“No waving of enchanted wands but heightened perception. No magic objects, but a transformed and enhanced reality. No spells or chants, but the raw power of the human will to enact supernatural change upon the universal fabric. This is the kind of “magic” that fills Lords of Rainbow – elemental, organic, humanistic – an extension of reality.” ~ Vera Nazarian

Greetings Dear Ones!

It’s been another soggy week here in the land of misty mountains and muddy floods. Gus and Otie, the Jersey steers, are growing webbed feet. The sheep have gotten used to the idea of being caught in the rain once in a while.

“You’re from SHETLAND,” I tell them. “It’s not like that is the arid land of endless sun!” Twice a day, they scamper out to the meadow to gobble all they can. After about an hour, they are hanging by the barn gate, wanting to come in again to escape the rain, heat, and bugs. They are content to flop against a wall, chew their cud, and spill the tea.

“What’s happening?” they ask. “Do you have any extra cookies? Stale bread? Corn chips?” The lambs gather around me for under-chin scratches and cuddles, pushing and shoving to be next. They step on my feet, burp in my face, poop directly into their water buckets and demand endless amounts of service and attention. This sort of neediness would be irritating from human beings but from the lambs it is utterly endearing and adorable. I think we can tolerate a lot from our animals because they never require us to step away from our authentic selves. There is no need for professional perfectionism or manufactured politeness. We are free to take each other as we are.

I flop down next to one and begin processing my day.

“Life is a merciless reflection of our own attitudes, isn’t it,” says Wally, knowingly. “What’s happened now?”

“Well, the short version of the story is that a bride came in and her dress fit and I didn’t have to do anything to it,” I say.

“That sounds like a Good Thing,” says Prim. “What’s the long version?”

“Well, I think I can learn a lot from her. She’s a pretty amazing young woman.”

“People are in our lives to teach us and help us to evolve into the Highest Essence of the truth of who we are,” says Moll.

“AND to distribute cuddles and cookies!” says little Flora, the smallest of the spring lambs, snuggling up against me.

“Yes…” I say, sifting through empty pockets, “I do hope that when I come to die, people find the Highest and Best version of me, smack in the center of a whole lot of Good. If they do, it will be because I really listen to my customers.”

“I hope people find me smack in the middle of a whole lot of food,” says Waterlily, the bossiest of the mamas.

“A whole lot of food is probably what it will be that kills you,” I point out. “That’s why I keep the grain room shut and all the food in metal bins with lids. Overeating can be lethal for you guys. For any of us, really.”

“I don’t understand why you don’t just go into the feed room and eat all you want any time you want. You could, you know. You have that power,” says Prim.

“Firstly, it’s not my kind of food,” I point out. “Secondly, there are two kinds of power. You are talking about the power of ‘Yes, let’s do it.’ But sometimes saying NO is actually even more powerful.”

“We don’t know how to say No,” says Flora, sweetly. “we just say ‘YUM’.”

“I know. That’s why it’s my job to take care of you,” I say hugging her. “I try to take care of everybody who cannot say NO. Sometimes it’s not my job to do that but I seem to try anyway. I have a meddlesome “fixit” reflex that gets me into trouble with other humans.”

“Let’s get back to the bride,” says Wally. “Does she have the power of No?”

“Indeed she does,” I admit. “But what’s really confusing and impressive, is that her NOs all add up to a YES.”

“That IS confusing,” says Moll. “How can NO be also a YES?”

“Well,” I explain, “a few months ago, she came in with her wedding gown. She’d bought it before the pandemic and then her wedding plans got changed and changed and changed and she’s still not even married yet. Only now, her dream dress doesn’t fit. She says ‘It’s a wee bit tight…I can’t quite get the zipper up in the back.’ And by ‘can’t get the zipper up’ she actually means that the zipper is about six inches apart at the top. She had become a very different shape than she was when she bought the dress.”

“What did you tell her?” asks Fergus, a curious young ram lamb.

“I immediately jumped to my usual routine of reassuring her that I could fix the dress, that I have a magic wand that makes any dress fit any body… A good seamstress makes one feel comfortable in both one’s clothes and their own skin! I gushed and blabbed and tried to make everything ok in that way that I do that is actually very emotionally manipulative because I feel so uncomfortable when other people are sad. It’s incredibly hard for me to love anyone without feeling the impulse to make her life better, which is truly arrogant, if you think about it. Their lives are the product of their choices. Who am I to say that they have made poor choices? Look at my own choices for “Heaven’s sake!”

“Indeed!” huffs Prudence, my inner critic with her clipboard of crimes at the ready, rolling her eyes.

“Do you really have a magic wand?” Fergus wants to know.

“No. I just replace the zipper with a corset back and the dress becomes a lace-up dress that fits well and looks just as beautiful. Sometimes it even looks nicer than the original zipper. But this bride didn’t seem happy about that suggestion. She just stood and smiled bravely at herself in the mirror with big sad eyes. ‘I am going to wear the dress just as it is,’ she tells me quietly. Inwardly, I panic. I beg her not to crash diet or do anything crazy to make the dress fit. ‘Change the dress, not you,’ I tell her. ‘You are loveable, worthy, and enough just as you are, right here, right now. You don’t need to change a thing.’ She smiles wanly and gets dressed to go home. ‘I haven’t been loving myself,’ she says. ‘I can do better than this. All the stress of these two years has made me change in ways I don’t really want to change. Life’s about choices. I need to make some better ones. So don’t do anything yet. How soon before the wedding can I come again, just in case I need you to put the corset in?’ ‘Give me two weeks,’ I tell her. She nods. ‘I’ve got two months to make some healthier choices. Let’s see how that goes. I’ll come back two weeks before the wedding.’ As soon as she leaves I order corset kits in three different shades.”

“So now the dress FITS her again?” asks Prim.

“Yes. She did it! I have seventy five dollars worth of corset kits that we don’t need.”

“Save them for other brides,” says Wally, burping knowledgably.

“Good idea,” I nod. “I will.”

“But this bride…what did she DO?” everyone wants to know. “How did she melt back into her old shape? Did she have a magic wand?”

“I asked her the same thing,” I say. “She told me all the things she did and I thought they were very sane, sensible things. She didn’t go crazy. She did calm, centering exercises; she did a lot of walking; she made thoughtful food choices and established healthy boundaries around when and what she would use to nourish her body. She got good sleep. She drank plenty of water. She followed through each and every day with her plan.”

“God, that sounds Dreadful,” says Waterlily, sighing.
“I know,” I admit. “I hate knowing that slow and steady dedication can be so effective. I want magic wands, dramatic flourishes, quick fixes. It’s so discouraging to think that if I just do The Right Stuff every damn day that Good Things will result. Where’s the fun in that?”

“I think that’s what true Mending is all about,” says Prim. “Isn’t it? No highs? No Lows? Just steady faithful forward steps, one step at a time, one day at a time. You start making changes when the pain of NOT doing something becomes greater than the pain of doing it.”

“Yes… Yes…” I say. “She said none of it was actually painful even. She just kept redirecting herself towards what would be ‘more loving.’ It’s so inspiring. I’m not proud of her for losing weight, I have to say. She could have climbed a mountain, learned an instrument, written a book… the goal and tasks don’t matter. I’m impressed that she Stuck With A Plan: A big, hard, long, slow plan that required patience and planning. And she has a vibrant, glowing, energized, healthy result. She didn’t traumatize herself. She LOVED herself enough to do tiny hard things over and over and over…”

“So, now what?” Festis and Fergus want to know. “Is she going to stay on the plan? Or did she just do this so that she could fit into one dress for one day?”

“I asked her that too!” I say. “I was really curious. But she told me she’s made these choices for life. She’s not going to stop. It wasn’t for the wedding. She said—and this is the part that blew me away—‘I just looked at myself in your mirror a few months ago and realized I could be loving myself better than I was; that stress was no excuse; that I deserve to feel amazing and I didn’t.”

“Whoa…” says Prim. “I get it now. Her NO really was a YES. She said so many yeses to things that were good for her that she didn’t even have to say NO.”

“I know, right?” I say. “This is why I need to think about this a lot. So many of us traumatize ourselves over our choices without actually believing that they ARE choices. It’s so much more fun to blame others or our circumstances without thinking about how Love is a choice always available to us.”

“Traumatic relationships are usually ones in which people consistently deny, avoid, or overlook each other’s truths. From what I can see, for you humans, the most traumatizing relationships are actually with yourselves. It sounds like she was able to tell herself the truth, hear it, and then live into a new vision she chose for herself instead,” says Wise old Willoughby from the back. “The really cool thing about her is that now she knows she can make a commitment and keep it. That’s an amazing thing to own about oneself before pledging lifelong union to another person. Her half of that union is really strong.”

“Yep! I learned a whole lot about Mending and the self-love journey from this gal. The sweetest thing about her was that she had no attachment to the outcome whatsoever. She told me that she just wanted to see what two months of genuine self love would make her look like. She didn’t care if she fit into the dress. She knew I could make it so that she could wear it. But now I don’t even have to do a thing. She’s her own dream coming true, wearing her dream dress. She’s not going to be amazing for a day, but From This Day Forward…until death does she depart. She knows Love can reshape anything. No magic wand needed.”

The sheep are happy. They enjoy stories like this almost as much as corn chips.

If you are like me, Dear One, as much as we sincerely want to cheer for good choices, you might hear a fairytale like this and a tiny, icky part of you will say “Well, damn her! I’m off to [insert destructive behavior here].” I certainly do. We’re Human. Free will is our blessing and our curse. Stories like this can be very triggering if we listen from a place of “Yuck. I’m not that Good.” Nothing makes me want to do a whole bunch of naughty, self-sabotaging things like hearing some sweet princess is out there, dropping weight, toning her abs, glowing vibrantly, and over-achieving her pure heart out while I’m wallowing in a pen, chatting to sheep, eating all of their corn chips. (Ha! I’ll show her! I’ll spend the next forty-five minutes shopping for shoes I don’t need and farm equipment I cannot afford!) Doing those things meets my need for numb Comfort and my connection to a story that “I simply can’t…not now…because of…” when really what gets in the way of our Magnificence is the persistent abandonment of our own love. I’m telling you now, in case you need to hear it, YOU are worthy of that love. Treat yourself to an extra glass of water and a heap of self-blessing today. Who needs a needle and thread when we have True Love itself to reshape us?

I love you SEW much,

Yours aye,

Nancy