You are getting very sleepy.

You might remember, I’m not an astrologist but I do like to look at things from lots of different perspectives. It can be helpful to observe life from a cellular level and then all the way out to the ethers. Here’s a snapshot of how you might want to see today’s universal weather.

The moon might be conjuncting Mars and Neptune in Pisces as I write. No matter what, it’s happening. This alongside a slew of planets already retrograde makes clarity a scarce commodity. Wasn’t it Ann Lennox of the Eurythmics who sang, “Sweet dreams are made of cheese.” That’s right, right?

Right now the only thing clear is that communication is messy. This way one moment and that way the next. Whether it’s yourself or others you’re in communication with it’s easy to misunderstand and be misunderstood. Moving forward is in circles. Patience is required. Mind the brainwashing that can come with such polarities.

So why not wake up and smell the roses. Nothing too progressive is happening. Whatever fire is before you, it’s likely been burning like this for a bit. It has its own intelligence now. It’s not yielding. Another way said, it’ll do what it wants. Take the weekend to get away while attending to the party. Whatever that means. How ever that can happen. Weeding, organizing a closet, a walk in the park of solidarity. You see what I mean. Whatever you do, do it with equanimity. Bring balance to the circular progression by staying awake in and enlivened to your life.
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In the midst of what you see as problematic, it can be difficult to recognize the opportunities. I can help you discover a new way of thinking that will assist you in managing and negotiating life’s obstacles. You will find that this new way of thinking provides you opportunities that you hadn’t previously noticed as well as affords you the confidence and desire to live your life in the driver’s seat.

Tami Satterfield, MSW, LCSW-C, NBCCH, HTP is a licensed psychotherapist who practices solution-oriented healing from a deep ecological perspective. Her specialities include hypnosis for anxiety, performance, and creativity. Sessions on-line or in Boulder, Colorado include cutting edge brain therapies that will change the way you think. Learn more at attentiontoliving.com

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Dragging it out

credit Saatchi art https://www.saatchiart.com/print/Painting-Spring-Chicken-which-came-first/624423/1939461/view

I am tired

Tied to death like this.

A lame pair

Roped in a three-legged race.

What a bother an April picnic is—

Spoon-feeding me desire.

 

But I’m no spring chicken.

Dashing off.

Foolhardy.

Frantic flapping,

Outstretched neck,

Biddy-skin.

 

A shabby hen against the odds.

Imprudent, clawing toward the finish line.

And still,

The gravity of my situation only perpetuating my inevitable trajectory.

Every April, always dragging it out.

Tami Satterfield practices solution-oriented healing from a deep ecological perspective. Her specialities include hypnosis for anxiety, performance, and creativity. Sessions on-line or in Boulder, Colorado include cutting edge brain therapies that will change the way you think. Learn more at attentiontoliving.com

Birthday poem 2019

 

Haunted

I’ve learned
The distraction of aging.
The downward
Pull.
Centrifugal spiraling
Towards things lost,
Things gone.

A day as good as summer.
The garden tractor idling,
The tall timothy guarding the still colt
Laid out
Bagged in the cloudy sac.
This nearly transparent film reeling from a lofty museum
Too beautiful for reason.

Grey lids drawn closed over her eyeball’s glint,
Lashes like spiders.
Nose dark as a drum beat
If not for the spot pink as a ham.
Her baby legs bent,
Graceful runners cupped in soft bone colored boots,
Perfectly preserved in the milky dream between us.

Me,
Standing at the edge of the map,
Shading my eyes against the light.
Beholding silence
Save the white sheets
Crisp as starched ghosts
Snapping against time.

Everything that runs wants to.

April 15, 2018
For My Birthday

artwork by Haenuli

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In the midst of what you see as problematic, it can be difficult to recognize the opportunities. I can help you discover a new way of thinking that will assist you in managing and negotiating life’s obstacles. You will find that this new way of thinking provides you opportunities that you hadn’t previously noticed as well as affords you the confidence and desire to live your life in the driver’s seat.

Tami Satterfield, MSW, LCSW-C, NBCCH, HTP is a licensed psychotherapist who practices solution-oriented healing from a deep ecological perspective. Her specialities include hypnosis for anxiety, performance, and creativity. Sessions on-line or in Boulder, Colorado include cutting edge brain therapies that will change the way you think. Learn more at attentiontoliving.com

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Lover’s Point

Sharp and wet scents,

Perishing parts.

A carnage of puce seaweed

Piled like bloodied bodies.

Strewn wreckage,

Claret and rubbery tubular bobs,

Something’s spectacular innards.

 

It was the nature of dreams and loneliness.

Intimate,

Like a domestic incident.

We climb down through the remnant

Into the cove,

Venture the beginnings of what once birthed us,

Attracted to our own demise.

 

Things washed ashore,

Torn from the black, wet womb of our Mother,

Now adrift,

Lost from their meaningful beginnings.

Gifts from the sea,

Miscarriages of trust,

The aftermath of some nativity.

 

Still, we fancy ourselves seafaring,

Fisher people in a marine sanctuary.

Balanced on our haunches

Praying.

Alien to our own saline beginnings.

Daft and forgetful

To the salty brine that once delivered us.

 

Now, with curious hands and big feet,

Two clumsy bipeds.

We spend our time,

Backs up to the Pacific grove,

Nestled in,

Peering into the crystal-clear Peninsula pools,

Algae lined with goose neck barnacles and mussel beds.

 

Where the moon-pulled waters washed up

Imagined love interests.

White conical limpets clinging tightly to rocks.

Quilled abalone feasting on kelp.

Spiny globular hedgehogs,

Blind and purple,

Exposed in the low tide.

 

We have done this before,

You and I,

Together.  Careful pirates, scavengers

Ransacking for booty,

Coupling our attention and journeying like sailors.

Explorers of exotic places:

Christmas tree farms, used book stores, Nordstrom rack.

 

“Look!  Over here, another and another!”

Your hand descends into the glass world.

Your triumphant call hastens me.

A slippery crag, my ankle lags

Late, turning slowly behind my foot.

Shoes cursed for failing to fit like feet,

Now puddled in a world of moving parts.

 

What right,

We insert ourselves into another’s nature?

Black eyed peas mobilize across spongy, maroon carpets.

Mushroom capped shapes of sage and lavender.

Terrestrial flowers,

Mopped with tentacles instead of petals,

Graceful, like troops of ballerinas.

 

I hobble full of desire.

Your hand flat as a coin.

The generous invertebrate slowly sweeps

Its spinney underside against your palm.

A golden star.

Tangerine,

Like the setting sun.

 

You offer me the celebrated.

I am not the least suppliant.

My arrogant pincers

Plucking against its resistance.

Snap, you picture me,

My brush with stardom.

I am made special by association, elevated in my own regard.

 

In the distance, a buoy gongs.

A bell tolls announcing another majestic show —

The deliberate departure.

We scramble to spectate on shore.

The blazing bittersweet disc

Slipping behind the edge of our world.

Leaving us in the pink, and tucking the sea’s life back in to Mother’s fold.

 

Poem by Tami Boehle-Satterfield, November 25, 2017

Artwork by Maria Draper

 

Watch out for talking dogs in a snow storm

I have been up since three am shaking the trees. I set my alarm based on the forecast and when it went off I turned on the outside light hoping against the odds that it wouldn’t be true, but it was.

Big, wet flakes were pouring from the night sky. I wanted to be frantic, after all what kind of a world do I live in where it snows on my gorgeous purple Foxglove – testing their spines for endurance, or the giant peony beginning to splay over, what about the hosta and don’t even talk to me about the brand new Japanese Maple with its fragile new leaves. I was off to the races.

What a cruel, cruel world. And there I was, out in it. Wet, heavy snow demanding that everything bend to its ruling. Headlight over the top of my hat, donned in a sweater and rain coat, the poor choice of snow boots when rain boots were for the job. Forget about gloves, my fingers are now worthless. Get the picture. This is still going on at 10 am, out every hour shaking off the threat.

It is not so much that it is snowing, it never lasts long here and it is pretty. It is more that it is not what I thought would happen and even knowing that it might happen, I didn’t really know what I could do about it. I felt helpless against the odds.

There is an ABUNDANCE of that out there right now: helpless against the odds. You don’t need me telling you that. We all know, and we are all tired of the reminder that there is no control. I got the memo, you got the memo, but still it bears reminders.  I can control nothing. I never could and I never will. It is impossible. Physics won’t allow for it. NO CONTROL, only influence.

The good thing about influence is that it is more powerful then control because it endures. Those staked garbage bags over my Foxglove? They are working with me to keep those stunning flowers healthy, and I am working with them by shaking off the snow they are keeping out so together we can keep on protecting my flowers. I, in collaboration with those bags, the snow, and the foxglove, am influencing a different outcome.

The opposition between Venus and Jupiter is big. There is good potential for magnifying the importance of things, letting things get blown out of proportion. If needed, re-read the first paragraph. Be mindful to that which you set an alarm. You don’t have to be alarmed and you don’t have to make it alarming. Do what you want. Create the life you want to live.

Pluto in Capricorn is squaring the opposition between Venus and Jupiter. This can likely incite the manipulative tactic of he said, she said, the dog said. This kind of communication is fraught with hostility, aggression and, I am sad to say – meant to harm.

Be mindful. Stay grounded. Remember what you want. Act in your best interest. See what happens that you like and can build on. Me? I am looking forward to seeing those wonderful Foxglove after the snow.

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In the midst of what you see as problematic, it can be difficult to recognize the opportunities. I can help you discover a new way of thinking that will assist you in managing and negotiating life’s obstacles. You will find that this new way of thinking provides you opportunities that you hadn’t previously noticed as well as affords you the confidence and desire to live your life in the driver’s seat.

Tami Satterfield, MSW, LCSW-C, NBCCH, HTP is a licensed psychotherapist who practices solution-oriented healing from a deep ecological perspective. Her specialities include hypnosis for anxiety, performance, and creativity. Sessions on-line or in Boulder, Colorado include cutting edge brain therapies that will change the way you think. Learn more at attentiontoliving.com

Beware the hive mind, but still, the Borgs might be right about one thing.

We have been operating with a stellium in Pisces that has shifted into Aries. Capricorn, Libra, Cancer, and Aries are all involved, or in other words, the Cardinal signs. The cardinal signs are leaders that like to get things done, NOW!

Capricorn is ruled by Saturn and exalted by Mars. Libra is ruled by Venus and exalted by Saturn. Cancer is ruled by the Moon and exalted by Jupiter. Aries is ruled by Mars and exalted in Capricorn. This is an abundance of energy to support change as we approach and move through the upcoming Moon cycle. You can bet your sweet bottom dollar that some will fight this.

Use this energy like the spring wind it is and clear out the old. This might be the time of throwing out old associations that are like those stray socks.  You already know to that which I am referring.  You saw a picture of exactly that vibration in your mind’s eys as you read my words. You know, those vibrations, the ones that you just don’t pair well with any longer.

Set them free to find mates that better suit them and let go of your silly sense of responsibility to be “nice.” What is “nice” about keeping a vibration around around only because it has been around a long time. How is that helpful?  Use it or loose it.  Be honest with yourself, because if you are not, that stiff spring breeze is going to blow right through you and you might end up looking silly, like the Emperor in his new clothes. You might think it is a little early for the silly season, but the climate is changing.

March 27 marches in the New Moon in Aries. Saturn, that masterminded task master master, yes I meant to say master 3 times, is involved so prepare before getting started. It is spring right?  Tend to the preparation before planting.  Check out your child-like ideas that might disable a more mature understanding of how to work smart. Practice patience, pay attention, and thoughtful decide based on the inquiry, “Now, what do I want to do?” This powerful moon cycle has the potential to clear the dust and settle old scores, because under this aspect resistance is futile. Take this next Moon cycle to go deep into your stuff and clean out the attic, basement, and the garage!  And don’t miss the flowers popping up despite the hard Earth’s energy.

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In the midst of what you see as problematic, it can be difficult to recognize the opportunities. I can help you discover a new way of thinking that will assist you in managing and negotiating life’s obstacles. You will find that this new way of thinking provides you opportunities that you hadn’t previously noticed as well as affords you the confidence and desire to live your life in the driver’s seat.

Tami Satterfield, MSW, LCSW-C, NBCCH, HTP is a licensed psychotherapist who practices solution-oriented healing from a deep ecological perspective. Her specialities include hypnosis for anxiety, performance, and creativity. Sessions on-line or in Boulder, Colorado include cutting edge brain therapies that will change the way you think. Learn more at attentiontoliving.com

I am always never singular in a sea of possibilities

Artwork by Bill Sanderson, “Dna In All Living Things”

I am wishing to say one thing,
Incessantly telling another,
My faculties
Daft.
Am I slipping in my mind, forgetting
Or only now remembering?

What is that
Spilling over the earth’s edge?
A brilliant photon refracted,
Curled around a particle
Repeatedly
Illuminating The wave?

The wave!
Oh I, am zealot. A drumbeater forever
Preaching from a state of perpetual desire.
The wave! The wave!
No, not The wave! A wave.
A wave of utter realization.

Is all My life a mirror?
Is the world not dark,
Waiting blank like paper
My eternal mark, sparking the Big Bang?
Is it not forsaken,
Am I not marooned for your secret keeping?

Am I beginning?
Or only a dimming past?
Ghosting and milky,
One among a collection of shards —
A Broken sparkly
Looking glass.

You are not the moon
Towing me under again.
The clouds don’t know Me,
Dumbly,
Passing over Me.
Or is it Me, deaf?

No, I pray beneath my finely woven Hat,
Beached in defiance of the sun’s light,
Begging notice from the clouds.
A seagull
Crying
What about Me? Me? Me?

Headlong against an amniotic wave.
I am shelled in determination
Without Grace.
My feet claw for the sand.
When, just this morning
Did I become so crabby?

Generation after generation
Woven
Wrung out like a tight rope
Now unraveling,
Spilling a design.
Blood bursting through arduous veins.

Nerves on end, spidering outwards,
Grasping at sticky webs.
Thoughts spinning in circles,
Why, why, why?
Rorschach,
Instead of The perfectly replicated double helix chains.

i am me watching Me.
i am not a bottled message of chemicals
Reacting
As if
The Earth’s turning
Was an unforgiving mother shaking me loose.

Instead,
i am collected in
The smooth sand sound
Shifting from particle to wave,
Wave,
Wave.

I am a quantum entity.
Barely,
Hardly, to almost no degree,
A part of the equation,
And still
i am.

March 11, 2017

Kooky Stuff from 36,000 Feet

 

Artwork by T. Boehle “The moon’s gravitational force”

I am in a plane headed out to a place far enough away that the fastest means of transportation is the air. I going somewhere else to re-boot, relax, and literally get a new perspective. There was a time when doing such involved wee morning hours of cooking a fabulous picnic and loading up in a horse-powered buggy destined for the countryside.

It wasn’t easy getting here. The morning had an interesting start. The seemingly near Chinook winds kept me up most of the night, whipping in through the cat door. The flap of it flapping and papers blowing about our bedroom all night. It was spooky. In and out of sleep, the sounds reconciled in that half-wit state as haunted. In the morning I woke tired, fully awakened by an eight foot by four foot painting crashing off the wall, smashing its frame to smithereens. The bus to the airport made unexpected stops and at the airport my boarding pass wouldn’t scan so, despite my TSA-Pre standing, it was back to check-in again for a new pass. We raced through the airport and salvaged the plan of eating breakfast at Root Down by getting carry out for the plane, and arrived just in time to board when someone over the load speaker said our flight was delayed and hour and a half!

Hmm. My resources are low. I think of my kids, get out my phone and text them: “Flight delayed. Be safe. I love you.” I am tired and, honestly, the fitful night’s sleep provided the perfect backdrop for thinking about scary stuff despite the fact that there wasn’t really anything more scary then Colorado winds. But what about the painting? That is weird and, furthermore, that painting signified to me a deep understanding of myself, the universe, and me in the universe. And, really? The boarding pass doesn’t scan and then the plane has mechanical problems?

But I have done this before, gotten myself worked up about the secret meaning of things. There is a big difference between intuition and anxiety. Yes, it does seem my ability to get where I am going is slowed, and whenever the expected becomes the unexpected the cognitive brain sets about to solve the mystery, and usually from the worst-case scenario. All, of course, in an effort at self-preservation. And, ironically, the impetus for that can, and after years of practice, does bring my attention to the goodness in my life. The wind, stirring things up, relentless to not let lying dogs sleep. I love that fury and determination. The painting jumping off the wall and crashing straight to the floor like a declaration, “Remember there are no happy chances, only the infinite opportunity to create them.” The resistance met at getting to the gate, the delayed plane all reminders of three things:

1. There is no control. Control is an illusion.
2. Influence is the powerful force behind the smoke and mirrors of control.
3. Things aren’t always what they seem to be.

I will be on terra firma soon enough, and I trust I will have a deeply satisfying experience, because once I get out of my own fearful way I can see that I can always be heading in the direction of where I want to be. Where I am isn’t where I am headed; it is only from which I am starting.

The March 12th Full Moon in Virgo is pulling a lot of big pieces together and bringing them down to Earth. It is a good vibration for healing some stuff way out there in your past. Think about it this way, you can think about yourself or you can think about your self as a part the whole. This can be very enlightening. Mind getting spooked, trust that it is not always and might be nearly never about you alone. Find the value where you can, re-evaluate your route, and keep on keeping on.

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In the midst of what you see as problematic, it can be difficult to recognize the opportunities. I can help you discover a new way of thinking that will assist you in managing and negotiating life’s obstacles. You will find that this new way of thinking provides you opportunities that you hadn’t previously noticed as well as affords you the confidence and desire to live your life in the driver’s seat.

Tami Satterfield, MSW, LCSW-C, NBCCH, HTP is a licensed psychotherapist who practices solution-oriented healing from a deep ecological perspective. Her specialities include hypnosis for anxiety, performance, and creativity. Sessions on-line or in Boulder, Colorado include cutting edge brain therapies that will change the way you think. Learn more at attentiontoliving.com

Are you a pack mule?

I am retarded right now. Hold on, before my declarations gets your hackles up, hear me out. Retard: transitive verb meaning to slow up especially by preventing or hindering advance or accomplishment. But, you might say, as I did think, why use such a loaded word. Load: noun meaning something that weighs down the mind or spirits, a burdensome or laborious responsibility. No, this is not going to be vocabulary lesson, but right now it seems really important to be clear. I am using a word that burdens the mind and spirit and provides a burdensome responsibility because I want you to know that I am currently hindering my own advance and it is of my own doing.

Why would I do that? Well, first of all because I can, and second, because I am afraid. Yep, I am afraid, so I am gonna slow this train down and ride a donkey instead. Seemed like a good idea and it came quite natural to me; that tells me it is something I am good at. But I want to admit to you that when I first did it, I didn’t do it consciously.  It wasn’t until my world began to feel small and a little bit more than scary that I noticed what I had done. I had disconnected.

Yep, unplugged from the greater vibration that does in fact provide me with more information to resolve my internal and external dilemmas. Looking back on it, I can now see how I did it. Seriously robed in black, I stepped out of my chambers up onto my bench and began judging. I scoured the gallery with the eyes and nose of a vigilant rabbit on the lookout for crazy coyotes. And employed with such responsibility you can bet I began to spot them. Low and behold, it was like I was attracting them. That is when I started to think, “Hold on here, what is really going on? How come all I can see is danger? What happened to my peace of mind?”

I love donkeys. Those of you who know me well know that I tended for years a whole herd of those brilliant, kind, and stubborn creatures; but they aren’t the best for riding. So, I am climbing off and getting back on the bus. I am going to sit up front because I want to see where I am going, but right now I am not going to drive. I am going to take the opportunity to rest and remember how to trust in the greater good that, by the way, includes myself.

The Moon is in Mercury in Aquarius today. It may help the uncomfortable feelings from the tight thinking that you may have been expereinceing lately. It is a good time to see the ways you might be attached to the Venus, Mars, Uranus stellium in Aries that is causing fear to incite anger and judgment.  Now is the time because we have a Mercury in Pisces shift coming with the New Moon solar eclipse in Neptune. It is going get emotional.  So do yourself a favor and get ahead of the pack.  Detach from the anger and judgment and intentionally align with that which resonates with the goodness in you. Feel yourself.  Feel the truth of who you really are and not what you think you should be. That is a heavy load even for a pack mule.

Get unburdened. Bring your attention to the ways you are creating a heavy load. Take a look at the map and see where you WANT to go.  Get on the bus headed in that direction. Trust that you might be in good company and that it is safe to take a snooze. Once you are well rested, it is perfectly fine to take the wheel.

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In the midst of what you see as problematic, it can be difficult to recognize the opportunities. I can help you discover a new way of thinking that will assist you in managing and negotiating life’s obstacles. You will find that this new way of thinking provides you opportunities that you hadn’t previously noticed as well as affords you the confidence and desire to live your life in the driver’s seat.

Tami Satterfield, MSW, LCSW-C, NBCCH, HTP is a licensed psychotherapist who practices solution-oriented healing from a deep ecological perspective. Her specialities include hypnosis for anxiety, performance, and creativity. Sessions on-line or in Boulder, Colorado include cutting edge brain therapies that will change the way you think. Learn more at attentiontoliving.com

My Valentine

artwork “Lovers in the moonlight” by Marc Chagall

How many sentiments

Tender and soft-hearted

Fit on a sheet of red paper

Cleanly cut

After folded in two?

How many long and deliberate strides to shear out our hearts?

The crisp cardboard rasp

The blade sounding

Against the vellum

Yielding and permissive to measured cuts.

How many pecks between us these 12054 days?

Pink candied smooches

Boxed,

And blushed rosy

Our sweet discontent?

How many white moon faced nights

Did, by chance,

Round us up with scissored bodies and

Laced our swelling hearts

In fire and in fate?

Oh,

I can not say,

The numbered times did hands

Pen fancy whorls upon the naked breast

And finger ringlets of hair.

But alas,

I do reckon one white parcel

Knotted in fat, red yarn

That unwrapped

Such a child’s faith.

February 14, 2017