazing! Hubby is actually more partial to that now then coffee... and being a Die Hard coffee beast that he is, that says something.

Why?? You might ask is this even something that you are doing when it is so much easier to just go to Walmart... To that I say~ Exactly!!!

Have an amazing weekend~

Be Well & Peace To You Always,
Denice

The HOPE We Have...

Everyday I wake up and do the same things... Not too much changes in that routine unless I sleep beyond my alarm, or have to get up and out for one reason or another, but mostly my morning consists of a well timed pot of coffee, perking and popping happy hissing sounds as it burps its way into  the full carafe. I don't shed much light in the house at first, if it's still dark I light a few candles and one lamp in the far space of the family room and begin my dailyness.

Sitting at one end of the kitchen table on a Mexicali Blues cushion for good spiritual groundedness, I pile up my inspirational friends in the form or books, devotionals, gurus and a well creased composition book that I buy in bulk during the back to school sales for 10 cents a piece, knowing they'll be full by the time the next academic year arrives. One full comp book of writing a month is about what it works up to and I've been writing like this for close to 25 years. My sister has promised me that she will not read them and will burn them for me if I die unexpectedly and hubby has assured me he has zero interest in what I write in those volumes so doesn't ever nose around them or make me feel like I need to lock away my written verbal process to feel safe from intruders. He actually gets the audio version later each morning so really doesn't need to read them after all. Ha! :)

My spiritual practice has evolved from these writings. I feel very strongly that whenever you are conveying your inner most thoughts via the written word you are channeling a higher self or a deeper voice that most definitely I can attest to not being my own from time to time...most of the time. Divine Intervention is real people!! :) Days like that leave me exhausted but fully alive and present with a knowing that is wild and bizarre. I am humbled on those days. But in those spaces it seems to cultivate HOPE.. It opens up a what's next channel and if I'm listening most days it's spot on.

Hope is crazy! Sometimes I look all around me and I think, "OH GOD!! What is going on here?!?"... Life, right?? We all see it. We all feel it, sometimes closer then other times, but man~ It comes both barrels some days. I am not in any personal crisis at all right now, thank goodness, but I feel the crisis in others and see the crisis in so many places that it's overwhelming. Hope though, keeps us from jumping don't you think? Hope gives us pause. Hope is a drink of water and a breath that we didn't have or couldn't perceive two moments prior to the intake of what is "too much" to handle at once. Hope is what lets us trust and believe that there is a bigger and more powerful force that holds things in balance even when the eyes cannot see and the ears cannot hear.. Hope is a blessing. A pause, a breath.

"A shred of hope". A shred isn't much, but it's enough. It's enough to receive exactly what we need when we question, when we deny, when we are feeling, "What the hell did I do all of that for??!". Grab a carrot later and peel it. Pull out the grater and shred that baby up... take one shred and lay it on the table. It's not much is it?
But it's enough. Today in our culture we need BIG energy.. BIG results and we want them yesterday. Faster, better and we skim right over the surface of our lives. No wonder we don't see the cracks. We notice them once they become a fracture to our well being, our sense of purpose and life force.. When we feel defeated and tired, hopeless... What a shitty place to be and it can happen really fast sometimes. That shred of hope is all it takes though~ powerful in its presence and it only takes one. That's crazy hope!

My spiritual practice had been on a different track over the last six months or so. In christian circles it's called a dessert, in Native American teachings it would be a quest possibly. Buddhism would refer to it as a path or a journey.. It's been more of a dessert for me, a realignment of sorts I guess. I would still write everyday, but I didn't leave room beyond the writing to be led deeper, to give myself the time to sink or listen. My phone has been the culprit and I've given myself permission to keep it off, silenced, upside down for good measure and well out of reach in the morning or at least until I have given the third part of myself time each day.. Spirit.



Mind, Body, Spirit... Keeping that simple balance alone has healed each crack and fracture I've endured over the last 25 years and creates a deeper hope for the journey I am on and whatever that journey may be. I'm not sure anymore. But what I do know is that I am healed from the complacent space I have been in and I am open. I have HOPE, and today it's abundant enough to share!

In Love Always,
Denice

Unraveling

The older I seem to get the more I have noticed that I am in good company, especially when I am alone.

We are all so different. That is such an anomaly to me at this transformative time in my life. My history of sameness was cultural, and not causing a ruckus was the goal. Safety in numbers I suppose. Growing up in a large family, the youngest in a troop of six kids, a gazillion nieces, nephews, aunties, uncles, partners and such, we had quite a throbbing lot of deep familial sameness. We came from that space, all of us. But we were not the same.

The past few years I've re-birthed myself in a way, raised my family, refeathered my empty nest, I have discovered that although I love and cherish each and every one of my "people".. I am not them and they are not me. WE are not collective or carbon copies of each other. We are all beautifully unique and incredible individuals. Who knew?!!

Coming from New England.. Maine specifically. We locals are "a rigid and stuffy lot" some might say. Ha! It's not always easy to break in to the tribes that have lived here forever and whose roots run deep below the ledges of the islands in my midcoast home town. We run thick with family ties, deep connection and generations of tough love and belonging. But we still are not all the same. Even when we belong.

Personally, I have always felt different from the whole. Not in any special kind of way, or not the milk man of olds bastard child, but just different. Unique maybe?  That seems like a better word. "Different" used to feel like something that you should avoid, something that you wanted nothing to do with. Don't call attention to yourself, unless you are called to attention.. Now, that's a whole other blog post. Lol.

Today approaching 50 I want nothing more then to be different. Separate. Unhinged. Independent of whatever it is that keeps me the same as..  Set apart. Myself. Understood. Heard. Sounds like I want a divorce! Ha.. Hardly.. But it might feel like that to my patient 30 year husband that has been helping me sort this all out for the last couple of years since all three boys flew the coop.

It has been a process. One that I have found is easier said then done, especially when you weren't even a whole self right from the beginning, and when you have been woven deeply into an enmeshed and intricate design of a life already lived, it gets tricky.

So in this, I am finding that sometimes I pull hard on an old thread from one direction and it tightens in the opposite.. unraveling in all of the wrong ways and I am left with a bound up mess that leaves me frustrated and angry. Other times it slips out ever so gently with no effort at all and is a welcome relief.

A simple analogy I guess... one most can relate to in some way or other at some time in their lives.  I don't want to unravel completely, that would be scary and is not my intention here. But what I do know is that I have to listen to that deeply forged desire within me. That still small voice that tugs at my heart and the more I am in my own company I find I'm getting glimpses of her.

In the silence and breath of the morning, she rises and stands all by herself, raising her hand and says. Me Too!

In Love~ Denice

Words Are Powerful

Random thoughts reeled through my mind as we navigated the final stretch of mountain curves on our way home from our last camping trip this past fall...
"the deeper I seem to go into the woods the more I am truly getting to know myself." This was new to me, profound and it stayed with me over the last few months.

Those thoughts returned to me today.

2018 has ushered in, ever so gently under the frigid temperatures in our snow covered New England. Winter is a peaceful time for me. Not everyone thinks this way of course so I tend to keep my love of it well wrapped and hidden. Winter brings me time to create and always leaves me with a inspired energy.

So... at the beginning of the New Year over the last four years I have chosen a WORD for myself and that word will be carried with me in a variety of ways as the days move forward and the seasons unfold. These last few years this has been my practice. Why? No big reason, it just works for me and gives me a focus I suppose. I am a daily journal writer, eclectic mixed media artist, cook & creative maker so all the while as I write, create, cook or birth things into existence I maintain the plumb line of my chosen word within all of the pieces of work that come through me. Hence the new word each year. It could get boring otherwise. :)

Choosing the word isn't really up to me. It, finds, me, over a series of weeks or days prior to the new year. Sometimes it glaringly comes right out and waves it's hands jumping up and down.... pick me, pick me!!! In years past the WORDS have been, BALANCE. ACTION. COMPASSION & LOVE... They all came at times in my life that I am certain were related to my own journey and path. They weren't a daily incessant task to tend to, vying to be front and center but, they most definitely were woven into the fibers of my life and still stand out in my verse, memories, color choices, textures, tastes and moments that are hard wired to my present and recent past.

My word for 2018 is EMERGE. This word came to me directly one day when all I could think of to write in my journal was this line.

"I am silent and overwhelmingly present. I can no longer just sit here being no one." EMERGE

Just like that. This other self that has been on the peripheral edge of so many "others", for almost fifty years is peeling away feet first, straight out of the woods. EMERGING

In my writing and in my life now I am seeing deeply and forging ahead. My life is lighter. I am free. Unhinged. An EmptyNester. I've begun to notice everything. There is no hold on me now and I can reach beyond where I have been tethered. EMERGE

Words are powerful. I am trusting this is the time and that all of who I have been is leading me into who I will become. Sheds from another life lie around my feet. Stepping out of the rippled fragments of what was layered and attached to so many I move away slowly and purposeful, shaking the last pieces of expectation and dried blood off of my boots and follow a new path.

A new path that only I can see and what I see, is beautiful and full of hope. EMERGE.

Cheers! Denice