My friend,
I know you are suffering and I feel there is little I can do to ease that deep pain for you. I wish I could. When I look into your eyes, I see the same sorrow and confusion and grief that I have navigated and at times still navigate. But you are in the thick of it now and I know that this is a very difficult place to be.
And a lonely place too.
Things that you once clung to are crumbling and this change can feel like a personal assault on you, reaching down to your very core. This is hard work, perhaps one of the hardest kinds of work that we as humans can do, and yet it is quiet work, done in the depth of silence and sometimes despair.
It will get easier, but it will take time.
This pain is your medicine and while I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, if you stay with it and stop looking for escape routes you will reap the benefits that come when you are able to live in the truth of your own life.
Right now you are navigating more pain than can fit into your human lifetime. This pain is ancient and confronting. There is much that has been lost, and yet it will all return to you at exactly the right time. Trust.
Stay with it. Breathe into it. Witness the stories that live in that pain, and need only to be acknowledged.
It is only yourself that you are becoming acquainted with, and you are so much older than you think.
This work is a mystery – you don’t have to understand, merely acknowledge.
After my 40 days in the desert and much humbling and difficult inner work I became more myself, embodied, knowing how I truly felt, connected more deeply to the earth on which I walk and understanding a little more about of the pain of others.
In retrospect that sounds a fair trade off, but no one chooses to do this work. It is something that some of us go through and others will never have to navigate. And this is just another part of the ever-evolving mystery.
So my beloved friend, know that I walk beside you, even though you can’t see me. Know that there are countless guides who sit with you as you navigate these challenging times.
Know that you are beautiful beyond measure and that this work you are doing will benefit many others.
Our vulnerabilities, our weaknesses, our shame, they are not the things we must avoid. If they are given the time and understanding they need, they can become strong allies, reminding us to take care of ourselves, to create strong boundaries, to own up to the damage we have caused and the mistakes made.
We are just like every other flawed and beautiful human on this planet, and yet we are our own unique person at the same time. We did what we could with the awareness we had, and as we learn, we do better and we help others around us to do better too.
This is mighty work you are doing and there are mighty invisible helpers stroking your back and giving you the strength to keep moving forward.
With love,
your friend,
Emma
x
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The World Wide Fund For Nature’s Living Planet Report, released on Thursday, describes a catastrophic decline in biodiversity.
Global populations of fish, birds, mammals, amphibians, and reptiles decreased on average by 68 per cent between 1970 and 2016, the index reveals.
Many of us are feeling we are being pushed to edge of our comfort zones by the global pandemic and all it entails. I wanted to share some secrets that help to keep me calm in the eye of this storm that is currently raging.
Nature has taught me many things. Without her, I would not have found the space and stillness to embrace myself more fully, both my darkness and my light.
Thanks to her patience, and the patience I learned as I sat in silence, I was able to acknowledge and accept not just the parts of myself that I am proud of but the parts that I hide, the parts that I am ashamed of, the parts that I would prefer to ignore.
This inner work is not easy to do (nor speak of), and it scares us, for this inward journey, though filled with eventual treasures, can at first be a frightening and confusing challenge.
To embrace ourselves fully we must first see and acknowledge ourselves in all our aspects.
This is the challenge. Society, our families, our pride and some would say our common sense tell us to ignore what is painful and ugly and sad within ourselves and to move on, move on, move on.
And this works for a while. And for some of us this works for a whole lifetime.
But for others there comes a time when we must look within, and make friends with ourselves.
Karl Jung calls our darkness the shadow. He says that in middle life we can choose whether to spend our time on the awareness of the shadow or the denial of it. Both will take up a large chunk of our time but will lead to different outcomes.
Coming into contact with our own darkness can be shocking and deeply challenging, and yet if we give this process the time it needs it can lead us to a better relationship with ourselves and eventually with the world.
The beautiful Aboriginal word Dadirri has been on my mind. We visited Sydney recently and the ancient spirit of that land captivated me and I remembered this word that I heard many months ago and it stared to make sense.
Dadirri is a sacred practice developed by the Aboriginal guardians of Australia.
"It means deep listening and quiet, still awareness. It is a 'tuning in' experience with the specific aim to come to a deeper understanding of the beauty of nature. Dadirri recognises the inner spirit that calls us to reflection and contemplation of the wonders of all God's creation."
A Reflection By Miriam - Rose Ungunmerr - Baumann of the Ngangikurungkurr people from Daly River in the Northern Territory.
I realised that this deep and rich practice of Dadirri was at the root of my ability to sit with nature, to sit with myself. It helped me to know myself, to accept myself, to comfort myself, and to eventually love myself, in both my darkness and my light.
And this process never ends. It is a lifelong journey of being willing to listen, to keep our hearts open, to embrace our sorrows as well as our joys.
Dadirri may be the key to our future here on earth. This practice, deeply natural to us as humans, and largely forgotten, calls us to go deeper, to listen, to breathe, to connect.
The photo of the rock above was taken on the Bondi to Bronte beach walk in Sydney.
Here is a video of Miriam - Rose Ungunmerr - Baumann speaking about what Dadirri means to her. I find it very calming and comforting.
"The sound of deep calling to deep..."
]]>
You came as we all do;
agreeing to a body,
vulnerable and unique.
You saw,
felt
took it in deep.
Could I have sat beside you through the deepest of that dark, dark night?
You went silently,
tired of the fight
you must have weighed it up
many times.
You were astute and you were wise
but your calculations were incorrect
because we are all connected;
tiny, jagged, intricate pieces
of this one nefarious puzzle.
If you could have calculated correctly
the breadth and depth
of our feelings for you
could you have stayed?
You collected us along the way
those who saw you
recognised you
gave thanks for you quietly.
Perhaps you couldn't hear us,
we didn't know
you were drowning.
Forgive us Zari
for not knowing
that you needed
more (or was it less) than you had
I hope as soon as you were released
from your body
you understood
the mysterious importance
of all you gave, shared, were.
You were taken by the dark night
but we will meet again,
your dreamy eyes only resting a little,
untroubled at last,
as you welcome the multitudes within you
as you surrender to your wholeness
before you bless us again.
]]>
How do you survive?
I survive because you have failed to protect your mother earth and you have failed to protect yourselves. You have lost your connections to yourselves and to the earth and this is one of the things I have been sent to strengthen.
Why did you come?
You are stuck in a system where profit is the highest measure of success. In order to elevate profit to this high position, you have had to ignore some essential elements. Each living thing deserves a life and a death of dignity. There is no room for such things when living beings are traded for money.
You came to this planet through the same evolutionary process I have passed through. We are linked, our karma deeply entwined. As you evolve, I evolve.
I live in you and I take what I need for my survival, just like you do.
Yes, but I don’t kill people.
Yes you do every day, through your unsustainable systems, through your greed and your ignorance –millions of living being are lost daily. You have placed yourselves at the top of a murderous hierarchy and though I do not have the power to fully topple it I do have the power to make you stop and think.
I am not your curse, but rather the first messenger in a series of messengers that have been mobilised to stop you in your tracks.
You see the tracks you have built, the progress you have made is not true progress at all. You are part of a great being, part of an ecosystem that is struggling under your lack of awareness.
My tiny particles engender fear and death to some, and to others, I will pass through their systems with hardly a symptom. Your deaths and the disruption of the systems you have built is not my primary purpose, but these parts of my existence have done well to get your grudging attention.
I am here to show you that you are not separate from each other, you do not live in cities and countries, you live on a planet that supports you in every way possible, that asks nothing from you, but the same awareness that exists in each living being. This awareness of your interconnectedness, of the vastness of your true being, is what I am here to show you.
When will you go away?
Currently, billions of dollars are being pumped into the pharmaceutical industry as it develops a vaccine against me. This must be done in order for you to bring back the dominion you have grown used to, but it is just another step in the further degradation of an organic planet that has the resources to be able to take care of each one of you. All you need to do is to use your knowledge, intelligence and skills in order to accept your role as a key player in an unfolding drama, rather than the controlling director.
What is your purpose?
My purpose is to help you to start on your inward journey. When the doors are closed and many of your usual distractions are no longer allowed there is a chance for you to understand your life more fully. I am giving you a chance to simplify and to slow down so that you can plan for the days to come.
What about climate change?
The climate catastrophe is but another messenger alerting you to the very same lesson. Our mother’s time frames are much vaster than your own and so it is hard for you to see your lives on the true horizon of time. It is difficult for you to believe that you have done enough damage to cause your own destruction.
This is true but it is also false in the way of many riddles. There are large arcs of time that our planet passes through in the phases of her lifetime. She is already in a phase of transformation but the imbalances that your systems have imposed, have sped up her process and unbalanced the eco-sphere enough to call into question the continued survival of your species on this planet.
But it is not too late.
There is time and room for you to not just survive but thrive. Over billions of years, the same evolution that has grown me and you has put the exact right conditions into place to support this unique place we both call home.
What will happen next?
Eventually, my power will decline. I will probably be banished by a vaccine and if not, over the decades to come I will be reduced to no more than a strain of the common cold.
In the meantime, I am giving you a gift. I am asking you to slow down, to look into your hearts, to find your kindness, to own up to historical injustices and to acknowledge the mess you have made of your home.
Don’t be shocked that it is all happening at once and that so many things are toppling over, or falling apart, or being exposed for the evils that they are.
This is a sacred time, and despite what most of you think, I am a sacred messenger.
]]>We all have people in our lives that we worry about. They may be in the clutches of addiction, they may be unwell, or we may have become estranged from them because of their bad behaviour.
There are also people in our lives who hurt us and make us angry and whose very presence feels toxic to us.
Ho’ponopono is an ancient, simple and effective way to heal these relationships while at the same time healing ourselves and spreading the qualities of love and harmony in our world.
Ho’oponopono originated in Hawaii as a healing method based on forgiveness. In it, the practitioner visualizes the person that has wronged them or that they have wronged and they say these four sentences to them in their mind.
According to the Hawaiian worldview, the literal translation of Ho'oponopono is ‘to put to right; to put in order or shape, correct, revise, adjust, amend, regulate, arrange, rectify, tidy up, make orderly or neat.”
According to Jonathan Davis on Uplift, Ho'oponopono came to wider attention through the work of a Hawaiian shaman, Dr. Hew Len. His perspective is the idea of taking responsibility for more than your personal self because ‘you are in me and I am in you’. His way of expressing Ho’oponopono contains an awareness that the discordance we find in others and in the world outside ourselves is due to ‘errors’ in thought stored in our personal and collective memories.
Read this interesting article for more information:
https://upliftconnect.com/hawaiian-practice-of-forgiveness/
It is advised to keep repeating the four sentences until you feel a shift - a more harmonious energy between you and the person you are visualising.
I know that it can seem counter-intuitive to say sorry to someone who has wronged you, but this practice is at the core of the unconventional wisdom of Ho’oponopono and when you use these four powerful sentences the wisdom will be revealed.
I have found when using it I can finally understand the problem from the point of view of the person that has hurt me, and I can understand the hurt in their own lives that have led them to act in such a way.
Through this process, I can often find true compassion for someone who has hurt me, and from there it is easier to think good thoughts about that person and to wish them well.
Ho’oponopono also works well with people that are unwell mentally and physically. And when you feel powerless to help somebody who is grieving, or who are suffering these four sentences can show us a way to connect with the person in a loving and life-giving way.
The best part is that we don’t need to be in someone’s physical presence for Ho’oponopono to be effective. We can be separated from this person by geography or time and it still works just as wonderfully.
We can also send Ho’oponopono to our loved ones who have died. It is a great way for us to recognize that this person is still alive but just not in this world. We can send them our love and our forgiveness and our gratitude and it is heartening to feel connected to those we are missing in the physical world.
Ho’oponopono offers forgiveness, love, and harmony to fraught relationships and can bring relief and healing. It is a simple and effective medicine for the soul and it is worth trying so you can feel for yourself the transformative potential of four simple, short sentences.
Give it a try with someone that has wronged you, or whom you have wronged and please let me know how it goes for you.
And to help you use Ho'oponopono effectively I have a meditation video that can help you bring the practice into your daily life in a very simple way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=B6Z-Rbmz1vM
]]>
As I move towards putting my art and my vision out into the world I'm drawing strength from my great, great grandmother Shariffe.
She inspires me to face down my fear, to take one step at a time, to be patient and determined and focused. She rose above so much in her life and I am asking her right now to help me rise above those things that hold me back while keeping both feet firmly planted on the earth.
Shariffe Lettoof was the daughter of peasant farmers from Bsharri in the Lebanon Mountains. She married Anthony Coory and in the mid-1880s, with their infant daughter Amelia, the couple sought their fortunes in New Zealand.
In 2008 she was inducted into the NZ Business Hall of Fame, one of only a handful of women represented. As you can imagine she was a fascinating woman.
It is said her husband Anthony Coory did not have her knack for business, but she refused to let him squander the wealth she had created. The Coorys opened a fancy-goods store before moving into importing. At this time, when women were seldom seen in business, this indomitable immigrant woman was the driving force in her family business. She set up a workshop where Lebanese women made shirts and aprons for the hawkers to sell, and it is said she taught many how to successfully sell goods.
She built her own fortune and left her own legacy. She was able to leave a Dunedin property to all four of her grandchildren, one of whom, Joseph Farry, was my grandfather.
Her gift helped her descendants become educated and give back to their families and communities, just as she taught them.
Now I call on her strength as I move forward with my creative vision.
I will draw on her wisdom and dogged determination as I launch my book, my soul stones and my website into the world.
Thank you Sitee Shariffe. I love you
]]>This week has not been one of my best. I have been overloaded, overwhelmed and overburdened...plugging away at my never ending "to do" list , snapping at the kids and fighting with my husband about every little thing.
I think the guys have been tip toeing around me, as if I'm a volcano that is about to erupt with sky high lava flows...and to be honest that's how I've been feeling a lot of the time.
I lost perspective somewhere in amongst the obligations of the week, and I started taking things too seriously. I doggedly found time for my meditation, but there was no joy in it, as it became just another thing to tick off my list.
I find that when life gets like this I feel something within me harden. Somehow I stop living from the heart, and trusting the flow of life, and become convinced that I am very important and have so many things to do, and that without me, the world would just stop turning.
And I make decisions based on this wrong information. Coming from an overload of obligation, and a lack of time and space in which to process all the "doing" that my life requires, I get confused about when to say "Yes" and when to say "No".
From this contracted place, things don't look as clear. I can't see myself or the people around me as they really are, and I live life as if it is something to be either managed or conquered.
And I know that none of this is true, but when I'm operating from my mind, rather than my heart I can convince myself of many falsehoods, with the righteous belief that I most certainly know best.
But I don't...my heart does though...so to be able to drop back into the heart is the only way to end this tiresome cycle.
I woke this morning to a beautiful day, and after I had caught up on some neglected family chores I made my way down to the vastness of a deserted Muriwai beach for my first walk in a week.
As soon as I got down on the sand I started to unwind. The constricting feeling around my heart loosened its hold a little and by the time I had made it to the sacred spot where the river meets the sea I felt myself sinking slowly back into my body.
I climbed up a sandhill and lay down on the warm black sand and breathed deeply until I relaxed a little more. I felt something biting me and sat up to discover a nest of dashing ants in the tussock right beside my feet.
I watched them for a while and marvelled at their team work. I remembered that in the Native American tradition the symbol of the ant teaches us about patience, about being mindful of others, and about letting things unfold.
I smiled to myself a little at this point as patience is a constant struggle for me, and I never seem to properly learn the lesson. And that's probably the exact point.
By this time my phone had run out of batteries so I was unable to check emails or social media any longer. What a relief.
The tide was high and the sun had gone as I made my way slowly home, being soaked several times by rogue waves that seemed to come from nowhere.
I found a huge blue plastic container that had washed up on the beach. Luckily it was empty and I carried it for ages, finally handing it over to the DOC rangers who were happy to dispose of it for me and thanked me for picking it.
I know, it sounds pretty boring, but each one of my little interactions with nature gave me back to myself a little more fully.
By the time I climbed through the native forest and greeted my favourite tree I was feeling almost human again...comfortable with myself...at home.
And so all I can do is thank nature again and again for all she gives me, naturally and unconditionally. I want to give back to her by being kind to myself and my family, and by keeping my heart open and my mind in service to that open heart.
It's a big ask, but nature helps me to balance my life, and my world. And even though I am prone to forgetting, and leading myself off track, I know that a grounded and balanced perspective is only a long beach walk away.
I just need to stay humble and know that the lesson is never fully learned. Life is merry dance of getting lost and eventually finding my way back home.
]]>
There is lots of anger in our world right now, from the fires in the Amazon to the dehumanisation of refugees, #metoo, racism, toxic leadership, the gender pay gap, modern-day slavery and the terrifying acceleration of climate change.
There is much to be angry about.
And this anger is better than the despairing silence and apathy that many of us feel when we think the problems are too big and too complex to solve.
As humans, we are built for survival and have managed against the odds to keep reproducing for hundreds of generations. We will find a way through but I think we may need to engage with our rage and use that to spur us on to constructive action.
But it’s not easy to engage with rage. It is an uncomfortable emotion that is judged harshly by a world that thrives on our consent.
There is nothing wrong with rage. It is the emotion that arises when justice has not yet been done when we feel powerless and silenced.
I think this modern rage is our gift and that we should use it very wisely.
This rage is coming from many different places.
I think some of it is coming from a reaction to a thousand years of disrespect for our planet, from our pain at watching nature's silence used as consent for taking and taking and never giving back.
#metoo is just the tip of the iceberg in our powerful fight for consent, not just over our own bodies but over the body of our planet.
Planet earth has been given no rights, no legal identity. She is there only for our pleasure, for commerce, for mining and fracking and fishing, and farming.
This planet is not our property - she is not our resource she is our mother and we are all lessened by her enslavement.
And our collective rage is not appropriate - is not polite, is not rational but yet it exists in each one of us because we know the way we are living is fundamentally flawed.
So can we direct our rage into something that will make a difference?
In December 2010 Bolivia passed the Law for the Rights of Mother Earth.
The law defines Mother Earth as "...the dynamic living system formed by the indivisible community of all life systems and living beings who are interrelated, interdependent, and complementary, which share a common destiny; adding that "Mother Earth is considered sacred in the worldview of Indigenous peoples and nations.
The law also establishes the juridical character of Mother Earth as "the collective subject of public interest", to ensure the exercise and protection of her rights. By giving Mother Earth a legal personality, it can, through its representatives (humans), bring an action to defend its rights. Additionally, to say that Mother Earth is of public interest represents a major shift from an anthropocentric perspective to a more Earth community-based perspective.
This Bolivian law needs to be embraced by every government on earth, starting with New Zealand. If we can direct our rage about lack of consent in our own lives and in the life of the planet into lobbying for this law, and all the societal changes it entails then we may have a chance to bring things back into balance before it is too late.
We think we have time but our survival as humans on this planet is at stake. Mother Earth has time frames that we cannot even comprehend. She can wait us out without effort and her body and systems will regenerate quickly once we are gone.
But we have a chance to turn it around. To finally start living on this planet the way our ancestors did, the way the indigenous people of this planet have been living for thousands of years, in a delicate and ever-evolving balance.
Living on this planet is about give and take, it is about understanding that nature and Mother Earth are what sustain us. There is a balance that must be created through new ways of looking at our lives, through the community, through building our lives sustainably, and through the navigation of what consent means for both our bodies and the larger body of Mother Earth.
On a practical level we can start with bringing the need for a Law for the Rights of Mother Earth into our consciousness. Let's learn about it and think about it and talk about it with our families and friends, debate it, and understand the concepts behind its creation.
We can draw great wisdom and strength from our own indigenous guardians, our Tangata Whenua who have preserved ancestral knowledge and culture in a unique and powerful way. It is time we used that knowledge to lead us back into a reciprocal relationship with the planet on which we live.
Let's look at how this law works in Bolivia and lets lobby our own politicians to implement the same idea in our own countries.
This is an achievable step. It is a way to bring the needs and rights of our great mother into law so that she is afforded the same basic dignity that we as humans enjoy every day.
The Native American tribes make each decision based on how it will affect the next seven generations.
When we bring the rights of our mother earth into our law-making, we are ensuring that her health and preservation are carried forth so that our grandchildren are able to inherit this planet and act as caretakers of their living, breathing, sacred and unique home.
]]>Dear Amazonia,
I apologise on behalf of humanity. Unlike your mother, nature, who acts in response to natural rhythms, we humans have replaced cycles with unnatural greed that ironically threatens our own long-term survival more than it does your own.
We have replaced give and take, with only take, and we have confused destruction with progress. The needs of the children from our seventh-generation have been ignored by those who think only about short-term gains, and the need for short-sighted growth.
Our indigenous guardians remember what you have shown them, and they are fighting on your behalf. But their numbers are tiny, compared with those who have forgotten.
Show us how to help more people to remember.
Bring us back to ourselves enough that we understand that we are part of you and that you are the best part of us.
Amazonia you are the lungs of our world. And what spectacular lungs you are. You have evolved with grace for the past 55 million years and hold in the treasure trove of your habitat, magical life forms that we are destroying before we have had the time to discover, let alone understand.
And that is what hurts the most, the ignorance and wilful greed that is driving us forward and seems to be unstoppable.
We have simply elected the wrong people, but implicit in this is our lack of humility and understanding. We live and breathe and have our being only because of the thin layer of topsoil beneath our feet, and the hospitality of our great mother.
We do not deserve the mantle of leadership we have given ourselves, and we need to find improved representation. Even better we need to stand up, each and every one of us and speak out on behalf of the mother beneath our feet.
The time for privileged reticence is gone. We need to dig deep. We need to look at our allergy to earnestness because at this time earnest passion and true community is all that can save us.
Despite it all, I believe in humanity. I believe we are being held hostage by the worst of us, by the 1% that are delusional, that have been denied access to their own hearts, that are so damaged they cannot see the harm they are doing to their very own mother.
Please, Amazonia show us the way.
Help us to use our lives properly so that we are able to look our grandchildren in the eyes without guilt.
This is not a dress rehearsal. We are heading towards the sixth extinction where humanity will be a casualty of a planet that can no longer support the very specific needs of human life.
And we have brought it on ourselves.
Will our mother breathe a sigh of relief when she has finally been able to shrug us off?
Perhaps….
But I believe we are better than this.
We have love, we have compassion, we have connections, we have community. We can prove ourselves worthy of our great mother.
We can win back the trust she once had in us.
And to do this we must look to the indigenous guardians on our planet who have not forgotten what so many of us have.
We need their sacred knowledge and the rituals that have evolved since our earliest days to keep us in balance, to keep us honest, to keep us close to the mother that provides so unconditionally for our every need.
Can we empower each other to stand and speak on behalf of our planet, on behalf of our mother, on behalf of the one who continues to give her all so that we might have a life?
Amazonia we are sorry.
We have much work to do.
]]>On Saturday, my husband, two sons and I headed to Ihumātao, to stand with those occupying the land near Auckland Airport. We parked our car 15 minutes from the site and joined hundreds of others who were either heading to, or heading home from the site.
The atmosphere was friendly and almost festival-like. The sun was shining, and most people were smiling, including the police. People carried water, food, blankets and wood to the occupiers.
Looking around, we were immediately struck by the natural beauty of Ihumātao. Rolling hills and ancient rock walls give way to small maunga and a sparkling view of the Manukau harbor. Million-dollar views indeed. This is sacred land, and the thought of 480 houses being squeezed onto this breathtaking site was distressing enough in itself to justify the trip.
But this was not the reason for our visit. This land was confiscated from its Māori guardians by the Crown in 1863, and in 1869 it was sold to the Wallace family, who then sold it to Fletcher Residential in 2016. Recently, there has been an offer by Fletchers to hand back 8 hectares of land to Māori and to offer 40 homes at a discounted rate for Māori buyers. This deal was negotiated with some local kaumātua, but for years there has been concern. This was spelled out in a United Nations report that recognised that consultation and consent from Māori had not been adequately sought.
Of course there are always two sides to every story, and in cases like this, where conflict has been going on for hundreds of years, things will never be simple.
Read this article by historian Vincent O’Malley to learn more about the history of this area, and the “Trail of Tears” that Māori have walked as they were exiled from the land of their ancestors, and given no proper reparation after hundreds of years of injustice.
https://thespinoff.co.nz/atea/27-07-2019/our-trail-of-tears-the-story-of-how-ihumatao-was-stolen/
As a Lebanese New Zealander I have always sought to dig deeper than the mainstream, to understand what is happening in the world. My extended family on both my Lebanese and Pākehā sides believe strongly in social justice and I have grown up marching against the Springbok tour, the Iraq war, and now marching with my children on behalf of our environment.
My husband and his family have only recently connected back with their Māoritanga, after colonisation and its legacy of shame left them disconnected from their Ngāti Kahungunu heritage.
So, like many New Zealand families we are a pack of mongrels…a bit of this and bit of that, but we have a deep love for our country and for our land.
This deep love is what drew us to Ihumātao at the weekend. We wanted to show our solidarity with tangata whenua who are protecting this ancient land. We came armed with bags of fresh fruit and we were welcomed with open arms and made to feel like we belonged here.
And looking around we saw every different kind of Kiwi. There were Arab Kiwis, Pasifika Kiwis, Pākehā Kiwis, African Kiwis, we saw Black Power members and priests and hippies, and every other demographic you can think of.
When we first arrived I bumped into my two goddaughters, both in their early twenties, both studying at university. They came with separate groups of friends, and made themselves instantly at home. When I hugged them I understood that our future is in good hands.
We noticed that the young people who gathered at Ihumātao, talked to each other and walked around learning about the site, and listened to the speakers on the main stage or the musicians and performers who entertained the crowds.
Some made the rounds of the site quietly carrying the most thought-provoking banners, and others volunteered in the kai tent, or helped with cleaning up the site. Many were taking photos, but none were glued to their screens. These young people were in community and they were fully present, and that was something rare and valuable to see.
Ihumātao is a place for all New Zealanders. It is a place for us to learn about our history and to be inspired about our young people and their vision as well as their ability to organise.
There is a feeling of safety, as if those in charge are thinking carefully about what is needed to make this a comfortable and functional communal space. Ihumātao is a drug, alcohol and smoke free zone. There are posters everywhere to remind those visiting that this is a sacred and peaceful space, and that respect for each other and the land is a pre-requisite for your entry.
Ihumātao has many kai tents offering free and healthy food to whoever needs it. There are free blankets, warm clothes and even toys to keep the kids entertained. There is a tent for making banners where all are welcome, a decked out media tent and lots of great music.
My friend said it was like a Māori Glastonbury, only better.
I had to agree.
All the people we met at Ihumātao were welcoming and humble.
It was first and foremost for us an education about our history. We were able to witness first hand, the other side of the story, not told in our schools or in our mainstream history books.
The fact that this beautiful land had been confiscated from Māori who legally lived here is a part of New Zealand’s history that must be understood by all Kiwis if we are going to move forward in a functional and sustainable way.
For mainstream Pākehā, this uncomfortable knowledge, can, for the most part, be easily avoided. This is the main reason that I urge you to take your children, your respect and your humility to Ihumātao.
There you will find people of all ages, with hearts wide open, wanting to share their history, their waiata, their karakia and the beauty of their land with you.
On the speaking stage are photographs of ancestors who watch over all those who stand to speak. There is important dialogue taking place on this stage. It is important for our whole country and especially for our children.
One of my favourite banners at Ihumātao read, “We are our ancestors’ wildest dreams”. This rung true as I watched my boys learning the difficult truth about our land and our history and what it really means to be tangata whenua of this young nation.
If you go to Ihumātao be sure you take an offering with you. It might be water, food, blankets, tents or gazebos, firewood, or supplies to make banners, but don’t come empty-handed.
We owe courageous people occupying this site our respect. It is their vision and their willingness to stand up for what they believe in that is the start of a powerful grassroots movement in this country and around the world.
We have had enough – the old ways are not working.
Take your kids to Ihumātao and get a glimpse of a future we can all be proud of.
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we are all broken
each one of us
not just those who so generously
let us let it witness it,
but every human being
tied to her human family
with the pain, strife, war and famine
that have lived before us
and so live IN us also
we are here
to learn to live in the unique joy
and the excruciating pain
of our humanity
we are here to acknowledge
our vulnerabilities,
to encounter
our shadows
we are here to be humbled
by the depth of our ancestral pain,
to walk into our shadowlands
accompanied by
the compassionate witness
who waits and watches
and comforts,
who knows
that this baptism of fire
is the first step
towards our next evolution.
we have survived
that is true
but now we must learn to heal,
to spend time
giving to our ancestors
that compassion
which they didn't
have the luxury
to gift themselves.
we must make room for each other's suffering
we must not look away from each other's agony
or hide from our own.
we are survivors,
but that which we ignored
in order to move forward
must now be brought
tenderly
into the light.
only the strong have survived
and so we are terrified
of our weaknesses
our damage
our despair
our defeat
our sensitivity
our hearts
broken beyond repair
but these precious defeats
live inside us
alongside our stories
of survival,
they are silenced.
so that the strong
can continue to inherit our earth
these rejects
ignored and shunned,
hold knowledge
we can no longer
afford to do without
they call out from within us,
they are desperate,
sending the best of us
to graves dug by our very own hands
these untouchables
connect us
with the ground beneath of feet
teach us the necessity of humility,
open doors
that have been locked
for the millennium.
they wait to guide us
gently
back
to our wholeness
both the darkness and the light
acknowledged at last.
our brokenness
is our way forward,
may we embrace it
may we acknowledge it
may we make room
for our greatest teacher.
]]>
When I was grieving my mum I found that nature was the only place vast enough to contain the raw and overwhelming emotion that washed through me.
I sat on a lonely rock at the end of Karitane beach most days for two years, listening to the sounds of nature, expressing my sadness and waiting to feel better.
The wisdom I received from my time on “the rock” made me realize that there is a life force, and a message in every part of nature. I started to look more closely at the rocks on the beach that I walked every day, and the more I studied them, the more I loved them.
I realized that there were words inside each stone.
Words that could remind us of truths we have forgotten.
I choose each of my Soul Stones by hand, and they come from many different parts of Aotearoa (New Zealand). Each stone comes with information about its geographical place. Some of the stones are from our rivers, and some are from our coastline, and each one is filled with its own quiet wisdom.
I believe that the mauri or life force within the stones can help us to remember ancient truths that can be forgotten in the rush of our daily lives.
Each stone is completely unique, with a message that I hope will resonate with you.
You see I have always wanted to say YES to life, to people, to requests for my time, to help those less fortunate, to being a good mother, wife and friend. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with this, in fact, this YES is what makes the world go round.
There was just one problem, I hadn't yet learned the lesson of balance. I had not yet learned that my love of saying YES had stretched my life too far. Like a rubber band that had no more elasticity left, I had reached the end of the road with my old ways.
I had a lot of soul searching to do.
I had seen my mother gain her PhD in YES, and although she helped so many people, she never got the chance to make choices about how she wanted to live her own life because she was always taking care of everyone else's needs.
And her life was filled with grace and when she died the cathedral was filled with hundreds and hundreds of people whose lives had been made better by spending time with her. And this was comforting and beautiful.
She was a shining light to all that met her, and she will guide me always, but I realised that we are different people, and the YES that informed her life had to be tempered by a NO in my own. And with learning to say NO I was starting pretty much from scratch.
I started because I had to because I had nothing left to give and I needed to go to ground, to understand myself more deeply, to heal my wounds.
And so that's what I did. I spent time in nature, in silence, by myself and with a trusted friend who understood exactly what I meant when I told her that I needed to bring NO into my life.
It takes a time to change lifelong habits, and I am still very much a work in progress but I feel relieved to have been able to make NO my friend.
I realised that I need not volunteer so enthusiastically for things that I don't really want to do. I learned that I don't need to spend time with people who don't make me feel good. I learned that boundaries are good and healthy and that I need them if I want to be a healthy person. I learned that I need to take care of myself and my own emotions before I can take care of others properly.
And most importantly I learned that NO is just as important to me as YES and that I can trust myself with this. There is not much chance that I will become a selfish recluse because there is still within me the overwhelming desire to say YES, to help, to make things better.
But now, I have learned that I must balance this YES with a healthy and unapologetic NO.
It's funny, the world doesn't seem to mind at all when I say NO for my own good. In fact, saying NO has opened my life up in ways that I could not have imagined.
]]>I don't know about you but I am sometimes pretty hard on myself. I'm always looking at what I could have done, how I could have done better and comparing myself with people who seem to be doing better in life than I am.
"How do they have time to do that?" I ask, "How do they fit that in on top of all the other things they have to do? How can they make that work?"
And if I'm feeling weary and tired I question myself and tell myself to keep going no matter how I'm feeling.
"Why are you tired? There's no reason for you to be tired, you're just going to have to keep going," that perfectionist voice inside me says.
And I know that this way of thinking is the building block to anxiety and conflicted feelings and yet, even after all these years of meditating I find myself listening to this un-constructive voice and giving it more power than it deserves.
Last week I had a very long "To Do" list and yet I felt really tired and it was taking me longer than it should have to complete easy tasks.
I decided to go rogue and take myself down to the beach for some much needed quiet time. I made my way to the sand dunes and climbed to the top and lay there in the spring sunshine, listening to my breath.
At first, I was berating myself for all the things that I should have been doing but slowly the breathing started to slow my mind down a little and I was able to hear the waves and feel the gentle wind on my skin and watch the birds as they circled in the blue sky above me.
After about twenty minutes I felt calmer and more in tune with the natural world around me. I felt that nature herself was recalibrating my thinking into a calmer and more receptive state. From here I was able to see my life from a different perspective. I was able to see (and feel) the many blessings of my life, and this gratitude grew as I lay in the sand dunes doing absolutely nothing.
In the past, I may not have allowed myself to do such a frivolous thing in the middle of a workday, but I knew from past experience that this time I took, would be more valuable than any other more immediately constructive work I could do.
This week, my wish for you (and for myself) is that we take the time we need to feel balanced and peaceful. That we give ourselves the rest and replenishment we need, free of the guilt that sometimes stalks our most precious moments.
Take an inventory of all you have done for others this week (your family, your work colleagues, your friends, your pets) and also consider all the ways you have made the world a better place.
You are more precious and worthy than you think. You are doing more than you give yourself credit for. You are spreading love and kindness in the world. You deserve to take some time to rest your body and mind.
You are enough.
Can we please rest in this knowledge for even a short time this week?
Beloved is a comforting book that emerged from the time I took in nature to heal from deep grief. It is a helpful resource for those who have lost a loved one, or who are struggling through hard times.
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Mark and I were living in downtown Manhattan at the time, and when we were finally allowed back into our apartment we found it covered in the toxic, white dust that settled all over our beloved city.
The city that we loved, that had provided us with all we needed to make our creative dreams come true, changed almost overnight into a place where scared immigrants displayed the stars and stripes in their front windows, hoping it would be enough to save them from attack.
We read with horror accounts of sikh shop owners who had been killed for wearing turbans and we watched as fear mongering nationalists hijacked the city.
Within a month of the attacks we decided to return home to New Zealand.
Since then the world has become a darker and more divided place than ever. The fear and division caused on that day has grown so much that when I look at America today I feel desperate about the future.
There are more refugees and displaced people than ever before, (67 million at last count) and new nationalist movements are taking the fear and anxiety of our age and using it to fuel their political ambitions.
I think many of us are feeling apprehensive about the future.
When the attacks happened all those years ago, I took refuge in my faith and in words that helped me to make sense of the chaos all around me. Freedom Song was a touchstone poem that I carried around with me back then, and I remember reading it during my toughest times to bring clarity to the confusion.
And now 17 years later that same poem is now a beautiful hard cover gift book and the message it brings is more relevant than ever. It looks at the world and all its heartbreak and gives a solution for these strange and divided times we are currently navigating.
The message is simple but very important at this time. We know deep in our hearts that our shared humanity is all that really counts, and yet sometimes we need a timely reminder.
People have told me that they have cried or choked up when they first read Freedom Song. This makes me happy because I know that it is doing its work and making us think about the big picture, and more importantly helping us to tap into how we are feeling about the way the world is right now.
Freedom Song didn't spring from a focus group or to plug a gap in the market, the words sprang from the depth of my soul, as it struggled to make sense of the human suffering it encountered.
It brought a message of love and connection to me at a time when I most needed and it and it exists now in the form of this book to connect with your soul in an authentic and healing way.
Freedom Song has changed and evolved with me through the last two decades. I was lucky to find the unique and wonderful paintings of Ewan McDougall to illustrate the deep themes running through the words.
I wrote the first draft of the poem when I was in my early 20s and working as a journalist on a documentary with Rena Owen from the award winning New Zealand film, "Once Were Warriors". We were talking to people whose lives were similar to those depicted in the movie.
I was shocked when we met a young woman who told us the story of the death of her baby at the hands of her partner and how she had taken the rap and blamed post-natal depression to save her partner the jail time.
I thought I was pretty worldly twenty something but this confession broke my heart. There seemed to be little emotion in the woman's retelling and I was shocked and saddened by the lack of love, and devastating violence that was at the centre of her life.
I felt helpless to do anything to make this woman's life any better and her story was only one of many sad stories I heard through my research. I went to bed that night with a very heavy heart.
I fell into a fitful sleep and in the middle of the night woke to a urge to write. What emerged was the first draft of "Freedom Song". The words somehow distilled my distress and pain into a rhyming poem that answered some of the deep questions that I couldn't answer in my woken life.
The words came from a deep well within that was working hard as I slept to bring meaning to my world. The whimsical tone, and compassionate words brought me peace that night and it has done the same thing on many nights since.
Freedom Song is a celebration of our shared humanity and a song of hope in these strange and uncertain times.
It came to me as a gift of clarity at a time when I really needed it. Now I offer it to the world with the same intention...may it bring peace, clarity and joy to all who come across it.
And in this same spirit I will donate a percentage of profits from Freedom Song to the Save the Children charity.
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Our Mother
beneath our feet
blessed be your name.
Your wisdom come
your love be felt
on earth
that we can make it a heaven.
Give us today our daily compassion
and forgive us for loving ourselves too little.
Lead us not into separation,
but bring us to balance;
for thine is the earth
the wonder and the beauty,
for ever and ever.
Living in Aotearoa/New Zealand we have a special relationship to the land and the nature that surrounds us. One day a few years ago, when I was living on Karitane beach I came up with this feminine companion to the Our Father and called it Our Mother. It is a simple prayer, but I feel that it has great power in that it balances the masculine imagery and energy that we have come to know so well, with the lesser known but no less important feminine perspective.
Most of us can recite the Our Father, which is at the heart of all Christian spirituality. This prayer has given me great comfort over the years as has the Hail Mary.
But as I have grown and evolved I have been questioning more and more the lack of feminine influences in the Christian spiritual tradition. Things are slowly changing and Pope Francis is finally speaking out on behalf of Mother Earth, but there is a long way to go.
I love this prayer and bring it to mind whenever I feel the need to feel the relief of the ground beneath my feet, or be comforted by the compassionate feminine energy embodied in nature.
I share it with you in the way it was shared with me...in the spirit of love, balance and increased compassion for our world.
My latest batch of soul stones are inspired by this prayer and many of them carry words and phrases found in the simple prayer above. They act as a reminder of the love and beauty that surround us, and they bring us back to simple truths that we are sometimes too busy to remember.
Thanks so much for reading and I hope you take some soul food with you through the rest of your day x
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I was shocked to hear this, as the young man in question is sweet, smart, savvy and very polite. Not that this means he is immune to hate speech and the philosophies that go with it, but because I finally knew a real person who believed these ideas and he didn't fit the bill of my preconceptions one bit.
There is lots of anger out there in the world and according to my 14 year old son there are lots of young, white men who feel threatened by feminism, immigration, government interference and many other things. And there is a concerted campaign on social media to gather and harness this anger and hate and make young people passionate about changing things in all the wrong ways.
WhenI was at University it was all about the Women's Room, and fighting for Palestinian human rights, and listening to ever more alternative bands in the quad and local pubs.
We were free to think what we wanted and to form our own opinions while the government paid our fees.
Things are so very different now. University is a business decision and kids are making choices based on what will buy them their first house, rather than an ideological ideas about what the world actually needs in order to move forward.
I've no doubt that kids are much smarter than we were at the same age and in the long run I have great faith in the way the way our society will grow, change and evolve over the next few generations.
But thinking of lovely Tom becoming passionate about such hateful ways of seeing the world broke my heart a little. It's so easy to live in our own little bubbles of those who think the same way as we do, and who echo back our own views of the world.
But to make a difference and to counteract the tribalism and "us and them" mentality that is growing globally we have to be prepared to really listen to those on the "other side" and understand where they are coming as much as we possibly can.
Judgment is easy, but what is not easy is to really open up a compassionate dialogue with someone whose views are polar opposites of our own. There must be valid reasons why Tom feels the way he does and if I can understand them, and then help him understand them then I have hope that we can bring more true compassion into our world.
We live in uncertain and volatile times and perhaps Tom just wants to put his trust in something, to rely on something that will not keep changing and will give him a sense of purpose in the world. Perhaps he has been wounded by a woman, or by his mother, who was wounded herself and so he is threatened by feminism and all that represents.
All the things that separate us come from a lack of love. When love is present we can embrace each other and find our common ground. When we are lacking in love we see this lack all around us, we are angry and we want to bring justice to the world and to make others pay for the wrong that has been done to us.
And it doesn't matter whether we are left of left, or alt right, this lack of love and the wrong decisions that it leads us to, take us further away from each other and from a world that is kind and free and sustainable.
My new book Freedom Song embodies my hopes for the future in exactly this way. It is all about the strange, disconnected times we are living in, and asserts that if we can drop our judgments of one another we will see that we are all fundamentally the same.
Love is not some esoteric, romantic word, it is the strongest and most difficult and powerful word in any language. It is also our only option, our only way forward, our only way back to ourselves and each other.
I truly believe that love and compassion can work magic. I want so much to gift Tom a copy of Freedom Song, and then ask him to let me know his thoughts.
I think I'll do just that and let you know how it goes.
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We are all broken, just as we are all perfect in our imperfection.
We have recently become aware of the suicides of two people who inspired us, and showed us better ways to live. They seemed to have it all, they were people we admired. What went wrong? Were they simply unable to live with the unrealistic expectations we have of ourselves and each other?
I believe that we are all broken in unique and different ways. There is not one amongst us who does not suffer and yet this suffering is for some reason shameful - clandestine, hidden away, as if we will be forever shunned if people see who we truly are.
And yet I think that this is exactly what we are here on earth to do – to find a way to be more authentically ourselves. To know and accept ourselves, to cradle ourselves when we are suffering so that we can cradle our friends and family when they hurt in the same way.
Our heroes should not have to suffer alone. We should be able to accept the full humanity of ourselves and others. And this true acceptance means sitting with the parts of ourselves that suffer, and not being afraid to share those parts too with others so that we don’t leave them alone and despairing.
I believe the heart of the world is breaking apart at this time as it has so many other times in its long history. It seems that we are being asked to consider the prisons we have built for ourselves. We are being asked to embrace the emotions that have been shadowing us our whole lives.
Our spiritual teachers don’t shy away from suffering and pain. In fact these were the very reasons they came amongst us. Our suffering and brokenness is a legitimate part of our humanity, (some would say an integral part), and it is something that we can acknowledge, understand and eventually share with each other.
It is the shame we carry that keeps us hiding from each other and leads to great suffering. Shame is another legitimate part of our humanity and yet it is the most feared and least understood. Once we acknowledged it and understand its causes with true compassion, we make room for transformation and we are able to help each other find true wholeness.
It can start with asking each other how we are feeling and really listening to the answer. It may be necessary to ask more questions or sit in awkward silence for a while to find the depth and trust in each other (and ourselves) that allows true healing to begin.
And if we are unafraid to reveal ourselves as suffering, vulnerable and flawed human beings, then we can open the door for others to bring their whole truth to us.
Society has made us uncomfortable with each other’s dark places with each other’s pain and suffering, as if we think that if we can just distance ourselves from pain then we will be free of suffering ourselves.
But as we know this is not true. There is suffering within each of us that needs addressing, and far from being something to avoid, this suffering can be the gateway to our true connection with ourselves and others.
We can simply sit with ourselves in silence for a short time each day, and eventually this inward focus will help us to recognise our pain and to understand it a little more fully. When we learn to trust our inner life, we find we are able to commune for a time with the mystery that lives at the depth of our being.
And when we invest our time in this way, slowly things will begin to shift. We will see our suffering with less panic and more understanding and we will recognise that same pain and suffering in people and situations outside of ourselves. We may never welcome these difficult emotions, but as we feel more comfortable, we may be able to sit with them a little more peacefully and lend our presence to that which we once so heartily rejected.
It is the hardest work we’ll ever do but also the most deeply rewarding.
We are all in this together.
]]>The NO that was left on the window sill seemed to be calling to me in some way and it took me years to understand the large role that those two letters would play in my life.
You see I have always wanted to say YES to life, to people, to requests for my time, to helping those less fortunate, to being a good mother, wife and friend. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with this, in fact this YES is what makes the world go round.
There was just one problem, I hadn't yet learned the lesson of balance. I had not yet learned that my love of saying YES had stretched my life too far. Like a rubber band that had no more elasticity left, I had reached the end of the road with my old ways.
I had a lot of soul searching to do.
I had seen my mother gain her PhD in YES, and although she helped so many people, she never got the chance to make choices about how she wanted to live her own life, because she was always taking care of everyone else's needs.
And her life was filled with grace and when she died the cathedral was filled with hundreds and hundreds of people whose lives had been made better by spending time with her. And this was comforting and beautiful.
She was a shining light to all that met her, and she will guide me always, but I realised that we are different people, and the YES that informed her life had to be tempered by a NO in my own. And with learning to say NO I was starting pretty much from scratch.
I started because I had to, because I had nothing left to give and I needed to go to ground, to understand myself more deeply, to heal my wounds.
And so that's what I did. I spent time in nature, in silence, by myself and with a trusted friend who understood exactly what I meant when I told her that I needed to bring NO into my life.
It takes a time to change lifelong habits, and I am still very much a work in progress but I feel relieved to have been able to make NO my friend.
I realised that I need not volunteer so enthusiastically for things that I don't really want to do. I learned that I don't need to spend time with people who don't make me feel good. I learned that boundaries are good and healthy and that I need them if I want to be a healthy person. I learned that I need to take care of myself and my own emotions before I can take care of others properly.
And most importantly I learned that NO is just as important to me as YES, and that I can trust myself with this. There is not much chance that I will become a selfish recluse because there is still within me the overwhelming desire to say YES, to help, to make things better.
But now, I have learned that I must balance this YES with a healthy and unapologetic NO.
Its funny, the world doesn't seem to mind at all when I say NO for my own good. In fact saying NO has opened my life up in ways that I could not have imagined.
]]>I love meditation. It has helped me through my darkest times, and is always there to ground and balance me when I need it. It’s free and it’s wonderful and I think everyone should try it at least once.
Spending twenty minutes per day listening to my breath has been a daily practice for me since March 1997. Those twenty-two years (how is that possible?) have flown by and I still feel that I am a beginner in many ways.
At the heart of my practice is a compassion for myself – a willingness to sit with myself and just BE with whatever arises. There are many layers to this process and I have discovered parts of myself (both good and bad) that I didn’t know were there. Knowing and acknowledging myself unconditionally has been one of the greatest gifts that meditation has offered me.
As a highly sensitive and empathetic person, it is often hard for me to deal with the energies of those around me, as I can be a psychic sponge for all the feelings in a room. The problems and pain in our world can often seem overwhelming to me.
That's where meditation helps. It gives me back to myself daily. It helps me to protect myself in a loving way so that I can find my balance and fill my own tank, before I offer my energy to the world.
It helps me to know what boundaries I need and helps me to set them without guilt.
It’s endlessly fascinating to me how meditation is able to turn my day around. For example, I find that if I miss meditation in the morning I will undoubtedly be contacted by someone I would rather not speak to, or lose my car keys, or get a parking ticket, or have a fight with my husband.
The list goes on and on.
Just by giving myself the time I need to balance, ground and centre myself, I am sending that message out to the world ahead of me. When I can relate to the world from this calm place it is much easier to let life unfold as the gracious dance it can be.
That is not to say that meditation has made my life easy, it’s just that when I meditate I make better decisions. I am more focused and grounded and I attract the people and circumstances that fit with the way I am now feeling. Life seems to flow better.
I think meditation also gives me a chance to put some space around those things that make me angry and push my buttons. After meditation, I can take situations less personally, and understand them in a more heart-centred way, without letting my reactions and judgments run ahead of me.
When my beloved mother Pamela was dying we meditated together as much as we could. This was a beautiful way of coming together in a place not dependent on the material world. In this place, we realised we are connected in ways that are not limited to these bodies we wear, and we found peace, even through the darkest of our days.
Since her death, I have started to meditate twice a day, once in the morning and again at the end of the day. This practice has been a great help in navigating the intense grief that has come with the loss of my mum.
Our relationship continues in a spiritual way. She is always close when I need her and I hear her advice coming from my heart whenever I tune in to listen but I still miss her physical presence every day.
Meditation is my port in a storm, my willow, my place of centring, the heart of humility, humour, and love.
Just try it once and see what you think.
https://www.emmafarry.com/pages/meditation
]]>No other generation has believed this dangerous theory of the world.
Life was never meant to be easy, and no one with any wisdom has ever told us it should be. Our experience on earth is about the light AND the darkness, the joy AND the sorrow, the pain AND the ecstasy. We are deluding ourselves if we believe that our lives can be anything but a balance of the good and the bad.
And if this is true and all our experiences are a valid part of our human journey, can we stop vilifying our pain and accept it as a necessary part of our human life.
Can we stop running away from it? Can we stop distracting ourselves when we feel anxious? Can we accept our tough emotions as a necessary part of being human? Can we learn to embrace them as a valuable and lesson rich part of life?
Imagine if we could even start sharing our pain and the lessons we have learned from it, and the strength and courage it has given us. Imagine if it wasn't shameful to admit our pain, that we could trust each other with our precious and raw truth instead of pretending that all is well, when inside we are suffering.
And when we are in pain, can we, (even in the midst of our trials) find a little spark of light in our lives that we can be grateful for. And then can we let this spark grow until we can rest in gratitude and let this feeling lead us to all the other places in our lives that want to reveal their blessings.
Can our trials become our strengthening moments that teach us about our own humility and our connection to every other human being?
I know it is a very challenging thing to do. It’s easy to be grateful when life is going our way, but when things turn to crap it's a lot harder to be thankful.
I can remember in the depth of my grief after losing my Mum, gratitude was often the last thing on my mind.
I dragged myself along the beach and sat on my rock as often as I could, waiting for relief that sometimes never came. Weeks turned into months and at some point along the way I started to understand that even in the midst of all my sorrow and pain there was still a little bit of room for gratitude.
At first finding something to be grateful was tough. I scrolled through all the aspects of my life and at that time there didn’t seem to be many bright patches, but the more I looked, the more I could identify a little spark of light.
Once I found my little spark I gave thanks for it. And once I gave thanks it was as if that little bit of gratitude helped me to see another blessing and then another one. And that was the beginning of my slow journey back to the land of the living.
I think that our sadness and our pain and our sorrow can isolate us and maroon us on an island of sadness, where we believe we are the only person in the world going through such a hard time.
But this is completely untrue.
Every one of us has our share of pain and sorrow. Every one of us will go through hard times in our lives. If we trust in this we can navigate these times with more peace of mind, knowing that this very pain is what unites us together in our human family.
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It sounds like a pretty easy decision to make, but it is anything but.
As women, we live our lives under the male gaze and this starts early on and continues until we are old and no longer worth looking at in a certain way anymore. Maybe due to this function of the patriarchy, (or just because we have a deep yearning for perfection) we have become terrified of ageing and encourage ourselves and each other to look as youthful as possible.
There is nothing wrong with this but there is also nothing wrong with living into our laugh lines and our wrinkles and our silver hair.
I am seriously considering waiting for my hair to grow out while we are travelling for the next few months and come back with a whole new "silver fox" look.
Apart from the fact that women aren't called silver foxes for some reason, and as soon as we go grey we become invisible according to a number of wise and resigned brave women who have opted to go natural.
I'm a pretty natural girl, I love nature and eating healthy food and meditating and staying grounded and yet every month I sit in the hairdresser's chair with toxic brown paste on my head because I'm afraid of my own ageing process.
And there's a lot of pressure on me to keep dyeing my hair. My ever supportive best friend tried to cheerlead for me but I could tell she was horrified by the prospect of my silvery short hairdo.
And then there are my fabulous Lebanese aunties who look decades younger than their years and would not even consider letting their hair go grey even though they are in their 80's.
My gorgeous mum dyed her hair most of her life. I always told her she would look amazing with white hair, and she did. But she only got a very short time to live into it and enjoy the new look, and ironically those last months of her life were the time she seemed most vividly herself.
So there is a lot of emotion tied to our hair and the face that we project to the world. I feel that if I can go natural I may feel a great sense of liberation and relief, or then again I might just feel like a little old lady and run straight back to the hairdressers and beg them to cover my mistake with their toxic goop.
I suppose in the end it comes down to being true to myself. And if I want to live in a sustainable way on this planet then being responsible for gallons of dye going into the environment, let alone onto my skin, is not the way forward.
And perhaps it is time to embrace my aging process. I am a great advocate of embracing the truth rather than running from it and if this is the case then my true color should be the one that looks back at me from the mirror.
But as usual, life is a mixture of ideals and reality. I'm interested to see whether I go through with my radical idea and only time will tell.
Thanks to my lovely hairdresser Sara from Luxe and Duke for giving me some insight and agreeing to be in the photo.
I would love to hear from you about what you think of this topic and how you felt when you did decide to finally let go of the dye.
If you are looking for a little inspirational reminder of acceptance.
Here's a soul stone from my collection.
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I learned about grounding and being present in my body from a trusted and wise friend who came to me in the form of a ten foot high rock at the end of Karitane Beach on the south coast of New Zealand.
I spent time on my rock daily in the midst of my turmoil, and in that time I was taught to sit with myself, to cry with myself, to listen to myself, to have patience with myself, to forgive myself and to have gratitude for myself.
The rock taught me to breathe deeply and to give a little time to the anxious and unacceptable parts of me that had previously been rejected for being too imperfect - not spiritual enough, lacking in every way.
But when I could see myself through the eyes of my ancient rock who is a great friend of time, I saw the sad, vulnerable places were just another part of me, no less or more worthy of love, but all the same to the rock, and to the great spirit that birthed her.
And so I eventually relaxed a little.
I allowed myself to be the flawed and totally imperfect being that I am. I stopped fighting and striving and trying to improve myself and accepted myself more fully just as I am.
And once I could do this I could see those same deplorable, unloveable, self-destructive traits in others too, and I could sometimes love people not despite their flaws but because of them, because I understood those very same wounded places within myself that had made me act in similar ways.
In this way, former enemies slowly lost their power over me.
Interestingly my rock also taught me about the necessity of healthy boundary setting. I have always been a sensitive and amorphous creature but spending time with my rock allowed me to realise that I must take firm boundaries with me wherever I go.
There are people in the world that are toxic to me and harmful to my peace of mind, and though I can have compassion for them I need to be mindful of keeping them at a safe distance. When we are sensitive it is very important to watch how we feel around people. If we feel drained after seeing someone, or silenced in their presence then it is usually because they are not a good energetic fit for us and it is good for both parties to limit contact so that life can flow more easily.
The rock also taught me to stop running ahead into the future, where anxiety lives, but to stay solidly present, accepting time as a friend, and giving patience a key role as a powerful ally.
This sounds like a lovely little journey from turmoil to peace, but believe me that's not how it was at all. The process of learning to be a little more grounded and present was a very rocky one, filled with much confusion and many tears.
Before I learned from the rock how to accept and love myself for who I truly am, I was stuck in a trap of striving to be more spiritual and light filled and holy - while at the same time I was denying all the parts of myself that didn't fit with this manufactured picture of me.
Once I decided to be me and embrace myself with my contradictions, messiness and darkness, I found I could forgive myself and my world a little more easily and replace judgement with a level of compassion that came from my own humbled position.
I realised that we are all the same - that sometimes our greatest beauty can be found in our vulnerability, in our flaws and weaknesses, in those things that we try to hide.
And so thanks to the rock I can feel my feelings more fully and I can sometimes love myself and others with true compassion.
But then like the fabulously flawed human that I am I will forget what I learned all over again and trudge down the beach with a hopeful heart - back to my rock where I wait for grounding and acceptance again.
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And that's as it should be. Life is tough, and at times cruel and it does no good to dwell on these things. It's important to just to get on with life... to block out those feelings and memories and move on.
How many of us have heard this advice? And on some level it is true. No one wants to get stuck in the darkness of memories and regrets that cannot be changed. We, as humans are hot-wired for survival, and to do this we must be able to keep moving forward.
There is nothing wrong with moving forward but sometimes we leave too much of ourselves behind, so that we become only a shell of the whole person that we could be.
But how can we leave ourselves behind? What does that even mean?
Well, it means that we often abandon those parts of ourselves that we don't think are worthy of love. We abandon our shame, and our anger and our sadness because they don't fit in with the person we want to be. We leave them behind and we move on.
But then what happens?
For many of us, that is the way we live our lives. We keep moving through without claiming back our shadows. And there is nothing wrong with a life lived like this. But for those of us who (for whatever reason) have had to sit with our darkness, we start to navigate life in a slightly different way.
When I was first faced with the abandoned parts of myself I wondered who this needy wounded child was that was calling for my attention and filling my life with fear and anxiety. I couldn't recognise her, as I had been running from her for the entire first half of my life.
It was time to spend some time with my own darkness. It was time for me to go and sit on a rock, and commune with nature while I constructed a new identity for myself.
And of course we are never alone when we choose to travel this path. In the midst of my searching I found a deeper connection with Jesus who had always been my friend but now took on a key role as he sat with me and showed me that he loved me in every part of my being.
The best news is that each and every one of us has access to this spiritual assistance. It may be Buddha, or nature or our ancestors or our guardian angels but each one of us has access to this divine guidance and all we need to do is ask for it and surrender to the love that always comes.
And if you feel you need to talk it all out, the comfort found in a counsellor, therapist or trusted friend can also be a companion that helps shine a light of clarity into the darkness. That was yet another aspect that helped greatly in my own healing.
The funny thing was that after all that soul searching and growth, only those closest to me noticed any difference in me. To most, I was the Emma Farry they had always known, but inside I was a completely different creature.
I had learned about my wounds, and about my sadness and eventually about my joy, and I was finally able to feel present in my own body, with my own emotions... belonging, first to myself, and then to my world.
So stop, look and listen has been on my mind lately. Some of us will have no choice but to stop, look and listen to the parts of ourselves that we reject, to our stories of shame and to the eventual wisdom that is revealed when we have the courage to look at what reject, right in the eye.
When we take this journey we can reconcile the good and the bad within ourselves and find love for both. And then almost by magic, we are able to see the good and the bad in the world and understand it more fully for what is it, without judgement and anger.
And from this place we can move forward healthily, embracing and understanding the whole of ourselves, and so understanding our world in the same way.
These times seem to be bringing much that is dark, out into the light to be acknowledged. It is difficult to navigate all the sad news and as sensitive humans our empathetic natures can sometimes feel overwhelmed.
I suppose the purpose of this post is to reassure those of you going through the dark night of the soul that the hard work does pay off and that sometimes our pain is actually a sacred messenger and a wise teacher.
I believe that all of us, as human beings, have both light and darkness within and together they make us who we are. Most of us enjoy contemplating our own lightness, and the great things we bring to our world, and that's the way it should be, as that is the truth of our nature.
I have found though that there is also great value in contemplating my own pain when it arises. It feels uncomfortable to stop and to sit with the parts of myself that feel the most unworthy but given some silent time and a little patience, these feelings start to reveal their stories, and once I hear those stories I can understand them and myself a little better.
With more knowledge, I can comfort those parts of myself and perhaps parent them a little more compassionately than they have been.
And I also believe that this hard work is the best way to build a truly loving foundation within myself so that I can, in turn, share my grounded and unconditional love with the world.
Meditation is another good way to navigate the hard times in our lives, as it brings the focus back to our breath and to our bodies so we can stop our brain from getting stuck going over old pain, or running ahead into future anxiety.
Here is a link to my guided meditation which is an easy and no fuss 16 minute introduction to the practice.
https://www.emmafarry.com/pages/meditation
And if you don't have the time to meditate I find that even lying down on my bed for ten minutes listening to my own in breath and out breath can bring some much needed perspective when I am in pain.
There is nothing wrong with you if you feel the pain of the world and your own pain very deeply. In fact, it can be your super power if you are willing to explore your feelings, especially the difficult ones, and understand and unravel the messages inherent in the depth of your pain. And the best part is that you are never alone in this process, but loved and supported through every breath.
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blessed be your name.
Your wisdom come,
your love be felt
on earth
that we can make it a heaven.
Give us today our daily compassion,
and forgive us loving ourselves too little.
Lead us not into separation,
but bring us into balance;
for thine is the earth,
the wonder and the beauty,
for ever and ever.
This prayer comes from a deep place, from the perspective of the divine feminine that has been disregarded and denigrated for centuries. It recognises the great power beneath our feet, the connection with our ancestors, the beauty of our connection with nature and with each other. It asks us to honour this connection and to remember it, because forgetting has led us into this spiritual wilderness and we are all so ready to come back home.
We have excluded ourselves from a sense of belonging. We have convinced ourselves that we are not dependent on our mother earth for every breath we take and every step we make. We have forgotten her and made her invisible and disregarded her needs as we take take take from her and seldom think about how we can give back.
And because this is the model we have come to accept, we do the same with ourselves and our own bodies. We give and give and give and forget to fill our own wells, so we are running on empty, and depleted and confused and out of balance.
And so we live our lives responding to the ups and downs of our world, while a deep and connected life, and peaceful sense of belonging wait patiently.
There is an easy way to access this divine and grounding energy that sustains us whether we acknowledge it or not, as this beautiful, all-embracing loving energy lives silently beneath our feet.
If we can spend a couple of minutes a day thinking about mother earth and feeling our connection with her then she will start a relationship with us that will change us, that will help us to grow.
If we can simply take off our shoes and walk barefoot while thinking about the blessings beneath our feet, or sit on the floor and give gratitude for our many blessings, or find a beautiful tree and sit against her trunk listening for her wise counsel, or discover a special rock to sit on in silence until her quiet voice finds us, we will commune with our great mother.
These things can bring us back home, can ground us in our place and in our bodies, can give us the inner peace that we so crave, can show us the true measure of success, can balance our frazzled brains and hearts.
Each time we connect with our mother in this way we are creating new pathways that will lead us to a sense of belonging to ourselves and to each other, and will lay the foundation for the new world that is currently and painfully being born through each one of us.
Thank you our mother. We love you. Show us your ways.
Recommended Read
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And it might be that this act of loving ourselves in the depth of our pain could, in some way we cannot understand, relieve the suffering of those around us.,and of the world.
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Wouldn't it be great...no global warming, inspiring world leaders, safe and equitable nation states, peace and harmony in all our relationships, balance in all things?
How come life isn't like that and why can it never be?
Life has been tough for me lately...and don't get me wrong, I'm talking middle class, privileged tough, not living in a refugee camp grieving the deaths of my immediate family tough. But still, life has been pushing my buttons, has been challenging me, has been bringing up old wounds, and presenting me with uncomfortable emotions.
We are in the middle of a tricky transition in our business, which has been frustrating and protracted and at the same time there have been long delays on the launch date for my new book.
I know...it's hardly the end of the world, but for some reason these events have brought my shadow back to visit me.
I have been battling confusion, self doubt, anger, sadness and grief. The good news is that these emotions are not new to me. Through being born sensitive, and recently through the death of my beloved Mum I have come to know them all quite intimately.
For the first year after Mum's death these emotions and the heavy feeling in my body that they brought with them were never far away. But after a while, the good times started to outweigh the bad again and I was able to build from a happy place instead of having to constantly excavate my way through the pain.
But that's just it, pain never really goes away because it's a large part of our experience of being a human being. We can be having a great time, and living it up large, sometimes for long periods, but pain is always there somewhere in the background and there will be times that it plants itself fully into the foreground of our lives.
So what do we do when our old pains (or new ones) come to visit us?
I used to run (or at least walk) miles, literally, or do laps and laps of the swimming pool, because lets be honest, no one wants to entertain pain unless they absolutely have to.
But that's the thing, sometimes we absolutely have to.
And so as I've got older and greyer I've decided to be less dismissive of my pain, I've learned how to be more curious about it, to sit with it and give it time to explain itself.
That sounds all very "woo woo" but its not at all. I just sit with myself and ask my pain what it wants to say to me, what message it needs to impart. And usually in the silence something will emerge.
It might be a memory, or a fear or a loss, and inside the pain will usually be tears and a deeper understanding of myself, my wounds and my world.
One of my favourite teachers the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hahn talks about the wounded child within each of us who is in need of our compassion and our love.
"When we speak of listening with compassion, we usually think of listening to someone else. But we must also listen to the wounded child inside us. Sometimes the wounded child in us needs all our attention. That little child might emerge from the depths of your consciousness and ask for your attention. If you are mindful, you will hear his or her voice calling for help.
At that moment, instead of paying attention to whatever is in front of you, go back and tenderly embrace the wounded child. You can talk directly to the child with the language of love, saying, “In the past, I left you alone. I went away from you. Now, I am very sorry. I am going to embrace you.” You can say, “Darling, I am here for you. I will take good care of you. I know you suffer so much. I have been so busy. I have neglected you, and now I have learned a way to come back to you.”
If necessary, you have to cry together with that child. Whenever you need to, you can sit and breathe with the child. “Breathing in, I go back to my wounded child; breathing out, I take good care of my wounded child."
https://www.mindful.org/healing-the-child-within/
I believe this wounded child is the source of much of our own pain as well as the pain in our world. When we stop running from that little child inside us we realise that pain is her way of getting our attention, and she needs that attention because she needs love, and when we can love ourselves in this broken, wounded place, we become more compassionate people.
All the great beings have taught us the same thing. My beautiful friend Jesus sits with me each time I sift through my brokenness and pain.
And it might be that this act of loving ourselves in the depth of our pain could, in some way we cannot understand, relieve the suffering of those around us.,and of the world.
Thich Nhat Hanh again:
"After recognizing and embracing our inner child, the third function of mindfulness is to soothe and relieve our difficult emotions. Just by holding this child gently, we are soothing our difficult emotions and we can begin to feel at ease. When we embrace our strong emotions with mindfulness and concentration, we’ll be able to see the roots of these mental formations. We’ll know where our suffering has come from. When we see the roots of things, our suffering will lessen. So mindfulness recognizes, embraces, and relieves."
The society we live in is allergic to our vulnerability, it tells us to medicate our pain, to run from it, to distract ourselves from the distressing cry of our child within. It is an act of courageous love to turn within and to sit with our pain, and to listen to it, and to give that child what she so deeply needs and deserves.
Maybe this is something good I can do in my privileged life to help ease both my own suffering, and the world's.
Next time pain comes calling, can you join me?
Thanks for reading my friends.
]]>I knew that in Maoritanga the fantail or piwakawaka was thought to be a symbol of death, or a herald of a message from the spirit world. This seemed fitting as the sudden death of my uncle one of the reasons for our move back home.
Little did I know that within a couple of years of the nesting piwakawaka, Mark would lose his father suddenly and I would then lose my beloved mother to cancer only a few months later.
Looking back, the piwakawaka heralded the arrival of a five year period that taught our family more than we wanted to know about death and grief.
But it taught us about healing too.
When I was weighed down by the loss of my mother and the heaviness of my father, whose depression seemed immoveable, I made my way to the end of Karitane beach.
Just before the beach turns to cliff tops there is a cluster of large volcanic stones that early Maori called the Rainbow Rocks. Apparently each one of them has a particular name that I would love to know, but the ancient maps have disappeared and like most sacred knowledge the answers are hard won, and I have not yet been able to find the answer.
It is said that in the old days, tohunga (Maori healers) took people down from the Pa to the Rainbow Rocks for healing, and that there the ancestors would gather and bring the solutions to many problems.
I had no knowledge of this at the time that I made one of these rocks my best friend during the roughest period of my grieving journey.
My rock is known by locals as the wishing rock as it is pockmarked at the base with holes just big enough to fit a smooth round beach rock. Locals choose a stone and a prayer and place these wishes with their rock into the small holes.
The rock was not only great for wishes but also a comfortable place to rest. Unlike the other rocks which were steep and inhospitable to humans, this rock had a flat top which had collected soil over the years and had eventually grown a soft crop of grass and clover that made the it the perfect spot for contemplation.
I first visited the rock with my parents who had found it on long walks after us children had left home. They shared their discovery with me one day when I was a grown woman and about to be a mother myself. Mum and I visited the rock many times on our beach walks. We meditated up there together as often as we could, (which wasn't that often with a young family and a business to run).
I remember so clearly the last day we visited the rocks together. Mum was tired and in treatment and couldn't make it up to the top.
"Don't worry," I said, "We'll climb up next time."
But there was no next time as she declined more quickly than anyone could believe.
So when I was all alone I sought the company of the wishing rock again, and I felt the relief of silence, along with the magic and presence of my own ancestors, and of many Maori ancestors, the guardians of that sacred place, who wrapped me in their arms, and helped me find my way back to the land of the living.
For two years I counted my rock as my closest friend and confidant. I sat there and thought and cried and meditated and prayed through all fours seasons - twice. I listened to the silence and I listened to the words of comfort whispered by the wind, and the the waves and by those who had gone before, and I made space for the new person that was emerging inside me.
And so at this sacred time of Matariki (Maori New Year) I give thanks to the kaitiaki (Maori guardians of this land and sea), I give thanks to nature, and to the wisdom and richness which is given to us so unconditionally when we make time to sit in silence on the earth.
I know that there are changes brewing, that there are strange and miraculous times to come. I know that there is guidance and nurture for all of us, even in the worst of times. And I know that our ancestors, and the kaitiaki of Aotearoa are always present, and their wisdom is only a silent breath away.
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