The Giant Paws that broke the camel's back... it's sad but true.

Several months ago my soulmate dog (and I have loved all of my dogs, but Oliver was special) had a sudden passing. The last couple of weeks I decided a dog was out there for me.

I met dogs... Tiny Dog, with the world's biggest name, was a version of Oliver if he had been shrunken and lived on the streets for years. He was territorial and scared my kid, and she had to come first.

Then came Nala.

She was Oliver if he weighed three times what Oliver did. She was a great walker, loved car rides, gave me paws, and rolled over for tummy rubs. But she had trauma and couldn't handle being around other dogs.

Suddenly I was in the storm.

One daughter whose doggy daughter needed my protection, and another daughter who really wanted me to keep her. And Nala loved on me while I cried the entire night, knowing that this beautiful, sweet girl wasn't the right fit for our home.

In the midst of this, I'm dealing with another soulmate connection that I don't want to lose. And somehow these giant paws broke open everything I've been trying so hard to carry.

The grief of losing Oliver. The fear of losing another connection I love. The guilt of disappointing people I love. The ache of having love for this sweet girl.Nala who truly has done nothing wrong, and still knowing that love isn't always enough to make something work.

Maybe that's what finally broke the camel's back.

Not Nala.

Just too much love, too much loss, too much uncertainty, and a heart that has been trying very hard to hold all of it.

Sometimes the most loving choice still hurts.

And sometimes you cry all night because there isn't a choice that doesn't hurt someone, including you.

So today I'm letting myself be sad. I'm letting myself miss Oliver. I'm letting myself love Nala enough to admit that she needs a home where her needs can be met safely as I wait for the call to take her back to her foster family. And I'm reminding myself that letting go of something I love doesn't mean I didn't love it enough.

Sometimes, painfully, it means exactly the opposite. I pray for her to be loved and at a home that works for her and that she lives a beautiful,  long happy life. 

 You may have felt like life was spinning out of control. The Universe invited you here

 

I was looking at a piece of my art, thinking about the books I was working on. Sometimes I feel scattered, this morning was no different. It was as if pieces of me were in different time lines, and I couldn't figure out how to get from one to the other, or which one I wanted to be in. 

It brought me to the idea of the books. I have six chapters of the one and eight chapters of the other to complete. Fourteen is the connection to Temperance, or patience. It's also related to Sagittarius, and Sagi had definitely kept me learning what patience meant in my life the last year and a half. 

In 2025 before I truly started the deep work of my heart, I cretaed a Sacred Love Blueprint. This was to understand what I need to feel love, and where my boundaries were going to be placed. These are the ideas that I came up with: 

1. Emotional Safety - My Truth / Need: I feel safe when emotions are acknowledged, not minimized.

My Sacred Boundary: I will not stay in a space where I feel emotionally invisible.

2. Communication - My Truth / Need: I need clear, thoughtful, and regular communication without chasing.

My Sacred Boundary: I will not accept silence or vagueness as love.

3. Sensual Connection - My Truth / Need: I desire sensuality that comes from emotional depth, not performance.

My Sacred Boundary: I will not give my body without feeling emotionally held.

4. Shared Vision - My Truth / Need: I want to build toward shared intentions, not just chemistry.

My Sacred Boundary: I will not build fantasies on mixed signals.

5. Daily Presence - My Truth / Need: Daily check-ins or moments of presence help me feel connected.

My Sacred Boundary: I will not beg for time or feel like a disruption.

6. Spiritual Alignment  - My Truth / Need: I need someone open to spiritual conversations or reflection.

My Sacred Boundary: I will not collapse my beliefs or spiritual practices.

7. Personal Growth - My Truth / Need: I thrive in relationships where both partners seek growth.

My Sacred Boundary: I will not shrink to make someone else comfortable.

8. Family & Traditions - My Truth / Need: I crave family traditions, holidays, and warmth in a home.

My Sacred Boundary: I will not give up my dream of a connected family for comfort.

9. Conflict Repair - My Truth / Need: I need repair to happen with honesty, not withdrawal or shutdown.

My Sacred Boundary: I will not stay in unhealthy patterns just to avoid discomfort.

10. Freedom & Space - My Truth / Need: I need alone time and independence to process and reset emotionally.

My Sacred Boundary: I will not allow someone to control or question my need for space.

Throughout the last year and a half, I have been slowly given every one of these. Despite this I felt like I was in two different worlds. 

I looked at my painting and realized I wasn't scattered at all. I was seeing multiple threads of my own life at once. The woman writing two books. The woman learning patience. The woman who had written a blueprint for love. The woman still carrying old grief. I thought they were competing timelines. What if they were actually one mandala?

Temperance does not ask us to choose one vessel and discard the other. It asks us to become the one who can hold both.

Perhaps this is what Henōsis had been teaching me all along. Union wasn't asking me to choose between my past and my future, my wounds and my wisdom, my longing and my boundaries. It was asking me to become the place where they could finally meet.

My Sacred Love Blueprint wasn't really a checklist for another person. Reading it now, it feels more like a declaration of the relationship I was cultivating with myself. As those ten qualities became more established within me, it became possible to recognize and receive them from someone else. That makes the blueprint not just about finding love, it becomes another spiral in my own becoming.

This is where the transit sits today, in the August 8 portal. We are letting go of things, becoming others, and learning how powerful that is. 

 

Welcome back... that's the energy I feel this week. 

It has been awhile. The adjustment to my new life after uncoupling was quite interesting and intense. However, I think the world has felt the intensity all around us in different ways the last year or so. 

This ZOOM session on Saturday is about ROW.

Reality

Opportunity 

Wonder

We are entering a new year in terms of the Zodiac and now feels like a beautiful time to come into community and honor our wisdom within. 

As always there is no charge for the group, but you are welcome to contribute to help support the ZOOM costs. 

Register at

https://barbara-christensen.square.site/sacred-space

Inner children and messy humans welcome! 

Much love,

Barbara xx

 

After my online retreat experience and ancestral transmissions, this showed up on the camera, which has never happened before. The ancestors are here. 

Today as I listened to the ancestors, I felt called to create with a mixture of oil paints, water, and acrylics. I can see the ancestors awaiting (all origins of ancestral energy). 'Ancestors Awaiting' .. but also maybe there is a piece of this that is the ancestors arriving. 

The gifts they have given me is this connection to the planets (including Earth) and the star beings. When I really started connecting to this gift early in 2020, a shamanic gave me the gift of a journey. The meteorite was a specific mention in the Upper Realm, and this OOAK piece is an intentional piece to remember always that there is something deeper than the last 500 years, or 5 minutes, that I can connect to as an offering to the world and for myself. Through my writing, art and service, I hope this gift helps others see the ancestors looking at them from all directions, to feel a sense of belonging and understanding. 

The part if this diving into the Piscean frequency with all of you, for myself, is the balance of energies that had been presented almost as if to say that everything is within you, and you is the collective of all things. The Saturn-Neptune alignment in Aries (we are experiencing 0° now) marks a major 36-year shift defined by the tension between hope and reality, according to Richard Tarnas. This period typically triggers either widespread disillusionment as fantasies crumble, or the rare, disciplined effort required to turn utopian visions into concrete achievements. Visions becoming reality. Futures becoming Now.

Such a blessing to be a part of. I felt how we are all healing something even if that something is outside of our body, and the alchemy of togetherness is what Aries energy  ✨️ of something new. What can be...  if we allow the possibilities to arrive? Mars square Uranus today as well ... both sides of this Uranus-Neptune tuning fork of unlimited transmissions ... and Aries says to me, what change is possible is already here. Unbox the possibilities. 

The theme for me was remembering where we came from is also creating where we are going. This can come in many forms, but the greatest transmission of remembering can just be sitting with another through space, time, and even internet connection. 

 

Written April 16, 2024:


The car... my safe space taught to me as a toddler. My scary place taught to me as a tween. My freedom taught to me as an adult.

Sitting in the car outside of my daughter's school today because she was too tired to drive, talking to my counselor about my massive fatigue the last week from the trauma I have been processing seems sort of funny when you think about it.

This is my academic counselor. It was nice to talk to him about some of what I would like to do in the future. I am thinking I would at least in part like to work with people struggling with addictions. He says they will easily get me into an internship when that part of school happens.

🅃🅁🄸🄶🄶🄴🅁 🅆🄰🅁🄽🄸🄽🄶 🄸🄵 🅈🄾🅄 🄲🄾🄽🅃🄸🄽🅄🄴:
⚠️⚠️⚠️


I don't know what counseling will look like. Gratefully I have a lot of years to address my own healing before then. I am aware, though, that I will likely never be fully healed, and am working towards managing my nervous system and the way it impacts my day to day.

I never realized how broken I was, and yes having fractures in your psyche is a state of being broken apart. Parts of yourself that you can ask to return. Not all parts will .. and integration is a b%&@

I have a complex trauma disorder now diagnosed as Complex PTSD, that I learned at a very young age to mask. My mother, who I still love, is emotionally unavailable, and wasn't a great mother beyond paying the basic bills. I may also be somewhere on the spectrum according to my daughter and her friends. (Would you like to know a fun fact about your microbiota?) I went through a long childhood of ACEs and then was in relationships that normalized punching holes in the walls, breaking things, hitting animals, amd berating and belittling me, slowly breaking me away from friends and family until I was almost completely isolated. I went through periods of deep depression and long periods where I couldn't even work. It wasn't until this year that I have been able to recognize when I become emotionally numb, and when I disassociate and go full on autopilot.

Having kids in my life (all the kids) saved me. It gave me purpose and a reason to have to connect with other humans in a way that I had been unable to do before. Playdates and birthday parties became getaways. Mommy friends became safe spaces. The orchestratas, field trips and PTSA meetings became the things I loved to complain about and yet was so grateful to have. As I got older I had a nice home, and my child was funny and happy, and we vacationed and had family visits, and my social sharing looked beautiful.

What people didn't know is that from age 5, myself and my siblings were left without parents for days at a time. When I was 10 I became the caregiver of the house buying groceries at the Food 4 Less. I was bring beaten by an older sibling until I broke his nose on my 16th birthday and moved into my friend's house for the rest of my junior year. My mom invited my boyfriend of two weeks to move in with us at age 17. Before age 20 I had experienced every ACE.

I had a late term miscarriage and my partner went right back to work and never talked about it again. This was my third lost pregnancy. I went into pre-term labor with my daughter at 30 weeks and was at the hospital three times before being on bedrest the last month. We always joke about how the nurse asked if there was violence in the home as I now know she must have realized something as she moved between us before asking... but I thought if you aren't being hit, it can't still be called violence. My childhood is what I thought violence was. I spent my birthday that year uber pregnant in bed, alone, with no one. I received less that half a dozen gifts for any occasion my entire marriage. This last Vslentine's Day I finallly admitted to that sadness of not being celebrated in love ... Not ever.

I learned to "take care of myself". Even rigging the $500 VW Bug I found with a 1970s chair cushion back to drive was a less on in taking care of myself... And the tiny people who were scared of the holes in the floorboards. I had multiple other pregnancy losses, so of course I am blessed that while others never had a full pregnancy, I did and am grateful. She is my breathe. But also love the kids I practiced with.

Yet, when my daughter couldn't breathe at 18 months old it was myself alone that drove her to the ER... yes alone. It was me that started sleeping in her bed when she had panic attacks at age two, and rubbing her belly and feet because of her pain and crying due to what was finally diagnosed as cEDS this year (which we both have). I finally understand what she was dealing with.

Marriage was a repeat of my early childhood, and with no iron stores, chronic pain, and walking on eggshells to keep the peace I lived to escape into mommyhood, science and fantasy. I fully understand the Russian roulette of "if I eat this allergy item, will the ride end." The last ride was Feb 2020 while I was isolated at home, being ignored, and feeling guilty for letting my child see me drunk after I fell of the wagon, again. I was gutted for drinking a half a bottle of rum. I had to self epi twice that night.... imagine if that had gone differently and my child had woke up to no mom with her dad in India and all other relatives many states away. IATA.

And then the pandemic began awful ... I was trapped in a house with a volatile adult and a sad kid. When I did take her anywhere I would either trauma-vomit on people or go sit in my car to decompress, which is a sign that people don't understand (Sorry for those that experienced that over the years).If you've bought my books, know writing was what kept me going through all of that constant state of cortisol. Those books were safe bubbles of sanctuary.

Why am I sharing this??


How long have you known me?

I smile, a lot. I am helpful. I love people. I joke. I laugh. I listen well. I don't ask for much, and in fact almost never ask for anything. I must have a great family being married for so many decades, and such a wonderful kid. I share personal details of my life (but ... wellness related 99% of the time). So I must be okay.

Uh ... guess what??

You never know what someone is dealing with, or what they've been through. You never know when someone is thinking the things that we don't like to talk about. You never know because someone with such deeply conflicted emotions who has believed that they are wrong and that they don't matter... they aren't going to show anyone the crack in that armor. If you know someone that is always "fine" and never asks for anything ... that's not actually a normal thing. Don't seek to be stronger like they are. They aren't actually strong at all, and in one moment you could lose that person because they honestly don't know how to ask. You have to push.

I am four years outside, in the midst of trauma therapy, and seven years into a massive healing cycle. I am so much better at reaching out and asking for support, but it's still limited. I don't often text first, or call, or do more than like a post, because I am still coming out of the shell. I don't know who I am, and I am learning how to feel safe in a world where I show my feelings. If I don't reach out it is because I have been conditioned to remain isolated. If I don't post for a week I am most likely in bed, overwhelmed by my process and my fatigue.

The Universe sent me shamans when I was ready to start seeking outside of myself to the shadows I couldn't see. Amazing blessing to have that show up one day out of nowhere. I am also lucky enough that the angels sent me a therapist who, due to my situation, saw me pro-bono for most of that time. If not for the shamanuc support group I wouldn't have made it through the pandemic. If not for my therapist I would not have made it through the last four years. I recognize that I am a lucky one. God continued through my life to put purpose in front of me in the form of every single one of you that has ever asked for help. Due to each of those moments you showed up needing me, I am actually still here. Your ability to ask for help from the person who can't ask for help ... ironically saved me.

Keep asking. But also look for those that don't ask, don't reach out, are isolated, and ask them : How are you? If they say, "fine" ... keep asking until they speak the truth.

There is a theory called “Structural Dissociation.” It proposes that individuals with complex trauma (c-PTSD) are characterized by a division of their personality into different prototypical parts, each with its own psychobiological underpinnings. The theory says that the parts are divided into apparently normal parts (ANPs) for adaptation to daily living and two or more emotional parts (EPs) fixated in the traumatic experience. The person with C-PTSD has a “manager” that deals with life as usual without even notice how difficult it is to live with a nervous system that is always forcing this high-functioning system.

Truthfully... almost none of you know "me". You know my "manager." I don't know me either. I hope over time more of "me" the integrated whole person will show up and spend time with you. Lets hope and dream together.

As we approach what my friend calls, Love One Another Day,  I know how many struggles people and their hearts are having. I feel that we're on the brink.... have you walked away from the past? What was said? My heart heard the following:

The beginning of the end... 

Today I walked away for the last time. I'll never see you again. I'll never have that safe space again. The space where I was able to say everything that I had never told another soul. Much of which, I may never tell another soul. I had to leave that safety behind, and the grief is unimaginable. 

The tears stung my face as I walked back to my car, wondering if you had watched me leave like you had watched me arrive that day. I had known, deep within myself that this transition was a part of the path ... and maybe even what was needed was to let me go. You knew what I needed clarified, and you gave it to me. I had known all along, 

I am an intuitive, and I can see what the elephant in the room was all about. But Spirit also shared with me that karma is realistic and those whom take for there own fruition without concern for the people the are harming, do not get to come out unscathed. Pain when karma cuts slices on both sides, you see.

I know that this end of  the year of the Snake, offers all an unwinding...  is it for the benefit of the Collective? What is the sacrifice,  and what will be the reward? 

Maybe this offers an ability to feel all of these feelings ... the ones you could never feel before? Perhaps the ability to be seen, and heard, or heard and forgotten?? 

What is provisional energy?? Some have never had that. That ... is ... the beautiful place the energy wants to share. The heart of all of this is arriving somewhere. 

This season we are being taught what will serve us once we are ready to do this work. Because Gods know that doors that close don't always stay closed, and that is part of this knowing. Ending???? It was a falsehood in many ways, outside of the energy of humanity.