The overall meaning I made from Mama’s story:

Life will be hard. Angels will come sometimes; you don’t control when angels come. Agents of darkness and hatred will have tremendous influence in this world, in your world. Your Soul is your Center. Your work in this world is to be true to your heart, you must follow your heart, you must discern what your heart is telling you; your heart is your portal to your soul. When you move in the direction of your heart’s true knowing, it will often feel like it’s the opposite direction of what the collective or authority is telling you, pushing you to, or threatening you about.

What I needed Mama to tell me: (but she didn’t)

You are inherently good. You don’t have to survive. Your creativity is the purest expression of your heart. It’s enough to enjoy this beautiful planet, this glorious life. Life is a gift, not a burden or a test. Despite what the world says, you’re not responsible for anyone but yourself.

***

I am choosing to sort the wheat from the chaff. I am choosing to take what is essential and nourishing for my heart so that I can embody my soul.

Questions for you:

What have your ancestors’ lives taught you to do and not do?
Where are you currently stuck in the straitjacket of their protections/fears?
What is yours to evolve beyond your parents? …because that’s what children come to do, to evolve beyond their beginning, beyond their ancestors.
What did you need someone to say to you? (You could find your eyes in a mirror and say those words to yourself. It may just save your life.)

Recently I visited the farm I grew up on in Wisconsin, and I spoke with my oldest brother about Mama’s story. We shared bits and pieces that we remembered Mama telling us. Some we both knew, some not. Mama didn’t hold these stories as important or epic, but as events that happened. This is what happened to Mama, but it’s not who she was.

These stories are part of our family history. They tell something about where we come from, but they’re not who we are.

Letting go of the past is necessary to be able to honor it in right relationship.

I’m on a journey of letting go of survival, choosing to thrive instead.

Mama’s father, Albert Kutschke, a scout in the Prussian army in WWI, taught Mama to believe that the soldiers can beat your body, but they can’t touch your soul. That lesson served her well. So well, that I don’t have to learn to survive beating and starvation.

My devotion is to illuminate what can touch your soul, bring you more alive.

Where could letting go of your past free you to evolve?
What touches your soul that you haven’t been giving time and attention to, the kind of time and attention that allows it to bring you alive?
If you gave time and attention to what touches your soul, what might you become a portal to into this world?

Subscribe now

Share

Before I decided to share this, I got curious, what is my reason for telling Mama’s story? Yes, it’s engaging, but what does it do for me, and what does it do for you, to hear another survival story?

I have told her story throughout my life. I clung to the belief, “I’m going to be able to get through anything because she did. If she could do it, I can do it.” But, then I kept expecting to have to survive like she did. I couldn’t see the truth of my life—that I had the privilege of thriving, of flourishing, and I couldn’t receive this gift that she gave me if I was stuck in surviving.

I had to learn to feel the grief and the blessing at the same time.

Life has not asked me to survive like Mama did. I have to accept that her sacrifice and strength were a gift that I don’t need to be worthy of or repay. Sometimes it feels like the price she paid is too heavy for me to bare. But whether I deserve it, is not my business. Grace is not earned, not deserved. It’s just given. If I continue to believe I am undeserving, or I can’t live up to her sacrifice, I’m denying her gift.

So I’m sharing her story as grieving and as celebration. I claim my path: I am a storyteller and a healer, a Voice of Fire and a Voice of Love.

I choose to evolve my lineage, not live in obeisance to it.

How might you choose to evolve your lineage?

I’m sharing two poems I wrote 40 years ago at a time when I was separating my identity from Mama’s.

What judgements are you carrying about your mother/primary caregiver? What might it feel like to lay down those judgements, stop carrying them? To put them in a box or basket and pitch them into a river or bury or burn them?

What (power, qualities, abilities) would you like to claim for yourself, regardless of where or how you came to embody it?

How could you honor your ancestors by living a bigger, fuller, more creative and brilliant life than they had the opportunity to?

Where could you claim space and own your truth, in places that matter to you? Even if your ancestors wouldn’t have been proud of you for it, ancestors want their descendents to grow.

Subscribe now

Share

“What is that fabulous smell, Mama?”

“Dat’s sviss chard, Rrrosie. You gonna eat some mit your eggs for breakfast. Dat’s good for da baby.”

About half the dozen people were sitting down to eat in the farmhouse kitchen, and the other half were serving them. Five months pregnant, I had traveled home to Wisconsin from Michigan in late August 1997, to meet Papa’s guests, Volga German relatives he had never met before. There was Papa’s cousin Emil and his wife Lydia, their daughter Erika and son-in-law Viktor, and their 4 girls ranging from 6 to 13.

Papa’s cousin Emil had grown up in Alt Samara, Russia, while Papa grew up in Blumenthal, west of Kiev, Ukraine (this was, of course, back when the U.S.S.R. contained these conuntries). Papa fled Ukraine to West Germany at the end of WWII, while his cousin fled to Lithuania and immigrated to West Germany in the 1980’s. These distant relatives lived a world away, but they had grown up with the old ways, like my parents, siblings and me. We were meeting for the first time, but their values, habits, rhythms, and skills matched ours like we had grown up together.

They felt like the family we were never able to have because my parents were immigrants. Cooking and living with these strangers-turned-loved-ones nourished something in me, a kind of connection that I hadn’t known I was starving for.

Making food for all of us at Mama and Papa’s farm was a nearly round-the-clock process because everything was home grown and made from scratch. Thankfully, there were many hands, and everyone was expert at harvesting, washing, peeling, chopping, and preparing food.

Before breakfast Erika, Viktor, and I picked green beans, a half dozen 5-gallon buckets, both for dinner and to put up. The beans needed to be harvested every 2-3 days in this peak of the season. While the majority was cleaned, blanched and frozen for use in winter, we kept plenty for meals, too. After breakfast, the women washed, nipped and broke the beans while we shared stories and reflections on life. Their stories showed that in horribly difficult living conditions, their inner light shone bright. And it continued to shine when they shifted from surviving to thriving to florishing.

I was five months pregnant with my first child. Lying in bed that night, holding the mound of my belly, I told my baby what I hadn’t known: This is where we come from. These are our people. This is how we live.

Something awoke within me during the hours of sitting among three generations, working side-by-side while my first baby quickened. A true longing for community, not just people to be social with, real community. People feeding each other, depending on each other for their daily living. During that two-week visit, I grew up in a way that many women never have the opportunity to. I came to know in an embodied way that tending life among women can be organic, nourishing and peaceful. We are wisdom holders, not just hands for labor.

Working among women changed how I felt about being a women. I began to celebrate not just my skill at feeding and welcoming people, but also the light that shines through me. It’s a light that invites others to claim their belonging, a light that nourishes their body and spirit.

***

Who are the wisdom holders in your lineage? How would you like to connect to them… through your creativity, your imagination? How would it feel to count yourself among them? To sit at the table with them? What wisdom is waiting for you to claim as your own?

Our world needs your wisdom holding more than ever.

German was her first language, and I began to mimic her voice before I became a teenager.

My questions for you: Where have you been giving away your authority? Where are missing the opportunity to make your voice a blessing to your friends, family and community?

Mama would say, Ya, you gonna own your own power. Dat’s important in dese crazy times… and den you gonna clean da spider vebs outta da living room, nah?

My dream to live in conscious community actually began with unfathomable grief. In 2018, on a solo trip to Wales, I began to have knowings and memories of past lives when I lived in sacred, conscious community. We called ourselves Keepers of the Spirit of the Land and we were slaughtered by invaders. My first response to the Universe was, “I’m never doing that again. No F-ing way! I’m not willing to see my beloved sisters and brothers, children and parents slaughtered again.”

Through the past eight years, as times became darker politically and environmentally, my heart and mind became lighter through nervous system healing, through breathwork, and through many “yeses” to my intuition. I could feel that my true desire to live in community was not something to fear.

I see this shift to living in conscious community and in reciprocity with other intentional communities as our evolution. This is thriving, not surviving.

I was raised to survive. From a young age, I believed I would have to flee to survive political or cultural upheaval, or a nuclear exchange. That belief may have come from energy I took on from my parents who had to flee eastern Europe after WWII to survive. As an adult, rather than anticipating collapse, I’m in continual curiosity of what I’m feeling and intuitively knowing, as a way to receive deeper and clearer truths in my body and mind. I am open to receiving intuition about how to flourish and live more fully.

Recently, I attended a breathwork healer training where we were guided through a meditation for future manifestation. Here’s what I wrote: I close the European style tilt and turn window in our bedroom after I pack my things to leave. My partner and I are preparing to ride our tandem bike to a neighbor community to do healing work in trade for goods our community needs. We have been leading grief healing and creativity work since we arrived and built this sustainable house. My partner has picked kale from our garden for our morning smoothies. As soon as we are done with breakfast, we grab our helmets and packs and set off on our bike. The forest we live in is full of redwoods, cedar and sitka spruce. I hear the song of chickadees and robins as we pass my familiar and beloved Tree Friends giving off freshness and silence. We round a curve and a massive vista comes into view as we pass my son’s home, and I wave to him and his wife tending the garden in the cool of the morning. We ride past houses of others in our community, and I notice the landscaping my older kid has completed recently, as part of their contribution to this intentional community. I feel like a queen whenever I ride a bike. I feel like a priestess when I co-lead healing work. I feel like myself when my family and community come together for dinner that evening. I’m grateful for my life of service and connection.

In the training, many read their future manifestation aloud. When I read mine, tears began to flow and my throat constricted. This dream was even more vulnerable and passionate than I had realized, but it felt wonderful to be witnessed. Afterwards, several people shared with me their vision for the future. When we share our visions for creating a new story for ourselves, a new way of connecting to and respecting ourselves, each other, nature and the earth, we are envisioning new life in these dark times.

If you could dream a new way of living more sustainably, peacefully, and authentically, what would your new life look like? What’s the harm in letting yourself dream as big and wide as you want?

Feel free to share about it in the comments.

Here’s a little story about how homemade pie became a metaphor for living authentically from the heart.

This is my invitation to you: what’s one place in your life that you would be willing to let go of polish in favor of loving care? It’s vulnerable! But you’re not alone.

My writing and healing work are homemade pie, not polished or made to look manufactured. You can see the imprint of my hands, and you can feel the care and love I put in. I can feel the love and care I put in. I think that was Mama’s wisdom. We feel it when the intention is love and caring, not how it looks to others.

What would it be like if America became known as the land of homemade pie? People would say, “Those American’s put so much love and care into everything they create! How do they do it?”

And we could say, “Love matters more than polish.”

In music, grace notes are an embellishment to enhance notes. Musical grace notes are elegant movement, balanced, poised, and charming. I felt fancy when I played music that had grace notes as a kid learning clarinet, like someday I might actually grow into an adult with grace.

The music that Grace plays is all embellishment. To the ears of my heart, my Substack Grace Notes are embellishments on the conversations our Souls are having with our human parts all the time: through dreams; in moments where natural beauty brings you to a full stop; in moments of presence; in longing; when the dam breaks and your grief finally pours out; and many ordinary moments in your ordinary, magical life.

Grace is the movement of Spirit that helps our souls to evolve, to fulfill what we came to do in Earth School.

Along that journey to fulfilling the purpose of this one wild and precious human life, we need signposts to help us know when to turn, when to step on the gas or ease off, and when to head straight on ‘til morning. These signposts often feel like reminders, like a giant neon arrow pointing to love which is the single root from which every life lesson springs—the love tuber.

Grace Notes are a giant neon arrow pointing to the love tuber.

Grace feels like magic that lights the synapses between our current self and the emerging Brilliant Radiant Self that itches with potential. The effervescent zap of grace often feels like a subtle sizzle, so easy to miss in the moment, but clearer on reflection.

On reflection, I am like the moon. I receive the light that others shine, and I shine it back to them and out onto the whole world. People are beautiful in their messiness and complexity, in their ebb and drought, their flow and flood. They are not parallel in structure, and they don’t add up even if you round their decimals. But people light me up.

The mythopoetic intersection of story telling and reflecting other’s light and grace is the love tuber that makes me want to hold a neon arrow that points to love. So, Grace Notes is an invitation to listen in, not because I’m rich and famous and smell nice, but because I remember the way. I was made to remember the way.

Grace has snapped my synapses for this one wild and precious purpose. My love tuber is ripe, and I’m ready for the harvest.

Are you in need of nourishment?

Whatever the dream, it’s not too late.

What if you just took one tiny step towards your dream? One tiny step could be letting yourself imagine how it would feel, what it would be like to experience the embodiment of that dream? What if you let yourself feel how much you really want it, let yourself burn (or smolder or sizzle) with a vision of how it could be, just the length of one song?

My one tiny step was to tell you my dream has lived inside me for 48 years. That’s all.