The Stones are Bones

Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico (not my photograph)

     On a recent visit to Chaco Canyon here in New Mexico, I was sitting in the plaza in the ruins known as Pueblo Bonito, staring up at the cliffs of sandstone and the many ancient faces that can be seen there.  I was terribly sick at the time with Strep throat and Bronchitis and should have not even gone on this trip, but I felt utterly compelled that I needed to come to Chaco.  Perhaps it was a stupid decision, sick as I was, and as contagious as I was (I ended up getting my companions sick as well, which I feel horrible about) but I knew I needed to be here.  
     I was leaning up against one of the walls, seeking a bit of shade from the too bright afternoon sun and staring up at the faces in the rock.  I was feeling very out of sorts, not only in my physical body but in my energetic and emotional bodies as well.  When I had visited Chaco once before, and very briefly, I had had a profound sense of a past life here, a deep connection to the land and to the ruins of a once large and thriving civilization.  I felt that connection still, but as sick as I was I was having a hard time sorting through everything I was experiencing.  So I leaned against the wall in the scant shade and saw the faces of the ancients in the cliffs, felt their spirits around me, and I felt so weary.  Not only weary from being sick, but intensely world weary.  
     I had lost my little sister Cindy to what amounted, in the end, to a freak accident only eight months previously.  I had handled her death fairly well and felt at peace with it, but her loss, and the losses of the loved ones of others, the tragedies happening in nature, the environment, and the state of things in the world in general left me feeling pretty bleak in that moment.  I began sending out a prayer to the ancients I felt around me, to the great oneness that is the Universe, and before I could even start to voice what was in my heart, before I could even understand what I really wanted, or needed, I felt gentle laughter emanate through the rocks and through me.  More in feeling rather than actual words I felt the phrase "The Stones are Bones" in my very being, and a huge sense of stillness and peace washed through me.  In that moment I experienced only what can be called a "download" of thought and feeling, more than I could process at the time.  What I felt more than anything was the deepest connection to All That Is, in the sense that there was no time, no space, no right or wrong.  Everything in the Universe was exactly as it should be.  It always had been, and it always would be, so nothing else mattered but this exact moment.

     The rocks are the bones of the Earth, the same bones that are in my body.  What difference is there except the make-up of atoms?  The wind is my breath, the same that sighed softly through the canyon.  The rain was my tears, my sweat.  The rivers and streams my blood.  The vast ocean my womb, my heartbeat.  My spirit was the whole of the world...no, the whole of the Universe.  The same as there was no difference between the rocks and my bones, there was no difference between me and the Universe.  None whatsoever.  So the ancients found it gently amusing my all too human distress at the state of things in the world.  
     The rocks had always been here, even when they were but sand in the ocean, even when there was no ocean, nor any planet Earth.  Time would wear the rocks away to sand again, and eventually to even baser mineral components, but they would still be here.  All things had always been here, and always would be.  Change is inevitable, the ancients told me.  All things change their form, their shape given enough time.  The change was the beauty of life, of living.  What did the rocks care if they were a cliff side, or wall shaped by the hands of inventive and ingenious ancient peoples, or the concrete struts of a sky scraper?  Life celebrates change, flows with it, adapts to it with grace and joy.  Species dies out and new ones adapt.  Climates shift and change according to the rhythms of the Earth.  Nothing is ever really destroyed, only changed, and there is no "good" or "bad" about it.  
     My sister had died, and it was neither good nor bad, it was only change, and because of that it was joyous.  SHE was joyous in her new form, and soon she would go on to another.  As I would do the same one day, and will everyone that I love.  We cannot lose one another because there is nothing to lose.  Because we are, all of us, small parts of the great whole, and yet we ARE the great whole ourselves, forever a part of everything that is.  The stones are our bones, and one day they will be dust that will return to stone again.  We are endlessly changing, as is the world, the cosmos, the Universe.  There is no fear in change as it is neither good nor bad, but joyous, and there is only ever Now, which should always be celebrated.

     Sitting in Pueblo Bonito, I felt the ancients with me and knew they had never left.  I had never left, because I was still there.  In all things, in every place, I am still there, and I always will be.  The world will change, life will change, and it will be joyous because that is the nature of change, even change we find difficult to understand or see as "good".  Life is amazing, the world is beautiful, and I am utterly blessed to be exactly where I am, right now. 

"One day you're waiting for the sky to fall,
The next you're dazzled by the beauty of it all"
- Bruce Cockburn

Wild Inside

I have always held a wildness in my heart. For as long as I can remember I have felt wildness within me, speaking to me, burning in my breast and being, shaping who I was. It is still very much a part of who I am.

When I speak of wildness here I do not speak of being out of control or crazy, but rather of being wild like the animals, like the wind, like storms, or the ocean. It is something like the beat of my own heart, the running of mustangs, or the howl of a wolf. It is that yearning for freedom, to live in rhythm and harmony with the natural world, with my inner self, with my fellow beings, with the very cosmos. To know my place and to take it, and never to bend or bow down to any form of suppression or domestication, to never let another take the wildness away from me. The wildness in me has been all of this and more.

This untamed spark has always yearned for the wilderness, for nature, longed to be a part of the very rawness of the universe, blossoming as a never satisfied longing for itself, for that in which it senses a sameness. It has caused me to be a wanderer in my life, a pilgrim on a quest for self, a mystic searching for the source and form of this wildness within me. I needed to understand it to understand the world around me, and to understand my place in it and where I belonged. I craved this understanding like a fish craves water, a bird craves the sky, or a wolf craves the wilderness. Where did I belong? Why was I different than most other people? Was I the only one who felt this amazing feeling? Why was I always looking into the forest, filled with a hunger for things I could not name?

In the 36 years that I have been living and questing for these answers I have explored many roads, many different possibilities of understanding wildness and thus understanding myself and my world. I have looked into different cultures, different religions, different spiritual paths, and different ways of thinking. Nothing has ever fit me or felt quite right. The only forms that have ever truly come close to the sense of sameness my wildness seeks are in the wilderness itself and animals. Not surprisingly, then, I grew up loving animals and the natural world I was surrounded by. I could be enthralled for hours poking around streams, examining rocks, playing with sticks, digging in the dirt, swimming in ponds, collecting shells, feathers, pebbles, twigs, and flowers, and generally immersing myself in the natural world. Sometimes I would pretend to be an animal, but not always. The animals usually varied between horses, unicorns, dragons, cats, dogs, birds, deer…whatever came to mind. Most times I was just being myself, a little wild girl immersed in nature (even if a lot of the time it was only my backyard or the local park).

When I was growing up my father enjoyed monster movies, movies I really was too young to watch, but he always let us anyway. He would always explain that the effects were fake, and usually silly, and this made it safe for me. I was cradled in my dad’s arms, safe there from the “fake” horror that still caused my palms to sweat and my heart to race. This was where I first learned about werewolves and shape shifters, and the wildness in me sat up and took notice. I certainly didn’t want to be anything like the ugly pig-monsters in the movies, but the idea that one could turn into an animal…well! Wouldn’t that be something truly amazing? I knew in my heart I could never –really- turn into an animal (that just wasn’t how God worked), but boy could I imagine! Back then I was heavily ruled by my parents and my upbringing in the Mormon faith, and I knew that werewolves were “bad”, so for many years I suppressed the idea and contented myself with “safe” things, such as horses, unicorns, and dragons. God didn’t have anything to say about those, and they were all in the bible anyway, right? Safe territory, then, for my imaginings.

As I entered high school the wildness in me began to really focus on dragons. Dragons in some way held the wildness in them, that ferociousness that said, “No one will ever contain me! However, if you tame me you can become one with my wildness and ride the skies on my back!” Perhaps the wildness in me was a dragon! I spent all of my time in my own little world of dragons where I could safely explore my imaginings and share them with no one else. If I kept my fantasies to myself so no one else could call them “wrong” and take them away from me. I was safe in my head, in my writings I shared with –no one- else but my younger sister. In my juvenile fantasy world I could explore my own wildness and perhaps find a place for that incessant yearning inside.

As I grew older and grew up, however, I found that my fantasy world could no longer contain my yearnings. Once again I began searching for something, anything to give a name to my longing. It was in my last year of High School that I finally came across wolves. I had always known about wolves, but they were always painted as “bad” animals with no worth or merit other than as villains. Growing up in Utah I certainly had never seen a picture of a real wolf, let alone a live one. But my art teacher collected Southwest Art magazines and we got to leaf through them for inspiration. This was at the beginning of the Wildlife Art craze of the ‘90s so there were many paintings of wolves in the magazines. I was instantly captivated, utterly transfixed by these animals, these canines I had only ever seen depicted as villains in cartoons. There was something about their eyes, the way they moved, their howls, and their pack structure, how they merged with the very wilderness and were one with it. Just like I yearned to be. As I learned more and more I became rabid for even more information on wolves, pictures, books, anything I could get my hands on.

When I graduated High School I was given the opportunity to go work in Yosemite National Park in California. I leaped at the chance! I didn’t care that I would be scooping ice cream for tourists, I got to work and live in the very wilderness I loved! More than that, I got to be where I could get more information about wolves, where I could be away from my family to nurture my growing fascination, to begin to explore werewolves, and to allow the wildness in me free reign to come out and play. It was here I convinced myself that I was somehow a wolf inside. There was no question about it for me. In the grandeur of the Yosemite Valley, with no parental figures, family, or friends around to tell me what to do or how to think, I allowed myself to howl.

That summer was a magical time for me, and when I came back home to Utah after those months I was changed inside. I now -knew- I was somehow a wolf trapped inside a human body, a true werewolf, and no one else could possibly understand or be like I was. I was alone in my wildness. I tried to find others like me, that felt wild inside like I did, but no one came close. Still I managed to find a group of people who loved fantasy and creativity as much as I did and expressed this in roleplaying games. More than that, they had an interest in roleplaying werewolves. Huzzah! Here was a group that I could at least find acceptance in. They weren’t wild like I was inside, but at least they didn’t look at me funny when I ran around growling and howling and acting crazy. I was just the crazy artistic wolf girl of the group, and that was fine.

We played lots of RPGs in those days, both table-top and LARPing, but the game we all seemed to enjoy most was Werewolf: The Apocalypse. Here was a game made just for me! The game was about tribes of werewolves with a mystical connection to the earth that used talismans, symbols, and magical weapons to defeat the evil that was bent on destroying the earth mother. Here was something that incorporated not only my love for wolves and the wildness I felt inside, but also my love and reverence for nature and my fascination with tribal/nature spirituality. There could not have been a more perfect game for me, and I dived in headfirst and began sculpting my sense of self and identity around this world.

For years I immersed myself in this “World of Darkness”, or one very much like it, and it was all I knew. Roleplaying allowed me to explore many parts of myself, including my shadow side, my darker self, which meant exploring my darker fascination with the power of werewolves. There was much strife within my family and my world at that time which came out as rage that I roleplayed out in my werewolf characters. I took on more of this “werewolf” personality and I felt more and more like an angry, tortured werewolf, cursed and haunted, never to find peace or my place in the world.

I made up stories with my husband at the time (who was also into the game). All of the stories held notes of darkness to them, truly evil characters whom the semi-good characters would fight against. But even the “heroes” of the stories were less than angelic. This was my rage against my family and my inner rebellion against my upbringing in the Mormon faith, the constraints my wildness had always railed against, and the teachings that my intellect could not accept. I never did anything “bad” in the real world (I simply could never; it’s not in my nature), but the darkened wildness in me sure thought up some twisted things. I was not a happy young woman.

Eventually, however, the true wildness in me broke free of all of this and assisted me in getting out of the relationship, and thus out of the dark game. I didn’t want to encourage the darkness within me anymore. I had had enough. I broke ties with that part of my life, determined to move on and put it all behind me, to discover the “true wolf” behind the monster, still convinced that I was a wolf inside. I felt more alone than ever. Now I didn’t even have a group to belong to. Was I truly alone in the world? The only person crazy enough to be fascinated with werewolves, obsessed with wolves, and think she was a wolf inside?

And then, later that same year, I was introduced to the Internet.

It was 1999 and I had found a forum about werewolves on a werewolf website that was fairly big at the time. I found many people on that board that professed to feel as I did, like they were wolves (and other animals) inside. They described all that I was feeling, down to the phantom tail I usually seemed to sport. They called themselves “Weres” back then, and I howled for joy inside. HERE were my people! HERE was where I belonged! Once again I dove headfirst into this new group, this new fledgling community, and gave it my all. So intensely was my sense of self wound up in this community, in this way of thinking about things, that it took over all else in my ego. I relished the persona I began creating around myself, the golden wolf, that I convinced myself I had all the answers. I knew exactly what was going on with these “Weres”, with myself, and I happily assumed the role of a guru of sorts, claiming I had all the answers and that I could help others like me. I convinced myself I did this with the best of intentions. I had had no one to lean on, to take my questions to when I was discovering my own wolfiness, so surely it would be good of me to help provide this to others who were still finding their way. Of course I was doing the right thing!

So I began creating forums and resources to “help” others like me, spruced up with my artistic abilities, and along with the attention I was beginning to get with my artwork I soon had everyone flocking to me. My ego had a festival with all the attention, even though I convinced myself I wasn’t being narcissistic about it all. I had lily white intentions didn’t I? And if people didn’t agree with what I said, felt, or pronounced, then they could happily find someone else to bring their questions to and could not be a part of my “club”. What can I say? I was young, in my mid twenties, and convinced I had it all figured out and was completely full of myself. Life had yet to kick me in the tail with some harsh lessons that badly needed to be learned.

I went through various forums, various friends, and various lessons over those years within the “Were” group (which by now had dubbed themselves “Therianthropes”). As the years progressed I went more and more underground with my “Therianthropy/Wereism”, trusting that part of myself with fewer and fewer people as I endured lesson after lesson, never truly understanding what these lessons were trying to teach me. I finally disavowed myself from the Therian community when it finally became clear that I had, once again, exhausted all avenues with this group. It could no longer offer me any of the answers I sought. Yet I still clung to the “wolf” part of me as the core of my ego and sense of self, that somehow that was whom I was inside. I still I did not get it. I still didn’t understand what the Universe was trying to tell me about myself. It took the hardest lesson of all to truly shake me up and turn my world upside down.

I found another whom I thought was as wild as I was inside. He was an untamed man to match the wild woman I felt myself to be. I fell in love, fast and hard, recklessly even. I was at once exhilarated and terrified by our romance, knowing it was too fast, too close, too much all at once. But the wildness (or what I called the “wolf”) in me didn’t care. This was mate. A true mate, matched in heart and soul. There was no question, only adoration, elation, desire, passion, and a sense of belonging. A spark of home. Meanwhile some other part of me, the logical part of me, the “human” part of me was scared to death. This would never work. I was going to be hurt, badly. I needed to back away, get some grounding and detachment, and really think hard about this. But I couldn’t seem to find that necessary detachment from him and the situation. All I could ever seem to think about was him.

All of it made me fairly insane, and during this time I made some bad decisions, acted erratically, and was pretty much out of control emotionally. If you have ever been in love, truly in love, then you will know why. I was pumped full of love drug, and the wildness in me was high on it. I knew I was headed for the cliff, and the crash at the bottom was going to destroy me. I knew it, and could not stop running towards it. The inevitable end came, and when it did it was just as I knew it would be: I was devastated. There is a bleakness, a dark space that your heart, mind, and soul enters when you experience such a loss. My heart was a lead weight in my chest. I could picture the wildness in me howling and howling, lost in a blizzard of darkness within me and it was a supreme force of will to put one foot in front of the other, to continue on with working, with taking care of my obligations, with simply existing from day to day. The only thing that kept me going for those weeks was hope. Some bleak hope that it wasn’t over, that we could somehow be. But I knew I was fooling myself. It was over surely as if it had never been.

It was the lesson I needed to finally say, “Enough.” To finally begin to ask WHY such things had to happen. What was the meaning of all of this? What was the meaning of life? Where did I fit in to it all? What did I really believe? It finally put my feet on the –real- path I had been seeking all along. I was so broken that I needed to remake myself. I began searching for real answers, for truths of the heart, for the wisdom that only the soul knows. I began searching for my real self, doing so with an honest yearning for truth.

What I discovered was the -real- truth about who I was. And I knew my ego had to die.

It was war on my ego, on my sense of self, and my ego did its best to fight back. The ego does not want to give up its illusions about itself, its stories it has told itself for a lifetime. It will try to get you to put on other masks, introduce other stories, try to convince you that you are your ego. I had various kinds of meltdowns for awhile and handled many things poorly, but I stuck to my quest for truth, my need to –really- understand, and kept trying, doing a little better, understanding a little more. Everything I had clung to in my life as a Therian began to drift away and disappear completely, sometimes violently and very finally, sometimes in stages. The image of the wolf in me I had built up around my wildness that had gotten me into all this mess in the first place became faded, less and less defined as I continued to strip myself of my ego. I came to know that that image of myself –was not who I really was-.

And in fact there was –nothing- I could say about myself, no image I could give myself that even came close to the truth about me. I was not my background, my family, my group of friends, my race, my relationships, or even my gender. I was not my art, nor my career as an artist, or where I lived, or what I ate, or what my preferences, likes, and tastes were. I was nothing at all that I could tell myself about myself.

This is a somewhat disconcerting place to be, this existential quandary. Here I was like a blank, gray canvas. Images would start to appear and would soon disappear as I held to my understanding of what I was not. The weakened ego still struggled to take on a form, ANY form, but I calmly and steadfastly refused it. My eyes had been opened and there was no going back. Still, while I knew what I was not, I still had no idea what I –was-. For a while this really bothered me, not having at least –something- to identify with. But this space of simply being refuses the ego naturally, and while I had a period here or there where my ego would desperately yearn for identity, and it would battle with all its might, it would eventually lose, and I would return to the blank gray canvas inside. So when I would ask myself the question, “Who am I?” the space inside me would simply say, “I Am”.

For the first time in my life I don't have to BE anything. I just…AM.

It has been a long, interesting road to understanding all of this within myself, to finding out who I am with it all. I find myself back to where I was as a little girl: simply wild. This wildness in me has never changed, has always remained the same. I find now that it was my own ego that needed to put a name to it, and a face and persona to match. I don't need to do that now. I still identify with wolves, and to a larger extent with bears now, but inside I am simply...me. Sure, there are various parts of my inner psyche that have their own forms (as we all have), but I know –I- am not any of those psychological archetypes. I can call them up, play with them, wear them for a while, and put them back, but no longer are they –me-. They are simply parts of the whole: Wolf, werewolf, bear, princess, queen, miser, clown, hedonist, horse, dragon, mermaid, shamaness, goddess, artist, poet, lover, child, rebel...all of these and more are within me and create who I am in this life. But in the end they are not, and can never be me.

With this new awareness of self there is a stronger sense of wholeness in me now, a calmness and contented acceptance of who I am, and who I choose to be in this life. The wildness in me is there as a call to oneness with nature, a call to be my natural self. It is the part of me that dances naked in the forest, plays freely in the water, sings loudly to the moon, lives without apologies, exulting in being alive, in feeling and sensing everything, uninhibited in making love to the world. And it does not need fur or fangs to do so. This is a wildness of spirit, of heart and soul that refuses to be tamed by the world, but rather celebrates being fully alive in every moment. This is the wildness within me.

I am still on this road of understanding, of getting to know myself and accepting myself to my core. I will no longer pretend to have the answers to anything; I only know my personal experience and understanding of myself, which is always changing and expanding. I still have so much to learn. I do not have to give definition or identity to this wildness anymore. I am done searching for a group, or an illusion, a persona, a relationship, or any other thing to define who I am. I am simply wild inside, and that defies any real description. But I think it has something to do with simply –being-, and doing so consciously, with full awareness and presence of mind. It is the wildness of being free to be yourself. Whether it’s with nature, with my pets, with my friends, with my art, with my life’s circumstances, with my gender, with my past, with my future, or with my self, I simply AM. There is freedom in not having to be anything at all, but just to be.

And that freedom, I believe, is the call of the wildness in us all.

Who Are You?

We are constantly deciding who we are in our lives. We are always evolving. Who I am today may not be who I am five years from now, next year, or even tomorrow. We always have a choice of who we are in everything that happens. Who are you in regards to your body, to your soul, to your family, your friends, the drug user down the street, the priest at your church, to your pet dog, to the price of gasoline, the new iPod your Uncle Bob got you, to world strife and hunger, and every other aspect of this life?

You always have a choice in every moment of your existence, a choice of who you choose to be in regards to every Now moment. Remember that the past is in the past, the future is yet to come, so the only moment that matters is right now. So who are you –right now-? And whom do you choose to be? Do you like where you are at and what’s going on? Do you like who you are? If not, make another choice. It is really that simple.

Situations and events are as they simply are. Let me explain.

You cannot change the fact that you were just in a car accident (let’s say). It has happened, and now you are paralyzed. You do not have a choice about the situation, it simply IS. This is the IS-ness of the situation. However, now you DO have a choice of deciding –who you are- in regards to the IS-ness of the moment. Are you a person who gives up, becomes angry, bitter, withdrawn, and creates a life of hell for yourself? Are you a person who becomes resigned and victimized, who enters a deep depression and chooses not to fight? Are you a person who refuses to let this stop you in life, and you then work to do the best you can to heal and to work with your limitations to have a full life? Do you choose anger, despair, and the victim role, or do you choose joy, love, and life?

Let’s say the opposite, and that you just won the lottery. This is the IS-ness of the moment. Who are you in regards to this IS-ness? Are you a person who goes out and happily spends and spends every penny until your prize is gone? Are you a person who is highly generous and gives all of your money away to friends and family, even strangers? Do you defend your newfound money from everyone else, hoarding it away and keeping it all to yourself? Do you use your money to help others and the planet? Who do you choose to be?

These are extreme cases of course, but this is the choice I am talking about, the choice of every Now moment. Who do you choose to be, sitting there in front of your computer reading this? Who are you in this moment? Who do you want to be? No one can choose but you.

I know that I have changed dramatically over the last few years due to this choice, this choosing. I had to go through several major lessons to really see Who I Am Not to find out Who I Am. We all do, because how can you ever find out Who You Are if you do not first see Who You Are Not? I will continue to change my definition of Self as I go through this life, trying on different ways of being and discarding others. What has served me in the past will likely not serve Who I Am tomorrow. Health, jobs, location, living arrangements, friends, relationships, what I am into, favorite things…all will change, will come and go, and all will help to define Who I Am, and Who I Am Not.

This sort of change is inevitable in every single one of us. This is called growth. This is our soul’s growth, and like the children we are, we are ever learning about ourselves, trying on ways of being, keeping some for awhile, discarding others. However, you have always been –you-, and you will always be –you-. It is what you choose to –be- that ever changes.

So make a new choice, in every moment. I encourage you to strive to choose that which is the highest choice –every- moment, and you can be the best version of the highest vision you ever had about yourself. We can all do this, and doing so together we might just save this world.

It is our choice.

So…who are you?

Human, Being

There was a time, not long ago, I would have given anything to be something else.

Ever since I was little I wanted to be an animal. It didn’t really matter what animal, as long as it was an animal. Animals were beautiful effortlessly, it seemed to me, and oh so deserving of love, admiration, respect, and affection. I was not. I was less than perfect, unlovable as a little girl, and so I sought to be an animal. It had to be better than being a human, especially a chubby little girl who nobody understood.

As I grew, I centered my life around this belief, that it would be better to be other. At first it was unicorns and horses, then it was the fiery power of dragons, and finally the mysterious grace of wolves. I thought that if I could somehow learn the ways of wolves, perhaps I might find a way to become one of them someday. Perhaps I could find four feet and race into the wilderness where life would be simple. Others would accept you as you were, and together you all would be beautiful and loved, and those that didn’t love you would be as dust. Gone and forgotten on an icy mountain breeze. Nothing would matter but your pack and the hunt. Life would finally be sweet.

I harbored this belief and held onto it tightly as I grew ever older, convinced that being a wolf was preferable. Others of my kind would accept me, and we would find solace in this hard life and seek the magic of animalness together. We would understand one another and find acceptance in our strangeness.

But as the years passed, I found that animalness let me down time and again, left me empty and wanting no matter how hard and tightly I grasped it. Perhaps it meant that I had to try harder, search farther, find better friends, different circles, and different answers. Yet nothing and no one I ever came across on the search for fur and fangs brought me peace.

Then one day it happened. As I had always wanted to, I fell in love. He was like me at the time, a man searching for that doorway to wildness, to becoming a wolf. A soulmate, or so I thought then (later I discovered how blind I was to his own humanity and thus very human flaws, flaws I would never be able to forgive). But the deeper I fell in love with him the more I finally understood that being human was far more preferable to a fantasy. I wanted reality; I wanted this love in my real, waking world. I wanted it for me, the real me, the human me. And before my eyes it crumbled, the fantasy of what we had unable to endure the real world, leaving me empty, leaving me questioning everything.

Leaving me with nothing but myself.

No wolves, no romance, no illusions, just the rawness of my real life. It set my feet upon a journey of understanding WHY. Why could I not find happiness? Why was contentment so elusive? Why did I have to suffer? Why could I never find that perfect love I always searched for?

In honestly searching for answers to the whys of my life, I came upon the simple truth: nothing and no one could make me happy and loved but me. And who I was, was human. Simply human and nothing more. But as I have grown older and grown inside I find that there is nothing “simple” to being human. Being human is complicated, it’s difficult, and yet I have found in embracing that humanity that there is sweetness and joy in living. In growing older, and growing up, I am finally finding myself in the simple, yet complicated, glorious state of my own humanity.

I have finally grown comfortable in my imperfect body, yielding to its heavy softness, its aches and pains, and its familiarity. I am starting to see signs of my middle age in the thin skin that stretches over my hands, the veins in my legs, and the faint (but growing) wrinkles around my eyes and mouth. I feel it in the subtle aches and pains in my hips and back, my need for a decent eight hours of sleep, and my intolerance for unhealthy food. This body is aging, and as it ages it becomes like a favorite pair of old jeans: frayed, a bit tattered, but oh so comfortable and familiar, like an old friend. Even (dare I say it?) loved.

I have always struggled with my weight since the onset of puberty. I have never known what it is, in my adult life, to have space between my thighs, to not have these heavy folds on my back and belly, to be sleek and slender and light on my feet. I will never know what that is in this life, and it is okay. I love my softness, my bountiful curves, my lush and ample bottom. This is who I am, and I am beautiful. I am sensual, and made for loving and being amply loved. I have no desire to be “skinny”, I seek only to be healthy, and to nurture this body in healthy ways.

No one else has this body, this unique and beautiful machine, this house of my soul. I am learning to celebrate it, to honor and nurture and love my body like it was my spouse, for in a way it is. My spirit is married to this body for this life, and nothing can change that save death. And like an imperfect couple we have learned each other, grown familiar, and come to love one another. I love this body, and this body loves and serves my soul the best that it can. Body and spirit are imperfect, but together there is love. This is happiness. This is peace.

I am coming to know and understand who I am on a deeper level as I do my personal work and dig into my inner landscape. I am starting to understand the wounded little girl who rages inside at events long past that were out of her control, the bitter teenager who never really was allowed to come out and be like the rest of the kids, who never found her voice or fit in and who felt so powerless because of it, the jaded princess who believed in fairy tales and knights in shining armor only to be horribly let down by real life time and again, the sensual goddess, hidden and denied so long because of a restricted upbringing, the wounded beast with a broken heart that howls deep within. They are all in there. They are all me. I take responsibility for each one. I dig deep and uncover and reveal hidden places within that were long forgotten, or buried in grief or rage. It is time to let the light in. It is time to heal what I can., and what I cannot I am learning to temper and accept.

I treat myself with love, honor, and respect, because I am deserving of that from myself. Who else can love me better than I can love myself? And how can I ever receive love if I cannot give it first? You cannot give what you do not have, and once you give you open yourself to receive.

I find as I grow older that I am tapping into a hidden river of peace flowing within me. Sometimes the river is hard to find and I once again get caught up in my moods, the inner voices rattling the windows like old ghosts, but they always eventually settle again and once more I find that deep river and let it flow through me. I know that as I get older still the river will be easier and easier to find, only a thought away from finding its flow.

No one said it was easy to be human. In fact, being human can be the hardest lesson of this mortal life to understand and endure. Simply being in your own skin can be torture, to have to live with yourself and your demons, your imperfect body and imperfect life.

But it can also be the sweetest taste of heaven to listen to the wind and the silence, or a great symphony orchestra performing a work of art. To taste sweet summer berries on your tongue, not because you are hungry, but because it is beautiful to savor that rare sweetness. To gaze upon a blazing sunset in simple awe of nature’s palette, or the wonder of art pouring from your own hands. To feel the sensual glide of a lover’s touch, the passion of a kiss, or the mere beating of your own heart.

As for the wolves, I still love them as the wonderful beings they are, but I am no longer secretly jealous of them, obsessed with knowing their secrets. I understand now that wolves are wolves, and people are people. Different, and yet no more noble or perfect than the other. It is in that acceptance of myself, in the entirety of my being, that I have come closer to what the wolves know than ever. Wolves simply ARE; they do not struggle to be anything different. If we can learn that with ourselves, to know who we are, to just BE who we are, all of it, instead of always struggling to be someone, or something different, we may yet understand what the animals, the trees, the rocks, the flowers, birds, bees, fish, the very Earth herself knows. The peace of simply being.

This is who I am. This is being truly human. I would have it no other way.

The purpose of this blog.

If you have somehow found your way to this blog, hello and welcome. I am glad you are here. Some may not know me, and some know me well.

My name is Christy Grandjean. I am also known as the artist "Goldenwolf", and for this reason some call me Goldie. I am a woman who is currently 36 years old, I currently live in South Dakota with my spiritual sister-twin Sandra, I am heterosexual, I am happily single and loving it, I am a proud introvert, I love the wilderness, animals, wildish people, and romance novels, I have no children save for my cat, I am a full time artist making my living solely from my art, and someday I hope to be a published writer. Those are a few of my stories, tidbits about myself that give you an idea about me. But none of that is who I am. As you read this blog you will understand what I mean when I say that.

Though I have not been so in the past, I am currently a very private person. Being in the lime-light even as little as I am I find that my words carry far more weight and bear more attention than they should, therefore I must be careful with my words, and with what I share with the world. Perhaps, then, I should say nothing at all. However, I am a natural born writer, and for all of my reclusiveness I have a need to share myself with the world. My art is what it is, but I feel like my writing conveys more of who -I- am, and we all have a need to share ourselves with the world. Here I must be careful, however, since I do not want anything I share to be about my ego. Rather, I want it to come from a higher source, "speaking the truth" as Don Miguel Ruiz puts it in his book The Four Agreements.

So here I will speak my truth when I feel urged to do so. My spiritual truth, which comes from an honest undertaking to know who I am, my place in the world, and the nature of the Universe. I am a student, and yet students tend to teach what they learn. I still feel horribly unworthy at this point to teach -anything-, since I know so little, yet I feel urged to write and to share my writing with the world. I do so not out of a place in my ego, to pretend that I know anything more than anyone else, but out of a need to share my thoughts and discoveries with those who will understand it, who can share in this with me.

All of that said, I will post my thoughts from time to time, usually in the form of an inspired essay. I also tend to pose these essays on my Deviant Art account, but some I will reserve for this space alone.

I hope you enjoy what I have to say! Namaste!