A good death story.

Tis been a while between posts. I had a thing to be with. My life was surrendered to the loving of my father for his last few months of life, as well as assisting my daughter to head off for a 5 year adventure. Please, forgive my absence, but it was well worth it.

My father had abandoned me, my 3 siblings and Mum, when I was an 11 year old. During the last 35 years I have known little of his life, his world. Only snippets that would show me he was deeply controlled by his wife, a woman the rest of his family could not fathom either. He spent one year studying up the road from Mum’s house, so he created a fake class to put on his schedule so that for three hours each week, for two semesters, he came to our home, hung out and taught me to drive a car. I was 27.

For the next 20 odd years we saw barely anything of him, till about a year ago when his wife recognized, finally, that her children (same age/older than as him) where not interested in caring for Dad. As his Alzheimer’s progressed it became time for some intervention, directing traffic on the Eastlink was a thing, so after the 8th time he was brought home by a police car or ambulance they agreed to go into aged care. It was in Melbourne, 4 hours away from me, but they were safe.

Then came the call that Dad had struck one of the staff. He was becoming increasingly combative, he was struggling, this was 6-7 months into the care, this was a change that was not going to get better. From what I gleaned from the nurse, Dad’s wife had finally shown her colours/been seen, and was often observed being very cruel and verbally abusive towards Dad, even though he was obviously quite ill now. The nurse asked me to take him away from this, from her. In so many ways, this is what the little girl in me had always wanted to do, to rescue him, to love him openly again.

So, I did all the things. I became the legal guardian, discharged him from Melbourne and set him up in Lakes 12 minutes from my home. When he first arrived he was scared. He was contracted and many felt that he had but days left. I was with him 8+ hours a day, for each bed change, for each meal. I held his hand, gave him loads of Reiki and LOVED HIM for all that I am, for all the permission I gave us both. I enrolled every nurse and aid in that incredible facility to love him too. Gently he uncurled, he softened, he smiled and winked and touched the hearts of many there.

We had six and a half weeks together. I got him a special chair so that he could go out in a taxi. I then took him to the farm, three times, so that he could share just a little of my world, Mum’s world too. We went out on a boat to see the magnificence that is the Gippsland Lakes. Shared a Skype call with his brother who he hadn’t seen in many years. In the middle of the third week, Jasmine left for the UK for the next 5 years. That was a ripping open in the middle, but met and lovingly knowing it is for the most delicious time for her!

We did all the things till it was obvious there was no more to be done. We had lost the life we could have lived together long ago, we were but collecting together the ashes of what was left. Precious ashes that I will treasure till I return them to our home, in Powell River British Colombia, Canada.

As I sent away the chair, as I held my Mum and my Sister through our last evening together, sharing stories of how Mum and Dad met, the things Mum loved the most about him, what we each remembered. Everything slowed down to a state that trusted there was no where else to be, nothing else in my life could be this important to me, to my understanding of living, than to be with my Dad in the dying.

I had been bringing in my laptop every day to watch Sci-Fi together. We had watched all of the 7 Star Wars films, we were working through the second season of Star Trek Next Gen. That morning, I forgot my laptop. It was to be a different morning. I got there around 10am. I sat with him. I sang softly. I read him some of my book. I held his hand. I didn’t stop holding his hand. I assured him he was held, he was safe. Around 12 everything deepened, the energy changed. I cast a little circle around us, just to hold us both gently in this moment. I asked for his Mother, my Granny Good Witch, to come and meet us half way. Her delicious sassy self arrived palpably. I sat with my Father, gently holding his hand as the space between the breaths became longer and longer… till there was no breath, just space. A soft and held death, beautiful in so many ways.

I howled. I howled and howled and howled. I kept holding the hand of a Man I never really knew but never stopped loving. My greatest fear for him, that he would die alone, never realized, because I chose to hold him no matter what. I called my Mum, my Sister, and they were there before I told any staff. Time of death was 12.52pm 19th of October 2016. There was to be no funeral. This was all the space we had to say goodbye in. We stayed till we walked the empty shell down the corridor, out into the hearse. His cremated ashes now rest for a while where I can glance at them to inspire my return home, May 2017. There, then, Mum and Jasmine and I will scatter his ashes with his Mum’s ashes on the property where he and I grew up.

We have so much space for our birth stories, and as I have attended about 8 different births I understand how unique each of them are. As I have lived through this last month, I have come to feel that a death story, a good death story is as important to share. Indeed, many beautiful caring and loving friends have shared their stories and it has helped to rest in the knowing of a very human threshold I have crossed, to witness the death of a parent, a next stage of growing up.

This death was a beautiful moment in time, with ALL the love in it I could hold and much more as it cracked me open, not unlike the way I was cracked open giving birth to my daughter Jasmine. So much Love. So much to Love.

I hope this good death story holds you gently.

I am grateful to have somewhere to share it.

My First Blood Rite.

Locking the doors felt both foolish and oddly securing. I was shaking with the anticipation of what I was to step through. The rite I had conjured for myself felt so very dangerous, as if I was about to step into, through and beyond something that would change me forever. A threshold I could never come back from. This was the point; Really truly deeply changing something took this kind of sacrifice of fear, of terror, as the edges of it were felt through.
Who would stop me? Who could stop me? Who would know? There have been many moments of my life spent this secretively. Times where I would explore something never seen in a book. But ached for by my skin or by my heart, in such a way as to build the entire path to it. Every little detail of the encounter with self, alone and in so many ways All one, every part created with such joy and true abandon.
This here was the passageway to reclaim my blood. I had been using a menstrual cup for a year by then. I dearly loved it and the truth it afforded me, by virtue of its design that I may have such direct contact with my blood. So many questions arose from its use, so many wonderings that my bloodmind would wonder. But it would be years before I would even conjure that notion of my being… the recognition of bloodmind… by this stage I was barely able to see, to smell, to witness the bloods effect on my being… by being safe with it. This was another step along the pathway to understanding why we are so very forbidden from this blessed gift from within.
I had fashioned a simple spell working, from my basic and newbie relations to witchcraft. My sacred tools assembled, I cast circle. I created a sacred space, naked now, dripping in sweat, I sang a simple Goddess chant, The River… returning back unto She Then, taking my menstrual cup from my body, trusting it would be rather full, which it was, I opened to the blessed wonder that was this sacredness and added this cup of blood to my bowl of ochre.
I felt like an original witch. Working with the most primitive of elements, blood and earth. I made my sacred paste. Stirring and blending till the consistency was just right for painting. Singing quietly to myself as I built such an offering, to me, to Her, to the life force that engaged me to continue, to move through any resistance, anything that would tell me this was too wrong, too far away from what is considered “normal”.
Once this sacred tool was ready, I turned and faced each element to ask for the blessings of each quarter. I conjured a power-filled brew, and turned to the mirror to apply it to my being, to reach ALL the way in. I was after what ever had made this feel wrong. I was chasing the tail of the beast that had stolen my first blood and made me fetid, filthy and dirty for being a woman that bleeds. I was chasing the demon that had laid this curse, so that I may shift it within myself. As I faced that mirror, I painted a crescent moon upon my third eye with my sacred blood earth, and knew myself a blood witch. I painted a spiral upon my heart to journey further and further within to the heart of woman.
I felt then, what I do now. A peace, a profound peace where there now lives an incredible life, sharing such life giving possibility of the sacred blood.
That first blood rite led me to the sharing of blood wisdom with many women. A life led deeper and deeper into the flow of what lay within a curse, what lay within the meaning and value we place on being a woman. I have sought the source of the curse in myself, in other women, in the texts that support it to remain. Those still invested in a woman’s perceived weakness rather than making room for the rest of her to be welcome at the table.
What I was after, what I am still opening to, is the state where in my body, the menstrual cycle has the rest of its worth enacted upon. Where I reach into the emotional realms, the heart tools of being whole as woman. Being real in this bloody glory.
I still remember the mortification of realizing a small drop of blood had landed on our rental carpet and the panic of having to explain how it got there to my housemate. I did all that I could to clean it, but in the end I confessed what it was, and how it got there. In testament to our friendship she heard me, and helped me remove my exposure. This beautiful sister became the first woman that I shared what I had learnt from within the blood circle, the first of many. She was to remain a deep sister that held me sane during a time when I could have easily slipped off an edge and been lost. For it feels like there is a madness, an agreement that we break outside of our current thought … a treason we commit by turning to the blood, away from everything else, when we bleed.
I know I am not the first woman to have my attention taken by the flow of wisdom down my thighs.
I know that I will not be the last woman to re-frame my blood, my bleeding as sacred.
I hope that this story touches any woman that has felt this place and had no language for it. For where do we find such a language in the world of men that have never felt the entire dissolve that is menstruation.
Blessings of the Blood, for there are so many!
Katherine Cunningham.

For the Love of a Women’s Circle!

This. Here. Now.

I am brewing some delicious, down here on the farm… but planning on bringing a moment up to Melbourne. Tis all part of my greater plan! This first part though is for ALL the women that I have had the honour to share circle with! Whether over the years, in deep and long pagan rites, or during a StarFire, there are a whole lot of women I have shared this intimacy with.

The invitation is to share the love of a woman’s circle, for way to many women have no idea what one looks, nor feels like and we have an opportunity to shift that.

I would like to film it. To film us all in circle. Also for us to interview each other. There is a facebook event page here, with all the details. And a test video that shares the love of circle I am attempting to deliver, via a free online digital class through Udemy.

I know, as many of you do too, that when a woman is truly held in circle there a whole lot more of self that can be reached. A deeper offering of being in the world when the time, commitment, trust and honesty, an equal environment, is crafted over moons, over cups of tea,great cackling outbursts and those soft gentle tears of relief of being heard, of being seen.

Please, come along if you can, share a whole day of the Love of a Woman’s Circle…   If you can’t make it along for the day perhaps consider making a short film of you and maybe another sister you share circle with, interviewing each other on the love of a circle. There are some questions outlined in Facebook post to the event, but really, just share what you can! Once made, please email them, or a dropbox link to them, at livinggently@gmail.com and I can get them into the conversation to be created.

I am bringing a large map of Melbourne on a cork board, with the intention of sharing where we all are, and what circles are currently running. If you can’t make it, but have a circle that is open, please contact me and I will get your details on to this map. Tis my hope that every woman that wants a circle to be a part of, goes home with contact to at least one!

I do hope you are being held!

Menstrual Wisdom, Sexual Unfolding.

Katherine Medicine… words on offer!

Every woman I have met deep in the blood work has a powerfully strong sexual presence. It’s almost like there is no holding that juju back once the door has been opened and the love of being a woman has been unleashed.  ( I got to dance with some of them on the weekend!!)

My own sexual states have been spiraling deeper and deeper within, to an ecstatic state that has me circling on my coccyx bone for hours if I create the time and space. The words that bubble up from the core of this place are good, like milk and honey are good… particularly upon the skin!

So, from this gentle permissive state… I make an offering of some work… some words that have arrived, truly, deeply, madly… in Love with the self.

(all available on mp3 here at my E-Junkie store)

The Sound of Rain by Katherine Cunningham.

An Erotic Fable is a story, a juicy story that has all the room you need to be there, yourself… as you hear the rain on the skin of the tipi…

The sound of Rain is an Erotic Fable that explores the difference between surrender and submit, power and rage, soft and hard… Let me take you to a time outside of ours, perhaps before, certainly a time to come… at least in my reality! Where we are the initiators, in the deepest sense.  When we take him all the way there, to the edge of his skin, where the mind blown away, and there is nothing left but the breath, the skin, the sweat and the fire.

The Sacred Yoni by Katherine Cunningham

A Self Pleasuring Adventure.

This guided visualization is for women, or lovers of women, to find and share with self, or another, the deep sacredness that is within The Sacred Yoni. The art form of defining one’s own reality is the deep authority to which we author our lives… WE decide what is sacred! Creating Sacred Yoni was a profound pleasure that I wish to share with you. Wont you give yourself permission to listen to the deep loving voice that will guide you all the way to the Sacred Yoni.

Opening to Awegasm.

This Self Pleasuring mp3 is designed to open a woman to her whole body gently. A great beginning place to find that soft edge to fall over.

A Self Pleasuring Adventure.

When the orgasm is elusive… when the pleasure of self has never really been explored… there sometimes needs to be a little support in the process. With this guided visualization I offer an opportunity to sink deeply into yourself, by creating a powerful state of permission.  Allow the state of being open to take to all manner of deliciousness.

If you do find yourself here… and allow yourself to purchase… maybe even place them within iTunes gallery and have a quite listen…. I would dearly love to hear how you felt…

When it is time…

My scratching of a lodge structure, the one we made with Kerryanne Ansuri.

I have been waiting for a long time for this… to wake and know today is the day. Our dark moon circle women and our children it seems too, are gathering today to build the earth lodge.  Tis an earth lodge, not a sweat lodge in that we will be enclosing it in earth over time. Wattle and daub the walls once we are truly happy with the placing, the movement of the rite. My feeling is that we are only ready now, after all these eclipses and movement in our heavens. As we ready ourselves to build such a vessel, the contents arrive. I have been holding open the space, the idea of the ritual, the notion of a Black Earth Lodge, in that I understand what its purpose is, where it would take me and any one else that would journey with me into these the dark inner sanctum of the earth. For as I was recognizing we had the means to move forward, the very first draft of a ritual that is sitting in such a lodge arrived too.

Holding open the space, to trust that there is something here, like the fable of the south american shamans sitting on the waters edge, with no idea what is making that shape in the water, for there was no reality that was a tall ship in their world, but staying with what is, even if we don’t know what it is, to be with what is in front of us… trusting that if we don’t have the language, we will will make it up… like these new deformities in Iraq that children are being born with, we will find the names to call these new and real places. My intent is to stay with what is, in earth, in the decay and death and fecundity that is black earth. To be with so deeply, so gently, so honestly so as to hear Her.

The first draft of the process looks like this: Unlike the Sweat Lodge, there is only one long deep round. We are ready, comfortable, with our feet in the center hole flat as we are able, spine straight… bum on something that is soft? maybe… I would like us to be able to descend profoundly, so we do need to be comfortable, at ease.  Once we are ready the fire keeper will bring in the warm earth and fill the hole that our feet are in. Then we close the door to the light outside and let go.

This is the beginning, we surrender ourselves. Firstly the self, the noise that is in the head, the words that are keeping us out here an not in… maybe rather than give any of it our full attention we can all just keep making the noise, what ever noise is there, in the head, in the body, keep expelling it till it’s all gone. A silence will instill itself. We will be able to reach beyond our self to the collective…

From the collective and the voice we give that, we can descend even deeper to the animal, the part of us that is a part of the earth fully, instinctively, aware of its death. All life knows it will die, thus the strong and powerful quest for life. The sapling that breaks through the concrete shows us just how determined life is to live. BUT we have been moved away from this power-filled state of truly choosing to live our lives, with that fierce determination, and I consider the fear of death to be at the core of it. (Terror Management Theory perhaps the writing on the wall of the core..)  Here in the Earth Lodge, deep within the belly of earth, I trust that there is a place to be found that will help us shed the fear of death… therein find the power to truly live, as ecstatically as we can!

The beauty of this process is the trust… that to hold open the space… we will find true purpose to live in balance with Her. If ever there was a time to find the balance to live with, tis now beloveds. Are you holding open the space? Can you hear the call to Earth? Please… Share…

As we hold them Sacred.

From My actual wall.

I have had this on my wall for over 6 years… The notion of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers gathering all over the world to do the work that needs to be done. To listen and heal, be with and inspire, this I honour. This I hope one day to be of service to…. and actually that day has come.

A Journey into Her… is all about our connection to Her, to being with our blessed earth, with other women, in the kind self care and loving that we need, to do the work that we all do, each day. From loving our kids, men and family, to doing what needs to be done to pay the rent. To holding our sisters in times of joy and sorrow, being present to the art that just wont let go till it is made real, through you.

The film, “For the next 7 Generations, weaving a world that works”.. This is on the Saturday Night… open for our men and children to join us, so that they may understand why we are here, gathering doing the work that must be done…

I am finally going to sit at the sacred fire with these incredible women, and just be with, in the edges of love and grace and listen to their wisdom, be with their core intent.  To serve our blessed earth. To find Her Sacred and all the life that is with Her. If you feel to join me, please do, the tickets are only on sale till the 1st of November. If you are already going, please join us in the journey of fundraising to help send some of our own Aunty’s, from our sacred lands, to join in the fire.

There are still so many tickets left to sell, for both the weekend and the Raffle… could you please assist us in sharing the love. We need to sell tickets, we need to get the word out there… How can you help?

As truly, as we hold these incredible women and their vision sacred, they hold us.

 

Artifacts: Creating the tools we need when they don’t already exist

I am eternally grateful to Kathleen Agius (https://www.facebook.com/kathleen.agius.9) for her artistry and that it lives in my world.

When I share my beautiful “Fragile Please Touch Me” Teraphim with the circle, I feel the ancients holding her with me. This tool, I explain, comes from a time when our Goddesses where close enough to touch. When we built forms we could hold on to when the shit got real! Something power-filled to walk with us as we stretched open in a thousand directions to allow our daughter’s birth through us. Our Goddesses were for support, like we were as women to each other, like we can be now if we let go of our shields and use our swords with respect and tender loving care.

Artifacts are those things that embody what you are investing your whole self into. They are the shapes and vessels to pour oneself into, that maybe others may share, or maybe we get to really anchor our self into a moment for future application.

A telling part of an artefact is time… when I build something, and I don’t really consider myself an artist, so I don’t often call it sculpture, but once built, do I find that it becomes something I reach for, when I am doing the work. For emotional work, is work, and every field of work has its tools.

You know, when we realized we are now in the realms of “Knowledge Workers” where a lot of our day is spent digging a hole in data not the earth, we recognized that we needed to be with this type of workflow differently than you do when you are digging a hole. I feel the same about the emotional workings that many of us do, whether by our self or working with another, there is a whole lot of digging that can be going on, and a lot of “work” that is real and good and the whole we are after has a different expression… but perhaps we have yet to acknowledge the process that we are utilizing, like we have with “knowledge workers”… I bring this up, because I feel we were building emotional tools, physical ones, like sigils but in 3D form, back in the days of the Venus of Willendorf. We called them Goddesses and Gods, but for me, they are applications of the human experience, and can be held in a form.

These tools, these artifacts are often unique unto the practitioner, depending on the language they are using, the flavours and colours that are their style. For me the exciting bit is when we have the impetus to make the tool, sometimes with absolutely no idea what it is for, and the trust it takes to make something for as yet to be experienced intent… well perhaps I am an artist, for that is the artists edge, to just begin, allow through what will be made today, through you.

What artifacts have you built? How do they assist you to do the work?

Risking my Authority…

is your vision to work WITH?

Living Gently

We watched the film “A Dangerous Method” last night… that powerful moment of separation between the learning, willing to participate, Jung, and the only able to hold the authoritative core of analysis, Freud, a true moment of student surpassing the master… That Freud existed at all I am grateful, that he held open the space that gave birth to the opportunity that is processing our emotional experience, profound… but where Jung took it, where he went in the name of his own sanity, and the possibility of the human experience, just how far human freedom could be expressed, this is what I have come to understand as the gift of Jung, of the birth of psychoanalysis…

To risk our authority is to say … I don’t know… I have no idea what lay beyond this, and that is the most delicious way to learn, perhaps the only way to learn…

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Ovulation Offerings…

To share loving…

Living Gently

 

A delicious idea raged through me just the other morning, and now that it has some form, tis time to share it.

When we give a new body of knowledge a physical anchour for the conscious mind, we allow for embodiment, which is very different to remembering.  A simple set of actions that build the wisdom from the inside out. This concept can’t be new, I am sure there are many that utilize our disposition to small acts of ritual to support a framework of understanding, I just can’t think of them right now.

So, the body of work, Harnessing the Fertile Force, is a process of accessing our core fertility, our fecundity, from the whole of the cycle. Allowing ourselves to really sink in and use the whole 28+ days (or your version… anywhere from 18-45 is considered normal).

This particular part is to access the gift of…

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May your body please have your attention… this is your blood speaking!

“Queen of Flow” by Freydoon Rassouli

To hold open the space… To bring focus to the often unseen… To make some noise about the unmentionable’s… This is my work… I share with women the rarely spoken joys of menstruation! A perspective that our culture seems to actively shut down…

How do we stand it? As women, in the actual experience of bleeding, walking around our world, in our core knowing we are shunned if any one sees it, accidentally, if we are found out. We are so consistently made wrong, not male, therefore not worth our attention.

I heard a story once about the female anthropologists in Australia going to study the native people of our country in the 1920’s/1930’s.  There had been male anthropologists studying the native peoples for 50 years by then… from the 1870’s… when asked “what are the women doing over there?” their male counterparts answered, “we don’t know, you’re not important in our culture why would the women be important in this culture?”   ( I just found that link… yay for wiki!)

What has our attention? What is important to us? How are we valuing this part of being a woman… in a culture that will consistently reduce us to tits and ass, if we are acknowledged at all.

StarFire is Cultural Education… a body of work that is designed to shift the culture within, thus transforming the culture we live in.  There are two coming up, one in CERES, one in Selby starting the 8th and 9th of June… I truly know that a woman that has opened up her blood, made it a power-filled part of her practice of being in body, in her cycle, with the earth… these women of my world are incredibly potent, anchored and effective.

Please, join me in paying attention to the Real Beauty of being a woman, for if enough of us do so, we can set our daughters free from the menstrual tyranny of ignorance, pain and fear.

This is part of the Revolution beloved woman, please join me in the circle!