The Life Path: Heading for my Balanced State

"I take care of my own needs in order to take care of others."

This is my balanced state of existence. Self-preservation. There have been rare times in my life where I have mastered achieving it and it is something I do still have to work hard on. I am rarely in that state.

This is a bit of a different post today. 2012 is my year to get more serious on my blog with what I do. More on that as the year gets into full swing. But for starters, here is an opportunity to give back to you a little something of what I do "professionally" these days. I'd love to hear from you if it sounds like something that might be useful or relevant for you, so feel free to contact me. Confidentiality is assured (otherwise I'd be really quite shit at my work, wouldn't I!).

Okay? Read on if you're interested!


We all have a balanced state, unique to us. We also have deficient, excessive and fear states as well. When things aren't quite ticking along or seem out of kilter in our communication with others, or in the general way we see things in our lives, it can be helpful to gain further understanding so that we then have the free-will and choice to make change. In whatever direction. (Sometimes, I can have all the understanding about my particular way of being in a situation and still walk head-long - the long way around! - into further hurt and harm and shattering lessons)

My general life lesson/purpose is the responsibility of change - transition is my lot. For many years, I gnashed my teeth and was frustrated by the begin again and again and bloody AGAIN nature of my existence! When I discovered, through my study, a deeper understanding and purpose for this repetition, I had a far greater expansive awareness of myself and why I was going through the mill. Little by little, the begin-again lessons stopped, for I was able to look at each previously frustrating or hurtful occurrence in my life and learn about my role in them and whether there was anything in my power to change (if not how then) why they occurred. It was a turning point in my heal-the-healer journey I've been on.

The other states of the psyche, as I mentioned - and we all have these, but they are different for each of us - are "excessive", "deficient" and "fear". When we are striving to understand these, we can begin to have a more complete picture of what makes us tick.

My deficient state (when I am not quite feeling balanced and there is instead a depletion somewhere in my pattern) is "ego-centric", ie. "Things are not quite how I want them to be." 
It's all about meee! There is a certain aspect of wanting to control with this one. I am very familiar with it! It, too, is a lesson that keeps knocking on my door and as my life progresses, I can now recognise that this is not a balanced way to live my life. It has been helpful to know.

My excessive state (when the pendulum is swinging too far in the other direction and I am over-grown with something) is "aggressive", ie. "I expect conflict in my life."
This is where I am currently. I have been in an extended period of the excessive state of the psyche. It is not comfortable, it has kinda lately become my new norm, even though I know I am not this aggressive person. Partially, yes - it is in there and I need to know it to be familiar with my whole Self - but to this degree and intensity and for this long? Nu-uh.

And get this:  My fear state is "fear of death, or of birth."
Well, well, well. Hasn't that been one shock to my system then, eh?! It's little wonder, when I look at it, that I have been delivered the repetitive lessons that I have about death. And of birth. Why, my whole adult life so far has been consumed by both those things - the prospect of birth of each of my conceived children (that'd be 14 so far) and the death of all but one of them.

So, okay. I've mastered the fear state. I am familiar with but currently not steeped in my deficient state. I am going to diligently stay with the Excessive State lessons and see what I can work through. Because enough is enough.

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Have you reached a point where you're looking for another way? A bit of a break-through? That gnawing kind of feeling like you know there's something that is holding you at bay from "the next step" (whatever that is for you) but you just don't know what??

If anyone would like a consultation (online, via email) on their Life Path, I am available from January 2012. For a small fee, you will receive a pdf containing information specific to your numerological Life Path number, which is determined by your birth date. It can be general, as above, or a decade-specific one (ie. if you are in your 30's, the information provided can be specifically about your 4th decade here on Earth if you prefer!), or both if you want as much information as you can get. Also included are a couple of tools to support you along the way - your Animal and Plant totems (text), essential oil/essence understanding (text) and your Life Path colour mandala.


To get started, simply email me via kirrily@geneticfactor.com, send me a DM on Twitter, find me via Facebook.... there is a plethora of ways! All I need is your birth date (including the year) and a contribution via Paypal and you will have your Life Path reading in just a few days.

Study revisited: It's often just the little things

In order to extend beyond a stuck place, a plateau, I have to tell myself to get past the pattern of "this is what I do, this is what I know." Becoming unstuck is a process in itself.

One of the most genuine ways that I do this and stay true to who I am (whereby I remain closely linked to my own Source and guidance) is to honour my imagination. No matter how menial or basic my thoughts appear to me to be, when I bring conscious awareness into every moment of experiencing my every thought, I become so much more present in my day and in my own life.

No more putting down your imagination! How many of us have deeply contemplated our imagination lately? Respect your imagination and all it brings to you.

Remember, you do not have to prove or justify yourself to others; you only have to be true to what and who you are. As soon as I start concerning myself with how I sound to even just one "someone else", I have moved away from my centrepoint of being. I enter into another (or another's) realm and reality, which dishonours my own. In this manner, I am also able to be more respectful to another's truth (realm/reality) as I am truly honouring my own. Staying true to what and who I am is where I am strongest and living my best and most productive life. It's all good!

And breathe. Don't forget the breath! Conscious breathing connects us to all that ever has been from the beginning of life in all our universes.

Meditate on the base of the sternum. Here you are grounded in Earth reality and respectful stillness. A beautiful space to be. Sometimes, for me meditation is merely uninterrupted focused breathing. If I have ten minutes, I give myself that ten minutes.

This is the energy of Apple.

If you want to get really serious, place/visualise this mandala in your sternum area as you meditate

It's so basic I think we often forget to close the laptop and turn OFF the phone (not mute... turn the thing off!). But the respite these simple acts give back is well worth the effort.

If you ask me...

Meld only with those who honour who you are Now

Going through periods of change and growth, I have come to respect (and expect) that I will say goodbye to friendships and attachments as I expand my awareness of what makes me tick and that the more I seem to know about the world, the more I don't know.

I was remembering earlier a girl I used to work with. She had an anxious, confrontational nature, served with lashings of victim mentality and manipulation through (excellent, enjoyable) humour. But manipulation, nonetheless. I worked in the back office and she was the "face" of the company out front. I could tell what kind of day I was in for by the number of times she would turn her head this way and that, keeping her gaze on me, as she asked probing questions before I had even put my bag down in the morning after arriving.

Unfortunately for me, I fell in to the trap of placating her. A caller who slighted her on the phone would cause her to slam open the door to the back office - yes, you can bet it is possible to slam open a door.. try it! - and stand in the doorway protesting loudly about what she had just been subjected to. Or if it was just all too hard, there she would be - door slammed open, taking up the space between our two separate areas.

I never realised while I was there but this individual, who was at least six years my junior, was displaying behaviour that triggered reactions in me. Reactions to my mother that I had not long since tried to bury. I would be working away, concentrating on my screen and the interruption to my thoughts became a violation of sorts to me. Towards the end of her time there, I got to the point of feeling a tenseness creep its way across my shoulders and down my back, there to remain until my working day was over. I braced for the almost imperceptible sound of her rising from her chair, keenly listening out for her footfall on the plastic chair mat under her desk, knowing that at any moment I would be a captive audience of one to the latest vomit of "pity me" about to escape her.

Over time, I made the connection. I recognised the similarity in energy between this young woman and my (estranged from me by that time) mother. It was a moment of choice for me; I vowed to change how I behaved - both in terms of what I gave out and how I internalized what was coming at me - if ever I found myself in the presence of this sort of energy. I knew it now. I had known it all along, having grown up (and been raised) by it. But coming across this type of behaviour and energy output from a source external to my familiar circle helped the penny drop.

Years have passed now and there have been a couple of occasions where I could easily have fallen into the trap of shouldering the "burdens" of this type of energy again. But I haven't. I see them coming, usually, and practice (sometimes harder than others, depending on the situation) pure love - that is, the sort of non-placating, non-smother/mothering, universal kind of tough love that enables me to stand apart from the individual but remain in compassionate care and, sometimes, service.

This past-time was recalled while I was working today.  A paragraph that stood out to me read:

Do no bother to your “brothers of blood”, nor to those belongings you once had in bygone times, who act as reminders to you of your lack of “spiritual perfection”.  Instead, begin again and be able-bodied to the basic call to be at one with your spiritual calling. Some “past” influences and experiences in your life will fall away (Death), some will walk by your side (Rebirth), but the sum of it all—both Death and Rebirth—will be TRANSMUTATION.

What this says to me, as I remembered how I was struggling in that time with walking away from that person I worked with (and I still had several others in my life who leeched me in the same way, even though their personalities were different), is that sometimes the fear of change is what prevents us from changing. It says that just because I have behaved in a certain way for however long and it's expected of me (either by myself or external forces) that I will continue to take it because I know I can handle it, doesn't mean I have to. Or, indeed, that I need to. No. That actually serves to become a defeatist kind of devolutionary way of handling things.

I know, for me in my circumstance, I had to really look at why I kept attracting the same kind of friends and acquaintances. Not to blame myself, but to learn from it. Working with this girl was the straw that broke the camel's back - so to speak - and something in me said, "Right. Enough. I'm ready to start anew from Now.... ok, now.... How do I do that again?"

And the rest, with all my study now seven years in the making, is history.

Slowly, very slowly, I began to redefine myself. After Ellanor died, I was forced to start again! I guess I could have chosen not to. But I would have been denying a hell of a lot, had I done that. So with diligence and taking it very easy on myself - for I begin again, and again, and yet again all the time! - I define my own Now. I attract those close in who enrich and fulfil what I do and who I am today. I daresay for the most part, I know the ones who will continue to be there for as many "tomorrows" as I can foresee. But I also know that I don't really know how I will change and evolve either, as they are continuing to move through their lives too. The fluent movement of friendship has been something I have come to wonder and marvel at - the ones you thought would remain, the ones you were SURE were destined to end explosively and the vast number of surprise delights to be found in people that support your place in your own life. As you are. Now.

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There are other posts to be written about this. As well as the flashback moment I had recently regarding my own time in preschool and the conditioning surrounding being raised by a very sick mother.  But I am diligently trying to practice keeping posts short these days! (Hmmmm...... how'm I going? cough.... not exactly acing the short post thing so far)


Do you recognise repeat performances in your life? Of friends, family or perhaps colleagues who treat you the same? If so, I wonder what your next step has been/will be (and please don't feel you need to answer this in the comments, although I always deeply appreciate and welcome them! This is personal, private stuff. Email me if you wish, too :)

The World: In My End Is My Beginning

Image sourced from here

I sat back down at the computer this afternoon to continue my editing work. I am currently going back through the Green Ray manual.

I had left the document and gone about doing other things. Grocery shopping, hanging out washing, being distracted by Twitter and my Ebay auctions, picking up the LGBB from preschool, reading even more blog posts about people feeling left out. I had a lengthy phone conversation with a one-time colleague and mentor. Basically, about how I felt not one but two of "my communities" were in a period of flux. Change and growth. Where to from here.

All that sort of real "these here are changing times" stuff that comes around. You know? And suddenly, everything that once felt all sorted has suddenly gone and shed another layer of skin. And who you thought you were - or at least, where you thought you were headed - along with it.

So I came back to my computer, as I was saying. And I did something I rarely do: I read the work. There are so many words to align, correct, space properly.... I don't often take time to actually read what it is I'm formatting. It was with more than a little interest, then, that with all these thoughts swirling in my head marked "For Later" I read the following (and could not have been more buoyed and comforted about my place in The World):

Card #21.  THE WORLD (sits on Green Ray) - Tarot Card

THE WORLD is about supreme happiness that can be derived from living in the physical world.   

“So the darkness shall be the light and the stillness the dancing.”

The Fool has come to the end of his journey—or at least this part of it.  His lessons and experiences depicted throughout the Major Arcana have now been synthesised and absorbed into a completion so that physical life on Earth can be lived as it was meant to be lived.

No longer clothed with hopes and expectations of what the journey will hold but dancing the eternal dance within the ellipse of the “cosmic” egg, the Fool embodies the truth that

“what you do not know is the only thing you know

And what you own is what you do not own

And where you are is where you are not."

and that

“In my end is my beginning”

The Dance of Life continues in a never-ending cycle of birth and death and birth and death and so the Fool can look back at the past while dancing into the future.  Naked and free from all fear and falsehood, the Fool has become one with his Higher Self.  Our outer person and our inner person are one and we carry the World within us, each of our life experiences contributing to Eternity, each one of them journeying us, as part of the Infinite Whole, back to Source.  Our Soul and the Soul of the World are one and we know, with total certainty, that all we will ever need will be given to us.

This is the end of a cycle and the beginning of another—success and fulfilment are ours.  We are released from past responsibilities and are free now to experience anew.

Number Significance:

The Number 21 signifies the Active Mystic who dwells not in grief, guilt or grievance, but goes forth in faith and courage.

All quotations from T.S. Elliot’s Four Quartets, “East Coker”.

Intellectual copyright:  Peace Space 2011 

How does your place in your world feel for you right now? "They" say these things happen in collective energetic ways. I'd be interested in your stories. Email me if you feel more inclined than leaving a public comment below :)


(and equally as importantly.... does anyone know how the eff I get this 'Like' button to stop kissing the last line of all my blog posts?? It's disturbing me, for no real reason other than it's displeasing to my eye. Harumph)

The Social Symmetry

My work is consuming me at the moment and I am carefully balancing it with being home with Lolly - she is increasingly bored and particularly testing of my patience these holidays.... and I read with dismay (for her and me) last night that she doesn't go to kinder properly until MARCH!! Days are staggered until then, during Feb.... oh Lord, please help us both - so I have been (probably not exactly notably) absent from many of the blogs I usually love to dip into and read. I'm surprised I have been able to post anything on my own blogs. But I need to do that, it's like my salve, my little back-to-me space, in all the madness of my various jobs.

Anyway, I wanted to point you over to my other blog - if you're so inclined - because I have posted something there that I am currently sitting with (cocooning myself in, really, in order to remain professional, unemotionally involved and untangled) and the words may just be useful to some of you reading, too.

Catch you again soon!

She reaps, she sows

This subject has been floating around in my head for a month or two now. I grappled with posting it, as on face value it appears to largely self-promote, yet this is far from my intention; I came to the conclusion that it was taking more energy for me not to spill and mention here what is going on in my changing professional role than it was to just be as open as I have always maintained on here. And it might explain why my posts on this blog could - who knows - become obsolete, or at least much changed (hence my working towards setting up the private blog last year, so that I may continue to post somewhere less open, as I sort of saw this coming) if it begins to impinge too much on my personal life.

You see, what happened was this: I lifted my head up near the end of 2010 for a brief moment and realised.... I have been studying non-stop for six years. That's six years of knowledge all backed up and archived in my head (and in my overflowing study!). And almost as soon as that realisation crept in to my awareness, I began to be sought out for my services as a psycho-spiritual counsellor. Not just friends or friends of friends this time. Real life, no personal connection, paying querents. I knew I had to start cracking a whip on myself if I was going to seize this opportunity to make my life's work (to date) turn into something meaningful for others. Otherwise, what had been the point of any of it?

For the first three years, it was most certainly a heal-the-healer journey, as most often are. And then I turned a corner. Almost unwittingly, I embarked on an extension of the study whereby the manuals referred to this unrelatable, unrecognisable, seemingly unattainable person called "The Practitioner". Before I was even aware, my mentors and class facilitators were going along with me on this ride where I've suddenly screeched to a halt and looked around and gone, "Oh my stars, I have my first paying client!"

Despite my trying every which way to weazle out of my responsibilities here - and stay relatively 'anonymous' online and help who I can, when they seek me out (and you know who you are!) usually via email or even by phone - and also to remain outside of the murky waters of remuneration for a service that I have to this point in my life considered an Earth Healing cause, I am on the precipice of the amazing and unique privilege of calling myself a legitimate counsellor. Rather like the online forum moderator who slogs diligently, voluntarily, until that moment in time where they realise that the energy exchange has become overblown. They're not "married to the job", for it is not a job they are being paid for and yet it seeps into their family and private time as if they were some sort of executive. So they either let the role go to someone else or they get put on staff as a paid contributor to the running of the service. And they're a lot more satisfied and work more efficiently because of it.

There have been lots of to's and fro's, lists of pro's and con's and so forth, all going in to my decision. I find that I have come to a point where I am actually not being as good as I can be in my role when I am sought out on this casual basis by acquaintances - and part of this is because I don't know the defined line; where do I stop relating to them as a friend and giving the support a friend can and should give, and when do I put my professional hat on, treating them somewhat more clinically/distantly so that I can step aside and be clear of mind in order for the assistance to come through and help them more effectively? It seems that when people lay their money down, that line is defined. And it is actually the only way to be effective.

With my skillset largely experiential, backed up by a highly principled mode to healing which ensures my spiritual etiquette and ego are firmly in check to allow whatever is permitted for the recipient, I think I have something unique to offer here.

I feel like the Masters' apprentice. I know what I know, I have no idea what I don't know yet (but I know it's a lot!) and yet, I find myself over-ripened on the learning vine. The next logical step is this. I have great expectations of 2011 being the fulfilling year I always thought it could be.

How about you? It seems there are so many posts going around about not having resolutions. And I for one think this is marvellous. So with all this self-affirmation and confidence that we're not actually going to set ourselves up to fail/beat ourselves up, and with the freshness of a new decade laid out before you,
what do you see as being your one overriding uplifting hope for your Soul purpose this year? Do you have one? If not, why not?

The filling day

I have just come back from the most astounding, enriching family day at the beach.

If you can imagine, my family is spread pretty wide. Cousins flung from either side of the country - my mother's relatives settled predominantly in Perth, Adelaide and Melbourne - so we are separated by distance and always have been. Add various inter-generational rifts (what appear to be genetic methods of coping with situations too difficult to express in words) and this has further contributed to separation and estrangement. Let's just say, it's rather commonplace at least on one side of my line.

My oldest cousin turns 50 this year. She is 15 years older than me. I remember her as the coolest, most lovely and nurturing girl - the one who willingly had me over to stay, as a spritely 6 year-old, at her home when she had her baby (and I was so besotted by her little girl during a trip to WA that I had taken with my mother). She was the one who got married the same year as Charles and Diana. I thought she was living a fairytale and I was always a bit starstruck by her.

I haven't seen my cousin since I was eleven. But I would know her in any crowd.

In recent years, I have heard from various members of the family that my cousin has taken an interest in the genealogical lineage of my mother's family. When my great aunt died earlier this year, my ensuing trip to the family home in remote outback Australia ignited a drive in me to remember my roots. This ties in very neatly also to my energenetics studies - the energy locked up in our genetics, basically - which have, these past 12-18 months, turned to unravelling the intricate webbing of genetic patterning (the stuff that isn't locked up in physiological DNA, but that which is energetic - passed on down the line, in much the same way as the physical characteristics).

Imagine my utter surprise today to discover that my cousin has been "hoping to learn more about healing the energetic side to a family's history." My ears pricked up when she said this. She referred to it as "healing the family tree". And imagine her keen interest when I told her, rather awestruck, that I had been learning how to recognise and decode family genetic patterns - the outmoded "ways" that carry down our genetic lines as patterns, overlaying our natural original self.

There was a bit of a grin and a slow head-nod of recognition for us both then, as we looked at each other, suddenly realising we were both striving to learn and uncover - from different ends of the same spectrum - this same thing. It's not very common, one has to admit, to hear about anyone studying their family pattern (not the tree and who was in it and who was born/married/connected to whom, but more the patterns of their ancestry and what they passed on). And as they go, let's just say our family has a few DOOZIES of recurring patterns!

I feel honoured that this chance catch-up (for they have been to Melbourne before on fleeting visits but we've not caught up before today) has given me a connection, or reconnection, to this beloved cousin. And now I have another family member in the know about our specific family dynamic - the strange, delicate, dysfunctional, unique and beautiful ways - to bounce theories and ideas off.

I have heard of courses such as Cutting The Ties That Bind and so forth. These aim, basically speaking, to safely and respectfully allow the individual to recognise and remove themselves from family patterns (or societal ones, for that matter) that do not fit for them. What we're doing seems to be something slightly different to that. At any rate, I know what I am seeking is a real understanding of where each member of my ancestry was 'coming from' as much as I can, in order that I might wholly accept that individual and their monumental role in shaping the generations that followed, right down to li'l ol' me... And Lolly, for that matter.

For, once again, that is what I am doing all this for. It's for her. My LGBB. For my further training, yes (and what better way to learn how to guide others than to first go through the tough trials yourself - heal the healer, etc etc...), but ultimately it really is to safeguard the way for her.

There may be more I'd like to share about this, but anything more specific might be best left for the private blog sometime in the near future.

Here we go: Family Lore/Law and healing patterns

Hello! So huge is this that I have to divvy it up to try and make it palatable, not only for you lot reading but for me as I catalogue it all in my time - this blog is a time-stamp for me as much as it is an outlet.

 This post is just part of a thread of thought/learning pertinent to cross-generational childbirth/loss and patterns of behaviour that I am going to have to split across all three of my blogs. There is a lot of personal family information - but incredibly pertinent to my discovery (which relates directly to my own healing and understanding of the burdens of my journey) - which I want to discuss on the private blog in due course. 

There are also a number of different realms and realities associated with what I am uncovering, which are probably best suited to the Earth Healing blog (where I am, after all, trying to collaborate and consolidate what I come across, like an index of sorts). 

And, of course, there is the continuing story of me, the person, which you have come to know through this blog - and this is where I want to begin to unravel not only so I can share, but also so I can understand and get my head around this most amazing story that has been unfolding. I would be delighted if you visit all three places, to gain a more rounded insight, if you feel moved to do so! Otherwise, I'll be sharing public thoughts here. As always.

A little preface:
I am writing about this in the spirit of sharing, in case this little snippet of my ongoing discovery might cause a spark of recognition for someone reading. This is a story/awareness not unique to me. And the experience that has journeyed me through this awakening is the vehicle by which I can explain how, by healing the family patterns from generations dead and gone, a remarkable and unmistakable healing - a pardon of the past - can take place.

My story is a rather extreme version of this occurrence/possibility. I am getting used to the fact that it is this way because it serves to highlight to me, personally, where I have had opportunities to discover, uncover and learn more. Constantly shifting and lifting all the drift wood. If I did not have this hugely impacting succession of the same lessons, I would not have persevered to learning the truth about my generational patterns of abuse, neglect and loss. It has been an enormous package, so huge in fact that I am struggling to fit it all into words. I possibly never will. But I am trying to describe it because I also realise that this is not something for me, alone, to simply discover, heal and move on with. That has never been part of my social cause. I get that now.

Getting to the crux of it:
All of us have the same opportunities to heal our family patterning - after all, we are all borne of families generations in the making somehow (even when we are adopted in to families, although this creates a really intriguing sidetrack). Whether this is through dissolving redundant but, regardless, still prevalent family lore (the family stories, traditions, anecdotes, "just the way it is in our family") or discovering ways of life that have amazing similarities to those of your ancestors, even when carried out 50, 70, 100 years apart.

When I had my first pregnancy, I did not even contemplate its connection to any sort of "bigger picture". When I lost my second, third, fourth and then fifth, I didn't think I was incredibly unique. I still did not really think about my place "in all of this", my humility didn't allow it.

My sixth pregnancy produced Ellanor. With her - and this is putting it very briefly!! - I was delivered a gift of glimpsing life beyond life after she died. If you doubt, I don't blame you. And if you doubt, all I can say is..... trust and faith and a healthily skeptic open mind is what saw me through the next six years (and counting). Trust me ;) Heh. So, I spent this pregnancy devoting much time to contemplating my grandmother and her own losses - of which I believe there were at least two, possibly three or even more - in her second trimester of pregnancy. BUT this is as far as I thought my connection to her went. I thought, at this point, and for all these years since, that I truly understood the kinship I felt to her the instant she died (my grandmother and not Ella). And that this posthumous kindred spirit, for want of a better explanation of it, was what I bonded with during the months of not only conceiving but then carrying Ellanor (for Ellanor came in to my awareness some seven months before I fell pregnant with her). Little did I know that this was just an introduction to really getting to know what my Grandmother had been all about, and her mother before her. AND, the most mind-blowing part of all, that the multiple pregnancy connection that I thought was the thing we shared (and her mother before her as well, who had a total of twelve live births before dying aged 38 when 7 months pregnant) was actually a ruse. That this female energenetic connection I have with them was merely the hook, ensuring I really understand them on this level in order to get to the real crux of all the scandalous running around that really went on, starting at least as far back as turn of the last century London?

My seventh, eighth and ninth pregnancies netted no result, or so I thought, but a dashing of hopes and now numbed and incomprehensible grief and pain. Sorrow and sadness were dancing within me beside my belief, belonging and will to strive/survive. But....

At this point, I also began to develop a real sense of belonging to a greater, much larger tapestry. Me and my failed pregnancies - and, indeed, the dear soul Ella - were but a miniscule part of it. However, without us, there would have been an undeniable hole in the overall picture. So the picture not only required me and my journey with these babes, I relied on it (completely unknowingly, unconsciously until only last week) to seek my Comeback, my homecoming and my calling.

I am floored to discover, only after pregnancy 10 (which gave us our blessed relief in the form of our second girl, Lolly), and then pregnancies 11 through to 14, which I of course lost last week, that there is NOT a curse on me but a course. Through me. And through me, my paternal female genetic line has been patiently, fervently holding. Waiting for this moment in time to be discovered by me. The pregnancy last week reminded me to keep seeking answers - I had stopped, foregone that duty, as getting pregnant is not on my radar anymore and the game of chance and two lines on a wee-stick is not one I am actively playing anymore - and I received them.

Like a bolt out of the blue. Or, hey, a burst blood vessel in the leg. Whichever ;)

So now, I am going to throw it over to the Earth Healing blog where, if you are so inclined, you can go catch up with the workings/"mechanics" of healing a family pattern. Or, indeed, how to discern whether you have one to heal. Give me a few days (maybe even a week or two) for this one, as it is huge and I need to get it as 'right' as I can in my head and heart before I can post it. As well, I need to get some of the more personal jot-points down and out quickly, before I forget and lose the essence of my great-grandmother (in particular), and I want to do that behind the veil of my private blog, for the protection of my family still living more than anything.


Phew. Well, I feel a tad lighter, getting that out of my head. Thank you for lending me your eyes, if you went with me on that. I hope it wasn't too hard to follow? If anyone has any questions they'd like to ask for the sake of clarifying in their own field of awareness, please ask. It may help immensely in shaping future posts on this subject of energenetic (family pattern) healing and for that, I would be ever so grateful for the cerebral stimulation from those interested in learning more. If you catch my drift...

Tabbarse

Well, I will just get right down to it and admit....

The "new" cat is a royal PITA.

I have never been quite this annoyed by a living creature before. Unless you count Jazz in her hey-day. Hmmm. Actually, yes. It's possibly a tie. To put it this way, our plumber was here last week (ooops.... sorry, was that rubbing it in, Steve(tropolis)?) and he asked - when Jazz bounced in and ricocheted back out, Tigger-style - how old our bag of beans was. I told him Jazz is coming up six in October. He looked sympathetic and said simply, "Well.... she's not likely to change now is she?" and I said, regrettably, no, I didn't think so. And we both watched her in silence as she attempted to impale herself by slamming into a fence post while playing fetch. With herself. I guess that's one good thing about Jazz: she has learned to make her own fun.

That darn cat, though, she just will NOT leave me alooooooone. So much so, the poor thing's name is now Tabbarse. Or Tabberzarse. It gives a slight satisfaction to be cursing while saying her name. If I sit down with a book (or print-outs - I'm usually reading and editing my own work), she comes and sits right in front of me and smooches her cheeks on the spine of the book. Or the pen I'm holding. Non-stop. If I wave her away and say 'NO!', it seems to encourage her all the more. And her cold little nose runs along my finger as I'm pointing her in the direction she should piss off move aside. As soon as I move, she is at my feet. Whatever room I am in, you can guarantee you will find the cat, perched on the closest high point adjacent to my head or where I'm sitting.

So now, not only do I have a four year-old who still is not keen on making her own arrangements with regards to playing (and the longest she has EVER gone is about 30-40 minutes playing on her own, in another room ohmygodohmygod it was so exciting!!!) and two dogs that fawn at every door and window to just catch a glimpse of me during the day, I have a crazy cat insistent on helping the others to drive me to within a millimetre of SAHMadness.
Tabby's meaowing for me begins at dawn and, while I used to be able to let her out for a play and she'd go and amuse herself outdoors until the afternoon, she has now decided that's not nearly as fun as standing at the front door and running her paws vertically on the security door. She makes it bang like an irate neighbour who's come to complain about the loud music (not... that that's ever happened... but I can just imagine it would sound like this).

If I succumb and let the cat in, she then meaows incessantly and gets under my feet, satisfied only when I feed her. Only thing is, she is overweight as it is and the vet has told me that she is not to have dry food ("Doesn't need it", he said, neither of us realising he had sentenced me to an endless run of putting up with a demanding cat who thinks her tummy is constantly empty, no matter if she just ate ten minutes ago). So she gets a can a day. Now, you try telling old droopy-tum and she'll just blink, shrug (her care factor about such matters is zero) and just meaow at you until YOUR ears bleed. And this is not to even mention the witching hour, that goes on for something like three hours, right after the LGBB has gone to bed. Tabby gets the spooks up and does flat-out sprints up and down the house. Not being a dainty slip of a thing, she hulks up and down on the floorboards sounding for all the world like a subwoofer kicking in with the bass during a helicopter scene from Apocalypse Now.

All of this being said, I have long since learned to look on such things as points of highlighting for me. There is something about her incredibly annoying insistence on being noticed - by me, in particular, for she doesn't go near Steve or Lolly but will actually try and be as close to me as she can at all times of the day and night (until bedtime, when she seems happy to retreat to her own bed) - that has really made me sit up and take notice. So she's doing her job well. A little too ruddy well, but nonetheless, I'm seeking to understand just why she's grating on me so. And she is going to continue to be the pain in my rear end until I work it out, just tipping quietly.

So I was on the phone to one of my teachers last week and I was talking to her about something I'm nutting out at the moment, to do with a certain pattern of energy that I have noticed (in a class setting) getting me all riled up and yet I say nothing and in fact am feeling a bit stifled. I know it's something I will keep coming up against - it will just be the same thing, different person, time after time and so far, there have been three people I have had to deal with this over so I know it's something for me to look into further - and I am working on figuring it out. I've also gotten into a bit of a rut with making time to seek my own guidance on things. I've become avoidant about doing any energetic work and I have been enjoying alcohol a bit lately (a great escapism tactic if ever there was one). Anyway, right when she was giving me some clues on where/how to start working this out, I had the dog (who represents loyalty) outside trying to bite and lung at the cat (which serves to highlight the imbalances in your life) through the window. We had to laugh, because it was virtually what we had been talking about - I have to work out where my loyalty is placed at the moment, especially in relation to what I am putting in to my intuitive senses and keeping myself balanced. If I don't, I run the risk of burning out/getting ill again, which was my pattern all last year.

I'll get around to it. I still haven't properly worked it through. I'm so gosh-darn tired this week, having not fully recovered from the other night when I had less than four hours' sleep (UGH.... don't ask.... but it involved a toddler's wet bed and being woken at 12.30am right at the end of my first 90-minute sleep cycle, so I then stayed awake until well after 5am).

If you are so inclined, and you have a cat gnawing at your energy (or otherwise making its presence obvious - more than usual), I recommend checking out the animal wisdom for Cat. I have just posted it on my Earth Healing blog. It is fascinating.

Do you have annoying animals at your house? Pets who haven't grown up? Pooches who think they're people? Cats who won't stop crying? If you do, you have my sincere condolences.

Essential oils

If you were expecting a discussion by me of the back catalogue of Midnight Oil's body of work, you'll be sorely disappointed. If, however, you were hoping I was going to talk about essential oils and their uses for, specifically this time, children.... sit right down and grab a cuppa! You've come to the right blog.

By the skin of my teeth this Monday, for the first time in ever so long, here is a post along the vein of my old dusty concept my Monday Mandala theme. Though this time, I am looking at just a few of the many essential oils to be found on the market.

Specifically, I am going to give snippets (below) of how you may use certain oils - and blends - to assist a child through certain challenging or difficult situations or transitions. I cannot express highly enough just how comforting I find it to place oil in a burner, knowing that the subtle properties of the mix I have chosen is helping to create a certain atmosphere, whether that be placid, healing, energising, soul searching... whatever. There are many uses for oils, only some of which I have researched below from my work books.

I just felt the need today, in particular, to do this for the children. There have been a few cases I've been involved with in various forms this past week or few, that I thought it might be pertinent to put here, as a place marker of sorts and a post of reference for anyone coming across it in future.

It could be very useful to build up a little collection of these amazing supportive tools over time - a good essential oil is not cheap, bear in mind - and perhaps start with those that you intuitively have a connection with. There are so many ways they can be helpful. I hope over time, I get the time to continue to share these snippets. Hmmmmm.... I'm starting to sense a blog dedicated to these other modalities coming on..... *wink*

And you know I'm going to have to sign over now with the old cliché.....

Oils Ain't Oils (hyuk hyuk hyuk)

Essential Oils - Uses for children

ROSEWOOD - Mix ROSEWOOD Oil with Oil of JASMINE for a sublime mix for children who are experiencing the trauma of not making lasting friendships. This very fine Oil will help the child see their own worth so strengthening their inner resolve not to dissipate their energies by giving their inner power away to others.
Children experiencing difficulties learning would benefit by burning a mix of ANISEED and ROSEWOOD.

ROSE OTTO - Children benefit greatly from the healing properties of Oil of ROSE OTTO. It calms them and helps them feel more comfortable in their bodies. It is especially useful when children are irritable after being in crowds.

ROMAN CHAMOMILE - helps to free one from following a life of expectations and to find a life where the guidance of the Higher Self leads one to discover their radiance within. (Apart from shock) nothing dissipates and depletes energy more than a being who stops following the heart in order to please others. ROMAN CHAMOMILE is a wonderful Oil for children, especially if mixed with ROSE OTTO, to help them begin to formulate their own bank of inner worth instead of trying to please others for a gauge of who they are.

YLANG YLANG - Burn YLANG YLANG with Oils of GENET and ORANGE for those who are working through the pain of changing friendships groups. It is very important to support a child’s energy matrix at such a time, particularly during puberty as the chakra can become depleted, especially around the heart space. Essence energy is also recommended. Use a flower or gem essence to do with feeling unable to cope with change or loss of identity, as this would be useful to the young person.

EUCALYPTUS - this oil works very well in the room of a child who has ceased to have hope. The signature of EUCALYPTUS is hope, but hope in a very specific sense. It is the kind of hope that flows to a loving heart. It is not the oil for a negative person who doesn't have hope. It is for the being usually connected to universal love, who is experiencing a temporary lapse of hope in their life. In its very essence, it works on the endocrine system to strengthen the heart space and the thyroid gland, to retain and maintain resonance.

ROSEMARY - What a gift this oil brings the being who suffers from a feeling of being suffocated by circumstances, or feels that their true Self is being swallowed up by the expectations of others. The Oil of ROSEMARY expands the frequency of the heart and throat chakras to allow the being to express, in Truth, how they feel thus freeing them from the destructive pattern of going along with others to the detriment of their spiritual growth. ROSEMARY is very good for children who are experiencing these feelings within their school situation. This Oil is very kind to children.

Oil of LAVENDER - is very good to burn for children who are feeling unhappy at school as it will assist the clearing of feeling bound and suffocated by authority and or peer group pressure. It will assist a being to concentrate on the Self and strengthen inner resolve to be in their Truth. If bullying by authority or peers is an issue, add oils of LEMON and TANGERINE. LAVENDER is very good to burn in children’s rooms after a ‘whole house’ healing. It nurtures the heart and stimulates the seventh and eighth chakras for a child.

GERANIUM - In regards to place, burn Oil of GERANIUM in an oil burner for children with phobias and fear of the dark or of unknown things. It is beneficial to use GERANIUM Oil before sleeping as it works best when the body is at rest, relaxing or meditating.

TANGERINE - Many troubled minds can be soothed by the energy of TANGERINE. Many beings run here and there, looking for things to do to make themselves feel better. Oil of TANGERINE will soothe this agitation so that these beings may stop and find the time to look within and discover the joy and contentment of their essence.
Anyone with butterflies in the stomach will also benefit from the burning of Oil of TANGERINE.
Burn Oil of TANGERINE for children, in particular, when they are fearful or very nervous about any challenges that they are facing.
Oil of TANGERINE is also very good to burn when the young female begins her process of menstruation. It will assist the energetic transition that can often cause confusion at this time. Add a little Oil of LEMON if the young one feels an agitation of Spirit due to the passing of her childhood. This reluctance to move onward to the next step of a life can often be a carry-over from times past when leaving childhood brought pain and suffering. So, if this lifetime transition can be smoother by clearing the way energetically for the next step, a great healing will occur for the child, as this progression into pubescence can be a time when the child within and the joy within are neglected. Sometimes they may be so neglected that retrieval of this wondrous energy is most difficult. The child stops playing and enjoying life and having fun, and then turns into the adult who doesn’t play and doesn’t have fun in their life, perhaps in their whole life, perhaps for lifetimes.

With thanks and full credit to Peace Space and
Lee Baxter, "Healing Botanicals: Plant energies to heal person and place"
(Creek Publications, Bendigo 2003)

Got questions or comments? Please feel free to email me (or leave a comment), I love to hear how these work for you~

Violet Day

This week, I find myself in a strange place. I'm in a pit. Of self-pity and past patterning, familiar to me yet so completely redundant that I feel quite ashamed I displayed it so obviously here on my blog.

On getting in to work this morning, it took only a few moments on the phone to a mentor to discover that what I am dealing with here is a sort of.... full circle energy. Something that needs to be completed. Passed over, if you will.

There have been a number of incidents here at home in the past week and, in no particular order of importance, they are:

• Steve quit his job, after 17 years (more on that in a later post, for I am ever so proud of him) - definitely a tying off of loose ends happening there, as he is being made to work out his 4 weeks' notice;
• The LGBB got into a punch-up last Friday, in a push circle with boys. I'm intrigued by this and am working with my own feelings about it (and hers - although she seems mostly unaffected, which is surprising to me as it turns out), coming to points of needing to clear energy surrounding that event as well. I was shocked, baffled, sad that she was in that situation, and then this has swiftly given way to looking on the situation as something she wanted to take on - the details around the fight, from Lolly herself, indicate that she decided to take matters into her own hands, so it looks like a clear-cut case of experimentation and mimicking (copying something she knows her father and I do not condone, so an exertion of independence, rebellion and a bit of stealth - none of them reported it to the teachers - going on as well);
• I had my birthday on Sunday. I am putting an end to another era - the era where a fuss is made over you on your birthday. Well.. not fuss, I suppose, but... focus? Something else, perhaps? Fryingpan-gate was merely a ruse, for the real issue I was dealing with, I discovered this morning, was the fact that my father - the only parent who is coherent and (apparently) in my life, has completely forgotten that he greeted me 35 years ago on Sunday. So, dealing with the last remaining "harumphs" over that (like a brattish teen).

At this point, I can see I am uncharacteristically lashing out and being quite insensitive - nay, actually, probably uber-sensitive is more to the point - with the people I share this house with. Over the past two nights combined, I have had barely 10 hours' sleep (Steve has another cold and is rattling like Darth Vader) and it is helping to impair my judgement somewhat. But it only dawned on me this morning that I am taking on whatever they are dealing with as well.

When a child goes to day care (long/short/occasional), they come home with a lot of group conscious conditioning. I have been remiss lately in helping the LGBB "de-sponge" herself and close down before going to sleep. The Monsters have been making their predictable appearance in tandem with that.

And with Steve and his workplace situation, I am being entirely neglectful - hurtful, even - in not throwing him a bone for the monumental death process he is stepping through. How insensitive of me. All I could bang on about (no pun intended) was frypans. Woe is me. Bloody 'ell.

So today, I am calling in to practice what I do know about this worldly process of energies - what is unseen but affects us and meddles occasionally in the equilibrium of a more peaceful life - and I am writing it here as testament to my commitment to get back on track with what I know I am supposed to be doing.

Some may read this and say I'm being too hard on myself. But the thing is, it is my responsibility to be true to myself and honour my space and place by keeping spiritually 'active' - I am a sensitive, I am affected by energies bouncing off others. I can ruddy well do something about it, instead of flailing into a pit of self-wallowing (and self-loathing for said wallowing, when all is said and done)! I keep forgetting that last part. Hnngh *pitiful Frank Spencer look to camera*

Without further ado, I'm off to do a clearing. Have a happy, productive day, peeps!

Got to hand it to her

The girl knows how to blow me away with the things she comes out with.

When I collected the LGBB today from occasional care, she was her usual chipper self. Quiet in the car, satisfied with a drink and a little chocolate egg... in keeping with the season she knows nought about except a "silly bunny who keeps dropping eggs in the garden." Sweet.

We got home, I dealt with an insurance quote assessor (the saga continues) while the LGBB did some mazes from her maze book - she's totally into them at the moment.

When I came back inside, I headed for the kitchen to begin cleaning it. It's been a busy week. Productive but busy. Today, I finally completed work on a big website. The client is ecstatic. So am I! Now I can invoice them and upload the thing.

On a more esoteric note, at the same time I am working on something else with a particularly testing energy. It's challenging. But ultimately, so in tune with what I know I need to be doing, to balance my very grounded physical work with websites, design and computer stuff. Over the past few days, I have been intensive with my work in this other realm. That's all I want to say about that (sorry for the vagueness!).

Anyway, there have been times in Lolly's short life where I have been visibly busier. I have been tested. I have been sore and sick and sorry for myself. And still working. But she has never said to me what she said today. It was a very rewarding confirmation, in a twofold sense, both of the insight I was given about the LGBB and the special nature of our kinship, and also the "assignment" (as a light worker) I have always trusted I was working towards but was for some reason as yet unrealised (despite many confirmations along the way from people I have helped, in various manners - from assisting a couple to find their children, who were born to another biological mother but ultimately found their way to these intended parents, to other lesser affiliated souls, requesting help, whom I have never laid eyes on but for whom I get little healing messages/instructions that always prove true...). I can thank/blame my upbringing, I think, that I am so oblivious to the signs that seem obvious to so many others - it's still a blinding wonder to me that I can do this and overwhelmingly humbling because of the personal nature of these circumstances.

But this is the first time I have assisted someone quite in this way before. And it is being led by something other than me, consciously, yet I know what I have to do. Kind of like reading a recipe and knowing, from that, what ingredients to put in, but then the head chef will come along and taste test and suggest another herb or a little more of "this or that".... The head chef, in this instance, is the higher guidance of both/either myself and/or the other person. I just do what I'm instructed in that instance.

So the LGBB, all of a sudden tired of her maze tracing, says rather sympathetically to me as I come back inside, "You working hard today. Mummy did lots of work."

"Yes I did," I said to her, almost distracted to the point of even noticing her intonation. She persisted and left her book, coming over to me with arms outstretched, looking drawn and tired. "Mummy worked hard. That makes me sleepy." And she really was.

I was told a long while ago that my children - both Ellanor and Lolly - were the other two sides of my working triangle. The sifters, lifters and finders of the redundant mess surrounding the world on the astral level, in our little corner of the world and what we've been enlisted and joined together to do at this time.

Of course when I am pulled to assist, in a universal sense, she is going to be affected. We are intrinsically, somehow inexplicably, linked in this manner. Even as a baby, she would be listless and drawn and tired during times when I was learning/working the most on this etheric level.

Only now, though, am I beginning to really live it. See it. Integrate what I have been studying. Most amazing to me at this time, this week, are the points of connection I am making between females, mothers, violation, fertility, the father line... it just keeps coming and coming. The symmetry around me at the moment, even with reconnecting with my old love and his affinity with cats and also some of the things he was explaining as having had happened to him over the past twenty years and the connections I've privately made with the work I am currently doing (on a group conscious level), is making me feel very small - a speck in the universe's history - and that, in turn, keeps me grounded and mindful of my egoic ways (which cannot get in the way of my work). It's also making me go "Wow, wow... WOW!"

It will forever be humbling, for it involves such deeply personal healing work with and for others.

Full of it

I'm so full of ideas and trains of thought for my book again at the moment. Blessedly, that girl of ours has come right on back in again, cloaking me with this familiar feeling of knowing who she is, knowing what we observed, putting me in that space in time..... But this time, for the very first time since having and losing Ellanor (hey, could that be a good title for the book??!! "Having And Losing Ellanor".... hmmmm) - anyway - for the first time, I am truly out the other side. Away from the (as one of my dear mentors, Neri, puts them) "nar-ne-nar's" - those thoughts that nag and gnaw and, well, "nar-ne-nar" at you when you are unconsciously aware you are letting them!

I've been holding a lot of energy these past six months on a project that I thought would never ever end. It has been tremendously arduous learning, whilst being the recipient of a huge swathe of channelled work that I was enlisted to edit and make coherent in the form of a whopping 4-part manual. It's now available for study by the students who have already done the Peace Space mode to healing, which is a heal-the-healer type journey through the 13 colour ray spectrum - a study that journeys the student, basically, through 13 layers of human perception and enables them to intuitively understand and recognise their potential in any given situation and at any level they find themselves. Further to this, the student will have had to delve into the masters' colours (a deeper/greater level of learning and responsibility, towards the self and in turn, turning that into service for humanity), of which there are currently... gawd, I can't remember, I've lost count.

So as I have come out of this bottleneck of busyness and expanded back into my slightly less pressurized juggle of family life and work (I have no idea how I managed to keep the business afloat while I did that, as it literally squeezed every ounce of free time out of me and I would grab at opportunities to post a blog entry or go to the shops for groceries like a mad woman out on good behaviour). As I have done this ease back to relative normalcy, I've had more time to think more freely as well. And this is where whole scenes for the book have begun downloading into my brain once again.

I now carry around a notebook of tiny proportions, in which I jot every little grab and plot teaser that I am given. For too long, I have been assuming those things would come back to me, if I woke in the middle of the night with SUCH a blaringly good insight that I knew I couldn't POSSIBLY forget it by morning.... and, invariably, I have lost a great many of those amazing trains of thought, simply because I didn't write them down, even in part, to go back to and expand on. It is a great disservice of me to the eventual reader(s) of this book, that I do this and not follow the thoughts through onto paper to capture them.

One of the main things that came out, only at the start of this month, that I will be building on (somewhere, somehow, don't know yet) is one of the main conclusions I reached, probably about 2 years after Ellanor died.

Letting go is not giving up (or in)

In some respects, regarding the writing, I feel like I am starting again. But in others, I do still have faith and trust that it has happened this way for a very good cause. And I am beginning to see that, had I rushed to the finish line with my intended manuscript, where I was 12 months ago heading towards the final chapter with great gusto and so certain I knew what the last quarter of the book would contain, I would never have had the learning under my belt that I have just been gifted, through holding what I have done in the first part of 2010.

I can see now that I still have much work to do and I will be going back through the book, before it ever reaches a publisher's desk, and weaving in a lot of the hindsight understandings I've been given. For without them, this would be a somewhat rubber-necker's delight. And I would never want Ella's (and Steve's and my) story to be reduced to that.

The Reader's Digest blog

Lately, I have had so much to blog about! So many discoveries I want to discuss. But look at my posts. You can probably see, if you're a seasoned reader here, that I have a lot going on, just by the very surface-nature of my writing. I tend to write very short, off-the-cuff posts when my creativity is being yanked in another direction. I also still have 2-3 website/design projects on the go at any one time, which has been the case since about October last year - it creates a drain on my reserves that I have to allow space for so that the well doesn't run dry (also need a bit o' creativity in reserve to come up with new and exciting ways to glue stuff to other stuff, for the LGBB, who is a craftoholic - how she loves glitter, torn paper, egg cartons and glue!).

Personally (well, I guess it is fast becoming 'professionally'), I am in a phase of learning just SO much right now. I'm understanding more than I ever have about spiritual lore vs spiritual 'law' (and all that pertains to both these things). Learning about our individual roles in perpetuating these disillusioned truths we hold (truths about ourselves, our friends, our loved ones, our neighbours, different communities, entire races - animal, vegetable and mineral). Helping to uncover theories about the close relationship between our psyche, our spirit and our soul and what/who really runs the show, which further perpetuates how we live our lives and, in turn, how that then contributes to the Earth's destruction, en masse. And these all run in to just so many other things that I find it difficult to even succinctly raise them here.

I'm also feeling the pull from a young miss who is constantly willing me to strive for a better way of life (and for me, that is nothing to do with how I look, what size I am, what I own, what I have, what I wear or eat or drive). Simply by her existence and her presence in my life, I am reminded to really look at what is my truth/natural original self as opposed to that which has been taught and imprinted on me throughout my life, in order that future generations of our family line do not repeat these outmoded, rather spiritually barbaric ways. The LGBB teaches me part of the way in how she needs to be raised and guided, but the rest of it is my reponsibility to... well, get responsible!

And so with all these things combined, I feel not so much a nagging but a gnawing. Constantly willing me to pull my socks up and remind myself of another way that does not involve anger, or idleness - in the form of escapism, using things like alcohol, internet surfing, tv, etc. - and actually opens up vast pockets of space in time in which I can fully reconnect with who I truly am, which in turn helps me cope and compartmentalise and sweep out dusty, dark corners of my existence. Today, I am steeped in trying to understand about reliances on the Father being related to an addiction/reliance on Father Time. Ho boy, what a sit up and take notice lesson this one is!

So, speaking of which, I have to go! Things to do, souls and Higher Selves to connect with, yada yada.... Please do bear with me, I'm just very pushed for time (as are we all, I know). But I'm in a phase of finding a new balance - I'm not trying to find it, it's finding me, and I am actually very grateful to the grounding nature of the Energenetics work I am editing and involved in (Energenetics = basically, the study of the energy behind our genetic coding and "what makes us tick" and, most importantly, how to heal family lines/ties and relationships, but on a purely energetic level - it starts with the Self and ends with the Self... an incredibly humbling process to integrate and realise).

A quote from my morning

Working away the morning. About to collect the LGBB from kindy.

I have been head-down, tail-up again in the next instalment of the Etheric Transfusion healing work that I've been asked to co-facilitate/edit/channel. And in part of my reading, I came across a little pearl that I'd like to share today.

A spiny ant-eater does not need its belly rubbed, it just needs to be able to get on with its life and purpose. Its spikes are for weathering the storms of existence, not for needling the unnecessary.

And that is just what I am lately: the Ant Eater.

A mandala for Thursday

It has been a long while since I cracked out a mandala (on here, anyway), but have been compelled to slip this one in here. It is profound reading and timely, as we are moving in to the energy of Red (around the end of this month) which sits on the Mother line - the paper below is in White, which is a complementary colour to Red energetically (it balances out the effects felt of Red). If you are moved to do so, it might be a well-placed exercise to diarise the push-pull plays you may be feeling in the lead-up to March - what choose you? Do you get swept up in another's powerplays? Are you able to discern between your higher consciousness principles (and act from this truth accordingly) and the truths of others that are overlaying your own?

Things are always a-stirrin' and I don't ever discount, these days, the effects of the unseen on my moods and intolerances. I often miss the lesson for the screaming and thrashing (coming from me!) but then am able to turn around and look at what I did and dissect my behaviour. Sometimes, the more I know, the more I know I don't know, but this doesn't mean I ought to give up seeking to learn what I can.

3. The PUPIL of PURITY

the colour of...BRIGHT WHITE
the sound chord of …Bb minor
the essence of...MOTHER OF PEARL... Helpful in times of challenge, heavy karma or soul-level transition, MOTHER-OF-PEARL helps those who live in an intense state to feel calmer and less afraid, especially in their instinctive or survival-orientated issues. MOTHER OF PEARL assists you towards their goal of acceptance, growth, and/or responsibility. It also helps those who have the purpose of the spiritualist, idealist or realist. It heals stress by keeping the body clear of stressful body chemicals and hormones, and calls all bruising of long-held abuse from being held in the body.

This Mandala is the gateway to the hurts of your past incarnations and of your present incarnation, hurts which have been caused by allowing your overplay of others’ opinions to influence and overlie your own truth and the safety of your walk. This Mandala will repair the “black holes” in your etheric pattern through which your energy has drained into retreat. This Mandala offers you the pattern of a personal, peaceful point of view which will mellow the harshness of any attack resulting from reclusive hurts of abuse. This Mandala will close the past and gather your energy so that you can walk with self-assurance. This Mandala will surface those shadows of sadness that require positive experiences to transition them so that you can achieve greater understanding as to their real cause and move away from the fear that defiles you.

This Mandala will also help you dissolve any illusion, deception or blockage by means of your willingness to face issues pertaining to your ego and your “child state”. Your ego and your child state hurt your perceptional state by preferring to view circumstances through “rose-coloured glasses” which ultimately mask reality. You are now being called upon to face your onus of truth willingly, even though this may seem harsh or confronting for you.

This will be most apparent wherever there has been personal abuse of any form. You will want so desperately to view the world through the eyes of peace and love and interact accordingly, yet, in doing so, you will be expecting your journey to be fulfilled before it has completed itself – before you have toiled in the interplay required for you to evaluate your opinion of all aspects of the situation. You will have to learn that before you can view a clean, clear space you have first to tidy up the mess!

If you have formerly been abused by the energies of confrontation or misleading guidance, the perceptional levels of your etheric pattern will “feel bothered”. You are likely to avoid interacting with similar situations, to avoid searching them with your intuition and initiative and, therefore, avoid surfacing the abilities that such interactions require of you. Here it will be necessary for you to hold to your purpose, to your protection and to the purity of your intent so you can produce your promise to yourself of standing peacefully and gathering your ability beyond the push of other pressures or power.

This will be a lesson for you in mastering your emotions by recognising your conscious and subconscious reactions and so surfacing them from your feelings. Such work will allow you to stabilise the overplay you engaged with in the past. It will prepare your mind to view this emotional state through the Sight of Reason. This, then, will allow you to work more securely with your instincts and survive your walk in the interactions of your daily physical life with strength and peace of mind.

The Emergence of truly being me

A little while back, I read a post that struck a chord with me. You know when you read something and know that you know, deep down somewhere or perhaps on some connected cellular level, that you know - have always known - what you have just read? And yet, it takes reading it to make the light go on again?

By the way, I win (my own self-assumed competition) for the highest use of the word "know/n" in one paragraph EVER.

The thing is, my 'word' for 2010 has only just come to me. I thought (as evidenced by my contribution on that post's comments feed) it was ... Grace. However, another word floated up today in my mind, amongst being steeped in so much work for my upcoming first ever co-facilitation effort at Peace Space (ohmylorrrrd am I gonna be ready by Feb 10??) and for some inexplicable reason, the instant I heard the word, that post also came to mind.

So. Here I am. Looking at what I'm facing in 2010. Trying valiantly not to stamp on my dreams and destiny before I've even seen my first client (I had a couple of queries arising from my 'business' card that had been picked up in various waiting rooms, waiting for me in my inbox on my return from our weekend away, did I tell you?!) and also knowing that I am holding an energy of change far greater than just me - as one singular person alone - so I am steadied again and reminded that there is sentient guidance here that I still all too rarely give credit to.

The word that bubbled up from nowhere was

Emergence

And in 2010, that is what I am set to be experiencing. An emergence, as more truly and originally "me" as I have ever been. Something that I guess I've known I was always working towards, ever since that little soul slipped from my fingers in the NICU in 2004. A hard slog and not one that will ever be over, as each new day brings newly formed 'truths', but one so rewarding in the long run that it's been worth the immensely personal challenges.

The way we were

I thought I would like to do something different to mark Ellanor's birth day this year with you, the Blog Reader(s). I would like to also think I am "all talked out" on the subject (not of her - heavens no, never! - but of me, my searching, yearning feelings, my analysing, my over-compensating for others, etc. etc.). I know I am probably far from it. Although, I hazard a guess - from just my own reading over of these entries over the years around her past birth days - I am closer to it than feeling I need to say any more at this point.

So, if you will - and if you are new to this blog in the past 12 months or so, I do implore you to delve deeper - please take a stroll through these entries. They are, in themselves, a catalogue of sorts, of my progress and that of my family (esp. my husband).

2009 and here, and processing the remnants of her death.
2008 and Steve's progress that year.
2006 and 2007.

Time for a backtrack or two.


And now, something I have not actually ever done on this blog, although I have blogged about it... I want to apologise in advance for the necessity you are going to have, to scroll a looong way past this story if you want to get to my next entry. I just feel the desire to share this story here, in all its fantastical magic.

But I do hope you all take the time to read this. Again, if you have once or twice before. I tried to read it out loud the other night to the LGBB. Nup, couldn't do it. She stared into my eyes, looked right into me, and I knew she didn't want to hear me pained - even though I knew it was a good pain ('good' in that it is useful, it creates change on some deep level as you read it). So I stopped, for her sake, and read it on my own to the end later that night. It was cathartic, as ever.

"LITTLE ELLA: THE STORY OF AN EARTH ANGEL"

1

Once upon a time, there was an angel called Ellanor, who was tired of wearing a long white robe and making sure she didn’t get her wings dirty. She didn’t want to practise her harp or even blow her trumpet any more. Something else was on her mind.

“I want to find out what is happening down on Planet Earth,” she announced to the biggest and oldest of the angels. “I have heard that Earth is full of beautiful people and trees and waters, birds and fishes and flowers of a great many colours, and wonderful animals of all kinds. It must be a very exciting place. I would like to go there.”

The Big Old Angel looked at Ellanor thoughtfully. “Earth may not be quite as you imagine it to be. You will find it hard to go there and even harder to stay, but it is not impossible if you find that you have something important to do there. First, however, you must see for yourself what Earth is like, and then decide if going there is what you really want to do. After that I will help you find a way to go.”

The Big Old Angel showed Ellanor how to scoop a peep-hole through the clouds so that she could see Planet Earth. At first it looked like a blue-green ball floating in an ocean of indigo space.

“Tell me what you see,” said the Big Old Angel.

As she gazed at Earth, it seemed to Ellanor that a dense, grey cloud encircled the Planet, and so it was hard to see anything clearly. She squinted up her angel-heart’s x-ray vision to help her focus, but what she saw made her heart ache sorely. She was reminded of something – perhaps it was the thing that was on her mind -- but she could not remember what it was.

“We-ell,” said Ellanor, slowly, because she was not sure if what her heart saw could really be true. “Earth is even more beautiful than I expected, but everything is so unhappy. The people there do not see Earth as beautiful and they do not see themselves or each other as beautiful. They are so frightened and unkind that they are killing each other and so they are killing the waters and soil, the trees and flowers, and the birds and fishes and animals.” Ellanor began to cry inconsolably.

“I must stop the Earth from hurting so much, but how can I do it?” she asked at last, mopping up the tears on her grubby white robe and blowing her nose on some tattered wing feathers. The Big Old Angel looked at Ellanor lovingly. He had seen angels cry these tears many times before and he knew that Earth’s gravity was already tugging hard at Ellanor’s heart.

“There’s only one thing you can do now, my girl,” said the Big Old Angel. “You must go on that long journey to Earth. It will be difficult, for the task you have chosen is not for the faint-hearted. You will have to be very brave.

“But, first things first. Right now, you must find a mother and a father on Earth who want a baby because you will have to become their human child.”

2

At last Ellanor’s angel-wings had an important job to do. She preened her feathers carefully. She scrubbed the grub-marks on her robe with a thick white cloud. She wanted to look as respectable as she could when she met her new parents-to-be.

While half the Planet was in darkness, and while those who slept were dreaming, Ellanor flew down to Earth. In and out of people’s dreams she flew. Using her heart’s x-ray vision, Ellanor saw what their hearts were thinking so that she could find the right parents for her big adventure. Always she kept out of the strong rays of the Sun, when folk would wake and forget their dreams. Always Ellanor followed the night’s darkness as it moved around the world, putting people to sleep, perhaps to dream of having a special baby.

One night it happened. Her angel-heart found two people whom Ellanor felt might be the mother and father she wanted to be born to, as a human child. Their names were Steve and Kirrily.

Steve and Kirrily loved all children. They especially loved Sam and Emily and Mia. In fact, they loved them so much that now they longed to have a little baby all their own.

Ellanor flew in and out of Kirrily’s dreams for a long time, just to make sure that these were indeed the parents who would let her make people love each other again so that the Earth would stop hurting. When she was quite sure, she ran to tell the Big Old Angel.

“What must I do now?” asked Ellanor. The Big Old Angel stopped playing the ‘cello and looked at Ellanor in silence. Although even the smallest angel is much bigger than a human being and Ellanor was an average sized angel, the Big Old Angel knew she had chosen one the hardest jobs any angel can try to do.

“Hmm,” said the Big Old Angel at last. “You will have to become very small, in fact, no bigger than a twinkle. I am afraid there’ll be no room even for your wings. You will have to pack all of yourself into your heart. Your heart will become all that you are and all that you have in the whole of the wide universe.”

Ellanor felt scared for the first time. “But if all I am is no bigger than a twinkle I might get lost and never be found again in all the wide universe!” she said.

“Never fear, my girl,” replied the Big Old Angel. I’ll make sure you are never lost. Look, I shall tie this silver cord around your heart. Then I shall tie one end of the cord around my middle and throw the other end down to the Earth Faeries to tell them you are coming to help them stop the Earth from hurting. If things get too tough for you, the Earth Faeries will tug three times on the cord and I will pull you up to safety.”

So Ellanor packed all that she was into her heart, closed her eyes tightly and shrank herself down to the size of the tiniest twinkle. The Big Old Angel tied the silver cord around her heart, and Ellanor jumped off her cloud.

Faster than ever she had flown, Ellanor felt herself falling, falling, falling through deepest indigo space. There was no going back now. Faster and faster she fell as if the Earth was pulling hard on the silver cord.

She must have lost consciousness for she suddenly felt dizzy and found she had stopped falling. It took her a little while to discover what had happened at first. Then she heard a voice she had come to know over the many months of flying in and out of Kirrily’s dreams. It was the voice of her new mother-to-be excitedly telling Steve, her new father-to-be, “We are going to have a baby at last!”

And because Ellanor had whispered in Kirrily’s ear so many times, just to make sure that she was wanted, Kirrily knew what her name was. “I’ll call you Ella, for short,” Kirrily told her privately, “because at first you will be so little.” Ella smiled to herself. She knew that Kirrily would help her remember what she had forgotten. And she knew Kirrily would let her stop the Earth from hurting.

3

The world from inside Kirrily’s body amazed Ella. At first she thought the sounds of Earth would deafen her. All the gurglings, and splashings and rumblings and grumblings that went on right next to where she found herself were very different to the harmony of harp and trumpet and sweet flute, and the Big Old Angel’s ‘cello that she had been used to. Then there were all the different tones in Kirrily’s voice, and the deep rumble of the voice of her new father-to-be as he read her bed-time stories, even though all he could see of Ella was the growing bump that was Kirrily’s belly. And, as if this was not enough to get used to, there were the sounds of dogs barking and cats meowing, noises of crowds of people and traffic, voices laughing, shouting, crying, car engines and the clatterings of knives and forks and spoons, and the jangle of radio and television, and the strange hum of the computer. Ella suspected she would just have to get used to all this if she were to become a human person who stopped the Earth from hurting.

Month by month and day by day, Ella concentrated on growing from a tiny twinkle into a bigger and then a much bigger womb-baby. To leave room for growth, she loosened the knot on the silver cord tied around her angel heart. Very soon her angel-heart had managed to grow first Ella’s human brain and spine, then two eyes, then two lovely shell-like ears and a rosebud mouth, and arms and legs and ten delicate fingers and ten long toes. But most of all the angel-heart grew Ella’s human heart at the centre of her body. All this growing took a lot of energy, so when she was tired, Ella crossed her long new legs, closed her new eyes and put her new thumb in her new mouth. Perhaps what she was trying to remember about Earth would come to her in her sleep.

There was no one else inside Kirrily’s growing belly, but Ella never felt alone or lonely. She was often visited by the Big Old Angel who very early on introduced her to the Earth Faeries. The Earth Faeries were delighted that she had come to stop the Earth from hurting. Eagerly they showed her what Earth was made of so that she should know how to live there as a human child who would never hurt the Earth herself.

The Soil Faeries led Ella inside crystal caves and to the heart of the oldest rocks on the Planet. They ran with her over hot desert sands and helped her dig holes in the dark garden soil near the birdbath. “When you grow big we will plant seeds together. We will show you the pink earthworms, and slinky lizards and bright lime beetles,” they promised Ella. “We will help you stop the Earth from hurting.”

The Water Faeries taught Ella how to ride raindrops and dive into puddles without getting muddy. They swam with her in the dark blue rivers and played with her in the white spray of the ocean. ”When you grow big, we will show you how tadpoles turn into frogs and teach you how to sing to the silvery fishes,” they promised Ella. We will help you stop the Earth from hurting.”

The Fire Faeries laughed with Ella as they raced her through the tops of the gumtrees. Behind them, the leaves exploded into flames, and Ella and the fire Faeries leapt high with the red sparks and cartwheeled through the orange smoke of the bushfire. “When you grow big, we will show you how to keep warm on cold nights, and bake bread full of the hot Sun’s goodness,” they promised Ella. “We will help you stop the Earth from hurting.”

The Air Faeries breathed into Ella’s ear. “Wake up and come dancing with us,” they whispered, and whirled her round the Earth with them. They spiralled her into hurricanes and onto gentle breezes which laid her, as light as feather-down, into the cup of a rose petal. “When you grow big, we will show you dragonfly wings. We will teach you the language of trees,” they promised Ella. “We will help you stop the Earth from hurting.”

Now Ella felt certain she knew just how beautiful Earth was, and she longed to be with the Earth Faeries. Perhaps among them she would remember what it was she had forgotten.

All Steve and Kirrily’s families and friends looked forward to Ella growing big enough to be born. All the grandmothers and grandfathers, all the uncles and aunts and cousins and brothers and sisters began to make their plans for how they would welcome Ella into their world on Earth.

“When can I see my new cousin?” asked Sam. He wanted to show Ella how clever he was with his cricket bat and how many balls he could hit with his tennis racquet.

“Cousin?” said Emily May. She wanted to show her new cousin her dollies and teach her how to be gentle with the pussycat and how not to make Cassie and Bill growl and snap.

And Mia came all the way from Japan to look in wonder at Kirrily’s very big belly. “Can my new cousin really be growing bigger and bigger in there?” she wondered.

The grandfathers talked about mortages and money for Ella’s education. The grandmothers began to knit lacy clothes for Ella. The fathers painted Ella’s nursery and worried about the car for the special trip to the hospital. The mothers discussed breast-feeding and stretch-marks.

Now Ella felt certain she was going to be loved and wanted on Earth, and she longed to be with her new big family of human people. Perhaps among them, too, she would remember what it was she had forgotten.

Ella knew that what she was trying to remember was just what she needed to stop the Earth from hurting.

4

Although Ella’s angel-heart was hard at work growing every single part of her human body, she was still an angel, and her angel-heart’s x-ray vision was still very busy looking into people’s hearts to see if it could find what Ella had forgotten. So it was that everywhere Kirrily took Ella, tucked up inside her belly, Ella’s heart could see if people were happy or sad.

Every time her angel-heart saw someone who was happy, or being kind to another person, or doing something loving towards the Earth, Ella grew bigger and stronger inside Kirrily. But every time Ella’s heart saw unhappiness or unkindness, her new little human heart hurt so badly that it began to tear in places.

One day, when Ella’s angel-heart had seen just too much unkindness and unhappiness for her human heart to bear, she suddenly remembered what it was she had forgotten. She remembered that once upon a time, she had been on Earth herself long, long ago.

She remembered a time when she had been part of such unhappiness and unkindness that the leaves had withered on the trees, the grasses had shrivelled away and died, and the flowers had faded away before their petals had even begun to open. The birds sang no more, but fell from the skies, and lifeless fish floated on the oily rivers. People’s faces turned grey and the eyes of the little children lay dark and lifeless in their sockets.

Ella remembered how people had been afraid there would not be enough of anything for them, how they had refused to share and had stolen things belonging to others. She remembered how people had taken more than they needed and always for themselves, how they had left nothing for others – no food, no homes, and no love. She remembered that, in order for people to do this to others, they had looked down on others and criticised them because they saw others as poor, ugly, dirty, stupid, different. She remembered how they made fun of others as worthless and unlovable, and then pretended they had nothing to do with hurting others and making them unhappy. Ella remembered how the more things people took, the more frightened, unhappy, angry and unkind they were to others.

Ella’s angel-heart saw that the people on Earth still did these things and that what they did to each other they also did to Earth, and to all Earth’s trees and flowers and waters, soils and rocks and fishes, and birds and animals.

Everywhere she went inside Kirrily’s belly, Ella’s heart saw people saying and thinking things which would lead to unkind actions. Both near and far, every unkind thought, word and action, tore holes in Ella’s new human heart which was trying to grow big and strong enough for her to be born.

“If I don’t get born soon my heart will be filled with holes, and then I’ll be no good to anyone and I won’t be able to stop the Earth from hurting!” exclaimed Ella to herself. She asked the Big Old Angel and the Earth Faeries if she could be born before her heart got any more holes in it.

The Earth Faeries raised their pale green eyebrows into question marks and looked at each other. The Big Old Angel stroked the length of his white beard, thoughtfully. Then they all nodded, one after the other.

“Yes,” they agreed, “But you will have to work very quickly and your job will be harder than ever.”

“I am ready,” said Ella, “But you will help me, won’t you?”

5

The Big Old Angel called on four of the most powerful angels to bring Ella strength from the four corners of Earth. The Earth Faeries began to stir Kirrily’s belly with a big flat spoon.

Kirrily called out to Steve: “Start up the car. We’ll have to go to the hospital because Ella is going to be born 10 weeks early.”

Ella turned upside down and got herself ready to be born. She could feel the clever fingers of the Earth Faeries preparing the way ahead for her. She was glad the Big Old Angel had told her to leave her wings behind. There was no room for anything extra as she pushed her way through the long dark tunnel.

For a moment she felt as if she were falling, falling, falling as she had done through the indigo ocean of space. Then Ella’s world was a sudden confusion of bright light and shiny things, voices that boomed and grated in her ear, and air that hurt her lungs and stung her eyes and dried the skin on her tiny human body. Steve and Kirrily laughed and cried with joy as they held their tiny daughter.

And so Ella was born for all the world of Earth to see. She sighed with relief and closed her eyes.

6

“Now what am I supposed to do?” Ella asked the Big Old Angel. “Everyone says I am too tiny to survive on Earth. They have put me in a see-through crib. Kirrily and Steve come to be with me and talk to me, but they aren’t allowed to touch me too much for fear I will break. How am I to stop Earth from hurting when I am too small for anyone to take me seriously?” Ella had been crying quite a bit at what her angel-heart still saw, but right now she just felt cross and frustrated.

“First things first, my girl,” said the Big Old Angel calmly. “Don’t do anything for a while yet. Let people get to know who you are first before you go among them to stop the Earth from hurting.”

So while Kirrily and Steve were visited by their families and friends, Ella lay in the nursery like a little rosebud. Cards and balloons and fluffy baby toys arrived for Ella to play with when she was a bigger human baby, but Ella lay quietly in her crib to give folk a chance to know her better.

She wanted her new parents, Steve and Kirrily, to know her especially well. Sometimes the Water Faeries helped Kirrily to bathe her which made her feel more like a real human being. And the sound she came to love best of all was Steve’s voice who had read her so many stories when all he could see of her was a bump in Kirrily’s belly. “Grow bigger and stronger,” whispered Steve and Kirrily into Ella’s ear. “We know you can do it. We will help you all we can.”

Everywhere, everyone was whispering to Ella, “Grow big and strong. We know you can do it. We will help you.”

7

But, as she lay there trying to grow big enough to stop the Earth from hurting, Ella’s angel-heart would still see many things that tore more holes in her human-baby heart. Although Ella grew humanly bigger, at the same time, she also grew humanly weaker.

“What can I do?” she asked the Big Old Angel, despairingly. “I am still too little to do anything to stop the Earth from hurting, and now I feel as if I am fading away from being a human.”

“Aha!” replied the Big Old Angel with one of his rare smiles. “Never fear, my girl. I have a plan. While everyone thinks you are lying in your crib, I want you to do something you are very good at. I want you to fly again.”

He began to unwrap the plain brown paper from a parcel he had smuggled into the hospital in the sleeve of his white robe. Ella looked in amazed delight as the Big Old Angel held out her very own wings, the ones she had left behind before coming to Earth. They had been freshly preened and polished and fluffed up.

“Put them on,” the Big Old Angel encouraged Ella. “This is what I want you to do. Every time somebody thinks of you, they leave a tiny doorway in their hearts open and, the moment they do, I want you to fly inside. You will have only a few seconds to tell them how special they are, how important it is to love and care about each other, how important it is to love and care about the Earth. But tell them that by doing this they will surely keep you alive.”

Now that she knew what to do Ella was filled with hope. For the first time, she opened her eyes properly and smiled at Kirrily and Steve. She wanted them to know her secret plan. Then she closed her eyes again, put on her wings and began to fly.

8

In and out of people’s hearts she flew, whispering to their owners during the moments they were thinking of her. Amazingly, the doctors and the nurses in the hospital became kinder to each other and to their patients. Instantly the mothers became kinder to their children. Suddenly, the fathers became kinder to the mothers. Miraculously, the grandmothers became kinder to the grandfathers. “Yes, of course,” thought the aunts and uncles and cousins who all became kinder to each other and told people in the shops about Ella. The people in the shops who thought about keeping little Ella alive became kinder to the other customers. The other customers who heard about Ella drove home with their shopping thinking about her and became kinder to the other car-drivers. When the other car drivers (who had never heard of Ella) arrived home, they were kinder to their next door neighbours (who also had never heard of Ella). The next door neighbours phoned their mothers and said “I love you Mum”. And these other mothers (who had never heard of Ella either) felt happy and wanted to help little children and injured possums, and old people who were sick, and young men in prison, and people who were suffering all over the world. And they asked the other fathers to help them.

These were only a few of the people that became kinder because of Ella’s flying visits.

Ella worked harder and harder, but the harder she worked to fly in and out of people’s hearts, the weaker her human body grew. She was far too busy to see how people were changing because of her heart-message. All she could see was that there was still so much work to be done. The last thing Ella wanted was to give up before she had stopped the Earth from hurting. As she flew, she asked her little human body to gather up as much of the Earth’s unhappiness as it could. But, with all the holes in it, her human heart was not strong enough to help her body turn this unhappiness into happiness.

One night the Big Old Angel saw how tired she was and told her that she would soon have to stop.

“Just a little longer,” pleaded Ella. “Please.”

“Just a little longer,” agreed the Big Old Angel, and he went away with the four powerful angels to visit the famous rose gardens of Faeryland.

“I may not be able to visit you much longer,” whispered Ella as she flew in and out of people’s hearts that night. “Light a rose-pink candle in your heart every time you think of me. It will remind you to be kind to others and to the Earth so it doesn’t hurt any more. I don’t want you to forget, as I once forgot long, long ago. Remembering will keep me alive, too.”

That night, if you had been awake, you would have smelt the sweet scent of roses as the Big Old Angel and the four powerful angels carried baskets of rose petals from Faeryland through the Earth, and up above the clouds to make a beautiful bed for Ella. And if you had been really wide awake, you just might have heard the rustling, murmuring, crackling, whispering sounds of the Earth Faeries as they gathered around the Earth end of Ella’s silver cord.

9

Ella was so tired after her last flight that she could not even greet Kirrily and Steve when they came to visit. As always, they seemed to know what was wrong. “If you want to go now, Little Ella, we won’t make you stay,” said Kirrily and Steve.

This was a sign to the Earth Faeries to tug three times on the silver cord. Ella felt it hold her tight as her human heart stopped beating. She felt herself being carried upward.

“Will we see you again, Little Ella?” called Steve and Kirrily.

“Oh yes,” replied Ella. “We’ve loved each other for too long to say goodbye forever.”

Up and up she went. At last she caught hold of the edge of the cloud and the Big Old Angel and the four powerful ones reached down to pull her up.

“I’m sorry. I’m afraid I failed,” said Ella sadly. “I did not know how badly the Earth was hurting until I lived down there amongst it all. I wasn’t strong enough to stop it from hurting and I gave up too soon.” First one, and then another and another, her hot angel-tears splashed down and melted a hole in the cloud at her feet.

“Come now,” said the Big Old Angel. “Just take a look down there to see what you really have done.”

With what energy she had left, Ella looked down at Earth through the hole in the cloud. Thick grey fog still blanketed the Planet, but here and there all over the Earth little patches of light had melted the fog and shone through like rosy lanterns. In some places, especially around where her Earth family lived, quite a lot of the fog had melted completely away. And, as she looked, Ella could see the patches of rosy light getting bigger and spreading.

What Ella had not realised was that people had begun to light pink candles in their hearts whenever they thought of her, or all the other angels who try to become human children. Around the rosy glow of these candles, Ella could see how pale green shoots had already begun to appear on the trees, how blue the Earth’s sky was and how fresh was the air in which the coloured birds flew and sang, how happily the silvery fish swam in the sparkling river waters, how warmly the Sun shone and how brightly the winter night’s fire burnt to keep folk warm.

“You see,” said the Big Old Angel, picking up his ‘cello to play a lullaby for Ella. “You have succeeded where many others have failed.”

But Ella didn’t hear. She was already fast asleep. The four powerful angels gently lifted her up and carried her to her new bed of rose petals.

Now you may be wondering what became of the tiny human body that Ella’s angel-heart worked so hard to grow. After Kirrily and Steve had said goodbye to Ella, the Earth Faeries took her body away with them to a place where there were tall trees above a pool of water. There, if you are very still, you may be able to see Little Ella playing with Soil Faeries in the fern-gully, and with the Water Faeries in the pool, and sometimes with the Fire Faeries if the bushland is alight; if you are very quiet, you just may hear Ella whispering with the Air Faeries as she swirls with the gusts of wind and flies with the coloured birds.

And then you will remember the story of Ellanor, the angel who became Little Ella for thirty miraculous days, and how she stopped the Earth from hurting so much. And you may wish to light a pink candle in your own heart so that the Earth can stop from hurting any more.