Category: spirituality

It’s gonna be May…

Rabbit gnomes in flower pots with text that says Rabbit! Rabbit!

“Never grow a wishbone, daughter, where your backbone ought to be.”– Clementine Paddleford

Spiritus Sancti
Like God full throttle
Bedlamite seer
Fortune teller croons
“Write your own fable
Believe it’ll all work out”
– from the Puscifer song, “Bedlamite“

Happy May – Rabbit! Rabbit! – may fortune favor your boldness.

Upcoming changes

Check out this week’s podcast for a deeper listen to what’s listed below. Long time followers of my work, or of just my life, will know that I’ve never been afraid to totally re-direct my life in a way that is beneficial for my wee group of beautiful humans. And, as I’ve always said, things sometimes take as long as they take. The pivot point, however, is when I’ve tried to do something for long enough to see that it’s not working out. After 20+ years of making my humanity my hustle, I decided to take some actions…

  • There is no way I can work against the systems in place to boost influencers, apps, and social media platforms. While I would like to thin that folks still want the joys of hanging with aging wise women, who live in eclectic domiciles near the woods, we are not in that ere of humanity right now. I gave it a good try, but it is clearly time to move on.
  • For years I’ve wanted to return to school. For fun and lack of my profit, it would be great to discuss the major topics of my interest. However, since I’m not independently wealthy, my goal is to essentially DIY some PhDs. Now, this is not what you might think, as there will be no “point and click” credentialing. Instead I have created a rigorous path of study, after months of researching online syllabuses from schools that have specialty programs that call to my soul. This blog, yes this one right here, is going to be about that journey. It is also my hope that others who are interested in these topics will chime in with their thoughts.
  • In life I’ve learned that it’s best to do the big work in silence. While it’s nice to sometimes have opinions from the Greek Chorus, I’ve learned that sometimes they are a little too influential in my process. Darn those people pleasing tendencies. Today is the first official day for The Master Maker (see below), and I’m excited to announce that my “shop” will be stocked with goodies by the 14th of this month (May).
  • The podcast will still be posted here, but it’s moving to its own place on Patreon. Subscribers will get fun mail to their USPS mailbox, along with cool digital goodies.

So there’s the deets on the changes. Now, you might be saying to yourself, “Gee, is Kim gonna stick with this, or shift gears again?” Honestly, that’s fair, and totally understandable. I mean how many times have I said, “This is what I am doing now,” only to shut things down for something totally different. The important thing to know here is this – I am always adapting, improvising, and overcoming. Life is change, fluid in its dance of becoming. Also, as mentioned above, I have spent two decades making my humanity my hustle. So…yeah…just because things are posted on social platforms, or in the wilds of the Internet, it doesn’t mean that I’m over here “pivoting the synergy” every few seconds in the offline world.

The other part of this is that most of those actions were done in hopes of keeping my inner people pleaser happy. While doing all that inner work during the recent Mercury retrograde, something shifted (finally), and perspectives I’ve been seeking for years suddenly became very clear. That when I made the decision to shine a light, and let all be revealed.

The Mystic Maker

logo for The Mystic Maker

For the past few years I’ve been making items for folks who are seeking spiritual tools, knick-knacks, graphics, art, and more. It was sort of an “add-on” for my clients. Their friends and/or family would see what I created, and reach out to me for items of their own. Along with the creations, there would be a story of the process, or a tale of what I learned while making the item. Imagine my surprise when people loved all of it. So, quietly, and without any announcements, I started The Mystic Maker. It’s sort of got a life of it’s own, and lemme tell you that I am absolutely here for it!

As of today (May 1, 2024), I’m still working on the site, etc., but by the 14th it should be up and running smoothly. (fingers crossed)

DIY PhD

Today in the DIY PhD land, I’m reading this: Trauma, Spirituality, and Healing: A Journey through the Lens of an Incarcerated Person. From there I’ll take a look at the footnotes for a deeper dive. When I was working with clients, part of the process was to find a creative outlet that was safe for expressing their journey. With more holistic research happening, wellness providers and spiritual leaders are seeing the benefits of storytelling and creativity in the healing process. One of my goals in my self-education is to learn the indigenous methods of creative healing, as well as how those in lower income communities incorporate spirituality and artisanship into their path of health.

Huge thanks to each one of you for being here, and for witnessing this wild process of personal growth. Along with the work above, I’m be updating my pages here.

Keep shining brightly y’all. I see you out there doing hard things, and am over here cheering you on!

Much love,
KEU

Back in the office/podcast day

Woodland scene with a brightly lit sky and a green man bird bath.

”You have polished the mirror
that now you shine within.

Any direction I look
I see your engraving.

The sun asks the inward sun,
When will I see you? At sunset.

excerpt from Rumi’s poem, “Limb-Shadows”

Happy New Moon!

On January 19th I’ll be back in the office. It was a nice bit of time off, but I’m ready to get back to it. I’m excited to share some of my contemplative insights with all y’all!

Here’s today’s podcast. The topic is grief, and I share some of the ways that help me get through times when life brings sadness my way.

Much love,
KEU

Life is a mystery/podcast day

Wide angle photo of downtown Chicago, Illinois

”Dare to declare who you are. It is not far from the shores of silence to the boundaries of speech. The path is not long, but the way is deep. You must not only walk there, you must be prepared to leap.” – Hildegard of Bingen

In my stack of things there is a notebook with the title, “Things to write about for my website.” Under each topic there are websites, notes on how to make sure all my SEO things are in order, and interesting tidbits about my experiences with whatever it is that seemed interesting enough to be recorded. Rarely do they ever appear anywhere online, and when I look at ones from years ago I’m like, “You know, maybe I should write about this…”

Then I don’t, or didn’t…because of these feelings that come up. Some of them are my own, while others come from people that apparently live in my noggin rent free. While I could say the long list of reasons this happens, in hopes that you will align with those moments and feel connected…therefore loving this post and sharing it with others, that’s not who I am. It’s also who I don’t want to be in the work I do, the relationships I have with others, or as a random entity in a sea of online personas. The important thing I hope you gather from this post, and this week’s podcast, is that the person you are in amazing. There are no viral videos that will change that, nothing you can share on social media that will convince me otherwise, or whether you like me back.

That’s right, it’s okay if you don’t like me.

You see, for years I worked very hard to have others like me. While in my day to day work I would tell clients how amazing they were for standing in their authenticity – in whatever form that was – I was over here trying to push my square peg into a circle shaped hole. Sad thing is…I didn’t even realize that it was happening. While I would have chats with Mr. The Mister from time to time, with his advice giving me solace for a moment, the minute I’d step away from the safety of those conversations, my brain would wander right back into the land of shifting my comfort levels to fit in with experiences that were never for me.

This year has been one precipice moment after another. It felt like a weird version of The Princess And The Pea, but in a more introspective way. No Queen was testing to see if I was fit for her son, but that with each layer removed I came closer to what prevented me from getting rest. Each little inconvenience just piled itself on top of the others, leaving me feeling raw, out of place, and a bit untethered.

Then I went to Chicago. In today’s podcast I talk a little bit about it, but I’m still trying to find the “right” words to convey what happened. And then, when I came back, each day offered up a new lesson and new ways to grow into whatever change happened while riding the L.

With that, the link to today’s podcast is below. It’s a little longer than usual, so grab a cup of your favorite drink and take some time to enjoy the words I’m sharing.

Much love,
KEU

Today’s Podcast

Only silence remains/podcast day

Photograph of a forest that is full of trees that have green leaves.

Not all of us are called to be hermits, but all of us need enough silence and solitude in our lives to enable the deeper voice of our own self to be heard at least occasionally.

Thomas Merton

Below you will find a link to this week’s podcast. Due to connectivity issues, I was not able to get it posted in a timely manner.

Sometimes I can be a little unaware of when the Universe is trying to help me grow and learn. It isn’t because I lack self awareness, or that I’m not observant. A more accurate way to describe it would be this — sometimes my brain is thinking faster than my senses. For example, I’m currently reading/studying the writings of Thomas Merton on a deeper level than I have before. As I was staring into the yard, while washing dishes, my thoughts were on Merton’s discussions of Celtic Christianity. Like I’m talking way down into the deep recesses of my noggin kind of pondering.

As the words go through my head, “Celts…Ireland…Roman Empire,” my ears do not hear the running of the water, and my hands no longer feel the squishiness of the sponge. At that moment I was on autopilot, doing a routine task without even realizing it, allowing the quiet of the day to give way to the richness of my mind palace. (This is not my term, but it is an absolutely delightful way to describe how the brain works.)

In this week’s podcast I talk about silence, and how it is becoming part of my daily inner work.

Episode 5 – Only Silence Remains

Much love,
KEU

As of this posting the social media tech gremlins seem to know that Mercury is about to be retrograde, and access to some of my platforms is limited. It feels like this may be one of those moments where the Universe is nudging me in a direction that I was already pondering. If you follow those pages, or have found my site through those pages, I suggest bookmarking my website to stay up to date with the goings-on and such.

Unfold your own myth

“But don’t be satisfied with stories, how things
have gone with others. Unfold
your own myth, without complicated explanation,
so everyone will understand the passage,
We have opened you.”
– Rumi

When we enter this world, we take a full breath, and when we cross over…it is released. As the mystics say, what we do between those two life events is up to us.

In the last year, or so, of using social media, I’ve noticed a push to: 1) find a niche, and 2) be “authentic.” Not to sound dense, but I am not sure what those words mean in our modern times. What it seems to mean is finding something that will make your post go “viral,” using a popular “hook,” to show people that you are who they want you to be.

Today I re-launched my podcast, and I talk about these topics in a little more detail there. In fact, I went all out today and updated all the things. Just seemed like a great day for being me.

Until next time…

Much love,
KEU

Link to podcast here.