It’s a very strange feeling to be packing a bag not knowing how long you will have to leave your home, or even if you will have a home when you return.
What would you take with you?
It was amazing to feel how much of what I owned felt OK to leave behind.
Some clothes, jewelry, a folder with important documents, and most importantly my sound healing instruments - harmonium, crystal bowls, and didgeridoo were what I chose to take with me.
Sunday morning around 4 am many of those whom I know and love and I were woken up by SOS phone signals, texts and sirens outside alerting us we were now in a mandatory evacuation zone.
Luckily we did not have to leave in a panic, knowing the fires were 25 or more miles from our house. But i tell you, the whole scene still felt apocalyptic. When the sun rose, the winds outside looked like when the tornado was coming in the Wizard of Oz ~ the trees swaying and branches breaking with every violent gust. Cars drove down the road beeping their horns, disrupting an eery silence of the land as more and more people left their homes vacant.
I couldn’t help but wonder, “What is being asked of us?”
and “Of all the places in the world, why have I felt called to live here in Sonoma County?” a place that has been afflicted by wildfires in the last few years.
One thing that has continually come through for me, is that many who have felt called to live on this land are here to be Earth protectors, and one of our most important roles during uncertain times like this is to bear witness to our Earth Mother and all she is doing to call out for help, or to wake us up.
To witness her in her fiery call of destruction, to feel the pain and grief of the land, and to be one of those to speak out on her behalf.
We’re now seeing the effects of living for years in disharmony with the land.
Centuries ago the indigenous people who lived on these lands would lovingly tend to them, intentionally burning the land periodically to clear away underbrush, dead trees, enrich the soil and prevent massive wildfires like this one.
Those practices were put to a stop when European colonialists took the land away from them.
One hundred years of un-tended land, paired with extreme rains in the winter - creating even more new growth and underbrush, climate change, extra-long dry seasons pushing the first rains further and further back, and outdated PG&E equipment creating sparks, have created a kind of perfect storm for many living on the West Coast.
So what are we to do?
It doesn’t feel like an accident that these fires aligned perfectly with the beginning of Scorpio season in the astrological calendar.
If you have been feeling the energies of death, destruction, transformation, and strong emotions, you are not alone.
Scorpio season is a time of diving deep and being close to the Earth.
Today’s new moon in Scorpio is a call to go deep within, feel your pain, call upon your courage and welcome Kali Ma to burn away what is no longer serving in order to be born anew.
If you are moving through the intensity right now (from the fires or otherwise) I invite you to ask:
How can I use this new moon energy to PURIFY and ACTIVATE what is most true for me?
As the veils become thinner as we enter Samhain (October 31st), I feel we are being invited to listen to the whispers of Mother Earth and our ancestors… to listen to what messages are most needed at this time.
I will be spending the week visiting my last living grandmother in NY (it seems her time on the Earth plane is nearing the end) and processing the last few days of shock and grief after being evacuated and watching from afar what is/was happening to the lands we call home.
It is a potent time to bear witness to our Earth mother and listen to her fiery call for us to WAKE UP.
How will you honor this new moon? The energies of fire and destruction? Transformation and rebirth? I welcome your thoughts and shares as a reply to this email or on my latest instagram post.
Blessed Be.
