Grow Not In Each Other's Shadow

Shadow of sculpture titled "Grow" by Tim Adams that is featured in downtown Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

On March 21st I went downtown to meet my good friend and fellow Active Dreamer, Patty, at Josiah's Cafe to chat about dreams, synchronicity, and whatever else our hearts desired. I had never been to this cafe before so I was very excited to check it out. As I was walking to the cafe a beautiful sculpture on the corner of the street caught my attention so I walked over to gaze at it. The Sculpturewalk located in downtown Sioux Falls is one of my favorite attractions and it does to me just what it is supposed to do---attracts me to the sculptures. I first gazed at the sculpture and remarked to myself how beautiful even the shadow is that it casts on the ground. Then I looked at the title and name of the artist which both struck my heart deeply as they mirrored someone back to me whom I carry in the memories I keep in my heart----my first love. The title of the sculpture is "Grow" and the artist's name is the same first and last name of the guy who was my first love and whom synchronicity led me to--- Tim Adams. 

The title the artist gave his work of art is perfect as it reflects back to me a powerful verse in the poem "The Prophet" by Kahlil Gibran that I actually tried to live and embody in my relationship with Tim, though I feel I may have failed miserably at doing, which is---

I feel the message inherent in this synchronicity is all about learning and growing from my experience of loving Tim and the deep pain I still feel from breaking up and having to say goodbye as he embarked on the voyage of a new relationship with the woman I watched him begin to fall in love with on the Alaskan cruise we were all three on in the summer of 2016. Life really knows how to deal the hard blow of a wrecking ball to your dreams and shatter them, along with your heart and spirit, like no other. But Life also being the great Teacher that it is has taught me so well by now that there is way more to the story below the surface of appearances that reveals, in time, a bigger story which helps to explain why certain painful experiences are necessary for one's growth and learning. Part of me feels wise enough to know that my painful experiences all hold within them the treasure that I am seeking if only I would use my courage to go into the dark places within myself in search of it but then there's another part of me that feels so paralyzed and wounded by the pain and wishes none of it were true or had ever happened. I fluctuate between these two parts of myself and I feel that part of my growth has to do with learning to embody more and more of the wisdom I know to be true and quit giving into the stories I tell myself that are filled with lies, like that I am not good enough, beautiful enough, fun enough, that I don't make enough money, and the lies go on and on...

I wonder if all of the tears I continually shed help me to grow? I sure hope so. Before I stumbled across this sculpture, many times I had scolded and told myself that I should not have taken the risk to be in a relationship with Tim and that I had made a huge mistake by doing so, obviously because of all of the pain I experience as a result. I have realized though that the huge mistake is for me to believe that. It was my dream to meet someone I would fall in love with and it happened in the most beautiful way. I could never have written the story of how I met Tim and got to know him more beautifully than the way my life wrote the story. Life knew just what I didn't know I wanted and I am so grateful for the adventure it offered up to me. It's like my life knew when I was ready for love and then there was Tim. He had already been in my life for a couple years but I was not fully aware of him. And then we bumped into each other at a concert outside of the work place where we had initially crossed paths with each other and that experience held within it the spark of romance. Synchronicity led me that concert that night and bumping into Tim there felt truly magical. I can't deny what I felt. There was way more than just music rippling through the ether at that concert, I know that to be true.

"Some say love, it is a river, that drowns the tender reed.
Some say love, it is a razor, that leaves your soul to bleed.
Some say love, it is a hunger, an endless aching need.
I say love, it is a flower, and you its only seed."         
                                                  Lyrics from "The Rose" by Bette Midler

It Took My Breath Away

Some people who know me may assume that I have always been a very creative person when it comes to writing and that my brain can effortlessly make up stories to write but this is very far from the truth. In college, I remember sitting in creative writing class one day struggling deeply with the worst bout of writing block I have ever experienced in my entire life. This simple yet profound memory has been burned into my brain because the pain I felt from not coming up with anything remotely interesting to write about that day was so excruciating for me sit with and accept. On that day, I felt like a total stranger to myself and my inner critic was scowling at me for being so lackluster with ideas. Since then, thankfully, my creative juices have been flowing like a raging waterfall all thanks to my experiences with synchronicity and dreams. These experiences have given me such richly creative stories to write that I could NEVER come up with on my own. The stories I receive from synchronicity and dreams have been created and gifted to me by life and all I have to do is paint the picture of what I have experienced with words. Though this is hardly easy to do, I enjoy the challenge. 

One such story that was gifted to me came in the disguise of a powerful nightmare that I had in 2012. The timing of this nightmare was uncanny in that I had it just days before the deadline to join an online paranormal creative writing class that I was dying to experience. But I was so hesitant and intimidated to join because I felt as though I didn't have a good story in me to write. That is, until I had an awesome nightmare which propelled me to sign up for the class being offered by someone who has inspired me a lot with his own writing---Ryan Buell, a writer and journalist who also happens to be a paranormal investigator that was on my former favorite A&E show, "Paranormal State." As synchronicity would have it, I actually had the opportunity to meet Ryan recently at Haunticon 2019 in Omaha, NE which was like a dream come true because I was so grateful to be able to tell him how much him, his show, and creative writing class had impacted my life. I told him that he has had a meteoric impact in my life. I had been carrying around gratitude in my heart for many years so it felt amazing to be able to share it in person.

Me and Professor Ryan Buell at Haunticon 2019

I remember Ryan sharing with the class to "write what you know." I was having many nightmares around this time so this was something I knew that I could write. Ryan's class offered me an avenue for working, though it turned into something more like "playing," with some nightmares I had had in order to gain better understanding and insight into what they may mean. I didn't want to run away from these nightmares any longer. Like I told Ryan when I met him, his creative writing class helped me to sit in the fire and find courage to enter into the cave I feared most which held the beautiful treasure I was seeking. 

Image from the "Nightmare" board game I used to play as a child.

The particular nightmare that inspired me to join Ryan Buell's writing class was an especially ominous dark cave for me to enter because I had felt so alive and present in it which made it seem that much more real. I was not simply a spectator in this nightmare which is a common thing for me to be in dreams. No, I was the star actress though I did not have a script to follow and had no clue what was going on or what the next scene would be. The joke was on me in this nightmare and I felt a sense of laughter like never before as it took my breath away...

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CLICK HERE if you would like to hear an audio version of my nightmare story.

It Took My Breath Away

Sometimes you don’t have a nightmare. Sometimes a nightmare has you. Meaning, you find yourself trapped as an actor in a story that has seemingly been crafted just for you and written before you fell asleep. It is as if the whole thing had been staged and the joke was on you. Upon awakening, you can’t help but ponder that perhaps some sort of intelligent force had been paying attention to your thoughts throughout the day, looking for inspiration to tailor a nightmare specifically for you. I think that this may have been the case for me. This is the story of a nightmare that had me…in its grip.

Not long before I had drifted off into dream space, I had been pondering what is called the “Ha” or the “divine breath of life” in Hawaiian spirituality.  It is said that we each receive the “Ha” at birth, when we take in our first breath, and that it is released upon the death of our physical body. As I thought about this I was also inspired to think about the spiritual aspects of humor and laughing; however, I didn’t come up with much because I was exhausted. It was at this point that I decided to take a break from wracking my brain for answers to some of life’s bigger questions and went to bed.

I soon found myself to be babysitting two children, a boy and a girl, I had never met before, or so I thought. I realized that they were fighting over a toy and this instantly annoyed me. I marched right over, snatched the toy out of the little girl’s hands and told them both that if they were going to fight over it then neither of them was going to play with it. This really upset the girl and she began expressing to me why I had made her angry. As she did so, I felt a connection to her and then instantly, she appeared older to me. It was as though she had transformed from a toddler into a teenager right before my eyes. And she seemed very wise for her age. I never caught her name, but she told me that we had met before and then, a memory flashed into my mind of the two of us riding in a car together. I was in the front seat having a conversation with her as she sat in the back. I never saw who was driving the car though. After the flash of this memory, I found myself in her bedroom, sitting in a chair next to her bed which she was sitting on. It was hard to see in her bedroom because it was dimly lit in there and the feel of her room made me uncomfortable. The girl asked me if I was interested in studying anything within the realm of the dark side of the paranormal. This question gave me chills. I told her that I am prone to experiencing a lot of fear and that I was very hesitant about diving into that abyss. Her face then lit up and she became very animated as she expressed to me how much she loves all sorts of scary stuff. She then asked me if I believe in ghosts. I told her, “Yes, I do.” to which she replied, “I definitely believe in ghosts! And you wanna know why?” I replied, “Um, okay…” Though I wasn’t really sure I wanted to hear her reason why, but then she said, “I have this friend. His name is Augustus.” Then she exclaimed, “Watch this!“ The girl grabbed a flashlight and aimed the light beam onto the hallway wall outside of her door. She used it to transmit some sort of coded signal by flashing the beam on the wall. I assumed it was a way to communicate with her ghost friend and that she had just summoned it to come into her room. I became paranoid and frantically wondered what the hell was going to happen. Just then I sensed that there was a presence in the room. Before I knew it, there was an invisible force swooping up over my body, starting at my feet, like a powerful gust of energy. I tried to figure out where it went and could sense it was still present with me but I did not know what it was doing. I tried to talk but I could not make out a sound. Then I tried to scream because I had become so frightened. Nothing. I became even more frantic and began squirming and furiously kicking my legs as I screamed inside of myself, “I can’t talk! I can’t scream! I CAN’T BREATHE!!!” Then, it felt like part of the force moved up into my head and I got the strong sense that it was trying to communicate with me, but I couldn’t make out what it was saying. That is, until I felt the force travel into my left ear. Then, I both felt and heard the vibrations of a deep, raspy voice say, “Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.” My eyes snapped open as I jolted awake like never before. I realized I was no longer in the nightmare but lying in my own bed in ordinary reality. When my whole body had jolted awake I instantly inhaled a deep breath of air. I could feel my heart racing and pounding. Interestingly, I could also feel a sensation in my left ear that had come from the deep, raspy voice that I had heard laughing. I could feel the sensation slowly fading away from inside my ear, yet the whole experience had been forever burned into my memory. Feeling the sensation from the voice in my ear after no longer being in the grip of the nightmare gave me even bigger chills as it blurred the lines for me between the waking and the dream state. It made the nightmare appear more real. In my eyes, what I had experienced was no laughing matter, for this was a nightmare that totally had me and it took my breath away.    

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Now that a few years have passed since I had that nightmare, about 7 years, I can now say that this is one of the best dreams I have ever had and it actually makes me laugh when I remember it. One thing that dawned on me as I worked with this dream in Ryan's class is that I think the part that included a flashlight was partially inspired by a photo I had sent in to Ryan a couple years prior to his class that was for a paranormal photo contest he held. The novice photo I created by hand looks laughable since I did not know how to create it using technology at that time. The photo features me walking up steps outside in the dark in search of the "truth" while Mothman hangs out in the shadows and a UFO flies above. There is a thought bubble with the "All-Seeing Eye" which I feel symbolizes a mysterious way in which we are all connected through the mystery of consciousness. I titled it, "One Step Closer." Unfortunately, I did not win the photo contest. However, it was all worth it for me to at least try. I smile when I look at the photo and enjoy thinking about how far I have come in my inner journey since I created it. Life has blown me away repeatedly since then and has given me TONS of new stories to write. And all the while I feel that I continue to be "one step closer" to my inner truth by paying attention to the dreams and synchronicities I experience.

I am "One Step Closer" to finding the truth.

Having New Eyes

While I was at work the other day I went into the main office to fill out a sheet for overtime hours I had worked and the calendar on the wall caught my eye because it has a quote for the month of March that holds very deep meaning for me. I have now seen this quote appear in my life a total of three times and I'm going to view this third time as a charm since it has appeared in the month of March. In some ways, I do view this quote as a lucky charm for how it has positively affected my perspective as I look over the landscape of the life I have lived thus far. 

Calendar in the office at work

The quote is by Marcel Proust who was a French writer in the early 1900s. The first time his quote appeared in my life was when I was a kid. It appeared on the memory book my Grandma Dorie had given me. As a child, though, I don't think I really soaked in the wisdom of this quote because in 2011, when I rediscoverd this memory book, it felt as though I was reading it for the first time. I didn't remember this quote being on the cover at all, but I did remember the image. It really wasn't until 2011 that its wisdom really struck a chord in me and I fully understood its meaning. 

The second time this quote appeared in my life was during a time when I was truly feeling as though I was seeing my life through "new eyes." When I saw this quote appear in my life again it was like I felt it had come alive and was speaking directly to me. It was truly quite profound. I had experienced a very powerful awakening on multiple levels in my life. My body, mind, and spirit had seemed to finally be beginning to heal after many years of suffering from health issues, chronic negative thought patterns, and having an overall negative perspective about life which stemmed from not feeling well most days. The second time the quote arose in my life was also at work, but a different cleaning job I had at the time. It appeared in a company-made calendar for a business that I used to clean and each month featured a picture one of the employees had taken.The photo that was paired with Marcel Proust's wisdom is of cottonwood tree roots. I have posted it below. The employee who had taken this photo had explained that with "new eyes" one would be able to see the beauty of the roots. I think that is wonderful. It really paints a picture of perspective. 

I deeply pondered how I felt seeing the quote recently for the third time and it felt like I had climbed many mountains, barely surviving some of them, which means I have changed and grown quite a bit since seeing it last. For one thing, when I had discovered the quote for the second time I had just met the guy who became my first true love. I saw so much beauty in the way we met which was at work where this calendar in the above picture came from. But where we really connected in a powerful way was at a concert. He was there for the opening band and I was there to listen to the headliner. As I look back I still smile about how so many things felt like a dream come true in our relationship and yet I also feel a lot of pain thinking about how our relationship quickly turned into a nightmare. Before I knew it, about 2 years into our relationship, we broke up, on an ocean voyage to Alaska. I still loved him but he shared that he did not love me. My heart broke with such power I had never felt before and I felt destroyed. I wasn't sure if I could heal from the pain of being rejected by someone I loved so deeply, but I am now seeing things more clearly with "new eyes" and have a better perspective about why our break up was for the best. Today I am feeling much of me has healed and I am still on the voyage toward healing. I have been trying to see more clearly why our relationship did not work out and I have learned to see that it was mainly because our hearts were going in different directions. The other day I stumbled across a quote by a different French author, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, that struck a chord in me and offers wisdom about how I may be able to better recognize when I have found a good match in a partner: 

Where do poems come from?

Words that are etched into my friend, Max's, headstone at his grave. "From My Heart" is the title of the poem he wrote and shared before he died from cancer on June 6th, 1999.

While in college at the University of South Dakota I was enrolled in a Creative Writing course and I recall a moment talking with the professor about two poems I had written. As we were both looking at the poems I held in my hands she told me that she could clearly see that I must have worked harder on one than the other. I shook my head and told her she was mistaken. The poem that she thought I had spent the most time on was actually the one that had "just come to me." I wrote it in a matter of minutes and its appearance on the page felt effortless. On the other hand, the other poem was the one I had struggled with and it felt incomplete. I don't recall either of the poems, only what the professor had said about them and her opinion has stayed with me. I find it interesting that a college Creative Writing professor would not be aware of how sometimes you can feel "in the flow," dance with the Muse, or experience a spark of creative insight where stories, ideas, or poems may just come to you, while other times you may experience nothing and feel total creative blockage. I just assumed this was common, intuitively known wisdom but perhaps it is not.

When I ponder how poems can sometimes just come to people, seemingly out of nowhere, this makes me think of two people from my life who, unfortunately, are no longer alive: a former high school friend, Max Beeners, and my grandpa, Ralph Wallin. Both of them had each shared a beautiful poem before they passed away that each of them said "just came to them." I find this so fascinating and worth pondering. Where do poems come from? On this website about Max there is a paragraph under a picture of his grave marker which has his poem etched into it that reads: A poem written by Max Beeners, who died of leukemia five years ago. The poem is inscribed on his grave marker. Max's mother, Carla, says he wrote the poem in a matter of minutes, telling her the words just came to him. 

Part of Max's poem etched into his headstone.

When I read his poem, each time I am blown away by the beauty of its visionary message. He was given a gift that was not only for him but anyone else who loved him or simply loves beautiful poems. While I lived in the dorms in college I kept his poem taped to my closet door because of how much it means to me. I feel he gifted me and others something, like a vision, to hold onto to help me better understand not only his death but my own, whenever it comes to greet me. When I read Max's poem, it is so hard to put into words, but I truly feel the presence of God in it and that it is not cheesy whatsoever to really believe that this poem came from Max's heart, the gateway to a Higher Power. I like to imagine that Max truly had conversations with Jesus before he passed away, like his poem describes. Maybe the conversations were in his dreams or perhaps in a waking vision? I like the mystery of it all and even the mystery of where the poem, not simply the words, came from. I see it as one thing, not just a sequence of words strung together. I perceive it how one could look at a painting, as the entire image. I am guessing the words came to him, perhaps one by one, but in totality it was one thing that came to him---a beautiful poem. It beholds a vision and the same time it is transparent to the transcendent. I simply love it and I am comforted by his message where he says, "Some day soon you will walk the path and see, That leaving this earth is all a part of a Victory, And when God needs you above and not on earth anymore, I will be waiting for you in the gateway of heaven's door." I believe the gateway he is referring to can be found in the title of his poem. 

The other person in my life who shared a poem that "came to him" sometime before he died is my Grandpa Ralph Wallin. I was not made aware of his poem until after he had passed away, however. The first time I became aware of his poem was when I received his funeral announcement. It was printed on the inside of it. Sometime after his death I followed my curiosity which led me to reading his online obituary and messages people had shared in his Guestbook. It was by reading the messages that I discovered a message from his friend, Jeff Kroon, whom I had never met or heard of before. Jeff shared in his message that:

One day when Ralph was walking around his pond, these words came to him:

I heard the wind blow,
Watched a tree grow,
Felt the rain,
Smelled the pine,
Tasted Life.

He shared this poem with me and made me promise that I would never tell anyone that he had wrote this until his death. I love you Ralph. You will be missed."

My grandpa's gravestone with his poem etched into it.

Now that I think of it, these two people who had been in my life both also have their poems, that came to them, etched into their gravestones. It is very cool to realize this as well. What makes it all even more special and mysterious is that I found out that Jeff Kroon just so happens to be the uncle to another friend from high school, Nick, who was one of Max Beener's closest friends. The weaving of synchronicity is amazing to me.

I learned that Jeff is the uncle to my friend by contacting him to not only ask him if he was related to Nick but to also ask him more about his friendship with my Grandpa. Jeff had known my Grandpa Ralph very well and knows the pond that helped to inspire his poem, especially because he now lives on the land that he had bought from my Grandpa which is where this pond resides. Gratefully, when I asked Jeff if I could visit this pond, he said yes. It was a beautiful moment to see it in person but also to hear more about their friendship. I felt like I was seeing my Grandpa in a whole new light through the vision of his poem.

The pond, where my grandpa's poem came to him. This pond and land is now owned by Jeff.

My Grandpa's poem is simple yet so profound. I like that it is about the five senses and yet it also embodies a kind of "sixth sense" which is about sensing something seemingly unseen and beyond what can be viewed as "normal" perception. I feel that his poem points to where it came from, if only we can see where that is. I like to imagine that his poem, like Max's, came from his heart. There my Grandpa was, in solitude by his pond surrounded by the beauty of nature, likely feeling so much connection as the nature lover he was, and then the poem came to him. To me, I don't think that he was not caught up in his mind when the words came to him. I like to imagine that he was connected to his heart and something bigger than himself which reveals itself in nature, the visible face of God.

This quote that I discovered on a sign at the Mary Jo Arboretum in Sioux Falls, South Dakota where I live and like to frequently frolic embodies an answer, I feel, to the question, "Where do poems come from?"