Cate with the Snowball of Honor – a snow egg.

It is silent and still as “snow, on snow, on snow”  comes down. Cate and I are bundled up to our noses against the cold, but happy in the oasis that is the walled garden near our urban home.

“Can we visit the Fairy Tree?,” asks Cate.

“Of course!” I reply.

“Oh good, I want to give the Fairies the Snowball of Honor.” says Cate.

When we get to the tree, Cate leaves her snowball in a hollow as an offering.

“Hey Cate,” I say, “tomorrow is Epiphany and we get to find the name of the star we will follow for the year. Want to ask the Fairies what the name of your star will be?” She nods. She closes her eyes and holds out her hand it it’s puffy pink glove. I say, “Imagine that the Fairies are carrying a word to you. They are swirling around you like the snow flakes. And now, they are putting the word in your hand.”  I touch her open palm with one finger. “Open you eyes! ”

The second her eyes open, the word is on her tongue. “Friendship!” she exclaims. “The name of my star is Friendship!”

And so, our new year begins.

Cate, last Winter, at the Fairy Tree.

For those of you who would like to move deeper into a practice of  Epiphany, you can learn more about this tradition, receive a spoken-word blessing, and get help crafting your own High Holy Days atFlock with Magpie Girl: a soulcare spa.  Thanks for being here!

Are your children fighting every request you make? Is nothing you say or do “right”? Are all of you grumbling under your breathe and making what my kids call “the huffy voice”?  That my friends, is Resistance.

Thankfully Nikki Di Virgilio of The Soul Reporter is here with a guest post for us today; and it’s full to the brim about the mysteries behind Resistance, and some tools to keep it from happening.

Kids and The Resistance Epidemic
by Nikki Di Virgilio

How many times have we told our kids to do something and they either refuse, or do so with a constant whiney tune, of I don’t want to and why do I have to.  The request can be something as simple and mediocre as wiping the table, and yet they put up a fight.  It’s frustrating, and causes tension between our kids and us.  Depending on the severity of the resistance in our household, this tension over time can create an isolating and perhaps even numbing relationship, which is damaging to both parent and child. 

Resistance is defined as: the act or power of resisting, opposing, or withstanding.  Unfortunately resistance is our first response to almost any that comes our way. This is often the same for our children.

The word “power” is in the very definition of resistance. Resistence itself  is a power struggle between parent and child. Once we enter this planet, we are instantly faced with the power struggle of balancing the demands upon our minds, bodies and souls. We have to breathe on our own.  We have to eat to live.  We have to sleep to function and be well.  These are required and necessary things.  But then we get older, and there are more requirements. And these requirements often do not align with the truth of who we are and what we seek.  School demands we pay attention, not chew gum, not wear our hair a certain way, be smart, be happy, learn, and agree with what is being taught. Then society demands we look and act in a certain way. As do our parents. 

Consciously or unconsciously our children are absorbing all of these little and big demands all the time. It is no surprise they are resisting!  We are energetic beings, here to unfold the purpose of our soul.  We are not machines, which comply with the buttons being pushed–although we can, and often do. However, most of us don’t want to, especially the young ones who are coming to our planet right now.  They are different, and leading us on a new course, which is more properly aligned with our soul.

 What lessons and tools can we use to help our children grow beyond Resistance? 

 Lesson #1 : Teach cooperation.  Cooperation means working or acting together for a common purpose and benefit. No matter the age of our children, they will respond positively with this larger idea of cooperation. They often like to help and be a part of something bigger. We just have to show how valuable it is, and determine the common purpose.  Read the rest of this entry »

From friends who have re-entered the dating pool at mid-life, to teenage mentorees, to children approaching puberty—sex and sexuality are a regular topic of conversations ’round these parts. One of my girlfriends once said to me that as a teenager she decided “I just wanted to have a sexual history I could look back on without regret.” But how do you defined what that is for yourself in complex and changing world?

It’s always a good idea to ask an expert. So let me introduce to you Becky Knight, Clinical Sexologist. Today Becky is helping us make the connection between our guiding values and our sexual choices. Making that connection will help us feel more confident about our sexual choices, calm the voices in our heads that lead to self doubt, and quite the old tapes we don’t need to listen to any longer. Becky, take it away…

  Read the rest of this entry »

The 19yo is talking about college. Of course, when I overheard him say, “I was reading this college catalog…” I stopped dead in my tracks. After several years of unschooling and some pretty serious slacker practice before that, I wasn’t even pretending that college was in his future—at least not right away. So this news that he’d already assessed and discarded one community college option and was considering another was a surprise to me.

As I listened from a vaguely discreet distance, there was a tone in his voice and a certain lean to his body that I recognized. This particular combo is what he uses when he’s trying to convince someone that he’s doing what they want him to do. But it’s a little tricky because it’s also the tone and posture he uses when he’s trying something on for size—sort of sussing out if he really believes what he’s saying, seeing if what he’s thinking of is really a good fit for him. I like it when he does this. I think it’s really wise. It makes me proud.

Later he and I were able to talk this college thing out a bit over breakfast. (These things always go better over a breakfast burrito.) It became clear that while he’s aware that most of the parental-types in his life would like to see him in college at some point, he wasn’t just blowing smoke at us when he mentioned the college catalogs. He really is interested in the possibility of taking some course — he’s just not sure how to do college his own unconventional way. He doesn’t want to get trapped on some horrid jump-through-the-hoops, school-debt, hamster wheel from hell. In short, he’s trying to figure out how to make college work for him, instead of the other way around.

See, I told you he was smart.

This got me to thinking about all the courses I slogged through and hated, and all the books I bought and never used. It was a lot of waste. So here, in retrospect are my Magpie Girl’s Tips for College Courses. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s back to school season with the last of the schools in the U.S. starting up after this Labor Day weekend comes to a close. Children are trying on outfits, putting their names on backpacks and picking out new lunchboxes. But beyond the ritual of buying schools supplies, what can you do to create a sacred space around going back to school?

Starting a new grade is a big rite of passage for children — one that more often than not goes by unnoticed. In the flutter, hurry and relief(!) of finally getting those kids back in school, busy parents don’t have a lot of time to mark the moment. So here are 3 easy ways to honor the back to school process.

1. Special Breakfast. For ma Read the rest of this entry »

Polyphonic Spree, Light and Day

I struggle to live in the moment. So often I am casting my gaze back in regret and longing, or throwing myself forward in to future worries. I know it’s healthiest for me to live mostly in the Now. But to the Now I feel foreign born, and like an adopted child returning to the place of her birth, I must work a little harder to feel at home on what is truly my native land.

I notice this most when Summer fades to Fall, and the days begin to shorten. I start missing the Light even before she is gone. Start longing for her while she is yet by my side. And in doing so I waste the last long rays of her presence.

This then is my attempt to stay with her, to stay present as long as she is still here.  To remain alert to her companionship. To “…follow the day and reach for the sun.”Later when she is gone, these images may hold her near to me a little longer yet, until she gently moves my hand from her hers, pats my shoulder, and tells me to lean into the next season until she returns.  

 How do you stay present to the edge of this season? What will you need to transition into the next?

He comes to me in my dreams, this child of my heart, separated now seas and ages.

Sometimes the dreams are all absurdity. Last night in my somnolence he came to me with a new love. I asked after her:  what captivated? what called? His serious reply: “She taught me the word “Huntington’s.” Ah, what meaning in that then? Pizza for dinner, perhaps.

Othertimes they are wrought with meaning — Jungian symbols all in a row.  He is lost in the woods. And what are these clamps there on his shoulders, at his gut? What is written on this new scroll?  Are we falling or flying?

When he feels far from me, this child of choice, I wear this ’round my neck. A charm passed to me from my soulsister, long ago when I was the age he is now. Touch it with one finger there at the hollow of my throat. For safety. For comfort. For joy. Hoping to only connect.

A talisman then, swinging there over my heart.

In this photo post: Favorite things, culled from a vagabond’s backpack while on furlough from Denmark in the States, and posed on a swing which has held three generations. 

Would you like to Unravel? Sign up for Susannah Conway’sphotography and journaling ecourse.

Did you know you could fly?

Yes you, with the middle-aged greys springing out of your ponytail…

You with the quarter-life crisis and the world as your oyster…

You with Junior High staring at you from the business end of a double barrel…

You can soar, if only you will bend your knees and leap into the great unknown.

True, the next day, you may fly in a metal tube for 9hours with your broken ankle in temporary cast, and ice from the airplane galley packed around your leg. But you will know in your core  that for those clear sparkling moments you were Icarus triumphant. And, when you are old, you will remember those glorious seconds aloft with clarity; while the throb in your bones will be but a faint memory, calling to mind not a fall, but a flight.

“In life you will come to a great chasm. Jump.”  -J.Conrad

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Cate as her pirate alter-ego, One-Eyed Jan, ready to defend her booty.

What the adorable offspring said:

“Mommy, why don’t you do something with me? All you ever do in Denmark is chores and work on the computer. And now all you are doing on our vacation is the computer!”

What actually happened the preceeding three weeks, when I did plenty of chores, but DID NOT WORK AT ALL.:

- trips to the homemade ice cream place
- daily swims in the ocean
-not one, not two, but three birthday celebrations
-kayaking by moonlight to watch fireworks explode over the Puget Sound
-letting the children swim–fully clothed– at 10pm
-tie-dying 7 kidlet t-shirts
-massive pirate-hunt with real buried treasure
-Eatin’ Eyeball hunt with a toy surprise in the pack
-approximately one million breakfasts, second breakfasts, lunches, snacks, dinners, and desserts
-4,000 tolerant hours of Sponge Bob Square Pants, ICarly and SYTYCDance
-numerous convertible rides
-making dreamboard collages with the cousins
-kite flying….

There’s more, but I forget. Still, I felt totally guilty for several hours while I tip tapped typed away that day. Oh those blue eyes, they are deadly.

What kid tactic really gets your parenting guilt goat? Tell us (and how you combat it) in the comments below. “Ain’t nobody going anywhere but together!”

 For the first time ever, Eden has asked that I NOT post her annual birthday letter on my blog. So in lieu of all that mushy goodness…this is she, and she is lovely.