On the Blog Again...from YK

Yes it has been a while. I have been a bit busy lately. I am writing this post on my giveaway laptop (Thank you giveaway Goddess – you know who you are!)
sitting in my room in a house that I share with other Yellowknifers. As I look out my window I see streams of rain washing through the sky changing the colours of the ancient lichen-laden rock that wraps around this house. It feels and smells like a summer rain. I just came back from walking the girls, Ruby and Bindy, two of my 4 legged housemates, and the air was pumped full of fragrances of the emerging greenery. These smells are a mixture of familiar and new. Oh so familiar I am with the scent of the warming earth dispersed by rain, but here it is mixed with the energies of polar desert and tundra flora – I challenge any perfume maker to bottle this stuff!
So how did I get from Chatham-Kent, one of the most southern communities in Canada (check it out – it is actually at a similar latitude as Northern California) to Yellowknife on the Northern shores of Great Slave Lake in the Northwest Territories? I could be a smart alec and tell you that I flew here, which I did, but I am quite certain that you would be more interested in the process that brought me here. It is yet another step in my journey of letting go, trusting and being who/what I came to this planet to be. When I first heard about this opportunity in January, my first response was a solid “NO” with not a hint of maybe mixed in.
In my way of ordinary thinking, I was not ready to leave home when I still had a daughter and partner there, I was already too tired of the earth life walk right then, I was too involved in life in CK, it would take a huge effort to release my practice, I know what a challenge physical relocation is for me etc. etc. etc. A few weeks later we had yet another snowstorm and I was pulled outside in the evening after the storm had passed to view the stars glittering through the clear crisp winter sky. As I continued communing with my star friends I picked up a shovel to be purposeful and to keep warm, and the rhythmic action and sounds of the shovel on the fresh snow opened me up to hear a good clear message from one of my ancestors. The message was “Don’t shut the door on Yellowknife” – as clear and simple as that I knew that I had indeed shut out possibilities and that right action was to say YES. While continuing to shovel I did that and was presented with an inner visual production of what may lay ahead. In a quick and powerful instant I had come back to all of my senses (some would say I lost them at that moment – it’s all in our perspectives!) and began preparing to move to Yellowknife.
It has been a big job getting here – family discussions, practical planning, interviews, adjustments on many levels…letting go, letting go, letting go. Because of the guiding nudge to come here I knew that I was not doing this alone in any way – non-ordinary assistance is always at hand when a non-ordinary path is followed. I have had great help finding a place to live here, pulling together a great staff team to work with, using non-ordinary resources that I have been trained to use to bring good energy into the co-operative art gallery that I am managing here, connecting with a powerful weekly sweat lodge for my own healing and remaining connected to my healing ways, and the list goes on. I have had non-ordinary visions and guidance to make big life changes before and I have always been rewarded when I find the courage to follow them. These nudges usually push me toward big, hard stretches to move through my fears and believed limitations, and I know that I am being given once in a lifetime opportunities to grow into who I truly am, the person that has been long trained out of me or forgotten. When I left Chatham-Kent the first time just a few weeks after my 18th birthday to gather academic learning in a university environment I had no idea that it would be possible to rediscover family gifts and powers more than nine generations old, I was simply going to learn how to become an architect. Spirit had other plans for me…they were helping me to become the architect for my soul.
Even before I arrived in YK (yes lets keep it simple with CK for Chatham-Kent and YK for Yellowknife) I knew that I was being brought here for a big picture, much of which I may never even become aware of. Being able to let go and let it all unfold has been freeing. I have been able to go to a deeper level of letting go of needing to know what is coming next, and to just be more present. I do not know how long I will be here in YK. I do know that it is a great place for artists to live and that may be one of the reasons that I have been brought here. I also know that the weekly sweat lodge is a big gift of healing for me and others who participate. This lodge was constructed about six months before I arrived. The grandfather stones who allow themselves to be heated in the fire to provide transformation energy for the lodge probably have brought me here. The co-operative gallery that I am putting many of my skills to work for may have brought me here. The ancient rocks may have brought me here. I prefer to think that they all brought me here…
...and true to YK form as I finish off this post the sun is emerging from the clouds,
it doesn’t stay away for long here this time of year.