Processing

May we find ways to use our experiences, the happy and the painful ones;

May we let them soften us;

And may we use the understanding they have brought us to help each other and bring healing and beauty into the world. 

Peace 

Dread

As I mentioned before, last Monday in New York City, my friend Adina brought me all the letters that I wrote to her when I moved from Romania to Canada in 1986-1987. At first, I was really excited. I hoped to share them with the rest of the family, so they could get to know that part of me, what I was like before I became acculturated here.

But reading through some of them on the train back from NYC, after seeing Adina, was much different than I expected. I was not ready for the feelings they brought up. I was crying on the train, and then, next morning, speaking to Sena about them, I was crying again. I did not touch them since. I actually dread looking at them now.

They bring up something akin to a dead zone in me. I'm afraid to go there again. I know I have to. I know it will help me explain a lot of other things. But I just feel like I'm hurling myself into this lonely, unfriendly void.

I will get the courage to read them and soon. If not for myself, then at least for Sena and Aiyana. They need to know my story which is part of their own story.

I don't want my parents to worry about me, reading this post. Just know that it helps me to share my feelings here, in a sort of impersonal way. I'm okay and I know that dealing with whatever's going on will help me in the long run.

I'm also hoping that sharing the hard feelings, will help not only me, but maybe someone else as well. We all have areas which we need to face, but dread to, and so, if you're facing your own dread, I just want you to know that you're not alone. I love the idea of using our obstacles to help each other.

Onwards!

Peace

A confession and my little corner, this morning

I have no sense of self outside my relationships. This has caused me a lot of pain and a lot of joy. Yes, I have my poetry and my gardening and my activism, but ultimately, that is still relational. I would not write poetry, for example, if I didn't have the hope that someone else would connect with it somehow.

I feel that admitting this makes me look weak, but it is true.
I don't know if being relational like this is a good thing or a bad thing. But that's how it's been for me, and for now, I'm grateful to at least be aware of it.

My little corner, this morning.

Peace

Image

I love this image. There's so much in it. What do you see?

I see someone who's alone and tired 

I see internal conflict and confusion 

I see someone who's trying 

I see tenderness beneath that armor 

I see that he wants to take it off but the conditions are such that he can't 

I see the most beautiful part showing through 

I see re-evaluation, transformation, growth

And great suffering

I see a turning point 

I see many of us, at some time in our lives, in this image 

I feel only compassion 

Peace

Success, failure and other possibilities

In the binary world of success and failure

When things get tough, as they always do

We're told and we're encouraged 

By well meaning people:

Don't give up 

You got this

Try again 

You can do it 

But should you do it?

Is there something else

Besides giving up or pushing through?

There is surrender 

A radical shift 

A radical acceptance of things just as they are 

Surrender and giving up are not the same 

Giving up is buying into the paradigm

But feeling like you cannot control it

You cannot give it what it takes

to be successful 

Surrender is

Not as glamorous as success 

And not as easy 

As giving up 

Surrender is empowering 

Surrender is seeing through the paradigm 

Beyond success and failure 

To a new opening 

Where something different 

Perhaps something more genuine to who you are 

Can emerge 

Peace

My friend, Adina

It was very moving for me to meet my friend Adina, from Romania, yesterday in NYC. She was my close friend when I left Romania, in 1986, and for years after that, we wrote to each other. She brought me all the letters I sent her from Canada, which I am so grateful for. They're not easy to read, because of all the feelings they bring back, but they give me a time capsule I can revisit and share.

This is Adina and I at the New York Public Library.

And funny enough, on the train to NY, I ended up sitting next to a woman who was wearing bee shoes. I was wearing my flowery Doc Martens. So I told her: you got the bees, I got the flowers. And she laughed and then we started talking about bees and pollinators.

Peace 

Devotion and losing faith

Devotion to these things 

Will wreck you 

Truth 

Beauty

Love

But losing faith in them 

Is always fatal 

Happy summer solstice

May we receive with gratitude the many blessings of this season, when the sun is at its strongest and the earth gives in abundance; and may we honor our own inner fire, and share it as freely.

Peace 

Deep is the well of joy

Have you seen the fireflies yet this year?

They're outrageous out here in Eastern CT!

Image: Pixabay

Peace 

Withstand

We're often told that we need to "toughen up" to withstand the storms of life. But I think that it's the tenderest parts of us that allow us to do that. They give us something to hold on to, something to believe in, they are our refuge when things are hard. That's been my experience. 

Picture by Sena.

Peace 

I speak for the bees

I am so excited to let you know that I had a wonderful meeting yesterday with the Sustainability Committee of the Town of Mansfield. I presented to them my "Protect the pollinators" proposal, and they were not only very interested, but agreed to start working on a resolution for the Town of Mansfield right away! I am so grateful for this great start! Once the resolution is drafted, it will be passed on to Town Council for approval. 

The resolution will include: establishing safe pollinator habitat at town level; minimizing or eliminating pesticides; and educating the public.

For those who want to see the presentation I gave last night, I am posting it on our farm website under my Poetry For Pollinators Campaign.

Peace 

Lovely start of the day

A lovely 77 year old woman who bought my book and I've become friends with recently, sent me this message and picture she put together with quotes from my book, and warmed my heart this morning:

Hi Raluca

There is so much to taste and ponder in in Fertile Ground.   It is a wonderful book, filled with great depth, beauty and insight.

I wanted to send this to you  in gratitude, so far.  I’ve miles to go……

Hope the season bears much fruit for you and your family.

All the best,

Congratulations to Ed for his amazing achievement!

Ed has been working on this amazing whale tail over the past year and a half, and yesterday, it was officially finished. He started this project as a way to support Sena's whale activism work, and raise public awareness about the plight of North Atlantic Right Whales.

The whale tail is about 12 feet tall and weighs 1000 lbs. He made it out of pine and Douglas Fir, and started with raw wood. The base of the tail is made straight out of a tree trunk. I will post more pictures of the process soon. But for now, here's Ed's write-up about the tail, and a few pictures:

"The North Atlantic Right Whale species, which this juvenile scale model represents, is critically endangered.  With an estimated 400 individuals remaining as of 2019, the population has been in decline due to the many threats they face, including fishing gear, ship strikes, and ocean noise.  Environmental groups, such as the Natural Resources Defense Council and Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies, are working to address the issues facing these whales, as well as many other species.  Please consider donating to organizations working to protect our oceans and environment."

Saturday, he moved it from the work area to its final location.

 Then he burned it to protect it from rain and insects.

 And here's the finished project.

I think it's so beautiful, and an amazing achievement, but Ed's always so hard on himself and doesn't feel nearly as proud as he should...

Peace

Cancelling plan to speak to Town Council tomorrow. Read on for some good news:

Pollinator action update:

I am excited to let you know that I had a very encouraging meeting with Town of Mansfield staff last week, and I will be working with them in the direction of establishing beneficial pollinator habitat at town level. Therefore, I don't believe it is necessary to go to Town Council at this point (as originally planned last week), and I am cancelling my plan to speak at the next Town Council meeting tomorrow, Monday, 6/10.

I will keep you informed on how the pollinator work progresses, and meanwhile, please help as much as you can on your own property, by:

• Never spraying pesticides
• Making sure that any landscaping plants you purchase have not been sprayed or treated (especially with Neonicotinoid products, which are highly toxic to pollinators)
• Creating pollinator habitat in your own yard, or even in containers.This is a wonderful resource for which plants are best to plant, from Xerces Society.

Also, please let me know if you're interested in being involved with this effort of creating beneficial pollinator habitat at town level.

Peace

My little café

My mom calls my porch area my little café, because that's where I have my breakfast and coffee in the morning, and that's where she also likes to sit when she comes to visit.

Since last year, I started having lots of plants and flowers out there, which makes it a lot nicer to sit, plus attracts all kinds of bees, birds, butterflies and my friend Hummy, the humming bird.

Sena and Aiyana and Ed always say I have too many plants, but I'm not sure that's a valid argument. So I keep dividing the plants I have and saving seeds and propagating them one way or another. Anyway, some of my plants are starting to bloom, so I wanted to post a few pictures. Also, I just posted a farm tour video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/gwr5hzocFss

Peace 

Luka

One of the things that was hard when my family moved from Romania to Canada in 1986, was that nobody could understand or say my name. It was always so embarrassing.  They would ask what my name was, and when I said Raluca, invariably, they asked me again, which made me feel very  self conscious.

As a newly arrived immigrant, in a foreign culture that I and everyone I knew in Romania, had revered all our lives, all I wanted was to be accepted and fit in as quickly as possible. My name made that a non starter. After asking me to repeat my name, people would often ask me to spell it, which was even worse, because I couldn’t speak English or French at first, and spelling in a different language was really hard, so I’d often get my own name wrong.

By the time I was 16, just over a year after we moved from Romania, I had had enough of this. It was 1988, and Susan Vega’s song “Luka” was popular. I couldn’t understand anything except “My name is Luka, I live on the second floor”. I thought that Luka was pretty close to Raluca, and nobody should have any trouble understanding or saying it with this song being so popular. So I decided, as I was about to go into a new school, that I’d start from scratch, and tell everyone my name was Luka.

It worked great. Everyone had a much easier time understanding and saying my name. So I stuck with it for the next 6 years, through University. Eventually, as my English improved and I became fluent, I found out more about the song that gave me my name. First of all, to my dismay, in Susanne Vega’s song, Luka was a boy! It now made sense why throughout the years, I had never met another girl named Luka, only boys. I had assumed that Luka was a girl’s name since a girl sang it, and I couldn’t understand any of the words... Second, and more disturbing though, I found out that the song was about a boy named Luka who was being physically abused. What? That was not the association I was going for. Although now I can appreciate this beautiful, sad song, back then I just wanted something "normal".

Eventually, in 1994, after graduating University, I started to feel more confident, and as I started my first job in engineering at Pratt & Whitney, I decided to introduce myself to my new colleagues by my real name. People still asked me to repeat and spell it, but by now, I had no trouble spelling in English or French, and I didn’t mind repeating.

Going back to my real name was a sort of turning point. I finally felt confident enough, and okay with myself enough, and I told myself that if someone wants to know me, it’s really not too much to ask for them to say my name, even though it might be a little difficult or unusual at first.

To my surprise, ever since I went back to my name, I have received many compliments on it. People often, to this day, tell me how nice it is, and when they ask me where I’m from, I am no longer ashamed to say, and I no longer feel uncomfortable.

Some of my closest friends from my University days still call me Luka. I feel an emotional attachment to that name now, and I do love it, because it represents the person I was then and most of all the hardship of trying so hard to fit into a new culture, new environment, new language, etc. And I also think that it’s really funny that it totally backfired, how I thought I was picking this really cool name for myself from this really cool song, but instead neither the song nor the name were what I imagined. It was not what I was going for, but in the end, I actually think it’s more fitting like that.

Peace

Kind words

Someone who follows my poetry on FB bought my book last week, and then she sent me this really kind message when she received it:

"The book arrived 2 days ago and I feel blessed to have it, to feel it, to know it. ....
 The "messy things" are about to reveal the light. Namaste"

And here's the picture she sent me. I love it!

I cannot even say how much it means to me to know that someone genuinely connected to what I wrote.

Peace

Loving attention

When I was about 7 years old, one of my grandmothers accused me of wanting attention. Though I denied it then, looking back on it now, that is truly what I wanted: loving attention.  But somehow, at the time, it felt shameful to admit it, and it felt wrong. So denied it then, and I’ve been denying it ever since.

Now, I know that to want that kind of love from her was not wrong, and it wasn’t shameful. I also know that my grandmother was coming from a place of hardship and her own suffering when she said that to me. In her way, she suffered just as much as I did, by not being able to give that kind of love to her granddaughter.

Now that I can see clearly, I do what I can to give the 7 year old inside of me the loving attention that she wanted back then, though it is very hard. The patterns and the voices in our minds are set and they’re not easily changed. And I do my very best to offer it to others in my life, knowing that it’s the most precious gift I can offer.

Peace

Woman walking the edge

Both images are from Pixabay.

Peace 

Welcome to the world, Jenji!

Our new bull calf. Isn't he adorable?

And this is Sena, Aiyana and I at Bluff Point yesterday after doing our farm deliveries.

Enjoy this beautiful day!

Peace