Breathing More Deeply

After two weeks of Brian being retired from firefighting, I’ve realized that I am literally breathing more deeply.

I knew I was always subconsciously aware of what he faced at his job and what could happen. Those possibilities and realities always loomed, quietly ~ pondered in a moment and then tucked away inside me.

Truly, the unknowns of life are present for us all regardless of occupation, but we know that some take on another level of challenge. Our firefighters and other first responders most certainly do.

I knew I was always aware of this in the back of my mind and heart….

 

I now know that it was far more than I ever knew.

 

This has been part of our relationship since the moment we met, since we joined our lives, since I gave him my heart.  Now my heart beats more calmly.

 

Ahhhhhh……. Another deeper breath…..

 

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Profound divine thanks that my man came through his 32+ years of firefighting as he has and is the man he is.
Thank you
that I am now breathing far easier than I ever knew I could.
Our journey continues with many adventures
and that feeling of TOGETHERness
is BEYOND even what we had known before this.
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Life is good, and I am so truly, deeply Thankful.

Thank you. I love you.

Tonight, I’m sending love and gentleness out to this young woman.

In this moment, pictured here at her 27th birthday on June 23, 1997, she knows she’s received a call that same day that did not feel like a gift. Her doctor’s office wanted her to come in for a biopsy. The result would be a cancer diagnosis.

The gifts of all that would be many but would be opened over time, over many years.

The tiny girl next to her would share stories of timeless love and whisper to her mommy that “everything is going to be alright.” That wise little one was right. She was so very right.

21 years later, today, I am honoring the day my womb left my body and opened a space in me that would eventually bring in a depth of compassion and love that I could not have begun to imagine in this moment…. as I opened these birthday gifts.

Today, as I do every year on September 12th, I celebrated being alive and still being here on earth to experience all these many adventures and so SO MUCH LOVE.

To this courageous young woman pictured here, I say, “Thank you. I love you. I love you more than I ever knew then and more with every passing year.”

She and I are together in this moment and we did it. We beat cancer. My horoscope sign may be a double cancer but I’m also the Cancerian Woman who has thrived after having cancer… Ahhh yes…I’ve bumbled and stumbled a bit at times but still thrived. And there is still so much more life yet to live.

I will live it with more love, for myself and for everyone, with every moment. That is the gift I’ve received. I’m thankful I’ve opened it so fully now.

So to you too, you reading this, I say Thank you,
thank you for being here and so SO MUCH LOVE.

❤️
#BeReal #BeYou #BeTheLove #BeLoved

For The Sensitive Souls

“This Is For The Sensitive Souls: A Poem For Women” 🌹
~ by Carly Morgan Gross

“This is for the sensitive souls who feel it all.

For the long processors, the bedtime criers, the ones who are blinded by the light.

This is for the women who’ve had to learn the hard way that “no” is an act of respect.

For the stomachs shaken by the sight of anything impure, the hearts that give too much—is there even such a thing?

This is for the wild feelers, the primal goers, and the ones who dream of another planet that feels more like home.

This is for the girls who are shoved into who they aren’t—and for the wisdom inside their bones from the old soul reincarnated in this now.

For the ones who take any chance to be shoeless, braless, and without any worries about what comes next.

The sunshine dwellers, the earth children, the ones who have said yes to forgiveness and being held by the divine first.

This is for the women who not only run with the wolves, but bring their medicine into a society that thinks magic is just a trick.

For the ones who know there is more to life than the 9-to-5 grind and who’ll do anything to bring their art forward and get their message out for others to heal.

For the alchemists, the witches, the medicine mamas—the women who understand and overstep the matrix of fear.

This is for the women who’ve turned their “why me?” into an “it’s me” and became their own guru and source of schooling from beyond.

For the ones excited by ritual, devotion, and prayer and deflected by gossipers, gogogo’ers, and systems that forget to account for the soul’s need.

For the ones who will hold you while you’re hurting, nourish you with touch and truth while you’re processing, and create space for you to exist just as you are.

The ones who are unconditionally loving, kind, and always there—even just energetically holding your heart.

This is for the women who, at times, feel unsafe in their physical form.

For the bodies that have crashed and burned.

For the beings that have been birthed brand new.

This is for the goddesses who don’t know they are goddesses yet.

This is for the empathic angels, the introverted intuitives, and the ones who wear others’ feelings by accident on their sleeves.

For the ones who get glimpses, more and more each day, of what it is to create heaven on earth by embodying the light.

This is for the women who were told that they were too much, too sensitive, too slutty, too pretty, too feminine.

For the women who challenge their fears, follow their dreams, transcend their triggers, accept their paths, and do the work.

For the ones who crave climbing every mountain top and bathing in every rushing river.

For the ones who don’t give up and are always diving deeper within.

You are not alone.

Whatever you do, don’t hide.

Show your face. Show your story. Show your progress. Show your vulnerability.

You don’t have to have it all figured out.

Your medicine is like drops of raw, wildflower honey over a turmeric latte—and it’s too sweet not to share.

Your truth is enough.

The voice of your heart will emerge.

Stand up for something—anything, everything—you feel to be true.

They are the crazy ones, and you are going sane—this is your cue.

Closer to your inner being, you’ve found home.

And there is a web connecting you to me, and me to her, and her to the goddess in us all.

You are safe. You are held.

And we’re ready for you to proudly invoke the power that lies within.

Your purpose is to listen—deeply, intensively—and to use your body as a guide.

She is on your side.”

~ Carly Morgan Gross

Poem Source: https://www.elephantjournal.com/2017/11/this-is-for-the-sensitive-souls-a-poem-for-women/

photograph: “White Rose & So Much Love” 10-4-17, Shrine of the Holy Redeemer in Las Vegas, NV ~ DeAnne Wolfgram

With chills, I sat alone praying and anchoring love at the church (still surrounded in yellow police tape) right beside the site of the Vegas 10-1-17 tragedy.

Clearing & Healing, Chaos & Creativity

The clearing away of the old to make way for the new has definitely been happening for me……on both the home and heart front…. (amidst all that is happening in our world.)

Last week, I traversed a powerhouse series of emotional healing experiences. Talk about doing some deep inner healing and clearing work, lifetimes worth in fact. Seriously, lifetimes worth.

I’m honestly still assimilating it all.   I could feel deep deep layers moving through me and knew to seek out some assistance. That led to a profound bodywork session and a cascade of multilayered connections, emotional clearings and greater awareness for me ~ before, during and after that session.. Those insights and that energy are still assimilating… My soul definitely took the lead to show me what I needed.  There was so much that I’d been juggling for so very long. For the first time in my life, I allowed it to fully drop… I let go…. Inner constriction from trying to protect loved ones had even become an unknown hernia in my body. During my healing session, I suddenly felt as if I’d swallowed a heavy rock. The pain in my upper abdomen was suddenly acute. When that happened, my modern-day shaman soul friends and energy-healing colleagues focused in on that area.  They physically and energetically helped release the energy in my body as I emotionally and physically surrendered it.  Together, we actually unraveled and shifted the hernia within the final minutes of my hour session. That part was a briefly, acutely painful process but incredibly purposeful. My body is without any pain in that area, and now my body is starting to give me a knowing little ‘tell’ right there whenever I begin to take on the emotional energy of someone else.  I’ll definitely continue being aware and attuned to this. So yeah, last week had some very….very…deep healing and clearing.

This week provided another type of clearing process for me to move through.  My “cellular” phone and computer both began having issues. I had to shift things around and eventually seek out tech support. My iCloud back ups weren’t working properly. My phone was powering off randomly, and both devices were completely full of photos. I had to go through a clearing and ordering process to get them both working properly again. Now, after several days of archiving thousands of photos and spontaneously organizing numerous documents  from years of writing, I can honestly see the benefits of why my mobile phone went wonky and my computer hard drive began flashing me incessant “full” signs… Those tech glitches were practical and energetic prompts for me to have to go through this other clearing, organizing and honing process on a practical and creative front.

Both me and my creative tools have needed some clearing and reorganizing in this first month of this new year. The fine tuning continues there. (wink, wink)

I recognize that this recent creative reorganization process has allowed me to see all the photographic and written material that I’d already created in recent years, along with all the relationships and experiences I am blessed to have co-created.

It’s all together been one of those ‘life reviews’ while living.  Now, I have an affirming sense of “Yes…I’ve been doing THIS all along…..” I have been on my own unique path and building (inner and outer) foundations for what is to come…even when I wasn’t feeling certain that I was doing anything.

AHhhhhhh…. CHAOS is part of the CREATIVE process
….and as we breathe through those moments, clear the heaviness, do our inner work, practice trust, believe in our process, continue creating and keep working at it, we do come into the eventual streamlining times of realizations arising and creations made manifest..
Chaos & Creativity….. Clearing the old and Making way for the new….This is certainly a year for all of these energies….In my own little ah-ha moment here, I feel as if I am having a tiny validating peak behind creation’s current for the moment. Perspective on my own lil’ life is giving me a renewed faith in the entire process of life. Here’s to THAT!!

BE YOU. BE RAW. BE REAL. BE ALIVE. BE THE LOVE

There has always been something tantalizingly soul affirming when I experience a beautiful real or raw moment expressed by someone who has often been emotionally constricted, vulnerably challenged or afraid to be seen as the depth that they are….

I came into this world attuned to this and sweetly aware to invite these moments of aliveness and truth out in others.

There’s no more fulfilling YES To LIFE moment than that. I’m grateful to have shared these soul glimpse moments, from my grandfather as a toddler, to parents, uncles and family members, to dear friends, to so many other precious children, men and women whom I have known.

BE YOU. BE RAW. BE REAL. BE ALIVE. BE THE LOVE that you uniquely are and ENLIVEN THIS WORLD!!!

I see you. I feel you, and it IS tantalizingly soul affirming….for us ALL. BE YOU.
xoxo ~ Love you, DeAnne

PS: This photograph is of the soulful little person I was with my beloved Uncle Jim in 1971. I feel blessed to have experienced special moments with each of my family members, friends and blessed souls who have crossed my path in life for a moment or much longer. Life is a magical journey. Let’s embrace it and BE THE LOVE.

Today, I honor it all

 

Today I honor a very personal anniversary, the 19th one in fact.   This special day marks nineteen years since passing through the portal of having cancer in my womb and enduring a sorrowful give-away at the age of 27.

What a passage it was, and continued to be, long after that fateful day nineteen years ago.  I still remember it vividly. I’m certain I always will.

What I know now is that I am a wiser woman for having had to give my womb away at such a tender age and live without the fulfillment of my dream of a second child. I am wiser for the courage it called forth in me and for the compassion it drove home in my core. It IS indeed our wounds that allow the light in and allow it in ways that we would never have dreamed of….

I may not have given birth to another child, but I did give rebirth then and many times since to this woman that lives in my body. She knows a way of loving now that is far more expansive than any body’s womb could ever have held. That give-away led to a gift that I continually give and receive now, through my way of being in life and through what I am able to give life to in other ways.

So today, for all that it carries in meaning for me, I honor it.
I light this candle and I honor it.

I honor the wisps of grief and tenderness that remain, even after nearly two decades.
I honor the dreams and the unanswered prayers.  I honor the prayers that came to be and the little life that did not.

I honor BEING alive myself, living the blessed life that I have.

I honor my husband and daughter who’ve been with me through that and much more.
I honor my family and friends who encircled me then and now.
I honor those with whom I’ve walked the path of life, whether it has been for a few moments or for many years.

I honor all the myriad of experiences, feelings, realizations, lessons and evolutions that have been lived these past nineteen of my forty-six years of this life.

I honor my own process of living, now more than ever before, and I honor the woman that I Am with all my scars, flaws, frailties, insecurities, eccentricities and uncertainties that are partnered with my continual courage, compassion, creativity, myriad talents, softness, strength, intelligence, intuition, flowing and deepening knowing.

I honor all that I continue to discover and to offer.
I honor life lived authentically and lovingly.

Today, I honor it all.