Today is the halfway mark of my 40th year. I've picked up a couple things in this much living, so far. One, very much from the gift of joining gathering after gathering of women, a cycle of twelve circles even, I've picked up this.
If your heart asks something of you, if your intuition calls you by your own sweet and sacred name, you run to it.
You run to it like it's a matter of living itself. You run to it when it's not easy. You run to it even when it's fucking difficult. You run to it when the call to do so is turning you inside-out from the outside-in.
You run to it even if you've ignored your intuition before, even if you've made a habit of it. You run to it even if you've trivialized it or dismissed it or called it inconvenient. Even if, no - especially if - you've called it what is wrong or broken or defective in your being.
You run to it even when there is pain along the way and you are gonna stumble and falter in your gait. You run to it even when it bends the map and tears up the precious plan. You run to it even when it feels like you might just be ripping your beautiful, familiar world apart.
You run to it even when it makes you no promises whatsoever. Only a promise to speak to you again.
You find a way. You run to it like you run to the water that makes up the essential composition of your being. Because it does, and you have no real choice but to heed the call. This is the only drink. This is what it means to live right now, right in this moment. Here. Aren't you thirsty?
Come here, love. Satiate your soul.
Another. When life presents you with a soul sister, you run to her. You bless her. You embrace her. You show up. You recognize the meeting. You scoop her up with your own two arms, even. And I did once with this particular soul sister, during an improv class, scoop her right up by surprise. And it's no surprise to me that I truly "met" or first "saw" the gift of a being who is Melanie Champagne in the playful dance of improvisation on this mystical, magical lake.
Or that I was drawn to create with this woman after viscerally experiencing the gift of her storytelling by the peering candlelight of night. Or that I had to wait until now to ground that intention, to bring it down to earth. Or that co-creating with her is an open field in which all there is to do is show up, exactly as I am, and let the damn magic that was always going to unfold appear in the inspired space between us.
We are meant to meet ourselves and each other in the spaciousness of spontaneity.
Not only is Mel my co-brewing, co-creatrix for the upcoming October retreat, my first full experience of co-creation in this realm, but she is also the most gifted astrologer I know. And by astrologer I mean, woman of earth-moving insight. A couple years ago, I had an astrological birthchart reading with this woman. I remember the experience in my body. I was raw-tear-sobbing within twenty minutes and she was running for tissues.
I don't know how the hell a woman manages to look up to the stars and right through your skin to the pulsing invisible matter of you, but that's exactly what she does.
Today, by intuition, by serendipity, and by her gracious influence of moving my desired timing one day later to exactly today, Mel co-created an astrological chart reading with me.
She did it again. This time, she looked up into the stars and right through the life of this precious, peculiar human in one precious, particular moment of time.
Call it a reading. Call it a recognition. Call it a revealing. Call it a reveling.
Whatever Mel does, when she does what she does with such presence and vibrance and grace, is a gift to receive...and not only receive it, but co-create it, because she insists on everything, just everything, going down exactly that way. I'm so humbly blessed for this teacher in co-creation. I'm so blessed that she asked me to hone and restate my intention from the depth of my being, so it breathes from my gut and vibrates my heart.
I'm so blessed for her open listening and acute insight and deep connection and oceanic compassion and gentle guidance and subtle suggestion and childlike wonder and exquisite explanation of the ethereal and elusive and inexplicable. And yes too, the utterly earthly.
I'm blessed for a woman that in her unflinching, French Canadian, innocence-kissed directness, reflects back to me, "It sounds like being penetrated by life," so that we can river-roll our laughter right through the screen between us, and I can promise most certainly to quote her on that one. And then keep my promise.
If you ever feel called to have someone look through the stars and into the mystery of space that is you, I can unreservedly say, seek out this woman. Allow her to map the constellation of your being and then read it beside you, from no matter where she or you may sit, as if that's the only way it can be done.
40 and a half, well here we go. You're coming for me, and I'm coming towards you, and I have a hell of feeling that the water, the molecular drops of it, are gonna offer up some wine. And I don't mean it's gonna come easy or to any idea of plan. But I'm gonna run to it and drink and swim until I'm drunk.
This is not the year, or the lifetime even, to back away from the fierce and fickle thirst of my own soul's sway.
Go on, universe, call. I'm here. I'll pick up. You and I and all of us, we have a vow. I surrender. *Find Melanie Champagne at the October 12th-17th, 2017 retreat or via her blog: Collective Astrology