My cat has been meowing, begging, crying to get outside. I let her out once in awhile, but not often. She has her back claws but not her front ones. She was declawed in order to live indoors, in order to not rip to shreds every couch, curtain and human being in sight. (Which she was on her way to doing). I have been crying too. I have been feeling massive amounts of pain, and my fatigue levels are extreme. I want to go out and play too. She kept pleading with me. She just wanted an adventure. I finally opened the door. She ran out and looked at me and meowed, thinking I was going to pick her up and put her inside as I usually do. I didn't. I am not sure where she is right now, only that she is somewhere in the yard. She is on her "safari" journey. I won't be able to find her until she wants to be found. She will come to my door when she is ready to come inside.( Or when she gets hungry. She knows where her bread is buttered). I'll have to check her for ticks. I'll have to keep my ears open so that if she is in trouble and calls, I will hear her. She could dig into the poison ivy. Get into a scrap with a rabbit, a beaver, or a heron. There are many things to be afraid of. But to hell with safety. At least she has the energy to play. At least she feels good. And she deserves some freedom. Freedom is her true nature. (As long as she can home at night for food and rubs).

I took this a few nights ago. The light was amazing. jo

Tonite I celebrate: All I have survived. How far I have come. The good choices I have made for myself. A new lifestyle and a new life. New ways of seeing and living and being. Hope and possibility. Letting go and surrendering. Blessings. Gratitude. The way suffering has made me appreciate everything beyond words. I celebrate myself. The people who have touched my life The gift of life. Love. Happy July 4 (FIreworks were here tonite on the 3rd)! photo copyright July 2007 Jo Davidson

Praying/Breaking/Merging open into the Divine Light sexually, spiritually, emotionally, physically photo c jo davidson

Does anybody know what kind of bird this is? j o

photo copyright www.solspitz.com

A few days ago I was diagnosed with lyme.( On top of CFIDS which I have had a long time). What a relief. Now I can start to be treated for the lyme part of this. It is possible that lyme could have been a huge part of my condition all along. When I think of the extreme symptoms I have had for years-

I mean, really.

I have a brilliant doctor who I also consider to be a healer. We work deeply on all levels. I started working with him recently. He is an M.D as well as a naturopath. He spends time with me, listens to me, honors my intuition. He is extraordinarily intuitive, and a little wacky in a somewhat creative genius way. (He keeps trying to give me eggs from his chickens hahaha). But It's like the brilliance in him somehow meets the brilliance in me, and there is something that makes me feel like, ok....I can work with this person. I get this. I also consider him to be mature and to have depth which matters to me in my doctor.

I feel I have landed in the right place.

Being that I have been on this road for years, I have explored all aspects of medicine inside and out from the far (And I do mean far) edges of alternative practices to the most mainstream. I have seen people abuse the word "healer," thinking they knew more or were more advanced or intuitive than they actually were. I have met people who claimed that their way was the only way, doctors who blamed me for being sick when their medicine did not help me, doctors who told me that my symptoms were all in my head, people who dismissed me as being silly even when I could barely walk. I have known what it is to be misunderstood, judged, falsely critiqued and blamed. I have researched, studied, read, turned myself inside out looking for a cure. Pounding away at myself emotionally. Digging though every nook and cranny of my past. Happy childhood and all! Then, exhausted and no better, I have let go completely and quit trying. I have done this dance and many other dances. What shall we call this dance if it is a song?

Some of the things I have tried to help me include:

Chelations, acupuncture, herbs, supplements, massages of all kinds, mainstream meds, therapy, meditation, yoga, music, IV drips, chinese herbs, essential oils and on and on.

I think prayer, music and massage as well as working with a spiritual counselor have been helpful for me. Yoga is AMAZING when you can do it.

I have tried a zillion adrenal supplements. The adrenal supplement that is working for me now is a product I recently started. It is licorice root by Wise Woman Herbals. I write this in case it will help anyone else. I highly recommend it. My energy, while still low, is radically better than it was before I started this product. Amazing.

My favorite cleansing program is drnatura.com It temporarily worked for me wonderfully, but then I believe it was not able to really work in the long run, because I probably have to be treated for lyme. But this cleanse could possibly be helpful for others.

The other thing that is actually amazing for me right now, is a full on antibiotic. Who would have thought? Certainly not me. But it is true. It is actually doing something big.

For a few weeks now, I have had a fever, and my blood has given me the feeling like it was on fire inside. My skin has been really hot. I have been having major inflammation and pain over my kidneys and pancreas and liver, and almost fainted last week. Whoohoo! Party down. I kept exploring emotional triggers or roots, but nothing was helping me on that path. I also had that liver pain several months ago and it was severe. Well, when the white of my eyes suddenly was not so white, I knew I was in an emergency. I felt like it was getting dangerous. I laid hands on myself and prayed over myself a few nights ago. And I mean PRAYED! I called in the angels and everybody! Claimed healing and drew it into me. I felt this tingling and sensation that healing was happening. My energy level came up and I slept that night. The pain and fire still existed. But to have my energy any higher at all was a major gift. Laying on of hands, prayer, and even sex- it's all good! It's all love.

The erotic lives very close to the spiritual. It's true. Read the Song of Solomon or poems by RUMI or poems by Rabia of Basra (c 717-801). "When God said, "my hands are yours," I saw that I could heal any creature in the world. I saw that the divine beauty in each heart is the root of all time and space."

What one of my healers has helped me realize is that everything is about connecting to the divine. Really connecting. Opening that channel. So I am doing that in new ways. It is exciting, actually. The key is to do it daily. Like eating. mmm....

Well, just a few days ago, my doc diagnosed me with lyme and he put me on emergency antibiotics. Thank God. I was freaked out, being I am always into natural things versus antibiotics, but felt I should try them. I have had some side effects, but also some amazing new changes for the better. Already the pain is less, the fever is lower, my vision is clear. I can drive again!

It's like a crack opened in the room. I have a little hope. I do. I have had my hopes dashed so many times that I cannot seem to gather up huge amounts of hope anymore. And it takes energy. But I know this much. A mustard seed can move mountains. I think God will forgive me for my doubts considering all that has happened. I know God doesn't abide by our rules or what our small minds can contain anyway. Thankfully there is such a thing as grace.

I am going with the flow right now. Open. Not pushing. Being with what is happening. Sometimes abandoning hope is also a good thing, and not in the sense of giving up, but in the sense of no longer pushing and pushing and fighting the illness, the suffering, the whatever it is. I have realized that positive thinking, as important as it is, can also at times be just a bandaid that one slaps on a wound when the wound really needs air. We spend so much energy sometimes fighting against what we feel and what our experience TRULY is, that we only create false mirrors. They eventually shatter or at the least, prevent us from living authentic lives.

So, I am here, looking into a real mirror. No judgement or expectation. Just looking. I have judged myself long enough. How wonderful to let all I have been through in my life, just be. Not trying to fix or solve or judge or change or move something or even fight it. Just be. I notice that when something triggers fear within me, my symptoms feel worse. Not always, but sometimes. So let there be no fear except what I see and feel and then allow to float by like a cloud.

Remind me of this every 5 minutes.

The doctor said I might need to be on antibiotics for a few years. That may or may not be true. We will see. The path will unfold. Whatever that means, I am sure I will find out. I only have strength for this day! So that is what I will focus on.

I was thinking about how so many times I have tried to get people to understand what it feels like to go through this. But I can't. And sometimes people say and do the most hurtful things out of ignorance. This line comes to me- and I need to work on it. Maybe it can apply to you too and be something you can work on in your life in any and every situation.

"Forgive people when they don't understand you."

What about that. If we just take that one line. How would it change your life? I know it would change mine.

Afterall, every judgement we make is based on our own culture, individual experience, religion, beliefs and values, our own lens, traumas, wounds, unresolved conflicts, insecurities, environments.

It is enough for each of us to try and understand ourselves.

We have many tests in life. Homework. Thank God for recess. Can I have my recess now? Please?

Everything is about loving myself. Everything.

Loving myself in all stages, on all pages of life, during and through everything including that which I understand and that which I don't, that which I love and that which I hate. Loving it all. Fully and completely.

I took a walk last night. It was a beautiful summer evening. CT is finally starting to feel as much like home as NYC. It was great to smell the salt water and feel the breeze out here. I LOVE IT! I feel grateful for the healers I have surrounded myself with. The people in my life who love me and support me. I don't know what tomorrow holds. But I am here in this moment, and I am alive, and I can sit here and type this and I am OK. Maybe if you felt what I feel, you would not say you were OK. But it all depends on where you are coming from. When you hit the bottom and the bottom drops out, even the floor looks wonderful! Sort of OK looks pretty incredible.

I sent out a newsletter today to subscribers that my show is on summer break. I am thinking about the new interviews for the fall, the direction I want to go in. There is so much in the self help world that I disagree with and find harmful. I have gone deep enough into it that I sometimes want to just scream and yell at some of these people I come across! For God's sake go get yourself a Ben and Jerry's ice cream cone and quit thinking you can control your reality and everyone else's!!! hahah

But seriously, everyone on my show has been wonderful. I wouldn't have featured them if I didn't think so. My show is about possibilities, but its also keeping the stuff REAL.!! Sometimes people take things so seriously. Like this girl at the health food store the other day who was lecturing the person at the juice bar on how they cannot let the fresh wheatgrass sit out for longer than 20 minutes or it would turn bad. Ok, yeah it's better fresh. But It wasn't just what she said, it was her voice. I think she needs to hang with Nora Ephron. That woman's sarcasm just makes my day! (She wrote When Harry Met Sally).

Well, I am pretty HOT right now. So I have to end this rant. Final words.... I am learning that the things we want to change about ourselves are usually motivated more by love than hate. Yes?

So whatever it is, your body, your weight, an illness, your job, your self, a relationship with someone close to you- see what happens if you start with loving the thing you "hate." (This does not apply to abusive relationship situations. Those, you need to get out of).

But for other situations like the ones I mentioned, see where that love creates an opening and where that leads. Hate usually closes doors. Love will open them.

Love is opening me. I don't know what they will look like, because there is no guarantee of physical healing. But it also might happen. Maybe my focus needs to be more on that love than on the form it takes in the outer world.

jo

Photo copyright www.solspitz.com

I am lying on my bed right now. The sheets are in the dryer. My bedroom window is open. Is there anything more wonderful than a gentle summer breeze? Tree branches sway in the wind, and the fresh air circles in. The crows are whining. The seagulls are debating, and the red swallows are having a discussion. I smell the scent of the pine trees and my wind chimes are playing music.

I have been playing music too, just a different kind.

In the wind I hear notes of longing for what could be, the me I miss and the me I want to become. I hear notes of regret for some of what was, long ago.

I hear hope for healing and fear of death, I hear doubt and courage, perseverance. I look for things lost. I find new strength. I worry, and then I let go. Fever, exhaustion, sinking into it.

I feel as if I am falling apart. Slipping in between the shadows and the light. Weaving in and out.

I walk this path. I honestly don't know anymore- what is more real, my waking world or my dream world?

Yesterday I discovered a labyrinth in a hidden garden, surrounded by flowers and cemetery head stones from the late 1700s and early 1800s. I walked the labyrinth slowly, like a prayer.

I will bloom where I am planted.

photo c jo davidson "...Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need For this bright morning dawning for you. History, despite its wrenching pain, Cannot be unlived, but if faced With courage, need not be lived again. Lift up your eyes Upon this day breaking for you. Give birth again To the dream." -Maya Angelou

The Picture

The picture is getting blurry

The rain has drenched the former image of her and the ink has bled into itself

She no longer recognizes her life and its corners and edges

Who is she now?

She is the rain blowing sideways through the misty grey covered clouds

The seagull's flight

The rose dripping under the water's weight

And the reed bending back in order not to break.

She is on the ride of a great storm

One moment the wave is an orgasm, a bliss, and then by afternoon it blows away evaporating into the wind's low alto hum

A fever and a wild downpour

She sits on the broken rocks and waits for what is to come....

Or as May Sarton says, "It is not so much trying to keep alive

As trying to keep from blowing apart..."

- jo davidson

I just went out for a very slooooooooooow bike ride. It was nice, although now I feel more tired. It still amazes me that I am living somewhere where I can actually hear the sounds of nature. Where the only sirens I hear are when I am watching "Law & Order." It is strange to me. I mean I spent 9 years in downtown NYC! But this is great even if it feels strange. I mean, how cool to look outside and see water and boats and hear birds. What planet am I on?

The waves are gorgeous right now and the sun is sparkling like little dancing crystals on the the water. I wish I had a sailboat or even a motorboat!

As I was riding my bike, I came across two baby bunnies crossing the road. Brake for bunnies. Beraaaaake for BUNNIES My new mantra.

It's better than "HEY YOU get the hell off of my roof!!! " (I am not making that up).

I found out that Matthew Perry was just sleeping a few doors down from me at an unadvertised location while he was filming a new movie/ show elsewhere in the area. I can't believe it. After all my moaning about STUDIO 60 ending, I would have loved to meet him. That was such an amazing show. Maybe we could have even made baby bunnies together..... Um, well, I am married. So no, I suppose not. Yeah NOT. But I still would have loved to meet him. I miss that show.

I gathered some flowers I found here and there. Aren't they pretty? Humor me.

Someone asked what's the latest on my treatment. I will try not to talk about it all the time, because I have a feeling this is a long road. And If I report on every stop sign, detour and dead end, I am bound to scare just a few people.

But I stopped the DOXY for lyme because my side effects were getting pretty rough. Minor things such as not breathing.

Trying to figure out how to treat this. If it were not mixed in with CFIDS, it would be very easy, or rather, easier.

Before my bike ride, I watched the entire video that I wrote the link to in my previous blog. It is GREAT. Reminded me of so many things I have done in the past at different points, but am not doing now. Me, little miss type A wants a PROGRAM, a PLAN. I think I am going to see if I can go vegetarian again just for one week. That's major for me. I eat alot of meat. I did the vegan thing for 5 straight month a few years ago. Pros and cons. But I think my body might need a break now. Seriously though, check this video out. It has amazing health info on it which I have studied and done at various points. Now it is time to put it all together.

Have a good one, and if you are reading this, thanks for keeping up with me and my rambling poetry, photos and what not.

j

When you are completely fogged in and cannot see past the circumstances of this moment, close your eyes and Trust...

...watch the sunset with me tonite.... the difference between these two pictures (this and my last post) is how things can change in an instant remember that if/when you ever feel like things are hopeless... (I am preaching to myself)

The Moon and Me

Tonite I had a talk with the moon. I told her that I hate how I look when I am covered in clouds.

She told me that she has different sides of her too, "and anyway, people usually see what they want to see."

She slid into the night clouds and shadows like she was slipping into a silky nightgown. I watched her disappear. When she came back, she was in a playful mood. She told me I was beautiful. She said, "You are seductive, and intriguing." Then she added, "You stimulate, you sharpen, you seduce, you kill, you penetrate, you touch, you provide enigmas and intrigues, an odd form of tantalizing, and much more............

I told her she had a way with words.

I asked her how she feels when she is behind clouds, or when she spends hours every day invisible to most people. I asked her how it felt to be invisible.

She told me that the darkness gets a bad rap. She said, How do you know that I am not secretly making love to the stars when noone can see us?" Then she winked.

I was jealous. I loved the idea of touching a star, twinkling with it in a mysterious dance, veiled and unveiled.

She became thoughtful, and she said, "I am still who I am even when you cannot see me. Just as the stars still shine even when nobody can see them shining. It is not being noticed that makes us beautiful. It is beauty that makes us beautiful."

I suddenly felt sad. How sad to be beautiful and not appreciated! She sensed my feelings, and said, "Think of how sad the creator of the universe feels when everyday her masterpieces go unnoticed! All of the gorgeous sunrises and sunsets she paints, the plants, the sea, the earth and sky, the mountains and forests, the miracle of birth and death and living...Think how the great creator must feel- giving the show of the universe and yet people are busy on cell phones and computers and in their lives, whining and complaining and worrying. They are missing it! Each painting comes only once, and every one is numbered, a limited edition! When will they stop and gasp in wonder at what surrounds them?"

I decided she was not only beautiful, but smart.

Then I was thinking about what she said. How does the creator respond to our neglect but to keep creating. I doubt I could do so without a few grudges along the way. I want to be wise, but so often fail to do be what I want to be.

I decided to start noticing all the beauty around me. To not take the show for granted. I felt better when I saw my place in things, and how small I am in this vast universe. It comforted me and reduced my problems from mountains into crumbs.

She saw that the darkness scared me. She told me never to fear darkness, for true beauty shines there. I had not thought of that.

I could not take my eyes off of her. I took her picture about 200 times while she posed. She had so many looks! She was a chameleon changing form, mood, color, in the blink of an eye. She drew me in, and I loved never knowing what to expect.

Her reflection bounced off of the water, and I fell in love with her. She made me come alive.

She didn't tell me to feel anything in particular. She just said, "Feel."

Then she blew a kiss towards me, and the salty summer night air dropped it on my lips.

I could taste it.