Friday's mass shooting in New Zealand has sat heavily with me. It can be hard to know what to do in the face of grief and pain, whether our own or others'. How can we honor its message with awareness and respond in love instead of anger? This is a beautiful testament by one woman as she processes the shock of such violence in her homeland. 💛🙏💛My heart has been longing for ritual …to send loving prayers to those who lost their lives in Christchurch, and to their grieving family members and friends…to find a way to show my children that their actions and love can make a difference…to anchor our feelings into the nurturing embrace of Mother Earth…
I reached out to beautiful Juliet Batten last night – a treasure of a woman who has written many books on ritual, ceremony and honouring the seasonal festivals in Aotearoa (we journeyed as a family with Juliet last year through each of the seasonal festivals, contributing our family rituals with our children to her new book for children)… Juliet has gifted all of us a profound and simple way of honouring the hearts and souls of those who lost their lives…
Juliet’s words…
“Go into nature, beside water or where you can hold a tree.
Gather 49 pebbles, leaves, sticks or whatever nature gives you. With each one, be aware that you are holding a human life, a soul that has just been released from its body in a traumatic way.
Assemble these symbols in some way that feels right to you.
Add a gesture of cleansing, healing, good wishes or prayers for those souls, and for all those who are grieving for them right now. (For me the gesture was to wash each leaf tenderly in a bucket of sea water).
You may wish to make sounds, say blessings or simply be silent.
Then leave your creation for the elements.”
So this afternoon, our family of 4 journeyed to Cornwallis…on our walk down to the beach we passed a beautiful tree who gifted us it’s leaves in it’s Autumnal glory laid ready on the earth for us to collect. Together, our 4 pairs of hands sculpted a beautiful heart in the sand. With each mound of sand, I felt a deep healing, a deep nurturing energy of Mother Earth holding us all… When we bake cakes, the children always stir in ‘love’ – we stir heart shapes into the dough… Today I talked to them about how we bake with love, and how we are creating this sand castle with love, with each mound of sand we sculpt with our hands for the people who died in Christchurch, and for their loved ones. We then placed the leaves – blowing the energy of our love into each one before anchoring it into the middle of the heart with its own shell. I counted at the end to make sure we had 49. I counted 4 times and kept counting 50 – with a sense of sadness, I removed 1 of the leaves, and on returning home this evening have since discovered the death toll has risen to 50 – we honour and send love and light for that soul’s journey too.
This morning I woke with an empty feeling inside, not quite knowing what to do with my feelings…Tonight after our ritual, I feel a more grounded sense of sadness…and some comfort that my children will know in their hearts as they grow that Mother Nature and the power of ritual is always there to hold them in times of sorrow, and that their prayers can make a difference to others…
We left the heart looking out to the approaching ocean. My beautiful son had sculpted his own sand castle directly in front of it…I asked what the lines were around it and he said they were already there…to me it looked like the most beautiful light that the souls were entering…By now the sea will have taken our prayers and sent them out through the waters, up into the heavens – may they be felt in all directions.
Thank you Thank you Thank you – Juliet Batten, Mother Earth, my precious family, and all the loving hearts of Aotearoa. May all our prayers be heard. ... See MoreSee Less
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Inspiration from my friend Riza for your Friday morning. What are you dreaming? 💖
Full Awakening
Welcome to our Weekly Golden Nugget! This week we talk about what it means to "Step Off The Track" of life and into a place . . . somewhere different and new . . . ... See MoreSee Less
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Get your well-rested woman t-shirt and support an important cause. <3Rest Friends,
Are you dreaming of a Well-Rested Woman t-shirt? Well, here it is!
www.customink.com/fundraising/wellrestedwoman
This is a t-shirt fundraiser and sales are only possible until February 17th. (Just 10 days!).
Your t-shirt purchase support's the Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women's mission "to stop violence against Native women and children by advocating for social change in our communities."
Last month's Daring to Rest podcast with Dr. Nicole Bowman-Farrell a Native Woman from the Mohican and Lunappe Nation, inspired us to create these shirts to support Native Women.
We are focusing on violence against Native Women because according to a new study, "An alarming number of Indigenous women and girls disappear or are murdered each year." There's a critical gap in measuring just how many, but what we do know is that 84% of Native Women experience violence in their lifetime.
Thank you for supporting this t-shirt fundraiser. Please share with everyone you know! Who doesn't want to be a Well-Rested Woman? :)
www.customink.com/fundraising/wellrestedwoman
xo
Karen ... See MoreSee Less
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