At the left is a drawing I made a few years ago of an oak tree on Nacimiento Road.
I called this tree the Fortitude Oak, because it stretched out over the roadside pullout in such a way as to suggest vast power and inner knowing.
It's good that I drew it when I did, for now it is only a memory when I drive past. It was a casualty of the fire that came through the canyon, weakening it so that it broke in the winds over the winter. Now, the drawing is the expression of what the tree meant to me.
This tree reminds me of times when standing firm was the only option.
As I learned what it was to be a mother and a pioneer, growing food, living with only the most basic necessities, a lot of my former ideas about life faded away, and I lived from one day to the next, with most days following a rhythm that went like this:
Wake up, light a fire, look after the children. Make food, get them dressed, find out what else they need.
Milk the goats, feed the chickens, gather the eggs. Go out into the garden and plant, weed, water, or whatever else was needed. Maybe cut firewood, maybe not. Lunchtime. Make food. Clean the house. Do the laundry, start making dinner. If there is time, do something creative like make clothing.
The family shows up, and instead of saying "Hi Mom!" they ask, "What's for dinner?" Can't blame them for that, they were hungry.
Have dinner, clear the table. Talk about what needs to be done next, or answer to some concern of a family member.
Wash up, get ready for bed. Repeat.
Time for creative activities was almost nonexistent at first. Who I was, as a person, never came up! It was enough to just keep things going.
Gradually I learned to find moments, bits and pieces of time, when I could make something, or write something. Poems sometimes appeared in my mind, and I would scramble to write them down before they disappeared.
Every once in a while I could write out a few pages of something that I felt I needed to express, even though nobody was reading it. I kept my faith in my heart, and listened to the voices of nature telling me to keep going.
As this life continued, year after year, I got better at managing my time. Things started to open up as the kids didn't need me quite so much. They were getting more independent, and although I was still important to them, it was clear that life was going to keep on shifting. Little by little, things were getting a bit easier. It was slow going!
Just when I was saying "Does this go on forever?" I found that it was almost over. Larger chunks of time were appearing, and the needs of my family changed.
I became able to start small businesses. First it was selling eggs and small crafts; then selling cheese, and somewhat larger crafts, then honey was added to the list. Bit by bit, I became more able to reclaim my identity as a person and not just a service provider.
I got into fashion expression, making lovely items that I was very proud to present to the world. My idea of what I could do with my life grew.
It became possible to find new avenues of expression, and I got back into writing. Eventually, I wrote my book "Prevail" and found a sense of mission, as I realized my experiences had value beyond my own life, and found ways to express that realization, that they could be useful to others in making their own lives better.
The journey for meaning and creative expression continues now, as I am able to offer support for writers. I am so grateful for the light that I guarded and kept within me, and for the way that it is growing now. I cherish every bit of what I learned along the way, no matter how I learned it.
Do you want to find more time for your creative expression?
Learn how to build creativity into your day in a completely natural way, that supports the life you already have.
May your path always be lit!
Best wishes,
Betty
The ferns at left are just emerging under the avocado tree. they are bracken ferns, which can get up to three feet tall, depending on how much rain falls in the year.
I have been told that they can be cured using wood ashes and made into snacks, marinated in oil. I never did get around to trying that one.
I did learn a lot about the wild greens growing around the woods...with really cool names, like miner's lettuce, shooting stars, johnny jumpups. all of these have edible greens high in vitamin C. Many walks around the pthways also produced mushrooms for the rice, rose hips for he tea, and other wild medicines and teas that grow in abundance here.
As I learned more about the way Nature has of providing nutrients, I often marveled at how I seemed to be living the same life that people had lived here thousands of years ago, and yet, it was a modern age. This, in a time when I had no phone and very little contact with the outside world!
As I look at that time now, I see how the seeds of today were planted through noticing the beauties of nature, and the treasure of time in the quiet parts of the world. Too much quiet, at times! I felt at times like there was no other place in the world. When a car came into the canyon, I could hear it from miles away, and know exactly where it was on the world.
I learned hard truths about life at a young age. This has served me by making me resilient, and in knowing the power of the imagination to transform, to create new meanings out of raw experience, I have become far more than I ever could have imagined during those times.
What seeds of your life do you want to grow?
"Oh, You, who make easy what is difficult, make our way to be a garden, for it is to You that we go."...Rumi
My idea of living in nature had always been that there would be harmony and beauty all around me. Here in the forest of Big Sur, where I landed with my infant son, his father, and a group of other people running from our pasts, this was the certainly visible. Stunning beauty all around me, far from the influence of the outside world (or so it seemed), I was so happy to be out of the grind, and on to the dream.
As it turned out, the dream was still there, but it soon became obscured by the harsh realities of pioneer life: a total lack of all modern conveniences may sound romantic until you have to live it.
It rained every day for the first winter. We had arrived on February 14th. You could call it the death of romance, since the truth was that we spent all our time out in the rain cutting firewood to burn in the stove so that we could get our clothes dry again. We were crammed in like sardines. There was no privacy except out in the woods. And more. Doing the laundry by hand, performing backbreaking labor every day, we were out of touch with the rest of the world, which soon became more appealing, even though nobody wanted to go back where we had been.
Cabin fever became a menace that visited often. I went out in the woods to yell and throw things until I was exhausted, out in the storms, and then went back inside to keep going, returning to my sleeping infant. Somehow, I still believed in the dream. I still knew that nature was a guiding force for me, and let's face it, I am one stubborn woman. I found little projects to do that comforted me, with the small amount of materials I had. Needle and thread, crochet hook...these became potent tools to maintain order and consciousness. I began to understand the struggles of my fore-mothers in a new way.
People began to burn out. When spring came, we all moved out to different tents, and barely spoke to one another unless we had to.
I wrote letters to people that I remembered from earlier in life, and to my family. We had no phone, so I only called people from pay phones when we were out on town runs. I wrote little poems about the beauty that I still saw and felt in my soul. Nobody saw them. I tucked them away in books to protect myself from the anger and cynicism that my group was showing more and more often. People argued constantly, with vicious insults hurled and relationships disintegrating.
Little books with pictures in them became my refuge. I took my son on nature walks, and explained carefully to the baby what plant I was picking, and what it is used for. He tells me that he still remembers those walks, now, as a father.
Whenever a book came my way, I read it. I cruised the local free boxes for cloth, books, decorations, to ease the stark reality of the poverty we were enduring. My earlier life was a distant dream to me by then. The struggle to survive had narrowed my world, and my options. Now, I could draw and I could write, but who would ever really know what I was feeling? The miracle is that today I am writing these words and you are reading them.
What was it that kept me going? It can't be all stubbornness. I had HELP! Every day, nature and the unseen let me know that you can NEVER be truly alone.
I always knew that I was held and protected by a Divine force, even in the worst times. To this day, I am grateful for all of it, because I know that everything that I endured can be the way to help others. I have never forgotten the beauty and the idealism that sustained me, the grace of being so naive that I was shielded from the big picture. It's all useful. That's what life is all about. When you take something difficult, and make it useful, you transform its very nature, the difficulty fades away, and the gift remains.
Do you have something you want to transform? Let's talk about it!
Lately I've been talking about the early days here on the mountain. Some things don't change. The night sky continues to amaze. The mountains stand quietly as they have for so many centuries.
But some things do change, and this week I will be talking about what's going on right this minute.
Here you see the view to the north from the meadow above my house. The tall mountain is Cone Peak, the tallest in this section of the Santa Lucia Range.
As I write this, for just under two months there has been a fire to the north, sometimes covering the area in smoke, so that on some days even seeing across the canyon is difficult. Most of the time the wind has tended to blow the smoke away to the north and east, so I haven't had it as bad as a lot of people. The fire is still there, slowly moving in several directions at once. Every day I check the fire maps online.
This has been a time of fear, and of loss for many people. I wait to see what the fire will do. Every day it seems more possible that it will stay within the lines and grow smaller, not larger, which is my dear prayer. Through this time, I have felt many transformational energies letting me know that things will never be the same, no matter how it turns out.
Business in Big Sur dried up, for seven weeks. People became overwhelmingly depressed for weeks at a time. I did the preparation for evacuation, in case I needed to run for it, and then after several weeks I got so tired of living out of a pile of suitcases that I put it all away, after having gotten rid of a sizeable pile of things that aren't worth taking (so why have them?). I donated whatever I thought could be of value to others, and threw out a lot of stuff. After a while I just got too tired to move stuff around any more. And then came the fruit harvest...abundance in the midst of upheaval..my emotions were all over the map.
Forced to change my focus, I struggled with emotional drama and fear on a daily basis, until it simply became too boring to continue. Inspiration appeared in flashes of insight at unexpected times. New perspectives and creative ideas came out of nowhere.
I started to get a grip.
My coach kicked my butt, fierce woman that she is, and told me that I need to focus on my mission, no matter what else is going on. This is an opportunity to learn new ways of doing things, to improve my skills and my strengths, to get really , really able to concentrate. She challenged me to stick with building my business, and my life, into what I want it to be.
And so I am doing that. I've written new programs, picked up new connections, forced myself to pick up the phone. Some days I wonder what in the world it all could be about, and then I just say, keep going, that's what it's about.
A whole new picture of what my life is, what I can do and be, is beginning to emerge. The next season will be different.
With smoke all around me, I looked in the mirror and said, "Girl, you gotta do this. Make it change, make it happen, lean into it."
I'll be on the road more often, and upping my game as a speaker. This is exciting new energy that will allow me to reach out to a lot more people.
The pressure of the fire, and the close examination it has brought into my life, are forces that have had their say. I'm listening, grateful for the blessings of safety and of support form the many people who have contacted me to offer help if needed. I am deeply moved to feel so loved. Thanks for being part of my life.
Here on the mountain, the next season I'll be doing more focused styles of hosting, writing retreats and nature group activities. Since I'll be out in the world more, I want the time here to be of the highest value it can, for myself and for others. Do you have a project that you really want to get focused on? Take some time out in nature and refresh your soul! Get a recharge, or a fresh start.
If you are interested in designing a personal VIP retreat with me, please
Click here to schedule time to talk with me.
As I got into my teen years, things got more complicated.
My family came apart, and I went to live with my grandparents for a few years. It was a blessing that I had been praying for, and a chance to see what other ideas life could hold.
You can read more about this in my book, Prevail.
For now, I want to talk about what that time was like. It was a time of intense turmoil for me, and for the whole country, late in the 1960s. There seemed to be nowhere to go that would be safe from the craziness we all were experiencing.
I was an uprooted person, with no clear idea of who I wanted to be. The chance to reinvent myself was not lost on me, so I created an identity that was something to hide behind, telling nobody what I was really thinking or feeling. A photo of me from that time shows the deep distrust I felt for everything that moved.
Yet I projected a sunny and even silly picture of myself, made the effort to get good grades, and gathered people around me who supported me in different ways. I got involved in "the scene", got in trouble, got on probation. My options became more limited, as I struggled to keep up with all the things that I needed to do. I kept up with my school work, went to church, went out to shows with the local band, breaking the ice on the dance floor to get people moving.
I took a lot of writing classes, and had reading and writing homework every night that was huge. For one class alone I had to write at least five pages a day, read and critique magazines, study the ancient masters of rhetoric, and more, with additional books being assigned to be read and reviewed.
That teacher, who was about to retire, shaped me in ways I didn't understand for decades. She was both loving and ruthless. She read and reviewed every word, and if you presented a false or indefensible premise, she would rip it apart in a phrase or two. I loved and feared her as the towering intellect that she was. To this day, I can feel her words in my heart. I remember how she impressed upon us the power of words, and the responsibility that comes with knowing how to use them. She gave us amazing tools, and warned us of the consequences to our souls if we abused them. She was VERY serious about it! I realize now that she was especially strict with me because she knew that I had a lot of conflict in my heart, and wanted to be sure I got it right. There was no fooling her. She had seen it all.
After high school, I was so fed up with "the system" that I dropped out of society, which was thought to be a good idea by some. The idea appealed to me, to my sense of adventure, to my desire to escape. I hit the road, traveling around to different places in different ways, finding out quickly that the life I had envisioned of a happy bohemian existence wasn't anywhere close to the reality of that.
The hippie dream had ended just before I joined, and the craziness I fell into was far more intense than I was able to cope with at the age of 17. I think back on it, and have to say that I was at least brave, to the point of being foolhardy in many cases. Amazingly, I survived some truly insane situations.
One thing led to another, and I found myself in Big Sur, where I didn't expect to stay long. Wrong again. I have been here for 45 years as of this writing. For a while, I didn't write. Things got too difficult, and it took everything I had to cope with the situations I found myself in.
Then I began to write again, on a different scale, and for far different reasons.
I'll tell you more about how that happened, how it felt, what I did about it, in another post...it's "another story". Want to hear more about the forces I dealt with, and the insights I gained from them?
Read Prevail: Seven Keys to Create a Personal Victory
