"How are you doing?"

It is easy to be upset; sometimes, the most disruptive thing one can do is to offer oneself care...and go from there.

Torrey Pines, Del Mar, California…photo by an unnamed, budding future photographer in a rain jacket

I am laughing to myself as I wonder if angels need rest? Certainly souls on the journey to becoming more angelic do.

It can be tiring to walk through the Matrix sometimes.

Dang tiring.

I am tired right now.

And of course, as I made myself comfortable at my Uncle’s house in Tucson, Arizona, where I just arrived, and told him I wanted to work on writing to you, I realized something. And that something is that I am tired.

It’s ok to be tired.

It’s ok to be however you are.

Sometimes, tension and resistance result from not being ok with what is.

Maybe I am also tired because not only have I been moving to a lot of different places lately, I also have not been ok with what is.

Don’t get me wrong. I do think it is good to be not ok with some things. Warriors of the light are not weak. We call out what we see, even if it is silent. We shine a light and people feel it. They feel it when we don’t say something just as much as when we do. It takes discernment to do that. And people know when they are near that kind of energy.

Certainly, I am not content looking at what I consider to be a lot of disfunction and problematic behavior in what I sometimes now think of as Lucifer’s little realm (which is actually simply divine energy that has been twisted up a bit).

There are many things I am not ok with at all.

But then I have to ask myself, “Ok, Terra. So what are you going to do?”

And what can I do?

What can I really do?

Well, the first thing I can do is check in with myself and see how I am doing?

You know what the answer to that is because as I mentioned, right now, I am tired.

How about you?

“How are you doing?” Really. “How are you?” Can you stop to check for a moment? More information may come and whatever arrives in this moment is fine.

“I don’t know right now Terra,” is a perfectly adequate response. The question isn’t a test that you have to pass. It is just an opportunity to turn the spotlight of your attention towards yourself for a moment, in a non-narcissistic, likely unfamiliar kind of way.

So, then what?

Well, I just spent a few days with my good friend. She is studying early childhood trauma and how to soothe one’s nervous system. On her couch she has a weighted stuffed sloth with long arms and a Buddha belly shaped like a large softball.

At times, as we sank up to our necks into her couch together and discussed her upcoming move, the years we shared chatting on it, and life with its various challenges, she would hold the sloth, or place it on different parts of her body.

Then she looked at me.

“Try it Terra. It really helps my clients. They come in and look at it and tell me right away that, no, no, they certainly don’t need to hold it. Then we start our sessions and it isn’t long until they break through their resistance enough to pick it up. See how it feels to have weight on your body. I like to put it anywhere I feel some tension.”

I took it from her extended hands and without thinking, snuggled it against my chest.

I realized her couch felt like a giant version of my soft brown childhood teddy bear that I also used to hold close to my heart, just like my friend. In two weeks, someone will come pick the couch up, for free, and take it with them. All they have to do is agree to move it. It has a lot of love infused in it from all the people who came to be gently guided by my friend over the years. She has hosted small groups in her home. I imagine it will find its way to the right person.

When my friend and I were not busy holding the Sloth, it sat on the arm of the couch with a big stuffed, red heart in its arms. The heart is another tool she discovered. She told me she likes to put it into her microwave where the stuffing warms up. Then she places it, like the sloth, on places where she feels tension in her body. She learned about it from one of her teachers.

My friend is always taking classes and getting various certifications, often more than one at the same time. Currently, she is becoming certified in Somatic Experiencing, a trauma healing modality founded by Dr. Peter Levine, author of Waking the Tiger along with many other interesting tomes.

Care is such an important thing that I was reminded of very concretely by my friend, her sloth, and her microwavable heart.

I don’t remember when I started to offer myself care. I think I was in a yoga class when I took my hand and touched my thigh with kindness.

(I made sure no one was watching).

It seemed like a strange thing to do.

Who touches themselves like that?

This led to suggesting it to others when I began to teach yoga.

“Just take a moment to touch yourself with some care,” I would suggest.

Then I would demonstrate.

It always felt nice.

At times, I have done this with my face, or my neck, or my heart.

On a previous trip, when my friend was in a different class, she demonstrated how she placed her hand gently on her own heart and told me it soothed the sympathetic nervous system (the one that kicks in when your body senses danger).

I imagine people don’t have time to touch their heart with care whilst battling a lion in the arena. So, if you can do that, consciously, your body can tell that at least for the moment, things are pretty ok. I know when I did it, and when I do it now, consciously, I feel more relaxed.

Try it if you like.

There are many ways to connect with oneself like this.

Once, on a psilocybin journey I ran my fingers over my sparkling golden and aging skin to see if I could love the process of my body changing, and find beauty in it all along with offering myself care.

A gentle caring touch or hug is a rare thing. You know. The kind of hug that doesn’t feel needy, or draining. The kind where no one is trying to get something from you. Just a hug. Just connection. Care.

It’s rare.

And people crave it.

My mom recently invited someone over. She is not much older than me and she is struggling with health issues, medications that seem to fight with one another and general grief and malaise.

We knew each other as children and I had not seen her in over forty years. I imagine Mom hadn’t either.

But when she saw Mom recently in the grocery store, they exchanged phone numbers. Then Mom told me that she had invited her over to visit after the woman called.

“I think she needs support, Terra.”

“How nice Mom,” I replied. “And I have a meeting then so I’ll be in my room. I hope it goes well.”

I heard some music playing as my meeting started, which I learned later was her playing their piano. Then, when I came out an hour and a half later, she was still there. Dad had joined them and was sitting on a stool near her on the couch leaning forward, so he could hear her better.

She was dressed in black from head to toe and as I walked out, she greeted me.

“Hello,” she smiled, with pain in her eyes, and arms held out to me, open wide.

I hugged her and as I started to pull away, she held on tighter, like someone grasping an inner tube in a stormy sea.

Her parents have passed away. Her daughter lives in another state. They get along…ok…but they don’t have much in common.

And she was looking for a life raft.

Care is a resource, and one that can come from within, as well as without.

And often, it starts with a simple question:

“How are you doing?”

I like this question best when it comes from someone who is not going to judge me, or deplete me, or offer me their solution to things. And I am learning that I can be that someone for myself.

In my parent’s living room, my childhood friend looked at me with her penetrating eyes and asked me for suggestions.

She didn’t know me at all. But I think she saw something about me that she wanted to emulate, or something that felt like a way out.

What do you say to people who read different news feeds and live in their own version of the Matrix? Usually I try to feel where they are coming from and what they may, or may not want to hear from me. Rarely do I speak in detail about my current views. It usually feels like it would not be respectful or that they would not have the capacity to hear me and would simply be triggered. Neither would help change the world in ways I wish to see.

But as I looked at those eyes filled with pain, I saw something else.

And that something was tenacity and willpower.

In that moment, I decided I would answer her question and tell her what I actually thought, and what I would do in her situation.

Not advice. Nothing I have to worry about as a disclaimer because I wasn’t telling her at all what I thought she should do. I have no idea what path is her’s to walk. But, I told her what I would do.

I told her what I had been learning a lot about health and healing from watching people who follow Dr. Jack Kruse and mentioned my friend’s new podcast with him. I spoke of sunlight, grounding, mitochondria, non-native EMFs, and El Salvador.

I didn’t pay attention to my parents or worry about what they might think.

I just laid it all out there.

She could take it or leave it.

“Thank you,” she said, as she wrote some things down on a piece of paper.

“I’ll check some of this out,” she and her tenacious spark of life repeated.

A few days later I was staying with my sloth-hugging friend when we encountered Desperation in another form.

We were going out to breakfast and passed two women sitting at a table by the entrance. One of them called out to us. She knew my friend from years ago. I think she had attended her yoga classes. Both of us could feel Desperation. Desperation is an energy. Just like care. And Desperation, will search for energy and a way out of pain almost anywhere, including from almost-strangers passing by in a restaurant.

Her eyes drifted towards me a few times as she spoke to my friend, but I didn’t introduce myself, and instead, stood quietly as my friend smiled and responded to her greeting.

How was I doing?

Well, I didn’t want to navigate Desperation right then and neither did my friend. And that’s ok.

But our unvoiced desire didn’t stop her. She came to our table a few moments later and tried to engage with us. We managed to honor our time together though.

My friend is tired.

She has her own health issues.

“I’m not here to work,” she told me, as the needy woman, with buried emotional pain we could both feel walked away. “I don’t think I even want to take on any more clients right now. I have to move soon and I need to rest.”

My friend knew the answer to these questions:

“How are you doing?”

“What would feel like care?”

The answers really matter.

On my friend’s couch, I held the weighted sloth and took time to actually let it feel nice.

In my opinion, that is a disruptive act. We live in a world that says we need to get things done, make a list, have a job, pay those bills, get our taxes done, do laundry, call that difficult person… The list goes on and on.

And I continue to theorize at times, that I am walking through a version of The Matrix.

I often have to remind myself that the only thing that is real, is love.

You might say that it is selfish to not engage with Desperation in the form of people that show up in the Matrix. And I would probably make a joke and say in a Dr. Phil voice, “And so, how’s that workin’ for ya?”

I know for me, that when I feel I am the answer to someone else’s problems, my energy leaves my body and goes to them. I participate in an unconscious cycle of feeding unconscious vampires. No one wants to be a vampire (at least I like to think so) and no one wants to be food for them. At least not me.

If I care for myself, trust myself, and have compassion for myself, I demonstrate what the way out of Desperation looks like.

I know.

There are times I have felt Desperate, or more accurately, Despondent and Hopeless.

Recently, as I looked at the chem trails overhead in San Diego, the chem trails I have been aware of for many years, I found myself troubled.

What could I do? Really?

I didn’t like them. I wasn’t happy to see them forming behind airplanes and slowly spreading out across the sky, blocking the beautiful sun.

“You are in Hell,” I thought. “You are walking through Lucifer’s realm and so of course things would be like this. Lucifer is pretty unconscious. Who would think it is a good idea to control the weather on a planet without anyone’s permission? Who would think they know better than the divine creation of which we are all a part?”

Then I got lost in Frustration and Misery for a bit, but it is hard to stay miserable at Torrey Pines State Reserve next to the ocean, even with the stressed people around me and the silver mist overhead in the sky.

I reminded myself again, of my other mushroom journey and the lesson I received that I carry like my personal Sword of Truth: “Terra, remember, the only thing that is real is love.”

The air was cool and misty as I walked uphill past trees that are part of my present and my past. We have seen one another now for many, many years. I always visit them when I come to California and I honor those that have been cut down or moved on.

I turned off the main road onto a trail I like, which passed by a forest of silver skeletons that used to be a glade of trees I had loved.

I told myself again:

“The only thing that is real, Terra, is love.”

And then I saw something. Something surprising.

There were two new saplings, with thin little trunks, maybe only three feet tall, that had pushed their heads above the wreckage around them. Wreckage from climate change, or bark beetles, or chem trails Lucifer farts across the sky. They didn’t have roofs painted blue over their heads to protect them from conspiracy theory weapons that burn things.

They were just there. Growing.

Like love.

They were real.

Soon after, I saw another tree, older and full of the energy of Spring, with branches reaching close to me on the trail and new life bursting forth.

Further along, a white Magdalene flower sparkled up at me covered in diamonds.

A father with two young daughters were heading towards me on the trail.

“Would you take my picture?” I asked.

As he reached for the cell phone I was holding out, I looked at one of the little girls next to him. “Would you mind?” I said.

People don’t usually ask you to take pictures when you are four.

I would have liked someone to ask me to back then.

She smiled.

“Just touch this button and make sure this part is the color yellow,” I said.

She smiled at me again as I crouched down in front of her. She touched the place I had shown her. Once.

Not like adults who think they are being kind and take ten photos.

Once.

She handed my phone gently back.

“Thanks,” I said.

I forgot about Lucifer and chem trails and all the people I am meeting with health issues.

I think Lucifer forgot about me too for a minute.

Lucifer probably thinks pictures little girls take with one click don’t matter much.

And Lucifer, bless his heart, really doesn’t get it.

Her sister was fine not taking one (as I did remember to ask her too) and we waved goodbye and continued on our separate adventures.

I knew I would use the photo for my post this week. I knew it would come out just fine.

I thought about Hell and Happiness. Somehow, I was finding Happiness despite everything. I told myself I would write about that. I just didn’t know how yet. I hadn’t quite realized that a lot of it came down to asking and answering that question for myself: “How are you doing?”

I wondered if maybe the picture of the dew on the white flower would convey it? The frequency I was sensing of hope, optimism, and love that underlies everything. The frequency I touched here and there as I walked, despite my frustration and my wish for many things to be different. Despite my unwillingness at times to see obstacles as a gift.

Now I am at my uncle’s house in Tucson.

When my family didn’t speak to me, or I to them for many years, my uncle did.

When I got divorced and moved to a different state, by myself, to live on my own for the first time in my life, two people came to visit.

One was my friend with the sloth and the snuggly couch.

She came for Christmas.

It was the first Christmas I was going to spend alone. A Lucifer kind of day, you know? Except I didn’t. I have some feistiness in me too and I wondered what I could do to make the day bearable. I called my friend in San Diego.

She said she would love to visit me for Christmas.

I forgot when I asked that she was Jewish. But she reminded me she loved Christmas and maybe growing up Jewish is what allowed her to be available to come spend time with me? I mean, Jesus was Jewish too wasn’t he?

On Christmas Day, we hiked up Cathedral Rock to a place called The Saddle and looked at Oak Creek far below meandering its way across Mother Earth. Green trees hugged its banks as it snaked through the sunset hued desert.

A woman began to sing Amazing Grace and I felt so much gratitude and reverence as the divine tones surrounded us like soft, feathery grass blowing in the wind.

Later, we went to the Chocolatree for dinner where I had made reservations for the two of us. The hostess directed us to find a seat at one of the communal tables they had set up, where we joined other strangers in togetherness, for Christmas.

And it was beautiful.

When I moved to Sedona, my parents never came to visit, even though I invited them. But my uncle did. And I felt a lot like I did on Christmas when he came. I was going to be ok.

Now I am here in Tucson, at his house that feels like home.

“Stay as long as you like,” he said. “I love to have you visit.”

And he meant it.

Then he sent me a list of plays he is attending and asked me which ones I might like to go to with him and his friends.

All of that feels like a good hug.

Easy.

Not draining.

Not invasive.

Like care, and stuffed weighted sloths, and hearts that go in microwaves.

And that’s love now, isn’t it?

How am I doing?

“How are you doing?” Maybe take just a moment to notice.

Me, I am tired.

I have been moving somewhere new almost every week.

I love adventure. I love meeting people and exploring. And I love snuggling in.

I have visited all the people in my family recently, the one’s that swam with me in estrangement, and it was nice. It went well.

I am glad I did it.

There were some bumps with some of them, and some hiccups.

I said to my father, when he tried to upset me on purpose by waving a piece of chocolate in my face I told him I thought was not safe to eat, and then eating it, “That just doesn’t make any sense…”

And the words came out before my mind had time to catch them. Like truth sometimes. They were quick, and authentic.

Later I realized it does make sense.

My dad is older. He has things he is still working through and some of those things, despite his age, feel young to me.

I imagine (and I am imagining this) that if I asked my dad, “How are you doing, Dad?” and he wasn’t too scared to really feel and express the answer, he might say something like: “I’m worried about getting older. I question myself when we play games and you always win. I feel worried about money, the price of eggs, and the roof that I keep trying to fix and that keeps leaking. I worry about your mom who is falling and struggling to remember things. And I am glad you taught me to scramble eggs. But scrambling eggs for the first time at age 89 scared me a little bit. That is why I didn’t move the whisk around much. Getting old is kind of overwhelming. And I’m going to miss you when you leave.”

But Dad doesn’t know really how to feel or say all of that. It’s a lot. I think Dad feels better waving a piece of chocolate in my face he knows I wanted to throw away and saying, “I am going to eat this and you can’t do anything about it.”

And for a minute, it didn’t make any sense to me. Until it did.

“How are you doing right now?”

Have you ever tried to hold your own hand, really gently, with some care?

Have you ever taken a moment to savor the ease of time with people who are easeful? To notice moments when you feel at home, even if they don’t last?

My friend and I laughed as she reminded me of the Hindu Elephant God, Ganesha.

I remember hearing once that all the Indian deities are actually different aspects of the divine. So it is not so much like there are different Gods, all worshiped separately. More like they are all different facets of the same crystal, sparkling in unique patterns and colors.

I like that.

Ganesha has a large elephant trunk and people like to pray to him to remove obstacles they face, which is something he specializes in.

But the other thing he does with his trunk is to place obstacles in one’s way, over and over again, until we learn what they have to teach us. When the obstacle becomes a gift, he takes his big loving trunk and removes it.

Most people I speak to who have recovered from really difficult situations and life events like addiction and traumatic experiences, have told me they would not change their past.

Those are the kinds of things Ganesha brings.

Not easy things.

But in the end, gifts.

And Ganesha is here to support us also.

It’s ok to ask for help from him.

It’s ok to be tired sometimes.

Or discouraged.

“How are you doing right now?”

I feel comfy here on the guest bed.

I watched a documentary @arianamasters sent me when I asked her how I could learn more about chem trails. The last documentary I had seen on them was twelve years old. Ariana mentioned things about weather modification that are new to me, and some of it I just didn’t understand. I wanted to change that.

I finished watching in the San Diego airport as I waited to board my flight. Then I got on the plane and as it took off, I could see chem trails so clearly. Even more so than before I had educated myself. When I arrived in Tucson, the sky was hazy and I saw remnants of the same thing.

It is spring, but rain has not come to the desert.

I looked at trees as my uncle and I went for a walk. Some were turning brown in ways that seemed unusual to me.

The wind was picking up.

My uncle and I walked comfortably side by side, in friendship.

“It’s climate change,” he said, “and the trees are just thirsty.”

I looked at the climate change overhead, which seemed more purposeful than I had been led to believe in the past.

And there was nothing I could do about it but remind myself again, that the only thing that is truly real, is love.

It didn’t help a lot.

But it helped to walk with my uncle, who later told me, “we choose the things we are going to spend time worrying about.” He didn’t say it unkindly. He said it like he meant it. Which also means, he was telling me I have a choice in things.

I am sad about trees turning brown, and friends I love who are struggling with health issues.

And I am happy to be here, in the middle of the desert, with my uncle again.

It is an oasis.

Chem trails, the Matrix, and Lucifer can’t change that.

They can’t change the joy a little girl feels taking a picture, or the beauty I see in the dew. They can’t change who I am or who you are.

Angels in training.

On a world with elephant gods placing and removing obstacles.

It helps to check in with myself and slow down a bit.

It helps to hold a stuffed sloth or place my hand on my heart, or touch myself with care.

It helps to ask and answer this question and to be ok with what I get in response.

“How are you doing?”

Sometimes, it helps to rest.

taken on a walk, on the bike path, in Tucson…

photo also taken on the same walk on the Tucson bike path…sometimes, I reminded myself, there are no chem trails…

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