Sunday

Posted on March 26, 2023 by Cecilia Steger

Awakened by a pack of howling coyotes, I couldn’t get back to sleep. I don’t mind the sound of wildlife outside as long as I am inside (and so are my pets). I ended up drinking coffee at 6 am, awake since 5.

Maybe instead of doing today what I THINK I need to be doing, I just go with the flow. I still do the daily business like walk the dog, eat food and drink water but maybe JUST BE. No other plans or expectations. Maybe, relax and read and work on my puzzle and walk while listening to birdsong. Maybe, just be with self and meditate in silence, practice some gentle yoga stretching and show compassion for self in real ways.

The more I do self-care and intuit my agenda, the more enthusiastic I feel about life. Go figure. A rebel through and through. The more I indulge the more worthy I feel. Many years of structured, restricted and unhealthy habits, the more I need to loosen up.

It’s simple really but not easy.

To find self-esteem I must do esteemable acts. So I encourage myself to think inspirational thoughts and ingest and inhale only healthy brain and body food. This includes what I say to myself and what I do for myself.

I need to be my own success story.

Yin/Yang

Posted on March 25, 2023 by Cecilia Steger

One of my favorite things is to write with my hands around a pen and hear it scrape across the paper. Even gel pens have a sound.

I can’t imagine dipping into an inkwell just as the younger generations can’t imagine hours of practicing cursive. I am glad my kids were exposed to cursive handwriting before it stopped being taught in schools. It will become a lost art just as pretty journals and day planners become an extension of one’s creativity and more like a hobby.

It’s the pull and push of life. The friction and the smooth release. The tension and the languid exhale.

Day Dreaming

Posted on March 24, 2023 by Cecilia Steger

I can distinctly remember staring out of schoolroom windows and just drifting, checking out, having to snap myself back into the class when my name was suddenly called or just lured back into reality by a word, a bell, a sound, a gesture, a whisper or a movement as slight as a note being passed.

I’m still fantasizing, imagining and speculating ad nauseam when I journal in the morning. It’s a fact a life for me.

For example, I see a forest of white birches and cedars, blue spruce pines and Japanese maples. I smell the smoke of a wood fire warming a home protected from cool elements. I feel the fresh sting of snappy weather upon the face while wrapped in scarves, mittens and an old ski jacket. I hear the sound of leaves rustling and twigs crunching as tender footed deer step lively and chirpy squirrels scramble up trees. I taste snow on my tongue as it melts in my mouth with that odd metal flavor of icy water.

I think I am missing the mountains. I meant it as a joke that we might have to wait for the spring thaw and I KNEW I should have knocked on wood for I fear this actually might turn out to be true for the mountains are calling but the snow keeps on falling.

Maybe it’s Love

Posted on March 23, 2023 by Cecilia Steger

In a group therapy meeting not too long ago, I got to lead the group and had to pick the topic. I decided to pick how to speak of the good side of the people in our lives that we came to fix or have better relationships with instead of the usual venting I was getting bored and frustrated with. I truly believe we can only change ourselves, remove ourselves or alter our perceptions – not others.

Yet, there IS a potent contender that can bring on change and is invisible. It’s called love and I include all its derivatives. Love changes us and “them” and therefore transforms relationships. This is the spiritual side of counseling and life that is sometimes bypassed, mishandled or just plain ignored.

Love filters and spreads and infects us all with empathy. It washes away resentments, forgives human frailty and allows compassion to soften our hearts. It can transform your belief system, release you from victimhood and heal all wounds.

We heal by loving ourselves. We can then see the light of all we are connected with and the spirit within where it is housed. Instead of flaws, we observe twists of fate. With love we open our minds as wide as a sky. Rather than seeing others as having relentless obsessions of the mind, we soothe their anxiety by becoming love, holding sacred space for them to unwind and process fear.

Y6 – Day 12 – Alphabet nights

Posted on March 22, 2023 by Cecilia Steger

When I can’t get back to sleep in the middle of the night I run through the alphabet and go through a makeshift gratitude list in my mind’s eye instead of counting lambs hopping over a fence. And mostly it works. I have taken the idea and extended it and even just used acronyms or other themes like naming vegetables in alphabetical order.

Last time I wrote acronyms in my head, I actually wrote them down because I thought I was brilliant in the middle of the night:

ABC – Art Beauty Creativity

DEF – Definite Energy Flow

GHI – Goddess Holds Inspiration

JKL – Joy Kindness Love

MNO – Money Needs Ownership

PQR – Peace Quiet Relax

STU – Stay Tuned Unconditionally

VWXYZ – View the World with Excitement and Youthful Zeal

Try it next time you can’t fall back asleep.

Y6 -Day 11 – Puzzling

Posted on March 21, 2023 by Cecilia Steger

For Christmas recently, my friend P sent me a puzzle of baby Yoda in a Santa suit. That got me on a tear and I have since put together many puzzles of 100-750 pieces and been gifted a felt puzzle wooden table that you set up on a slant with 4 drawers to parse out however you want to organize your pieces. I prefer making the frame first and then assign pieces to each drawer according to color.

I have since that day also gifted puzzles and we are sharing them once solved for the next person. One thousand piece puzzles await in a drawer for that day when I feel I have some experience and success behind me.

Meanwhile, so far after around eight completed puzzles, have lost one piece in just two. They are like socks. No one knows what happens to them. They just disappeared.

Y6 – Day 10 – Goddess Book Club 2023

Posted on March 20, 2023 by Cecilia Steger

Book club has changed and grown. We started before Covid and then went on zoom and now we just stay online since we have some out of the area participants. It’s just easier. We try to read women writers about women’s issues usually. Therefore many of the books we read shine a light on how marginalized, difficult and unfair our female ancestor’s lives have been.

Our first book of the year was “The Bookwoman of Troublesome Creek”, by Kim Michele Richardson. A lovely written book about the hardships endured by the Appalachian mountain folk of Kentucky and the existence of blue people therein. I don’t want to give anything away but if you like books and have never heard of the blue folk of Kentucky then this is one well researched historical novel on your list.

Our February title was “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan” by our own CA author Lisa See who joined our discussion on zoom and added much rich background info to how she researched the book, visited its historical location and even interviewed villagers with a translator to get precise memories and data so she could spin her tale around the true events. This was an extremely well written and prose like account of a secret language Chinese women once used many centuries ago. Her explanations were invaluable and we were all unanimous we want to read another one of her books next year.

We are so lucky to have writers who investigate little known facts, ferret out detailed experiences and circumstances so traditions we could have lost forever are made real to us the reader via skillfully creating stories around them so we can examine, digest and discuss amongst other trusted women; our thoughts, feelings and even our dedication to making it better in some small or large way just by our having our Goddess Circle Book Club.

Y6 – Day 9 – Forager Crafts

Posted on March 19, 2023 by Cecilia Steger

Today I went to visit and support my daughter as she set up her first new business booth at an artisan faire in old town Pasadena. Although she’s been active and had previously resuscitated a crafts and events firm, this is her newly formed sustainable and eco-conscious company she owns completely on her own. We are very proud of her and her impeccable taste, common sense knack for what folks desire to create and hard work ethics combined with hard earned business savvy has skyrocketed her off to a superb start and we wish her nothing but success and happiness as it takes off!!!!

Y6 – Day 8 – Garden Time

Posted on March 18, 2023 by Cecilia Steger

Time to plant some flowers before the rains come again.

Some purple and yellow color for the front door, including 2 early girl tomatoes and 2 organic zucchini. Lavender, mums and drought tolerant plants may be moved from pots to ground later next month. Meanwhile, our winter scene in Running Springs is dour. Another snow dump of maybe 2-3 feet expected this coming week.

The evenings as of late are deliciously sweet and intoxicating with the pink jasmine and pittosporum Victoria box variety fragrance and during the day they are both full of bees. Freesias from years gone by blossom but do not scent the air anymore. Their light purples, lemon yellows, vanilla and coral colored blooms still big and hardy for vase cuttings. Meanwhile, the azaleas in all hues are bursting and our many geraniums are ramping up for the warmer weather with early budding and blooming.

The rains have been good to wild flowers too; especially yellow sour buttercups, orange poppies and any number of dormant seeds including angelic blue lupines hills covered in malachite green grasses. The snow capped mountains beyond form a backdrop of white dripping down as the elevations lower like melting ice cream. All of this against the bluest skies dotted with bright cotton clouds. It’s a springy, lovely day for gardening and I can hear birdsong calling me to wrap this up and join Mother Nature outside.

Time to plant some flowers before the rains come again.

Y6 – Day 7 – Green Day

Posted on March 17, 2023 by Cecilia Steger

I am blessed to be surrounded by the garden of the soul. As I linger under the glow of the spring sun, I give thanks for all that breathes and lives on this earth. I sing the song of the whale and the chirp of the swallow. I bow to her creatures. I gaze in awe at her landscapes. Blessed be the day as I revel in the elation of being alive.

My little doggie makes me happy and is our sunshine. Thank you.