Hello, Feel free to join me in this grounding and centering meditation- if you havent done this before I would love to hear about your experience. First ground down to earth, drawing up energy through your feet, legs, hips, solar plexus, heart, throat, mind, and crown, connecting with spirit, sending your consciousness up to where your higher-self resides. Taking deep breaths, place a hand on your heart and remember your connection to the earth and the universe.
Why am I writing this blog?
- Understand myself. I have many interests which are usually focused on the triumvirate of art, social justice, and spirituality. I am especially interested in learning how to balance spirituality and politics. My first blog was named “between worlds…connecting worlds”. (link to my CV).
- Share my heart.
- Invite connections and community.
- Build a case for what I believe.
- Just to write.
- Bonus: Share calls to action for great causes.
Who am I?
Hashtags: #adoptee #Vegan #empath #highlysensitiveperon #astrologer #activist #curator #artist #eventorganizer #cosmicconsciousness #phdstudent #vanlife
I am a multipassionate “global thinker” and this will help me sort my non-academic thoughts outside of school as well as present what I think is important for myself and the world in this day and age. As I am approaching middle age (Uranus opposition next year) and have had a roundabout path, I wish to describe what I have done out loud, as well as what I am doing, and what I am visioning. This will help me with my self-reflexive heuristic part of my PhD and with my future plans.
As a child I was reading at age 2.5 and excelled in school until middle school, made art for hours every day from age three through my mid-twenties, loved music, dancing, witchy and magic things, comedy, and thrifting as well as high fashion. My first art loves were pop art and surrealism I grew up since age 6 near NYC. I was an only child adopted before my 1st birthday. I have been a chess and a pinball champion and won math awards. I got my first tarot deck when I was 12, was sneaking out also at this age to go to a nearby club called the Boardwalk, and got my first astrology books at age 14- by Linda Goodman. I also went vegetarian at age 14.
In college, I majored in Sociology and Art. After college I fell into art curating (site-specific installation art) and was attending protests and music shows as much as possible in NYC. A typical evenings would be a protest or art galleries, then a music show at North Six in Williamsburg.
At some point in my mid to late 20s, my inner self started getting louder and louder, and it wanted to express pain. My outbursts of pain in response to disappointments would be less and less controllable. I would learn about trauma, ptsd, and learn about my inner-workings and what happened to me. Abuse, bullying, and being sensitive were all important and I wouldn’t find out till later how much being adopted was as well.
I will write about my confusions, disappointments, curiosities, and explorations. I hope to understand my evolving identity and purpose. In my subsequent intros I will write about What am doing now? and What do I envision? (Spirituality, social change, how to be sensitive and thrive, vanlife, the US). What do I dream of? The first vegan RV park.
The first blog post is about recent adventures at ISAR, an international astrology conference.
Future blog posts
- My adoptee story. Every adoptee has an incredible story!
- Activism- from reading the NY Times, to getting arrested, to Bernie
- Grad school – my dissertation plans spirituality, Grof, ABR
- My favorite music and art like devo, agnes martin, rene Magritte
- Age 14: spirituality & veganism
~
BLOG #1: ISAR
#synchronicity #astrology #vanlife #adoptee
Neptune on my Moon, retrograde (2nd of 3 conjunctions)
I have lived in an RV for the past 4 years. I am from NY and have lived in the Northeast all my life, mostly in the Hudson Valley NY, but also NYC (10 years), and MA/VT for 4 years. I was on the road for a couple years due to the covid and when things calmed down a bit and with inviting springtime temps I headed back to the northeast and applied to work at Omega.
After doing astrology and tarot readings for a month at Omega Institute, I was let go because it was not working with my dog and the high humidity. I had wonderful help with friends watching Marnie the dog but it still was too challenging. Living in a van without plugging in for air conditioning can just be too hot for muggy weather. For cooler air and interest, I headed to Lily Dale in Western NY, where I enjoyed the bubble-like peaceful rare atmosphere. I met a 12 year old from Rochester who said the place to her was like Norway or Germany. The young girl already knows she wants to be a therapist. Inside this peaceful bubble I was able to recalibrate and started thinking about how helpful mediumship is for adoptees. I remembered i had had a reading eight or so years ago, a couple years after my birth father had past, who came through saying he felt guilty about what happened. I also spent time in their spiritual library which is the largest of its kind and that got me thinking about how to find spiritual information connected to adoptees and orphans. In my PhD dissertation plans I am focused on which spiritual modalities may help adoptees. (future blog post).
Being at Lily Dale made me want to be more in touch with my ancestry. I had a mediumship/astrology reading with Dr. Patricia Bell which was extremely helpful in my next choices. I had chose her with a blind tarot divination, but when it narrowed to her I recognized her name. She recommended I go to ISAR astrology conference as well as pursue ancestry work, and do ritual with my Saturn in Virgo. I had enough time to make it to ISAR in my RV. I also signed up for Jill Purce’s upcoming online weekend ancestry workshop- which was in a few weeks. I changed my classes so I could possibly focus on ancestry in one of them. I was about to start my final semester of classes before beginning my dissertation journey with essays.
I headed to Detroit first, via Canada for fun. I got stopped returning to the US which was annoying. In Detroit I visited my birth mother’s grave, who died in her early 40s, and is buried beside my grandparents. It was her mother who made the decision to give me up for adoption. I do not harbor bad feelings toward any of them. I know there is trauma in this side of my family tree but I do not really know too much, but I will tell in other stories about my ancestors. I found a new spiritual shop in the hip town next to the cemetery and had a heartwarming conversation with the guy working there, it really helped me feel better about doing this work alone. I bought spiritual and ancestor candles.
At her grave I felt strong and peaceful. It was my second visit, and my first doing so alone. I asked for their support and for us to work to clear any karma. I lit the candles for the next week, as I slowly drove to Denver to ISAR. Right before I headed to ISAR I had this little adventure on a disc golf course which was an early sign of things being magical. (I should repost this facebook post).
Pumped up by my first astrology conference, ISAR was very exciting for me to see all the astrologers all together for the first time. I had never gone before because I knew all day workshops in a hotel environment would be tiring or overwhelming for me. So, having my RV to eat my own food and take breaks was very calming. Fifteen minutes upon arrival, and in the vendors room, I was drawn into doing tarot cards with Fei Cochrane and her friend Jo. I read their cards and Jo bought me the gorgeous tarot deck, elated I said I would give her a reading sometime, and she gave me her birth info. Seeing that she was from Detroit, and her age, and her sur name I assumed she was Jewish, I said – wow we could be related!
The three of us chatted for a while longer, I do not know it got very personal. I felt they were being very motherly and I opened way up but got concerned to go too deep as I had just arrived and was feeling so wonderful. And then it happened- I said my birth mother’s name and that she played viola- which is what I always share about her as she was 2nd chair in the Windsor Orchestra as a teenager.
Jo said, “I played viola, I knew a Cheryl Mendelson and sat next to her! No one plays viola.”
!!!HOLY GASP!! I had to sit down at this moment and we all were in total amazement. I cried. She went on to tell me details- she remembered all of this from 50 years ago! She explained that getting 1st chair is very difficult. I took an hour or 2 to ground and breath as I was feeling a bit out of my body. I remembered Neptune was still exactly on my Moon as it was retrograde- and so much longer time than going forward.
The next day I went to Becca Tarnas’s lecture which fits in very well with what I am interested in at my grad school at Saybrook. After the lecture, outside I saw Adam Elenbass of Nightlight Astrology who was one of my first astrologer teachers in NYC (I had taken a short class with Antero Alli prior). We hadn’t seen each other in over 11 years so it was wonderful as I was in his first course ever and his group met in person, and am very proud of what he has accomplished. His work gave me the confidence to focus on astrology professionally. His inviting me to an Aya ceremony changed my life greatly- I moved from NYC to Earthlands…under an eclipse on my horizon. We caught up a bit and he said he would be having a get-together for his students the next day.
The next day at lunchtime I went to Nightlight’s get-together which was really cool to meet his present students. When it was over I said hello to a woman on my left, and we chatted. She was living in Aurora and she gave me updates about Elijiah… Later that afternoon we both went to Adam’s talk and afterwards sat together outside chatting about a bunch of things. After a while, I said, it was interesting that he chose 2 celebrities who are adoptees to talk about (Marilyn Monroe and Steve Jobs) [there are not multitudes adoptee celebrities so it stood out to me}. She gave a deep look down and asked, Why, Are you adopted? Yes…Me too. She was a bit in surprise mode, but I was not as I had been in this synchronicity world now for a few days ungrounded with one foot in the cosmos. (I was tired!). We did what adoptees do and share our stories knowing that the other can understand the significance on a profound level. We spoke for a while more and she took me out to dinner. I was becoming bone tired- I felt the Universe was rubbing me raw! We realized we both are interested in how astrology can help adoptees in a way that nothing else can – really too amazing, and are planning on starting a podcast. More to follow~
It has been seven weeks since this event and I am still in Colorado, about to visit Crestone and then head to the southwest for the winter…thank you for reading, please leave a comment, and TTYL!