I want to live barefoot

I want to live barefoot.

I don’t want to bother with

shoes and socks

or woolly hats that

tickle and flatten my hair.

No more heavy parkas and

leg warmers,

or gloves that make it

impossible

to handle a camera.

I am sick of heavy grey skies

that leak constantly,

and barely 6 hours of daylight.

That hot water bottle

that keeps me warm at night,

- it has to go!

I want to sleep under a canopy

of palm leaves

and walk barefoot on a

secluded beach

wearing only a sarong.

I want my body to be

kissed by the sun

while I sip Piña Coladas

and wade through turquoise water.

(The poem that became a verbal vision board)

Sometimes I see you

Sometimes I see you flying over me

on naked wings,

your elegant neck

gently bowed towards me,

beconing.

A new flame of clarity

reveals your message

as I look inside 

and see my own wings

You blow away the world.

I follow you over the plains to the river,

and in the red light of the first dawn

all we ever wanted comes true.

Weeping willows

Weeping willows 

shelter a pierced soul

while crusty earth soaks up feverish tears.

A brittle soul on the mend

still wears the unbearable loss

like a constraining sheath.

Every day gentle breezes 

charm up memories

that in turn explode,

rustling the sheath 

tearing up old wounds.

* * * * *

With Giddy Clarity

With giddy clarity I listen to my own breath
as I venture out into a bitter, tumultuous world.
Step by step I practice my breathing,
and within me a fire awakens.

November Full Moon

She appears veiled 

glowing and mysterious

later she is unveiled

revealing her fullness and glory

reflecting the light and power

that is given to her

*********

If I dabble in thrills.

This is a wordle I wrote about six months ago. I am quite pleased with it as I have used the words in the order they were given, and then in the reversed order. There's no deep meaning, it's just an attempt to simply use the words. I would love to hear any opinions :-)

If I dabble in thrills will 
someone whack me over the head because 

I run through hallowed spaces 

blasting my way 
through stained glass windows 

my hunt for whatever will unfold 

brings a shallow conviction that 
I am the center of all this that 
my skills can reveal what 
I am searching for 

But this revelation that 
my skills were given to me so 

I could center myself sets 
all shallowness aside 

my life unfolds and 
my hunt slows down 

the stains that came from the blast 
are hallowed and 

whack by whack they are multiplied 

until the thrill is gone and 
I'm back to dabbling.......

-------------------

Wordle 171 - playing with these words:
dabble, thrill, whack, hallowed, blasts, stained,

hunt, unfolds, shallow, center, skill, reveal.

I watched you die

Norsk tekst under bildet

I watched you die

Your body was

jaded and slashed by disease but

your life spark still burned

In that grey hospital room

cold rain poured down over 
the two of us standing there by 
your bed 

knowing that your last breath 
was imminent

That grey hospital room

that had been buzzing with action all night, now

there was only the hiss of life support

24 hours earlier you

loved me and

your life journey 

was victorious and magnificent

You were still magnificent

but your battered body was overriding 

your beautiful consciousness 

Time was running out

You and time 

were slipping through our fingers

there was nothing we could do to 

hold you back

Your time had come 

and you left us

your wife and your daughter

The two of us who

still have lives to live

but they are lives already scarred by

a son and a brother who went ahead of you

You saw him and

you knew he was waiting for you and

you went to be with him

Now you two have your own time

The agonizing pain of missing you both 

keeps driving holes through my heart

Jeg så at du var i ferd med å dø

Kroppen din var herjet av sykdom

men livsgløden var der ennå

I det grå sykehusrommet

strømmet kaldt regn ned over 

oss to som sto der ved
sengen din

og visste at snart ville du trekke ditt
siste åndedrag

I det grå sykehusrommet

som hadde vært fullt av aktivitet hele natten

hørtes nå bare lyden av respiratoren

24 timer tidligere

elsket du meg og

din livsreise var en seier og vidunderlig

Du var fremdeles vidunderlig

men din herjede kropp seiret

over ditt vakre sinn

Tiden var i ferd med å renne ut

Du og tiden

rant mellom fingrene våre

det var ingenting vi kunne gjøre

for å holde deg tilbake

Din tid var kommet

og du forlot oss

din hustru og din datter

Oss to

som fremdeles hadde liv å leve men

våre liv er arret av 

en sønn og en bror som dro før deg

Du så ham og

visste at han ventet på deg og

du dro for å være sammen med ham

Nå har du og han deres egen tid

Det smertelige savnet av dere begge

fortsetter å brenne huller i hjertet mitt

© Inger-Marie Sæverud

April Love 2015. Day 29. My Eyes

I am near sighted and have worn contacts since about 1976. As I have grown older, I also need reading glasses, so they are permanently hanging around my neck (I never got bifocal lenses to work for me). Due to hyperthyroidism, my eyes are not symmetrical, and my eyelids are very heavy. So heavy that in 2006 I had eyelid surgery, courtesy of our national health. Since then they have dropped down again. I also recently found out that I have starting cataracts on both eyes, and will probably need surgery for that, maybe soon.

April Love 2015. Day 28. Clouds

I wrote earlier about my current obsession, which is collecting found hearts. This little heart cloud was one of the first ones I found, about 4 1/2 years ago. I was sitting on our deck, Sigve was home from hospital, recovering, and life was good.

April Love 2015. Day 27. Love is...

Love is a journey,

not a destination.

April Love 2015. Day 26. Something beginning with A...

For this one I have to go with Artwork. 

Here is one of my doodles.

April Love 2015. Day 25. Simple pleasures

Today I wore a skirt (well, anything other than jeans actually, for anything other than a special occasion) for the first time in years, and last night I had a glass of wine in a plastic cup in my hotel room. I'm at my practical spirituality workshop, which is amazing.

April Love 2015. Day 24. Trees

I have lots of tree photos in my archives, but I can't access them right now. I'm on my way to a weekend workshop on practical spirituality, and walking in our inner landscapes. This tree was my view as I was waiting for the ferry to get off the island I live on. Photo taken through the car window. It was cloudy and raining, but I'm excited for the weekend.

April Love 2015. Day 23. When I was small

It was the early 50's, and my parents and I lived in the south of Norway. My dad was adventurous and the job market was difficult, so he and my mom decided to try for a life in the United States. My dad went first, to get a place to live, a job, and get settled, and my mom and I followed a year later. While we waited to go, he would send me presents like pretty dresses, and when I got this doll, I was over the moon. Those kind of things were not that common in Norway back then. 

We lived there for three years, from I was 3-6 years old. I went to kindergarden and first grade, and the english I learned while there made me bilingual ever since. 

However, my mom was homesick and not comfortable being so far away from all of our relatives, so they decided to move back to Norway. My mom, my 2 year old brother and I went back first, while my dad stayed on to work and save up more money before he joined us two years later. 

April Love 2015. Day 22. Spring/Autumn

Leon, our youngest grandson is just starting out in life, and he was 2 months old when this photo was taken, six months ago. It was 5 days after my husband Sigve's 59th birthday, and 11 days before he died. I am so glad Sigve at least got to spend the 2 months with Leon, but at the same time I'm sad that he won't get to see him grow up.

April Love 2015. Day 21. A Happy Memory

The birth of our first grandchild,

and grandparents get all silly.

April Love 2015. Day 20. My scent

I don't use any kind of personal scent, even my deodorant is unscented. Perfumes are allergy triggers, so I have avoided them. I also worked in a shop, and in consideration to allergic costumers we didn't wear any scents. 

I do like to light incense in my house, though.

April Love 2015. Day 19. I live here:

April Love 2015. Day 18. Sweet

Sweetness beyond anything I could ever imagine. My two grandsons, Helmer (4) and Leon (almost 8 months).

April Love 2015. Day 17. A life changing book

I would have to say "The Secret". I actually saw the movie first, 

in the summer of 2008. I was attending a training program, learning to use The Lightning Process, and a fellow participant recommended it to me. It was the gateway to my mindfulness and self help journey, and it really did change my life.

April Love 2015. Day 16. 10 years ago

10 years ago my husband and I, both slightly reluctantly, went on our first cruise. We didn't know if it would be our kind of vacation, but we had decided to give it a try. As it turned out, we loved it, and went on many more over the next 10 years. Some of our very best friends were made on one of them.

April Love 2015. Day 15. Yellow

Every night I slice up a fresh lemon, 

soak the slices in water overnight, 

and drink the lemon water in the morning, 

sometimes hot, sometimes cold.

April Love 2015. Day 14. My current obsession

is so definitely finding hearts in nature

April Love 2015. Day 13. Love note to self

My darling,

You have lost so much, and I feel your pain. Your heart has been torn to pieces. Sometimes you have no energy, you are sad and lonely. I get that.

Allow yourself the time it takes to heal. You are so much stronger than you think, and you have already started the healing process, even if you don't see it yet.  

Be lovingly bold and brave as you seize the opportunities that come your way. You deserve all the goodness there is for you. And I promise you, you will like it, your new life. It will be different, but it will be awesome. You will be so grateful you're alive.

Please stop feeling bad when you feel like you don’t measure up.

Don’t be so hard on yourself.

When you do your best, it is always enough.

Love myself xoxox

And a love note from my late husband:

This rock heart holds a very special meaning to me. Last week I was walking on a small rocky beach near to where my late husband and I lived for 25 years. I always find heart shaped rocks, and that day as I was chatting to Sigve in my mind, I said: "draw my attention to a heart, but let it be special and let there be no doubt that it is a heart. So none of the rocks that could be a heart if you look at it from a certain angle." So I was looking and found several of those could be hearts, and I nearly gave up and prepared to leave when my eyes fell on this one. There was no doubt in my mind. The rock is the size of the palm of my hand, so I took it with me.

April Love 2015. Day 12. Evening rituals

While this is not a big ritual, sometimes I need to collect my thoughts before I go to sleep, and since I let go of my former belief systems, the old evening prayers didn't work any more. So I came up with this one instead.

April Love 2015. Day 11. An inspiring person

They are so many. Some of them are:

- My son, who was diagnosed with 2 autoimmune diseases at age 13, and struggled with them until he died at 29, in 2012. He had so many odds against him, but he hung in there to the very end. His courage and strength continues to inspire me.

- My husband, who through our 35 year journey together until his death in 2014, taught me to “take every opportunity you get to do the things you want now, “later” may be too late”. And “if you can’t change it, handle it the best way you can”.  

- My daughter, who first lost her brother and then her father, but through it all, she was and is my rock and support.

And then there’s Paolo Coelho.

April Love 2015. Day 10. My superpower

My superpower is the knowledge that I am enough. I don’t need to depend on anything outside myself to make me good enough.

I was raised in a Christian family and environment. I was taught to trust and fear God, love Jesus, believe in the Bible and that Christianity was the only true Way. God was good, just and almighty, and He kept his eye on me. By myself I was a horrible sinner, not worthy or in any way good enough. I could only get God’s acceptance through what the bible said Jesus did for me. I could never be enough by myself. 

In later years things happened in my life that made me start to question this belief system, and long story short, I had to get rid of some old baggage for my life to make sense again. I had to redefine my image of god, and in doing so, I ended up rejecting most of what I used to believed in. 
I have realized that I am enough as I am! 
So this is it, this knowledge, that I have the ability to bring out the resources and powers I need in my life. I just have to look inside, it’s already there, and has always been.
(I mean no disrespect to anyone who finds comfort in their beliefs, but this is right for me.)

Min superkraft.

Min superkraft er erkjennelsen om at jeg er nok. Jeg er ikke avhengig av at noe utenfor meg skal gjøre meg god nok.

Jeg har vokst opp i kristen familie og miljø. Jeg ble opplært til å frykte og stole på Gud, elske Jesus, tro på Bibelen og at kristendommen var det eneste rette. Gud var god, rettferdig og allmektig, og han holdt øye med meg. Jeg selv var en forferdelig synder, uverdig og på ingen måte god nok. Jeg kunne bare bli akseptert av Gud gjennom det bibelen sa at Jesus hadde gjort for meg. Jeg kunne aldri bli nok på egen hånd.

I de seinere år skjedde det ting i livet mitt som gjorde at jeg begynte å stille spørsmål til dette trossystemet jeg hadde, og for å gjøre en lang historie kort, så måtte jeg bli kvitt en del gammel baggasje for at livet mitt skulle ha mening igjen. Jeg måtte fullstendig omdefinere gudsbildet mitt, og dermed endte jeg opp med å måtte gi slipp på det meste av det jeg tidligere hadde trodd på.

Jeg har skjønt at jeg er god nok som jeg er!

Så dette er min sannhet, at jeg har evnen til å hente fram alle de krefter og resurser jeg trenger i livet mitt. Jeg trenger bare lete i meg selv, de ligger der, har alltid gjort det.