 I am writing to update you about our work together as we all cope with the threat of the coronavirus. I want to let you know that for the time being, I am continuing to see individual clients in my office. However, your physical and emotional well-being will always be a priority, therefore given the uncertainty of our current situation, I think it is important to discuss options. Self-care during this period is so important. Therefore, as you know, if you are feeling sick, or are showing signs of sickness, it’s important to stay home. However, if that is the case and you would like to keep your appointment, I want to offer you the opportunity to videoconference or have a phone session. In addition, if you are healthy but still feel uncomfortable coming into the office these formats are also available to you. Just let me know and I can send instructions to you by email. If you are unable to keep your appointment, please continue to follow my cancellation policy, which requires 24 hour advanced notice. As many of you know, I videoconference often. But since there are some treatments that should not be or cannot be done over videoconference, I intend to continue coming into the office for individual sessions as long as it is safe, but may have to stop if required by local ordinances. This is an unprecedented time where we need as much support as possible. Please know that I am here for you and will find a way to continue working with you until this runs its course. As overwhelming as this situation may be right now, it will eventually pass. It’s important to hold onto hope, and staying connected to others is important for our emotional well-being. If you have any questions or concerns please reach out by email (info@blackhorsespirit.com) or phone (315-289-2030). Thank you and stay well, Cindy Please Note: Classes and group sessions are cancelled until further notice, or have moved to Zoom online. Please refer to the event calendar to check on a specific class or group meeting. |
Commitment to Change: Healing from the Inside Out
I spoke with someone today who was on the fence about working with me. And you know, if you are on the fence, if you aren’t sure you’re ready to move forward, then you are probably still in pre-contemplation, which means you probably aren’t ready to take action. I am a direct person, and I will be candid with you and tell you that. To be perfectly honest, people who are not sure if they are ready to heal and get unstuck and open up their possibilities are not the people I want to work with. Because if you aren’t really ready to get into the trenches and work this, then we are both wasting our precious time. But if you ARE sure, if you ARE ready, if you’ve just had enough of being stuck where you are, then I will be your most staunch supporter, in your corner and advocating for you all the way with everything I’ve got — all of my considerable knowledge, wisdom, experience, and passion.
And it may not be easy. It’s not easy to figure out where you need to make changes in your life to get to where you want to be. And it could be intense; looking at past trauma and how it continues to play out in your life today is often intense. But I promise you, the work we do together will be effective. And it might even be fun sometimes. It will definitely be rewarding.
But you have to commit to it, to giving it a certain amount of time and effort. Don’t expect that one or two hours with a counselor like me is going to “cure” you. During the first few sessions, it may seem like there is not much movement at all. But that is the place we are gathering the fuel to take off. After all, it took you a lifetime to get where you are now; there is no reason to think that truly healing those wounds (thereby creating the change you are seeking) will only take a few sessions.
And opening old wounds can be painful. Because of this, you may initially feel worse and not better. Because of this, you may conclude that this kind of therapy isn’t working for you. But this is just the point where you need to stay with it, because (to continue with the wound analogy) a wound that is only superficially healed can fester and cause problems in the future. (You know this; that is how you got to where you are in the first place.) You have to allow time and therapy to help you re-open and properly clean that festering wound so it can heal from the inside out.
For this reason, I will usually ask you to commit to several sessions. It is not unreasonable to expect that it will take about 3 months of weekly sessions to be able to track progress and realize forward movement. You owe yourself that time, that commitment, at the very least. When you think about that, it’s only 90 days, and the actual sessions with me in those 90 days are only 12 hours out of your life. And I’ll be with you all the way — because once you commit to yourself and show me that you’re serious about healing, I will also be fully committed to you and do everything in my power to collaborate with you to help you reach your goals and get you to where you want to be.
The Celtic God of Love: Aengus Og
February starts with Imbolc, the Celtic celebration of the returning light and the feast day of Brighid. She is, of course, the goddess of poetry, healing, and smithcraft. It is said her name is derived from “high or exalted one,” but it is sometimes put forth that the name Brighid is derived from brio-aigit, “fiery arrow,” which is certainly a fitting name for a goddess associated with three fires: the hearth, the forge, and the flame of poetic inspiration. In Irish tradition, poetry and seership are interwoven, so Brighid is often seen as the imbas (or divine inspiration) behind divination and prophecy as well.
However, the month of February also brings Valentine’s Day, the origins of which may reach back into the mists of a time before the goodly saint’s name was attached to it. Be that as it may, there must always be balance, and along with our beloved Brighid, some with Irish ancestry also honor a Celtic God in February (at Imbolc) who is less known in the popular lexicon: Aengus Og (Angus the Young). Aengus is the Celtic God of love, youth, and poetic inspiration (that last bit coinciding with the attributes of Brighid). As February is deep within the Dark Half of the Year (from Samhain to Beltaine), and is traditionally a time to go within, reflect, and incubate our futures, it makes sense that Brighid and Aengus both inspire that kind of insight.
Of course, like all the Tuatha de Danaan (Children of Danu), Aengus is complex. He is the son of the Dagda (the Good God, or allfather) and the river goddess Boann, who had an affair. To hide her pregnancy (because she was already married to Nechtan and he to the Morrigan!), the Dagda made the sun stand still for nine months so that Aengus was conceived, gestated and born in one day. (In classic Irish irony, a “love child” becomes a love god.) Later, when he came of age, he took the Dagda’s home at Brú na Bóinne (Newgrange) from his father by a trick of the language. He asked his father if he could stay there for “a night and a day.” The Irish language has no indefinite article, so the asking was for “night and day” – in other words, eternity.
Aengus was very popular with the ladies. From one story in particular, The Dream of Aengus, we learn that Aengus sees a particular woman in his dreams for a year, and he falls in love with her. His mother and father both search for this woman, and she is found after the third year at the Lake of the Dragon’s Mouth. Aengus goes there and finds 150 girls chained in pairs; the woman from his dreams, Caer, is one of them. Every other year at Samhain, the girls all turn into swans and remain so until Samhain of the next year. Aengus is told he can marry Caer if he can identify her in her swan form. Aengus turns himself into a swan and they fly away, singing beautiful music that put all listeners asleep for three days and nights. (This is one of the reasons swans are sacred to the Irish and protected in Ireland to this day, along with the Children of Lir — but that’s another story for another time.) How interesting that swans are known to mate for life! We often see a pair of swans depicted face-to-face with their necks creating a heart shape, symbolic of love.
In other legends, Aengus was able to repair broken bodies and return life to them — at least, temporarily. He loved his foster-son Diarmuid so much that when Diarmuid was killed, Aengus took the lifeless body home to Brú na Bóinne where he “breathed life into it” whenever he wished to speak with Diarmuid. Perhaps we might call on Aengus to help us converse in the deepest dark of the year with those loved ones who have crossed over.
The Broken Spirit Bear
I bought this spirit bear in Tucson on Samhain (Halloween) 2017. I bought it because Spirit nudged me to buy it as a home for my best friend’s power animal, who had been visiting me every night between 3:00 – 4:00 AM since he died in a tragic accident on August 20th that year. It may have had something to do with the black onyx spirit bear fetish that I had gifted to him once and then buried with my friend (a whole ‘nother story), but maybe it was just that he was trying to reach out. I would abruptly awaken at that time every night and see the spirit bear, black as the shadows, standing near the bedroom door. As soon as I brought this horsehair pottery bear home, the nightly visits ceased and I was able to get an undisturbed night’s sleep at last.
It wasn’t until today that it struck me: this bear is white, in juxtaposition to the black onyx bear that I buried with him. Curiouser and curiouser. (Things are sometimes shifted into their opposites between the worlds; left and right, for instance, or night and day. It occurred to me that black and white should be no different.)
Yesterday, on Samhain Eve, two years to the day after I bought it, the bear was broken beyond repair. I was changing the curtain rods in my new office and the curtain swept some books off my desk, taking the bear with them. Needless to say, I was devastated. I cried as a picked up the pieces of his back legs off the floor. I got the desire, the nudge to smash the rest of the broken bear up today and return him to the land.
I was thinking about the back legs and what they might symbolize. Bears often stand on their hind legs, looking very human-esque in the undertaking, especially to mark or defend territory. Perhaps this signified a foundational energy. It is definitely a big shift of some kind. I discussed it with my buddy Karl, who is very Jungian in his approach to things. We agreed it was foundational (standing on the foundation of the earth), and he said my inclination to return the bear pieces to the earth as well was probably spot-on.
This morning, I awakened with the knowing that my dear old friend has probably moved on. When this came to me, I whispered to him (somewhere in the Otherworld), “So you will no longer be my guardian angel, like you have been for most of my life?” Again, tears pricked my eyes as I felt the truth of it.
I was reminded of the most recent dream I had of him, where he was found living another life in a place far away, and when I asked him if he had had amnesia, he said no and told me we would discuss it later.
Perhaps this was that discussion.
And perhaps the most fascinating part of this story is the fact that a friend in southern Arizona had recently gifted me with a beautiful horsehair pottery horse that she had made herself. Of course, southern Arizona is where the bear came from. That seems no mere coincidence, because the horse is (of course) MY power animal. A cycle has ended; we have come full circle.
I really miss my friend, who was very dear to me. He was someone I relied on for advice and support quite frequently. He had a wonderful sense of humor and the uncanny ability to pull me out of any anger or despair that might grip me on occasion. You know, sometimes in our grief we may hold the subconscious belief that moving on with life will cause dishonor to our loved ones. And perhaps because of that erroneous belief, we hold on to our memories a bit too tightly and try to maintain a holding pattern in our lives, balking against a life that seems to be careening forward at breakneck speed without the loved one we miss so much. Somewhere deep inside, perhaps I have been reluctant to move forward for fear of abandoning my best friend’s memory. This will never happen, of course, and my intellect knows that the concept is irrational, but my heart does not. All my heart knows is that it was broken, like the bear — suddenly, without warning. All my heart knows is that if my friend could die like that, then anything can happen, and it may be best to hold on.
Still, after much consideration, it seems that I have divined the intended message of the broken spirit bear at Samhain (which, by the way, marks the Celtic New Year): it is finally time to stand on my own two back feet, moving boldly into my future. I have been released.
My dear old friend, thank you.
© Samhain 2019 – Cindy L. McGinley. All rights reserved.
New Equine Helper
Toby is a Percheron gelding who arrived here last month. He is donated and sponsored by Sylvia Hall. He joins equine helpers Dare, Henry, Bea, and Duncan, helping to provide special encounters designed to help humans learn better ways to be present in their lives and relationships. We provide trauma-informed equine-assisted counseling and learning, and most of our horses are “rescues” (horses that know trauma first-hand). Please consider donating to the Edoras Farm Go Fund Me Campaign.
To find out how you can sponsor one of our equine helpers, or to find out how to volunteer on the farm, contact us directly.
