June 2012
19 posts
19 tags
Reframing the Future
I can’t believe it, but this is my 365th post. It’s been a year since I started this blog, beginning with a line from an e.e. cummings poem as my inspiration:
“Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.”
In the year I’ve been writing, I’ve asked a lot of questions. It began with wanting somehow to release some of the negativity I felt...
15 tags
Channeling re: Upcoming Astrology
From a channeling session I did earlier this evening, about the upcoming Saturn direct and then Uranus-Pluto square, in case it helps:
Dear Ones, you do not need to be alarmed. The channel and those who follow her know that this one needs no introduction. Her need to support you and tell you of the upcoming troubles ahead is noble. But we ask you this: What time do you need to be home? How do...
11 tags
Idio-Syncrasies
As we near the inevitable astrological pairing of Uranus and Pluto, along with the direct movement of Saturn, I and many of my more sensitive clients have noticed a few things. People seem to already be in panic mode of one sort or another, taking everything on and becoming pretty damn reactive. This aspect is once in a lifetime, and serves to literally force us to choose between that which...
10 tags
Just A Few More Posts Left
Just three more posts after this one until I’ve officially kept The Beautiful Answer alive for a full year. Wow.
As I get closer and closer to what this actually feels like for me, I’m happy that I managed to stick with something on a daily basis for pretty much the entire year. Four posts were either skipped because I was sick or traveling, and one because I just didn’t feel...
11 tags
Exhausted But Happy
I’ve been traveling a lot lately, which always tends to change you somehow. It may be simple as seeing a spontaneous standing ovation in the airport lounge on the way to Baltimore, as veterans from WWII emerged from the airway. It may be as complex as overhearing intimate conversations you’re not supposed to hear — what the baby likes to eat, when you’ll be home from your...
16 tags
My Advice? Go Fetal & Stop Fighting
Some people don’t believe in astrology, the same way they believe that herbs don’t work, or Western medicine is better than Eastern, though Chinese medicine, for example, has been treating billions of people over many centuries.
That’s cool if you don’t want to believe the paragraph-long horoscope you find in most newspapers. It’s actually a lot more complicated...
11 tags
Riding the Ups and Downs of Progress
Ever notice that whenever you’ve got a lot going on in your life, the next moments, which are just kind of fine, seem disappointing? I’m sure it has to do with all the adrenaline moving through your system, all the hormones coursing through our bodies for one reason or another.
I suppose that if you’re not careful, you could get addicted to that. After all, there’s no...
9 tags
F*ck Perfect
I’ve found a new motto. In working with suffering people every day, and having done a fair amount of suffering myself, I’ve come to understand a few things:
1. That life sometimes has suffering. Probably no way around that.
2. That we add to our own suffering, often without realizing it, by believing on a very deep level that we have to be perfect.
3. Perfect doesn’t...
11 tags
Why the Hell Not?
This question is going through my mind more and more as the days fly by. I only have a few more posts until I get to the one year mark with this blog, and will have to post some channeling about it before I finish this up.
Today, all I can seem to think about are moments from my past. They seem to come out of nowhere, leveling me with their intensity, until I’m forced to start looking for...
8 tags
Leaving Some Behind
One of the things that happens when you approach a goal — losing weight, say, or even publishing a book — is that you find you’re doing stuff other people aren’t. It doesn’t mean you’re better or really all that much different in terms of the stuff that makes us all human. We all want love, for example. We all need water, food and shelter. We all push away what...
16 tags
So Incredibly Close
You know when you get so close to something you’ve been working for for so long that, well, people say you can taste it? Strangely enough, it’s not my sense of taste that’s most engaged when this happens, but you for you, maybe that’s what happens. Instead, it’s my sense of touch and smell that get most affected.
First, I can feel with my hands how the energy begins...
15 tags
Into the Abyss
“It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure. ” — Joseph Campbell
I’ve been thinking about this quote a lot today, for a few reasons. The first is that I’m considering what I want to learn next. I keep adding to my skill set every few years, and love to keep learning and learning. Honestly, I...
14 tags
A New Leaf
I’m feeling really different these days. I don’t know, fresher somehow, lighter and with some sort of renewed purpose. I’m not ordinarily someone who sits around wondering why she’s here. I’m pretty directed that way, and endlessly curious. So I could pretty much go on learning for the remainder of my days.
But when I get in touch with my emotions, and the...
12 tags
Working with Confusion
On any given day, I work with a lot of confusion. Usually, I’m so busy trying to see through it intuitively, so I can help someone release old, negative patterns from their past and bring in newer, fresher and healthier patterns for their future, that I don’t see how much of it I’m actually weeding through each day. That came to a screeching halt during the work I did with my...
8 tags
Never Too Late
Just got through watching the first episode of Push Girls, an interesting new reality series about four attractive wheelchair-bound women living in Los Angeles. Sure, it’s great that they’re smart and spunky and directed. It’s great that they can do a lot to smash stereotype of ableism ,and show that people in wheelchairs can do all sorts of things, even be independent.
My only...
8 tags
Searching for Sassy's First Award!
Super excited to report that my book Searching for Sassy: An L.A. Phone Psychic’s Tales of LIfe, Lust & Love has just won its first award, as a finalist in the Indie Excellence Book Awards!
Yay and double yay!
The response has really been great, and I am so grateful for all the reviews I’ve already received.
Onward and upward, to see what’s next. :)
6 tags
Searching for Sassy on Sale!
Just found out that my book Searching for Sassy: An L.A. Phone Psychic’s Tales of Life, Lust & Love is on sale at Amazon for just $13.96!
Not bad. Not bad at all, considering it’s about $5 off the cover price.
Also, I’m offering a small gift for anyone willing to read the book and offer an honest review on Amazon. In case you’re in the marketing for a reading, some...
13 tags
Me 2.0
It’s starting to sink in that I’ll soon be finished with this blog, 365 days of almost daily posting, reframing my experience to find the beauty in my daily life if necessary, and finding ways got work with the challenging and the rest. Before I’ve even finished the 365th post, though, I’m noticing that a profound change has already come over me.
I started this blog...
9 tags
The Bubbles of Eagle Rock
Sometimes, life takes you by surprise. You’re driving along a sunny Los Angeles street one afternoon, kind of spacing out, just enjoying the light bleeding over the horizon as the sun makes its way southward again. The radio may be on or off, it doesn’t really matter. Your fingers may be tapping the wheel a little, as you coast to a stop at the light.
And then you see the bubbles,...
May 2012
25 posts
7 tags
Calling a Bully's Bluff
What do you get when you call a bully’s bluff, or do the equivalent of pushing him or her down without all that messy violence?
Most of the time, you get your way.
During some of yesterday and the early part of today, I stood up big to a bully. He’ll remain nameless for the moment (no need to bring even more attention to someone who doesn’t deserve it). But suffice it to say...
10 tags
On Power & Failures to Communicate
Part of me loves it when people try to push me around. Maybe you feel this way, too. After all, most bullies count on two things:
1. That you don’t know who you are and what you want, and
2. That you’re dumb enough to hand over your power at their command.
Maybe that’s why we gravitate toward fantasy shows and things like Game of Thrones. We know on some level that every...
14 tags
Desire is Full of Endless Distances
I didn’t make this up; the poet Robert Haas did. And in so doing, he laid the foundations for most of my thinking today.
I’ve spent the past few days traveling to Baltimore, and giving a workshop on Intuitive Dating at breathe books there (great shop, you should go). I also saw my new play Punk Rock Mom performed there for the first time as a fully staged production. It was a short...
13 tags
Indecision Sucks, and Then There's Clarity
Sorry for the spotty posting of late, especially since I had made a vow to post every day for the past year. I’m pretty close, with only a few posts left to close out this 365 day period, and never expected a book, a play, a potential TV series and more in the works to be happening all at once.
Pans to travel to Baltimore last Thursday were in place, until I woke up with a sore throat (I...
12 tags
Moving Ahead
I’m taking an important step tomorrow, and I suppose I’m still processing it. Part of me has looked forward to this, the stepping out from behind the keyboard, and then there’s part that’s comfortable there, amongst the letters and words. Maybe all writers are a little control-freaky. They create worlds; they animate the people in them. Now it’s time to see what...
5 tags
Fearlessness
“Fearlessness is like a muscle. I know from my own life that the more I exercise it the more natural it becomes to not let my fears run me.”
— Arianna Huffington
12 tags
Missed Connections
I used to read them, back in the ’80s and ’90s, those missed connections at the back of most major newspapers. One person sees another, thinks there’s chemistry or eye contact and advertises to see if the slight chance that the other person feels the same way, not to mention reads the same newspaper, could lead to something more.
Part of me used to find them funny, or sad, or...
6 tags
Why Do Families Suck?
Been blowing off blogging in order to support my husband, who had to do some family stuff this weekend. You’d think something like this would be easy. But it never is, no matter where you come from.
We went up to Northern California with little time, and everything planned out, sometimes down to the half hour. There was little time to rest or even relax for a few moments to take a breath,...
30 tags
So Humbled to Be Part of This
Today I reached a milestone in more ways than one. I’ve mentioned before that I am a writer, and have been doing this professionally (i.e., getting paid for it) for better than 15 years. I’m also a reader and healer, and have been doing this professionally (again, getting paid for it in a regular basis) for even longer. Sometimes, none of that matters, like today.
I have been on the...
12 tags
A Whole Lotta Love
Lately, I’ve been able to contact the feeling of love almost effortlessly. It comes, sometimes overwhelms me and when I’m crying a little, or wanting to reach out and write silly little emails or texts to people I’m thinking about but don’t usually have the time to stay in touch with the way I want to. I call them, leave messages that probably have them thinking I’m...
22 tags
A Breakthrough
In the eleven months I’ve been keeping this blog, I’ve begun to notice a few things about the way the mind works. How it strives to keep things looking bleak, perhaps so that when joy occurs, it will stand out by comparison.
Then there are those days when you’re able to break through a pattern that has been so much a part of your life that it’s become like a second skin....
16 tags
Short Post Tonight
… and to sleep with tired me. So much rewarding stuff going on these days, but I’m still trying to take time to smell the cappuccino. actually, that’s a terrible metaphor. I hate coffee, any kind of coffee, with a passion. No amount of coffee would probably even keep me awake right now anyway.
I love my blog. I love my life. But I love sleep more now.
I can always tell when...
9 tags
For All the Mothers
“We’re sitting on our blessed Mother Earth from which we get our strength and determination, love and humility - all the beautiful attributes that we’ve been given. So turn to one another; love one another; respect one another; respect Mother Earth; respect the waters - because that’s life itself!”
— Phil Lane (Yankton Sioux)
8 tags
So Beautiful
These are the moments that sneak up on you, when you look over at someone you’ve been with for a long time and could very well be taking for granted, if you were a different person, and he were a different person, and you feel this simultaneous condensing and endless expanding of time and space, until you’re woozy and dropping and feeling the ground get ripped right out from under your...
13 tags
Retroactive
You ever notice that whenever you’re tweaked about something, it’s generally not about that particular moment in time? More likely, it’s triggering something you went through in the past, and your rection to it in this moment is overblown and maybe even the slightest bit inappropriate.
I saw this in action today, which gave me a great opportunity for reframing. I was talking...
12 tags
On Compassion
I ran into an interesting conundrum today, involving something that’s seldom thought of as controversial: compassion. Most people think of compassion as us being nice. It’s the ability to feel something for other people, their lives and situations. We feel compassion for people in Japan or Haiti when they’re lives are turned upside down by natural disasters, or those babies who...
25 tags
Oblivious
I love oblivious people. They make it a lot easier to live my life. It may sound counter-intuitive, but bear with me for a minute:
1. Generally speaking, they’re pretty lazy. Score one for people who bother to get out of bed each morning. You’re already one step ahead of these folks.
2. Those who prefer to live their lives in an oblivious state do so for a reason. Their lack of...
10 tags
Raise Your Voice
OK, I’ve finally had it. In any average week, I can only get by for so long before the siren song of writing — something, anything — begins to call. I try to resist, feeling more and more like a freakin’ junkie with every day that passes. But eventually, I have to, I want to, give in.
Then, usually, I spend about two weeks debating — should it be a play or a novel?...
12 tags
Ah, the Healing
Short post tonight, because after so much work for so many days in a row, I haven’t had much time off. Of course, it’s for a good cause — the stuff I care about, my life and career. But I find that as I near this little blogging experiment, I am drawn more and more to self-care, and find that I need to get better at it for myself.
I spend a lot of time helping others to heal. I...
10 tags
Full Moon Channeling for May 5th's Supermoon
Maybe it’s the prevalence of magic in the air when the Moon is full, or the fact that tonight’s mega bright Supermoon is in the watery sign of Scorpio, but I find myself practically chomping at the bit to channel at times like these. So my guides offered the following words under the influence of this lunar beauty:
Our darlings, we have not come here to focus unduly on the suffering...
10 tags
The World Lost a Great Guy
I didn’t know Adam Yauch, not really, though I knew people who did. I lived in New York at around the same time, walked the same streets, went to the same parties and shows. I remember someone putting a demo of “Cooky Puss” on a tape and sending it to me when I lived in England. Yeah, we listened to tapes then.
Today, I was sadder than I probably had a right to be when I heard...
7 tags
The Wide & Open World
When you’ve moved through a period of indecision and into clarity, it’s amazing how the world opens up for you. Maybe not in a physical sense, as in clouds parting and clear blue skies blaring down at you, but more in the inner sense. The chest opens, breathing becomes easier, and your heart just feels a tad bit lighter around the edges.
That’s what my world has been like...
17 tags
Daring the Truth
I’ve been thinking a lot about lying lately, the tiny patterns of lying that go on in our daily lives all the time. Most of us have become so used to lying - to get a sick day, to not attend a friend or colleague’s event, or to not pay quite as much on your taxes this year (or get a bigger refund), that we think nothing of it.
When I go to Facebook, for example, I’m astounded...
13 tags
Deciding
Some days, my mind won’t quit. By now, I have all kinds of tools to get it to quiet down and cooperate with the rest of my body parts — you know, kind of play nice in the sandbox. But I have a huge decision to make, and times like this, which could determine the whole next phase of your life, it gives you pause. You slow down and time slows down to match it. You want to give it the...
14 tags
Expansion
I suppose it’s no accident on a day when we had a significant Jupiter transit that I (and maybe you, too) experienced some major expansiveness. Jupiter is the luckiest planet in the zodiac, and when other planets aspect it, or hit our own natal Jupiter’s position, chances are we’re expanding our influence (hopefully not our waistlines), getting a promotion, enjoying a sense of...
April 2012
28 posts
10 tags
Not My First Rodeo
Tomorrow’s a big day, so gotta make this short. It’s been a strange day, filled with roller coaster emotions and realizations. Growth can be like that.
There was one moment when I thought I had had enough of the way things had been, but was sick of changing all the time, reacting to this and that, always adjusting around the ways of the world. Weird thought, for me at least.
Then I...
9 tags
Sometimes Dreams Aren't Subtle
Last night I dreamed of the Dalai Lama, for the first time in my life. Though I’ve studied Buddhism for the past 16 years, he hasn’t made a single appearance in my subconscious, even though some part of me might have found that comforting.
In the dream, my husband and I were in my car. I was driving, and we were with a lot of other cars, inching into a crowded stadium parking lot. We...
16 tags
Rock On
Add this to the million reasons to be grateful: I am safe. I am healthy and alive. I am happy, most of the time. I learn. I love to learn, and I get to do this on an ongoing basis. I can read, which is rare in this whole wide world of ours, and I am comparatively rich.
I have had the gift of music and theater, my parents and grandparents taking me into New York City to see orchestras play...
12 tags
Heal!
You know those old images of televangelists, who hold their hands in the air and say HEAL! really loudly, sometimes knocking someone in the head until they fly backward, or stumble into the aisle? I haven’t been to enough tent revival meetings to know how true this is (or isn’t), but that’s pretty much how I felt today.
No, life didn’t hand me one of those grudgingly...
8 tags
When It Began
You know how some songs pop into your mind at the strangest times? When all the memories of being in your body at the age you first heard it come rushing back until you’re here and there at the same time, kind of inside and outside yourself all at once?
I love it when that happens.
Today it was “When It Began,” by the Replacements. I can nearly remember every detail about the...
6 tags
Learning to Exhale
“Learn how to exhale, the inhale will take care of itself.”
— Carla Melucci Ardito
