Babushka, Babushka! Babooshkah!!!

I'm like a Babushka doll. Only when I get one opened up, the one under it isn't anything much like the one I just got through. 

Shrek peeling onions. 

And there's no way to be on the kind of Journey I'm doing without asking for it and invoking it on a regular basis. When you really mean it, you'll catch yourself saying dumb shit like: 

I'm going to be a wise woman when I grow up. (Always laugh at this.)

I'm Terri Contrary, Gonzo Shaman

... Yeah! That. Just like the Zen Buddha would like it. 

I'm a "student of shamanism" because if you call yourself a shaman, they'll give you someone to heal and a tribe. 

I laugh in gratitude. 

I'm always right on time. 

I'm a chameleon. 

I'm on Holy Shamanic Walkabout (before that, it was just walkabout)

My life and journey and self. If I tell ya all the things I've been through, then I'll seem like someone who hasn't had all the Divine Help a girl can get. If I don't reveal my story of struggle, people who could take hope in things turning around for them, me, or all of us -- might not have the words to express something I could.

My Journal Says: 
Writing about my past is like reviewing receipts for shit I already put in the trash. It's like burning out all the bad but trying to measure it again from the ash. If I could throw out all the good with the bad there would be nothing to see looking back. And I would still be me with nothing to add up and nothing to track.

Every time I get going on this blog, I think of another one I need to do. Looks like I'm gonna take a break and go over and work on another page of just advice I've been giving for free on Facebook groups for narcissistic abuse and recovery, witchy groups, and lil ole things folks be going through. I'm in a kind of spot about fixing my own life, but somehow I can still find words to share with others. I know that telling things my way and using my unique voice are why I'm here. I know I've been holding back ideas and inspiration that was not meant only for me. I know that I'm transitioning a quiet time to a time when I'm at least going to have writing back. 

Purpose!

They say the purpose is remembered better by kids who just fall into something and love it more than anything and stick with it and really know how to be free in it. Before I could write stories, I played school by myself. I loved paper and worksheets and coloring things. I loved to learn and escape, and anytime I'm recovering from seriously emotional things I escape into intellectual pursuits or take more time to learn something rewarding to focus on. 

When I was still in elementary school, I loved colored inks and wrote letters to my friends and had a magical feeling about notecards. I had pangs of jealousy about kids who played D&D, but I didn't know how to get into it since I really existed in awkward mode enough to be awkward with others. I wrote poetry and kept up with it and wrote short stories in my teens, my 20s too. Anytime I was in college was like uncorking the fountain and I'd be imagining things in class and be full of ideas, visions, things I wasn't mature enough to even appreciate. 

As technology became more accessible, I'd do online roleplays and fell in love with dating profiles, because they almost all contain a little bit of a real person to check over. I really like getting to know people from their photos and profiles and then checking their energy in person. 

Technology and connecting has been an adventure for sure. I was friends with a woman whose mom was into Handwriting Analysis, and got a bit into that for a while. Interpreting Energy and learning from humans and their little idiosyncrasies has been a fascination for a long time. The Universe speaks in Word Games and Synchronicity. Internet communications don't create artifacts like a notecard with some handwriting on it. Texts, emails, and all the kinds of calls do carry a bit of us there, and you do get a sense of folks this way. 

And when you're sensitive, you even feel the response. I was a reporter for the Texarkana Gazette and about 28 years old when I could perceive that the news I was making was also causing people to feel sad in the morning. If it bleeds, it leads, and I was already not wanting to be part of a mechanism of making people sad. I could feel it. I was also having a fair bit of PTSD from seeing mortality on the reg and listening to the scanner non-stop, since I was also having some tricky Paradigm about "If I listen to the scanner nothing bad will happen," and another one where I was some kind of "freaky deaky angel of death" since it seemed like I was attending things with death every day. My area was 13 counties of the 4-states region around Texarkana, and when one side of some line was slow the other side was busy. I'd been seeing everything the police and fire department went to, and without the kind of brotherhood they had. To walk between the worlds as a shaman, you have to practice while wearing professional combat boots and know when to stop asking questions.