Along the Learning Curve of Life: Recent Episodes
Dana Stovern
Candid Insights About Conscious Living -- authentic inspiration, natural beauty, deep mysticism, hints of irreverence, practical EQ --in these short podcast glimpses.
I feared Christmas this year because I knew the holiday was totally stripped down for me. I’d have no family or gathering to be with because of the divorce and the Omicron variant of COVID, limiting connection. There was no room to decorate a tree in my tiny space. I was also feeling the blah-humbug of the formality of gifting, which wasn’t a requirement for me this year. And trying to formulate how I’d cook for myself for Christmas, a special meal? Hmm. It felt like I was living in an involuntary boycott of Christmas, which did give me a certain kind of relief, even while a hollow feeling settled in the center of me . . . Stovern's Along the Learning Curve of Life collection and the full text of this piece is at www.danastovern.com
When my Spirit Team came walking to methrough the Eastern hills of Washington state,calling me to forgive Godthrough the fields and tan ridge-linesthat cut across blue skies above,I cursed. I wailed.
They said, “Things will go a lot better for you if you do forgive him,and let go of control along the way.”
I was already driving to the God Squad Shopwhen this message landed.I was already doing what I’d been spiritually instructed to do.Wasn’t that enough?But no, I had to bring my pet peeve of forgiveness and allowingalong for the ride.That was too much . . .Stovern's Learning Curvecollection and the full text of this piece is as www.danastovern.com
This offering is part of a greater e-boutique workshop package about Embodied Boundaries at my e-commerce site: https://the-magic-of-somatic-money.mybigcommerce.com/
I used to live in a beautiful, brand-new townhome overlooking the Selah, Washington river valley. There were sweeping blue skies with regular angel-wing clouds in our vista. Ridges embraced both sides of the valley like mountains. The Yakima River easily grooved below. It was pretty much a dream spot . . . as long as I could overlook the barrage of construction, incessant village traffic, socially unintelligent text messages from the property management company AND the commercial sized garbage dumpster beside my unit. Today, the story is about that garbage dumpster because me and that dumpster had a "relationship" . . .
If you traced the lines of river water and irrigation water flowing out of the mountains in all the places I’ve lived, you’d be able to infer much more about my life than most. I believe I’ve spent more time beside this flowing water than I have with people, learning about the sounds, the smells, the sights of the seasonal flow of water and all that goes with it. It takes time to come into the fold of this knowledge, but once you have it, it never leaves your skin, your nostrils, your ears, your line of sight. This is a knowing that comes of practiced walking in these places over decades. And on one summer day, all the walks of my life along these water lines met in one nostalgic tide-pool of time, held up for me to see in the dance of the dragonfly. Stovern's Learning Curve collection and the full text of this piece is as www.danastovern.com
In the middle of my first marriage, I cracked a lower back molar. At the time, I did not know that the stress of my life and being with an abusive partner were causing me to grind my teeth at night, putting my ivories at significant risk. Many mornings, I woke with achy jaw joints, not understanding why, until a dentist pinpointed the issue as he mitigated the tooth with a root canal and capped the molar with an expensive gold crown. Full text version is at www.danastovern.com.
I was living full-tilt through the meltdown of my life with a divorce, house sale, and move. My life had dramatically shifted from the COVID-19 hermit inertia of two years to everything blowing apart at the seams. In the middle of the daily swirls, I began dreaming of the “freshie” that my new living space could be . . . somewhere, out there on the horizon. To help keep that dream alive, I allowed myself the luxury of browsing for “freshie” new sheets on Amazon, because nothing says a fresh start like fresh sheets.
Full text version is at www.danastovern.com.
The magnetic power coursing through mountain ranges will change you, especially above ten thousand feet. But this isn’t necessarily what people talk about when they visit and drive through the Colorado Rockies, soaking up one of the greatest collections of fourteeners (mountains with elevations above fourteen thousand feet) in the country. Instead, visitors will usually talk about the magnificent feeling of the spectacular views without understanding the trend of energies right beneath their feet . . .
Full text version is at www.danastovern.com
Even though I’m living in a bit of insanity, or the hell of my mess, or the miracle of my life changes, depending on what kind of morning I wake up to, the irony of my surrounding environment is not lost on me.
Halfway through this week, as I tried to focus in my office on rebuilding and relaunching my business, I was abruptly interrupted by loud metal-to-earth scrapings and “KA-KA-KA-KA-KA-KUNKS!” and diesel engines throttling at the back of my townhome unit . . .
Full text version is at: www.danastovern.com
Sometimes, a cricket is a little messenger with something big to say about the tilt of life.
Everything about selling a house to break up a partnership and move is counterintuitive. To sell a house, you must clean what was once your home, like madly shining your shoes, burnishing all the corners you never bothered with before. Then, just as people show up, you must drive away; drive away like a strange Monty Python movie. Surreal . . .
About a year ago at this time, COVID-19 let air into the network of humanity’s water pipes woven throughout the global house, and a new rhythm sounded, kunk-kunk-kunk-kunk-kunk. Our homes shook with air in the pipes, echoing the change.
As this rattling looseness happened in the greater world, our little neighborhood churned with its own spring changes of wildlife . . . www.danastovern.com
The starling murmurations of autumn
sway in the sky-ward jazz waltz of their own self-thought,
letting us in on their artful movements if we listen,
if we breathe, if we sway with them.
A chance encounter that could have gone so wrong but didn’t: I was lucky tonight as the light waned on the western horizon behind me, the earth of the Uncompahgre rise heaving up to meet the night sky . . .
When my courageous act to purchase a Reiki Table from a fellow practitioner in the spring of 2011 lead to so much more.
In the autumn of 2017, a chance encounter with an elder cowboy in a Colorado Western Slope grocery store adjusted my perspective of the #MeToo movement.