The Law of Repulsion and more book

Back to Balthazar and Nimue.  I was going to continue the running commentary before each installment, but I've been loathe to write about our actual meeting.  It's such a great story, but so very different to the book, where I used lashings of poetic license to make it pretty.  Not that our actual meeting wasn't pretty mind you.....but I guess I'm realising that there's some stories I'd like to keep for telling in person.  To people that I've felt out and know will appreciate it.  Not that I'm saying you wont, but it's a very different story in it's details to the prose that poured out about it in this book.  And I think I'd like the book to be itself, without having my real story to compare it to, overshadow it, or confuse the plotlines.  Enough said.  If you want the real dirt on what went on when we met, you're just gonna have to come and visit me, bring some lovely Temple Bruer Desert Wine, have a meal, and a drink, and then sit back and let me lay it on you.

That being said, I'm just gonna do little posts about what's going on in my head at the moment, and then keep on adding chapters of my book at the end, so you can keep reading it.  A bit like a women's magazine.  With the serialised story that you buy it to continue reading. 

I reckon one of the most consistent laws of the universe that Currawong and I have bumped into, is the law of repulsion.   Yes you read me right, I'm talking about what is inherent in the Law of Attraction that nobody talks about.  When we learn something, realise a personal truth, shift long held patterns, have enlightening experiences, or change aspects of ourselves, we literally, physically, and spiritually change our vibration.  Our energy changes.  And it makes sense that like magnets, when we stop attracting, we start repulsing.  So when we change our energy, we can find that people, places and situations that were attractive before we changed......can become repulsive.  At the same time, people that we attracted with our energy before we changed, can become repulsed by us when they feel the shift in our energy.  Circles of friends with the same energetic frequency, can repel a person who changes that frequency to a different one.  Behaviours that were once acceptable, can become abhorrent.  All sorts of things can happen, simply because we started to vibrate at a different frequency.  Becoming out of tune with what, who, and where we were before the change. 

Now there doesn't have to be any judgement in this, and if we all had energy barometers, we could look at them and say "oh...I've changed my frequency and now it's repelling you where we used to attract.  That's okay, how about we just go our own ways till we attract each other again, if we do?"   But instead more often, we take it personally, wrack our brains for reasons why it happened, try and work out what we're doing 'wrong', and put ourselves through all sorts of internal gymnastics that aren't often comfortable. 

I almost feel like an expert on this subject, because it's happened so many times throughout my life.  And the most clear example I've got of it is when Spiral-Moon was born.  We'd had a rough time with Lilly's birth before her, as we gave ourselves an example of how NOT to do bonding, as in, we didn't really bond as a family at all after her birth.  She bonded with me, and wouldn't go to anyone else, not Currawong, or my mother, or ANYONE till she was a year old.  And the rest of the family were strangers to her.  So when it came time to birth Spiral, the main thing I was focused on was getting the bonding right.  Which we really really did.  We had a birthday party for her a couple of days after she was born, with a cake, and presents for the other kids, and we did lotus birthing for the first time, and we were in the desert and in a bizarre little town, so we were on our own, and we bonded beautifully.  Absolutely wonderfully in fact.  We cried a lot, and felt a lot, and healed a lot, and loved a lot, and as a result.......we totally changed our vibrations.  All of us.  And what was the result of this?

Well most of it was awesome, but after her birth and the most amazing part of our bonding, we went down south to the market that we'd created, and friends, family and community, and fell out with ALL OF THEM!!!  All at the same time.  We got kicked out of the market that we started, and fell out with our closest friends over the silliest little thing, and had a huge fight with my mum and eldest daughter who lived together down south, and had little fallings out with our extended community too.  We were absolutely devestated.  Our whole lives had just been flushed down the toilet with little reason it seemed!!  We went back to our isolated home to lick our wounds, and try to work out what the hell had happened.  We were really stressed with each other for a while, as we were internalising what had happened, and trying to work out what we'd done wrong, whether we were heinous humans or not, what to do next, why why why it had happened......  Then a good friend turned up and stayed for a few days, listened to our woes, gave us some Osho books, and headed off again.  I read some Osho, and started feeling better, and then we headed down south again, and made friends again with my mum and daughter, and in the process got given 'The Secret' to watch, and it changed our lives.  Gave us a whole new way to look at life, and affirmed a whole stack of things I'd worked out for myself, and after watching it, I realised that we'd changed our vibration, were no longer attracting the people we had, and it was time to consciously create the reality we wanted with our thoughts. 

Which we did.  Went on to meet a whole heap of new folks who were vibrating at the same frequency as us, and stopped taking the whole event so personally.  And around that time I developed my theory about the law of repulsion, and now I'm sharing it with you :)  So if you're ever wondering why that old friend is acting so wierd, or why you've just fallen out with a whole heap of people.....think about the law of repulsion and see if it fits.  It makes sense to me anyhow..... 

Now.  For the next installment of Balthazar and Nimue.  If you haven't read the rest of the book so far, go here http://spunoutpost.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/love-story.html for the first two chapters, and here http://spunoutpost.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/chapters-three-and-four.html for chapters three and four, and then here http://spunoutpost.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/last-installment.html for chapters 5 - 8.  And then read on........

Chapter 9 - She dreams

Friday, 4 September

 

I was in a cave, deep beneath the surface, with serpents, spider webs, and ancient lore.  Menstrual rituals and moon light dispersed amidst stories and dreams.  The goddess was my company, and I knew my power.  Then drumming came from beneath me, thundered through the walls around me, and I found myself enthroned in furs.  Sweet incense, ripe fruits, and oils were around me, and I could hear voices in the distance, like far off waves.  Then an antlered god stood before me, looking like Balthazar, muscled and hollowed, and glistened with sweat.  Wild eyed and soft skinned, with phallus erect, we created life together.  We flew beyond time to the place of all time, and saw our creation together.  I looked down below, and saw torture and murder of life and passion, with women seared by a cruel sword, and I knew them as me.   I saw the savaged and pillaged, defiled and lifeless, and knew them also as me.  Then I saw all of the characters in ceaseless succession, swapping gender for age for culture for death, and I knew them all as one.  And I knew all within me.  Then I came back to my body, and held my antlered lover as the glamour dimmed.

Hurled from her dream she felt otherworldly and disconnected from reality.  The images filtered together and shifted and sifted, to show her kaleidoscopic pictures of inner realms.  She needed to see him again, to see what it meant.

Chapter 10 - He wakes

Friday, 4 September

I was a pagan man, dressed in deer antlers astride a hill, drawing down the power of the horned god into my body.  Then I descended the hill, to a throng of people dancing round a blistering fire.  Drummers and dancers circled and spiralled, and I started the search for my mate.  I could almost smell her, sweet dewy earth, springs first flush, blood red petals, gaze of fire, and then I saw her, Nimue, stretched out on furs.  I went to her, and it was a joining of the goddess and god.  A creation of new life, stars in the heavens and deep broiling seas.  We soared overhead and examined the vastness of time and humanity, adrift in the cross currents of perspective.  We both truly knew our place more completely than before, thrilled at the knowing of all in one.  And then I saw way down, the clashing blades of armoured soldiers, blood dripping onto the grieving earth, and I knew them as me.  I saw the merchants and law makers, forest cutters and stone builders, inquisitors and diseased ones, fanatics and despoilers of earth, and I knew them also as me.  Then I saw all of the characters in ceaseless succession, swapping gender for age for culture for death, and I knew them all as one.  And I knew all within me.  Then I came back to my body and nestled beside her, and our glamours faded to sweet respite.

This dream thrilled and bewitched him.  Who would have known there lay a poets heart beneath his battered coat?  He could feel his new awareness stretching over his skin, he bathed in it’s silken touch and light caress.  He’d somehow seen above and beyond the role he’d had cut for him, as the male actor in this period piece.  He knew he could do things differently.  He knew he could start anew and fresh, with insight into what he could do with his character.  He had an appointment with the script writers to rewrite the world.

He suddenly saw his entrapment’s and tangling’s writhing at his feet, no longer bound to him, slithering off to nest far away from his knowledge.  He saw where he’d been pushing the wrong trolleys, and bragging the wrong stories.  He brought out some finer aspects of self, and wrapped some others away from sight.

He spoke to his girlfriend about his new outlooks on life, and was amazed when she told him she needed him gone.  She’d found a new lover, and she wanted to be with him instead.  They parted as friends and old colleagues, battered but bonded by their travails together.  He visited his other lives and found similar responses, doors closing gently on a suit outworn.  He found himself in a bound up time, a bound up pile of old clothes that he stored away and left for posterity.  His new hide was sleeker, wiser, softer, more comely to his inner eye.  He was ready to go with her to the hills and leave the street behind.

He wanted to see her again, needed to talk and see where she’d got to.  He drove down the street looking to no avail, and sat perched on a barstool at night in case she drop in.  He needed to remember more......





Women's Day

I really love women.  And not just because I am one......I've been through many fluctuations in my feelings about us, and had many bitter things to say about young, middle aged and old women throughout all my different stages, but above and beyond everything..................women are just wonderful.  Full of wonder, to bleed without being injured, to create life within us, to nurture little humans for as long as we do.  And even the women who choose not to mother, nurture their own forms of children into the world.  We are such incredible reflections of the greater cycles around us of birth, life, and death or rebirth.  With our personal monthly cycles we reflect the seasonal cycles, and the lifetime cycles, and the cycles of ideas and relationships that can be born, live, die, and then be reborn again in a different guise.  From my learnings over the years, I see that most of our collective problems come from our resistance and fear of, or attempts to control these cycles, or to try and arrest them into eternal life, so no pain has to be felt, and this is often to the detriment of ourselves and the world around us. 

But us women in our fibre and cells are attuned to these cycles, and reminded of them every month when we bleed, that a part of us that we carried inside us in our mothers wombs........is dying.  And this occurs to us metaphysically, and also literally.  Our bleeding can be the death of a dream of concieving new life, or a painful process that reminds us that we're not always in control.  The letting go of relationships and ideas, or a monthly purge of pent up emotions as we erupt with hormones.  A brief hiatus in a busy schedule, even if our bodies have to bully us into it with pain, or a reminder about how much we have to supress our wild natures to be a truly domesticated human animal woman....... 

In my experience anyway, us women are just a touch more connected to the great mysteries of life, the learnings to be obtained from the underground, and the great beauty there can be in death.......  Conversant with the great and swallowing pain that is the echo of complete and unconditional love.

And I can say right here and now that I love deeply every woman in my life.  Even the ones who have jarringly hurt me are loved for the lessons they taught.  I can't speak for the famous women and the icons and the movie stars, for I have no personal experience of them.  But instead when I think of woman, I think of all the women who have touched my life, and each and every one of them is beautiful.  I've learnt harsh lessons about my own mothering, about my mother, about how I've mothered my oldest and first born daughter, and they all lead me to reflections of myself.  And I believe that if I can heal them in myself, I can heal with them, and help others to as well, and  ultimately the world is a better place.  And beyond my personal family relationships, women in my life have taught me how to love, to hug, to giggle, to feel safe, and so many other things.  I've always had a special woman in my life in particular, who was there for me as a friend, sister, and sometimes lover, as well as a larger circle of amazing, talented and passionate women around me, and we all reflect, mirror, and beam on each other our particular brands of light. 

Women smell good, and feel good, and I always feel wholesome when I think of how nice it must be for a baby to lounge on my curvaceous body built for comfort not speed.  To sleep on my big and generous breasts.  To sit on my soft and accomodating lap.  Women by the nature of our bodies have a spiritual recess, that leads into us.  A deep that can't always be dived into.  An intimate inner part of us that needs a respectful request to gain acceptance.  We have parts of us that have to be dug for.

On my journeys through the interconnected world wide web, I've met some incredible women, some on the other side of the world, who have shared stories and birthing journeys and inspirations and advice and love and learning.......and I'm greatful for you all, and I'm happy and sad all at the same time that you're too numerous to mention by name, and for me to tell you little stories about what you mean to me, and how I hold a flame for you in my heart.   

And as I write this taking moments to gaze into my bonny baby's face and smile with him........I've got to express that I'm profoundly greatful for being a woman, and for the spiritual path that my feet tread as a result of birthing all the babies I have.  The humbling lessons they've taught me, and the unique personalities with which they instruct.  And helping me to get to that amazing place where I know a lot from my life experience, and it all goes to show me how incredibly much more there is to learn. 

So as a gift to whoever wants it on this International Women's Day, I'd like to keep with the theme but break the sequence, by posting two chapters from far off in the future in my book that I've been serialising here....Balthazar and Nimue.   One is, I guess, my ideal of womaness, and the other is a song that I wrote many years ago.  I love women :)  Hope you enjoy these two gifts to the goddess......

  

Chapter 18 - Nimue writes.....

     

Once there was a woman who brought everything around her to life.  Not just the people she met, and the trees and plants around her she touched, but the cars which she drove, the dishes she washed at the sink, the tiles she walked on to the bath, the cloth she draped over her skin.

If you had the gift of sight, of being able to see the energies that move around a person or a plant or an object, and you had been able to watch her, to hang back to a point of observation in which you could view the reaction of energies to her passage through them, you would have noticed a visible hum of life at her approach in all of the atmosphere around her.  Which would build into a buzzing at her imminent presence, vivid greens and purples and reds and blues and yellows swirling round her, threading out to vibrate through the very air circling her, melting into everything in its wake, and then at her departure the rapture slowed, faded, and a miserable ache of loss at the realisation that all was as it had been before, no more freed of it's inanimate incarnation, then the slow numbness of forgetfulness..........

She hadn't been this way all of her life.  She'd spread out luscious amounts of her time and love onto everyone, animal or cause that grabbed her at that moment, and spent her earlier years like an ant, scrabbling out scraps and lessons, and storing them underground, letting it build up till she knew what she wanted to do with it all.  Till a curious phase hugged her to it, breathing in her ears a warm, fragrant, sea breeze tune, that lured her closer, till she forgot to remember she was dreaming, and let it become reality. 

Every single moment of her life felt sacred, her room became a temple, her existence became filled with ritual, clothing herself became dressing the goddess.  She bought herself sweet oils and incense, velvet and satin, sweet treats and dope, herbs and fruit juice.  She looked at the stars and bled into velvet, then rinsed them in water and spread the bloodied water on her plants.  She bought sea salt and rose bath salt, sandalwood oil and candles, and made her room into time warping peace.  Melodies lilting, scents wafting, timeless, buzzing, soft bright peace.......

At first she just bathed in her own reactions and senses, feelings and smells, touches and caresses, and languished in the waves of herself.  But a little further down the path, at the end of a living green tunnel, she found herself aware of every particle around her.  She ran herself a bath, walking over the cool tiles, spread rose petals and scented salt through the rising bubbles and burbles of water.  Lay outstretched at first, feeling her skin, then she felt a rose petal brush by her and found herself in moist soil, feeling her roots into the ground, and her sturdy thorned stalks, and the soft, velveteen roses of deep blood red petals.  Felt the sun beating a soft heart path to her leaves and the bright bright sky spread above her............back again to feeling her body.  Then a grain of sea salt nudged her soft thigh, and she was hurled in a spiral through the deep dark sea, brushing by fish and anemones and being drawn toward the surface, and the melting of dark sea into purples and sea greens and white blues.....back again to feeling her body.  Then she touched the bath and shocked into knowing the rock and stones, ore's and oxides, landscapes and caverns, and hands of many people that all of these particles went through to become a bath.  And the room became very crowded. 

She brushed her teeth and her gaze strayed out the window to the lurid patterns the grass was weaving, with sprinkles of white belled flowers and deep pink buds, then clothed herself, feeling the vista of sunswept paddocks of cotton plants, with their soft white balls of fluff waiting to be picked, and woven, and patterned, and shaped, into clothes.  Doing the dishes she felt all the particles in every plate and cup and container she washed, gently, and placed with reverence in the rainbow bubbled water and then dishrack.  Every journey made, every hand that touched, every paint drop pressed in it's surface.

And she knew herself part of a bigger circle, larger life.  Countlessly relaying and passing and feeling information, and conversation, and content, and life, onto others and through others, and round the spiral of life, to the great mass of creation and knowledge, that hangs round the circumference of everything that was and is and will be.......

Chapter 28 - Always out at sea

Well I’ve been always out at sea

Nobodies ever rescued me

Drag myself towards the shore

Every stroke is hurting more

Is this the price for liberty

Constant drowning out at sea

See the flags fly on the sand

Distant drumming from the land

Chorus-

Maiden Mother Crone your story unfolds

And to you my sisters call

Feel the power rise within

Break the binds of christian sin

Oh mother can’t you see me here

Does my crying reach your ears

Seen your face so many times

Bruised and worn believing lies

You face misogyny and fear

Been beaten down so many years

Kept from knowing your own worth

Sacred mother of the earth

Chorus

Looking back on all my years

See the root of all my fears

Recognise the constant grind

To domesticate my mind

No amount of worldly gain

Can ever ease the pain

Separated from my birth

To the mother and the earth

Chorus

But my mother never dies

She is there beneath the lies

Steady drumming from the ground

Can you hear the ancient sound

Till her children hear her call

Stop this dance with death’s thrall

I think I’d rather be

Always drowning out at sea

My Currawong

There’s a lot of stories and events in my past that I haven’t even touched on here in my blog yet, and I reckon there’s a few terms and words that I’ve made up that you might like me to explain at sometime… But that time is not now. I keep getting ideas for things I want to blog about, like all the other births that I’ve experienced and what I learnt from them, and a glossary of all the terms I use that aren’t in common usage (yet), and I’ve written a cute little number about optometrists and another one about space in relationships……but their time is yet to come. But right here and now, I really wanna pay a bit of a tribute to my man. My Currawong. My best mate and co-conspirator. The studly father of my beautiful children. The male at the top of the heap in my circle when it comes to the survival of the fittest……..the male that’s preened and made nests and provided beautiful food, keeps our mechanical wheels running, and puts across the best display’s of human nature that impressed me (and him) so much, that we keep having babies. My muse, inspiration, education, and the most bodacious bed mate that ever sprinkled my life with pure human essence.

We’ve just been through a really hard time. And are only now really realizing how traumatized we’ve both been by recent events…….twins was enough on it’s own, but also my daughter feeling down, and us losing the home that we thought we were gonna live in the rest of our lives, and the betrayal of some of the people in that community home…..not to mention feeling poor and homeless, and staying away from our beloved beach community for a couple of months and finding out about an unexpected pregnancy along the way. It’s been really hard. And we’ve done what most other people would probably do in the same situation……..taken it out on each other. Years ago, I figured that fighting amongst couples is actually quite an honourable and trusting thing. You’re telling each other that you believe you can express and display the worst aspects of your personality (and let’s face it, we all have them), and also believe that the other will still be there at the end of it, and still love you, and accept your nasty self for what it is, at the same time as expressing their own. And it’s a great way for letting off steam in a society obsessed with being ‘good’, and ‘fine’. So we’ve been through the hurly burly of late. And just last weekend went down to the hugely loved Willunga and all the wonderful folk who we love and who love us there, and remembered who we were when we feel loved again, and it kinda put all the past hurts and betrayals into perspective, and helped us realize that we’ve both been a bit off the wall for the last 3 months or so. It wasn’t just him, like I kept trying to tell him it was, afterall. And for the first time, in the middle of a blazing and bitter recrimination that I just HAD to inform him about, I did what I’ve wanted to do for years, and told him how much I hated it when we weren’t getting on, and told him I was going to do my bit for making it better, dropped it all, and gave him a hug. And guess what. It worked. He was so happy that I just dropped it all and hugged him, and we haven’t had a cross word since. And it makes me realize again how very much I love him.

We’ve got one of the best love stories I’ve ever heard of. When we first clapped eyes on each other, I was a black leather wearing recent dyke with short hair, and he had a purple Mohawk, and wore black and shades of grey. Our eyes met across a crowded pub, and we stared into each others souls…….which neither of us had ever done before (or since). And then we met on the busy Katoomba street, went for a coffee, and within minutes were telling each other our deepest and darkest secrets. That night he was palming off his mistress, after having left his partner at home, so we could go upstairs to really meet each other…….and you can think what you like about such a meeting, but that’s how it was. 6 hours later we came back to the pub to cheers from observers, and parted, sure that we’d never meet again. He had a whole life that entrenched him, and I lived in another state, and I decided I wanted one just like him, but not him, because he was far too damaged. (I thought) But no-one of the male persuasion had ever treated me with such respect and equality before…….so I wanted to remember all the details. I got home to South Australia and decided to write it all out. And became a woman obsessed. Within 3 months of wondering whether I was writing the book, or it was writing me, I had a tome that I’d written, that began with a recounting of our meeting, and then became a visualization of what I wanted and wished would happen, as well as an autobiography, science fiction novel, and self help manual. It’s written in the most amazing poetic style, and as I wrote it, I’d read back over what I’d written in amazement, wondering where it was all coming from! I reckon I could almost call it a channeled book. I finished it just before Saturn Return and decided to take a trip through the desert and let it go, and take on the changes that would happen, and face my fears, and that trip is a whole other story in and of itself……but on the way home, I stopped in at Katoomba again, and just when I was about to leave and come home, Currawong walked into the pub, and we sank into each other again. I told him I’d written a book about him, and he told me he’d written a song about me, and our hearts melted together. But he was still entangled, so we parted again, a bit sadder this time, and went our own ways again. Till I got a phone call a year or so later, and he’d left his partner, and moved to Melbourne, and wondered if I wanted to come to a party at his house. I drove there straight away, and we spent the weekend drinking large amounts of Stones Green Ginger Wine, and had 7 people traipsing through his bedroom as we kept telling each other that we weren’t into a relationship, and we wanted our freedom, and all sorts of other pretty lies. Till the last moments, when we’d kicked the last person out of his bed, and he said ‘But is that all there is? Can’t there be more between us?’

I was so touched at the role reversal, and he was so soft hearted, that we entered into a period of a long distance relationship. I’d catch the train to visit him in Melbourne, and he’d hitch-hike to visit me. I was in such an amazing place of feeling my connection to the entire world, and understanding that everyone I met WAS me, that we had all these cute moments, like when he met me at the train, and I introduced the 6 people I’d met in the smoking carriage to him, after telling them all about our romance. He was really into being a debonair but angry punk at that time, and was a bit blown away being met by all these people….the toothless prostitute, the ex-con, the psychologist, the speed dealer and the rest… And eventually he decided to leave his punk band and come and see how good it could get with me. And we’ve never stopped the joy ride since. We’ve gone from both wearing black and shades of grey to wearing lots of bright colours, he’s gone from being virulently anti-child to being the best dad I’ve ever seen, I taught myself to spin and crochet and have done it all my own way, and he’s taught himself to drum in his own unique way, despite being told many times by big-egoe’d drummers that he didn’t know what he was doing and to stop. We ran a market together that was one of the most amazing social experiments I’ve ever been a part of – with the complete absence of all forms of hierarchy – and we learnt a lot about ourselves, our community, the environment, and other ways in which we could be activists for change. We travelled all around the country in our hi-ace commuter van, bought a house to have a baby (Spiral-Moon) in, up north in a town that time forgot, sold it after she was born, and then relocated to the hills around Melbourne for a short stint, before coming back to the Adelaide hills to have Balthazar, join a community, avoid the horrendous Melbourne fires, learn through Post Natal Depression and whooping cough, get pregnant with twins, and get to here where you find us now, wondering where our path will take us next.

But that’s just the external journey. The internal journey has been huge. We are both incest survivors and had traumatic childhoods, so we’ve had a lot of barriers and trust issues that needed dealing with in a gentle (and sometimes not so gentle) way. We’ve always had a huge love and lust for each other, but had to learn how to express it to each other in ways that allowed for each other’s particular foibles and scars. Currawong had so many barricades to his heart, that it really took the first five years of our being together, for him to truly believe that I was here to stay, and really loved him. And I needed equal time to believe that I really deserved love too. It was only last year that I really got that he didn’t put other people first, like I’d been accusing him of for years, and was obviously in every part of his being, choosing me and supporting me above all others. A lot of the things we’ve accused each other of over the years have been nothing to do with each other really, and are more to do with the treatment we experienced as children, and our issues with our families of birth. The untangling of family wounds and barriers we’ve built was tumultuous at first, and is getting easier and easier the more we do it, motivated by wanting to give our children as much healthy stuff as we can.

And I still pinch myself regularly, to make sure that I really am here, experiencing one of those epic love stories that I so wished for as a child and teen. He blends in wherever he goes just like me. He can get on with anyone, anywhere, anyhow, just like me. He can skip and jump through any intellectual hoop or concept you care to name, and he’s always growing and learning. He’s Friesian just like me. A bit less than me actually, but it doesn’t really matter, when you consider the coincidence of us having met and bonded at all. He’s the most awesome mirror I’ve ever known. And there’s not a single thing about him I’d change. He’s spontaneous, never boring, romantic in a totally uncommercial way, challenging, compassionate, and a huge amount of fun. We are so similar it’s mindblowing, and we truly have absolutely no secrets from each other. I’m so greatfull we found each other……..

Which is why we’re trying so hard to stay together. Without sacrificing one of us to a job and a mortgage. To keep travelling even sporadically, and make an income from our passions and talents. To keep our family close knit and dedicated to the path of natural learning for us all. To keep carving out our own reality, our own way, without compromising our dreams. And we’re both stubborn, and both resolutely freedom loving, so I reckon we can do it. I’m going to help Currawong get a vlog (that’s a video blog) together, cause his performance is so audio-visual, that I reckon it’s the only medium that will do him justice. His wild talent is so outstanding, I want the world to see what he does. He can drum on anything from glass jars, to computer parts, to play equipment in parks, to preserving kits, to plastic seats, to bodies, while creating the wildest threads of rhythm that keep forming a continuous multilayered soundscape. And he tells stories and plays with kids rhymes and makes up the most amazing lyrics on the spot. Everything he does is improvised genius, and I’m certainly not the only person that thinks so! My man needs the audience he deserves, and as well as busking on our journey, I reckon he could find an international love for what he does via the internet. Which will be easier on our family time than doing the band and gig trip that so many other musicians do.

And I’m going to flog my blog. Remember that book I was just telling you about? Very soon you’ll be able to buy it off me via the internet, either in PDF format, or printed in a hard copy if that way goes easy. I’ve got this idea of selling the articles I’ve written, theories, books, patterns, and creative writing pieces, with lots of pictures added, on memory sticks, and then crocheting pouches for the sticks to live in, as a connection from me to the recipient. And I’m going to revive my etsy site and start selling some of my crocheted creations that are just sitting around. And write more about birth and tell the rest of my amazing birthing stories. I’m even thinking about writing kids books about how we learn together, with photo’s of our gorgeous kids and examples of natural learning and how it occurs. And maybe one day we’ll end up on land and start community supported agriculture and other community hubs, cause that’s what we’re all about.

Cause I’ve decided I want a café income. After doing 6 years of cloth nappies, when I found out there were biodegradable disposable nappies, I decided I wanted a disposable nappy income, and it happened. I was so excited by disposable nappies after 6 years of stringing up prayer flags of colourful nappies everywhere we went, that I could hardly sleep!! And now I want a café income, so we can regularly go to gorgeous organic café’s for breakfast, or lunch, or dinner, depending on the mood. And I reckon if you’d ever experienced thinking up, cooking for, and cleaning up after 6 young children on a daily basis, you’d totally understand my desire!!! And it’s even Currawong who does most of the cooking!! And we want a big purple 40ft bus to trip around in, with beds that we don’t have to pack up every morning, and lay out every night, and a kitchen on wheels!! Cups of tea whenever we need them. And a home…….where we belong to the land more than it belongs to us. And where we can grow food and family and love and community. Did you catch all that universe??

But first, the search to find where we’ll birth this next one……..

So if you’re into what I write about, and think what we’re doing is a worthwhile pursuit to support, I’d really dig it if you helped me get my blog ‘out there’ in whatever way you can think of, and maybe buy my wares when they come online. And check out my beautiful Currawong’s vlog when we get it happening. And I might even try and add one of those donate buttons I’ve seen around to my blog, for the altruistic philanthropists among you. And hopefully it will all come around for all of us, to live our true and authentic lives, and dream our dreams, and support each other to be all that we want and need to be. Love, respect, peace and freedom to you all!

The story continues…..

So. A brief recap. We’d all got a bit stressed about the lateness of the second twin, then decided to sleep on it for a bit. I couldn’t sleep, and lay in bed listening to the sounds of Currawong clearing out the birthing pool, clearing the energy of the first birth, and making way for the second….

By the time I realized that no sleep was going to happen, I came out to a cleared and cleaned space, and a Currawong with a mission. He set about making food and starting to deal with the kids that were waking up. “Is there another baby yet?”…..”No, not yet”. Everyone slowly woke and we all hung out on the lounges chatting about what to do now. It’s amazing how a little bit of sleep can turn a desperate situation into one more manageable. Lisa decided to go off and do a bit of research on twin births and ring some old and trusted midwife friends, and we decided to give Russell Smith the Ayurvedic masseur a ring and see if he could help.

I consider myself extremely honoured to call Russell and Alison friends, he drums with Currawong and they inspire the hell out of each other, and is what I call a real healer. He swears, doesn’t read, smokes cigarettes, and doesn’t pull any of the ‘my shit don’t stink’ crap that so many ‘healers’ and ‘gurus’ I’ve known in my past push. He’s real, and honest, and calls a spade a spade, and has people come to him from all over the world, cause what he does really works. Alison is one of those women who makes you just wanna crawl into her lap and get lashings of mother love. She creates beautiful spaces and foods and moods, and giggles and laughs all the while. A more generous couple are hard to find. And bless their hearts, and may love and beauty rain on their heads forever more, within half an hour they were here. They just came. Russell straight away got to work on me, and Alison lay next to me chatting, spreading ease of mind like a balm. Russell started reading my body and telling me what was going on. It turns out my body had decided that it’s job was done! That was birth wasn’t it? Push one baby out and it’s over! My womb had blockages, and my uterus hadn’t contracted down, so even though baby number 2 was head down and ready to go, there was no punch from my uterus to help him out. A whole stack of fear had also locked itself in with the blocked womb, and it was all just stuck. He was massaging my feet and it HURT! And then he did all sorts of other work on my legs and by the time he got back to the bit that had hurt, it didn’t hurt anymore.

Meanwhile Lisa had come back from her research trip, Alison was pottering around cleaning the house, doing dishes and the like, and Russell got Currawong down to give him a work over too. We were all gobsmacked when Lisa reported that she’d found a statistic about the average amount of days between twins being born as 47 days….. It seems that many twins are born prematurely, and when one comes out early, they do their best to keep the second one in for as long as possible. She’d also bounced what was happening off some trusted advisors, and they all agreed that while I was healthy, and the baby  inside was healthy, there was no ‘normal’ time for twins to be born. In fact, in the days before hospital births became the norm, it was not uncommon at all for twins to be born days or even weeks apart. It’s only since birth has entered the treadmill of a hospital schedule that the second twin has only been allowed half an hour to make their own entry, before the birthing woman is induced to bring them on.

Peri-natal psychologists and midwives I’ve talked to have all found that quite often babies who are dragged into life by their legs and arms as in the case of caesareans, or induced to be born at more convenient times, set up life patterns of feeling like they’re being dragged through life against their will. Like they’re never on time to do the right thing, and that people around them are always overshadowing them and making decisions for them against their will. It seems quite stunning to me in the light of such logical conclusions about how birth sets us up for life, that we do anything apart from gentle welcomes to the world, with the mother, baby and family all being respectfully honoured in their journey.

But back to the story. I reckon I’m fortunate to be one of the few women in a western world at this point in our history, to experience the reality of having just given birth to a baby, but needing to put that baby to the side with other people holding it in the hours following the birth, because I had another baby inside me that needed to be birthed as well. I kept looking at Max and realizing that if he was a ‘singleton’ (a rather dubious term in my opinion((sounds to me like ‘simpleton’)), coined by mothers of ‘multiples’, to describe single baby’s…), I’d be holding him and staring at him and RESTING!! But it wasn’t to be. During the time that Currawong was getting a massage, my uterus started contracting. It was like the after pains you get after birthing that get more intense the more babies you have. I thought it was birthing contractions at first, till I tried moving like I did with contractions and it hurt more….I had to stay completely still for uterine contractions it seemed. Before Russell left he told me that “it would go like a bullet now..” I liked his metaphor. We were all relieved and felt like the whole experience was a lot more ‘normal’. We told Lisa she should head home and get some supplies and have a rest…none of us had expected it would be going this long! Not long after the blessed couple left, Lisa headed home for a while too. We all agreed that we were part of 2 separate births, and all was totally normal and fine.

There was a gentle and graceful pause in events for a bit of a breather. We hung out with Max and the other kids, and Currawong and I went walking round the property to walk through the contractions moving the uterus down, that slowly morphed into starting to contract a baby out. We stopped off to have a chat with some fellow community dwellers on the way, keeping them up to date with what was going on. It’s all a bit of a haze to me now, and was even receding quickly at the time, as I was still in that intense timeless space you go to in birthing. Come to mention that space, I was really into goddess chants for the sound track of these births, and had about 6 on repeat throughout the whole 49 hours…. Except for when Currawong created diversions around the fact that other music was on. For me in that timeless space it was wonderful…repetitive…. meditative…. reassuring. For everyone else it was mind numbingly annoying, but bless them all, nobody said anything to me till days after it was all over. Just ask Lisa how she likes goddess chants now……

And like Russell predicted, it did indeed progress like a bullet. Steady strong contractions that moved rhythmically in a mathematical dance through time scales to really close together. Around 9 that night I rang Lisa again, and told her that it was all on again. She got here quickly and the birth journey continued steadily till 12 that night.

When Balthazar woke up crying and wanting to jump in the pool, and Max also woke up for a feed.

It would have to be one of the most surreal experiences of my life – to be in the middle of intense birthing, contractions about 3 minutes apart, and have a crying toddler, as well as a newborn baby wanting a feed……. It totally threw me. I slipped into sergeant major mode, instructing Currawong, mum and Lisa to “take Max from me now!”, as I was about to have a contraction, and then “bring him to me now!”, as I quickly fed him before the next wave hit. Poor mum almost tripped while holding him, I had her running round so much.

Once the worst of the crisis was over, Max back asleep and the decision made to let Balthazar just hang out, I found myself at that time and intensity just before the body gets ready to push, and got scared again. I was feeling washes of memory from when I was birthing Balthazar, and he was held up so high by the cord round his neck that he could only lower his bum so far, which was lucky, cause if he had engaged he would have been strangled. But during the time of trying to bring a breech baby on, I’d stuck my fingers inside myself and been able to feel his soft squishy skin, but he never came out that way, he was cut out by caesarean instead. So I was having flash backs, and exhausted, and awake for two days previous, and at that full on time in birth when I knew it was almost over, and it wasn’t happening. My body had birthed Max so beautifully and easily on it’s own, I just had to step back and let it happen. But my body wasn’t effortlessly pushing this baby out. I started getting full of fear again. What if this was as far as we could get on our own and had to transfer our whole show on the road and to the hospital? What would they say to a baby that had been born two days before and another inside me? Had we come so far only to end up in another emergency caesarean experience? Were all my fears about not being able to perform coming to fruition?

Everyone else was equally tired, and trying their best to keep my flagging spirits up, but I started to get stalked by fear again. My body wasn’t taking over the show and letting me sit back in the directors seat anymore. I could feel that everything was in place, but rather than just submit to strong contractions to hug my second baby out, I found I had to physically push and grunt and yell and scream and WORK to get the second baby down the birth passage. After about 12 at night, when Max and Balthazar woke, I felt like the whole process flagged. Then the fear hit, and at about 1 in the morning I realized that my fears were actually having a physical impact on this part of the birth journey. I told Lisa to remind me to tell her what was happening for me around that time, because I didn’t want to speak it and give it power. But at about 2 in the morning I was still pushing hard, yelling and grunting, and we were still getting nowhere. I slipped down again. In this roller coaster of a birth story, this bit was the hardest and darkest.

Around this time everyone else was off doing stuff, and it was just Lisa by the side of me in the pool. She knew what was going on. I broke my promise to myself to not tell her about the fear again until after the baby was born, and told her what was happening for me. She looked me in the eye and said in a voice full of compassion and feeling, that she was really sorry that the whole caesarean experience had happened to me. And it was really good to hear. Made me cry….. 

After all the working out and about and around and through my caesarean experience, this felt like a final let go. I surprised myself, and maybe her too, with coming right back with all the reasons why I was glad that it had happened, and how many of my birthing fears I’d faced through that time that I’d survived, and the compassion and  understanding I now felt for other women who had caesareans, instead of the smug homebirthcentric perception I’d had before, and how much I’d learnt about myself and my body, and all of a sudden the show seemed to be back on the road! There was nothing left to fear I remembered! I’d dealt with what I’d been given before and only gained learning and insight, so no matter what happened now, I knew I had the skills and the ability to gracefully travel through it. This little moment didn’t miraculously change the whole situation into a movie like dream ending, but it certainly gave me the ‘oomph’ I needed to keep grunting, and yelling, and pushing my second baby out. No beat-poet, hippy birth this time! I reckon from about 12 at night till 4.05am when my second baby was born were the hardest, longest, scariest and most physically and emotionally intense hours of my life. It seemed to take forever. And then some. 

And then just a little bit more. 

And not to forget the last bit. 

And the bit in the middle.

I think you get the point.

And then at 4.05 in the morning of Monday the 23rd of August, 49 hours after my waters broke to begin the entry of Maxamillion, a little baby was born in the sac. Which burst just before coming out. It was like opening the most amazingly soft, velvety present I’ve ever been given, pulling the membranes from the head and trying to work out which gender we’d been gifted with. Like I said before, all the odds were on a girl baby being the second one out of my womb. Through the birth I’d been mentioning fairly solidly how my ‘little witch girl’ was on her way, and wondering what she’d look like, and telling ‘her’ to hurry up………..the first thing I said was, “It’s not a boy is it!?!?!”

It was.

Hale, healthy and hearty, a big sized boy with a round head from being born in the sac, and the largest baby I’ve ever pushed through my birth canal. At the end of a long birthing and previous baby born. Born in the water and at home, without any need to disrupt the bubble and go anywhere after they were born. After pulling off his sac, and holding him to my breast like I always do, I got some time to look at him. He looked like Burt bloody Newton. It took me a little while to get over that one.

Griffyn had woken up just before he was born, and came out as he was being caught. Balthazar was watching, wrapped up completely in the experience, Jess, Oma and Lisa were all around the pool, and Currawong was standing behind me. I was on such a high, it was OVER! And had been ultimately allright…. The end of my birthing career was a roaring success. Now it was done I started to feel quite euphoric. Tired, but euphoric. I went to sit on the lounge with him, (the name Merlin Radbod didn’t quite make it till a few days later), and did that staring thing I do after a baby is born. The placenta was born, and it was finally and completely over. We had a homebirth, waterbirth of twins, a VBAC (Vaginal Birth After Caesarean), grand multiparous, epic, that had a happy ending.

And here’s the weird thing. Lisa hadn’t been able to work out why the first umbilical cord of Max’s had kept pumping blood, and had gone to a serious amount of effort to ensure it was kept clamped. And the reason why was that there was only one placenta. Non identical twins are meant to have separate placenta’s, and if they do join up, you can see where they’ve merged. No fusion line or connection of two separate placenta’s was evident, it was just one enormous placenta with two umbilical cords and a membrane between the two boys. And had kept pumping through Max’s detached cord. How bizarre is that……

Now at this point you may be tempted to say that no wonder it worked out so well, as I was an experienced mother of 5, and Lisa was an experienced midwife of decades, and of course we were trusting birth and being zen with the whole situation, but you’d be mistaken. We both had serious limits being tested and boundaries being pushed. And were worried until the very end. But maybe both a little prone also, to hoping for the best. And it paid off for us all.

So. Successful outcome of two healthy babies, happy family and midwife, and a homebirth to boot, and Lisa sweeps through the house like a spring morning breeze and makes sure that everyone’s settled and covered and warm and fed and happy and packed and headed off home, and JUST as she left, the other girls started to wake and I looked around in despair, suddenly completely and thoroughly exhausted, and completely daunted by the beginning of another noisy day in our home. My big 17 year old Jess walked up and demanded Merlin, told Griffyn to take Max, instructed mum to take the three other kids to her house for the day, and told us we could sleep while her and Griffyn looked after the babies. And through serendipity and providence, we all got some well earned sleep.

And it was really good.