Room to Breathe - Permission to be Human Marianne Simon

I started out the new year wondering what I wanted to call in. In the invocation, I wasn't sure if I wanted to experience a specific project - a new book or performance. Maybe travel or some other form of adventure.  But I also knew I didn't want to be limited by what I could only currently imagine. So instead I cast my net out wide - inviting in mystery, the unknown. I challenged myself to be surprised.

As you'll hear in this story, the Universe answered.

Enjoy.

It felt like I'd been in hibernation for over a year. Wasn't writing much, felt uninspired, unmotivated. I knew at some point it would shift, that something was happening beneath the surface, but it just wasn't time yet. 

And then, at the beginning of the year, things started to shift. I could feel my energy changing, my sap was rising. Though I didn't know what was coming, I definitely felt an excitement, and anticipation that I hadn't felt in ages.  "East, Towards the Rising Sun" was the invitation to my future. Unknown, wild, wonderous.

Enjoy.

All around, on this very gray day, other people rush by with their black umbrellas and blue umbrellas and brown umbrellas. Then she sees it, about halfway down the block, a flash of yellow, like a butterfly fluttering above the crowd.

This episode is a short story. Though essentially fiction, it blends in seeds of my own emotions and experiences with longing, love and letting go.

Enjoy.

TBD

For the last months of my mother's life, my sister and I were her 24/7 caregivers.  For anyone who has gone through caregiving, you understand what a wild range of emotions it is. The heartache, the grief at where we are headed. The tenderness, the honor that is being of service in this way. But also, the part that is harder to confess, the anger, the frustration, the resentment. And for me, at times, the sense that life was passing me by.

This week's episode is an exploration of that rollercoaster of emotions. Giving voice, permission to feel all of it. The light, the dark, the communion, the regret.

It is only in this way that we can have compassion for ourselves, and navigate such hard times.  



 

When I was a little girl, my sister and I would go down to the garden to play “witches.” We’d get dressed up, borrow one of my mother’s pots and head out to make our brew. We’d add leaves, berries, the occasional snail, and some water. Thankfully, we didn’t drink the brew, but we’d call out our spells, wave our wands, laughing and cackling for hours.

As little ones, magic came easily, always at our fingertips. I want that back. I want that communion back.

There are moments when I open myself to it; I can feel it rippling through me, the magic. Not the “transport me to another room,” but the profound realization that we are miracles. The earth, her inhabitants, that there is water to drink, oxygen to breathe, all miraculous. The spark that is the difference between life and death, beyond comprehension.

This podcast, “Wanted: Women Who Believe in Magic,” is a calling, an invocation. For us to drop down below the seeming surface of the every day, open our eyes, and believe.