Frida Kahlo

Chiron Retrograde - Healer, Heal Thyself

Dead Poet Borne by Centaur - Gustave Moreau
From 16th June, Chiron, the Wounded Healer is also Retrograde like Neptune until November 19. Chiron brings change through healing crisis and like shamanic illness these point of crisis are not breakdowns but often breakthroughs. In the next 5 months as we journey deep in to Winter and then into Spring there will be opportunities to heal old wounds or to go back in dreams and reverie to points of healing crisis in the past. The beauty is that with full understanding of these events, we can release the deep pychic wound that we have carried and understand that these events are the making of us. That without the challenges and difficulties in our lives, like a pearl within the shell, this was the grit, the rub that helped us to form in all our unique splendour and authenticity. 
If you are feeling the pain of past events in the next few months, this is the time to change your thinking and focus. Do not focus on the hardship and pain, look on the past as 'warrior training' for your Chiron, your inner healer. It is no accident that when we step into offering any kind of healing service that we attract people very much like ourselves, as if they are walking our own stories. This is the gift of moving through crisis, we develop a powerful toolkit of practical ways to deal with this crisis if it happens again. This toolkit is part of your Wise Medicine. These practical tools become your gifts when you come to serve others who are walking similar paths. Perhaps this Winter it is time to gently work with the deep fears and psychic wounds of the past and release the pain, let them heal from wound into battle scars. Scars gained on your own Mythic Quest to your Wisdom. Take stock of all of the gifts and tools you have gained along the way and share this hard-won wisdom with those in your community who need it most.  
I see Chiron as the archetype that helps us to find balance between the Poet and the Warrior within. Working with Chiron is an opportunity to embrace both sides of your nature - Feminine and Masculine. And to also clear the binding of past beliefs that you are so different and weird that there is no place for you. The word that helps us to cross the threshold to embrace our Wounded Healer is Acceptance. Deep Acceptance of your unique self exactly as you are. And an understanding that your past helped to forge this authenticity. By removing even one of those past challenges, you would not be the person you are today. Take pride in your path and in your unique spirit. Yes you are strange! And guess what? There are many of us and we are growing. Welcome to the tribe. 

"I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it's true I'm here, and I'm just as strange as you."     Frida Kahlo

'The Love Embrace of the Universe' - Frida Kahlo, 1949

Freaks of Nature

A fern picture showing a closeup of its reproductive spores
Ferns of the Rocky Mountain National Park 
I am embracing the term 'freak of nature' - isn't that what we all really are?!! Wouldn't life be so much easier if we realised their was nothing to change about ourselves, try to be, nothing to correct? In our strangeness is our beauty. This psychedelic beauty is a microscopic photograph of the reproductive structures of a fern taken by Igor Siwanowicz and winner in National Geographic photo competition. The beautiful FERN is the plant calling us to move our work and home into Sherbrooke Forest. I am so excited to learn from this plant and her medicine. Now if a plant can be this wild and colourful, couldn't our natural nature be just as strange?

“I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it's true I'm here, and I'm just as strange as you.”
FRIDA KAHLO 

Frida Kahlo: Just as strange as You...

"I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it's true I'm here, and I'm just as strange as you."     Frida Kahlo

'The Love Embrace of the Universe' by Frida Kahlo, 1949