When I began my current Medicine Woman Tradition lesson “A Sense of Place”, I had so much hesitation and resistance. I kept thinking “ Sense of Place?” I really don’t like where I’m currently living, how can I really dig into this and feel good about it. But, ever since my recent retreat to Anima, I’ve begun to actually live this lesson before even trying to dive into any of the question and answer sections.

I think the most profound insight I’ve had is finally understanding and feeling what gurus, teachers and writings have always tried to convey to me “ It’s not all about WHERE you live, but HOW you live where you are.” I’m paraphrasing here. But, truly my ideal location is not Edgewood, but I am here for a duration of time and for the first time in my while being here, I’m living through acts of spirit, love, connection, wildness, nurturing, kindness, and gratitude. All the things I thought I needed an ideal location to provide for me. So, what do I mean exactly?

Anima is a sacred special place. How I spent my time there, how I treated myself, and the lessons that I learned were so powerful. I felt, it was like a vacation, a trip away from home reality, something that I escape to. But, ever since I’ve returned home, I’ve continued the small acts of sacredness that I had at Anima and I’ve integrated them into my home here. Just because I’m not in the Canyon, doesn’t mean I can’t live wildly, creatively, lovingly, and nourishingly here. I finally felt Anima running through me, in this place that I have despised for the past several years.

Since returning home from the Canyon I make a concerted effort to nourish my body with similar things I had there. I make pesto weekly, 3-layer conrnbread, dolmas, homemade breads. I gather wild rose petals from my front wild rose bushes and I dry them and jar them for my heart’s desire later.

I’m hanging laundry out to dry. I answer the inner call to day-dream, meditate, journal, and read when it beckons. I strengthen my body with YOGA at dawn. My family and I frequent the Sandia Mountains we love so much and immerse ourselves in the quiet, peaceful, aliveness of the place. We gather small beautiful items, like Riley’s flower seed pod here

and dried yucca flower stems from our yard and find special places in our house for them, creating sacred spaces

I lovingly tend to my garden and landscaping that I’ve put in this year every single morning and evening. Watching, waiting for those tiny little sprouts to emerge so I can admire their strength and energy, and life force that allows them to push through my hard clay like soil. I sit among my flowering salvias in the front yard and beckon the butterflies, bees, and birds. I actually saw a dragonfly in my front yard this morning as I clipped prairie sage for smudge bundles.

Come, on for real, a dragonfly in my high desert plains acre. That just seems so unreal, but truly so magical. And an inspiration, for my intention this spring has been to make our home here just that – magical – for All our Relations. The two-legged, four-leggedgs, plant spirits, winged ones, you name it.

A good friend wrote me recently and she commented that “it sounds like New Mexico has lost its magic for you?” Which for awhile I believe this statement was true. But, I returned to New Mexico because I LOVE the spirit here, and I needed to be infused with it again. I needed to live it again. It just seems I had some hard physical and emotional lessons when I first returned, and I was blind and shut-off to the magic this place had been trying to deliver. I know we most likely won’t be in Edgewood when Patrick is finished with school, but today I finally reached a place of loving acceptance for where I am for the time being. This place has offered me the solitude and lack of distraction, the vulnerability, the nakedness, the strength and endurance and the push I’ve needed to finally begin to walk my path in the Medicine Woman Tradition. And for that I am grateful for and LOVE this little piece of land in Edgewood New Mexico

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