Pixie Lighthorse Blog | Folk Medicine

November 6, 2014

Green Light Go: The Story of My Name Change

Dearest friends,

This post has been a long time coming…since I hosted Sacred Voice with Raven, in fact, when we journeyed to ask for our Ancient Names. You know, the real ones that tell someone who you are in your heart. That boot camp brought many of us into our holy places where the truth could come bubbling up, and where it refused to be avoided. Our truths have been singing ever since.

For the last seventeen years, I have been a Campbell. It was a tough decision to make, to take his name, because my paternal family line is so strong and our family name means something in our communities. I took on my ex-husband’s last name in a gesture of us pioneering the world together. When I began to step out more publicly into said world, I’d been wearing his name long enough to show up as a Campbell. Camp-Bell. I sort of liked the idea of being the one to ring the bell and call everyone to camp for healing and safehousing for a spell.

When I stared down the logistics of divorce last year, I considered what it would be like to have a different name than my children. We talked, one balked. We worked it out. I considered what confusion it might cause in my communities-what would the sisters do if they googled me and couldn’t find me!? All manner of fears, ludicrous and legit, played out in my mind around this topic. Who would I be with a new name?

I prayed and journeyed for my name. I consulted with my guides and council. I said countless times during the process, “I don’t even know what my name is”, “I don’t know who I am.” Dramatizing the issue of my identity lasted a short time, thankfully, but giving energy to the process provided me the chance to go inside and learn what wanted to come forward and be with me until I become complete. It called me out to get married to myself.

This ordeal, and that’s what it’s been on many levels, an ordeal, an initiation into what’s next, found me inquiring about how to go forward from the pyre.

What came through was not to go back to my “maiden” name, but to honor where I came from on a more subterranean level, that which guides so much of who I show up as, and most importantly, why.

The Choctaw Lighthorse were the Tribal Police my grandfather was employed by in the late 1800’s, the appointed peacekeepers on the reservation. Sometimes things weren’t peaceful at all in this wild, frontier era, but the Lighthorsemen upheld their laws and formed a structure for the Five Civilized Nations. These laws were rooted in, essentially, the honor system. Lighthorse is the name I gave my little Libra boy when I sensed his immense connection to what is fair and good and right in this world. I wanted to flood his path with support from the ancestors. I wanted the masculine protectors to be with us, without having to embody them in full warrior regalia.

I had a talk with my beloved today about authenticity, the kind you learn to trust when people rip your stuff off. Hear me out. We were talking about what happens when someone appropriates your mojo and calls it their own, which has happened to both of us. I told him that I don’t worry about such things, because imitations never come across as authentic, they lack the soul that the originator sculpts into the work so effortlessly. He commented that I seem to operate on the honor system around things like this, and it’s true. Some of my fiercest lessons in life have been around allowing unbalanced people and situations to show up as who/what they really are, remain relatively neutral, and most often, watch them fall aways as quickly as they came in- restoring balance to my world without me getting my hands too dirty. Hence all the ease around boundaries, I suppose.

It’s probably our twinsie Libra-risings which helps us to relate on this…how balance always comes if we can patiently allow it to.

We don’t have to go to war-it doesn’t ever create balance. It usually just creates a more equal sense of imbalance. If one adjusts for imbalance, the result throws them off-kilter like a ship at sea. Everybody capsizes.

Justice, if you want to call it that, is always served on a higher level and I needn’t meddle much with natural order to trust that when one brings peace and light to the table, peace and light will prevail for them.

I have this theory about following the green lights. When it’s the right time to do the next right thing, the light will turn green. The way will be paved for passage. Our way is always being prepared for us a few steps ahead.

In one year, I dissolved a malfunctioning marriage, left two towns, rooted down at a ranch and a community school with my two unschooled cubs (in a place where we didn’t know a soul), AND came nose-to-nose with my now-significant partner relationship. I would not be here if the lights hadn’t been bright green, if the cosmos and all attendant guides hadn’t made it clear to me to giddy up (cowboy-speak for “make your move, already”).

I’ve been waiting for a particular light to turn, the one in which I share with you that I’m no longer a Campbell. The holy day of the ancestors is as green as it gets. They’re behind me, and I know you will be, too.

Love and clear passage for the radiant truth in each of you,

Pixie Lighthorse

October 4, 2014

Cornerstones of Soul Work: Honoring Your Life

tumblr_lud1joGF4g1qbqwc2o1_1280 When I work with women in SouLodge and all along my path, what I hear most is that they’re having interpersonal conflict: with their significant other, with their children, with their co-workers and bosses, with friends, exes. It can be very challenging to get started down your good road when you have baggage dragging behind you cluttering up your relationships. You can divine from the stars, cultivate radical compassion and acceptance, draw from card decks, throw the bones-none of it seems to help when relationships are in a state of imbalance.

The reason why I teach this boundaries stuff is because without them, you can’t be solid in your commitment to Spirit. The reason for this is because you are not yet solid in your commitment to yourself.

Setting limits and boundaries seems kind of like marking your territory, but what it really is about is HONORING YOUR LIFE.

We’re given this time on Earth to live our best lives to the best of our ability, with all of the information that we currently have, at any given moment. When Spirit is calling us to higher purpose and accountability, we want to say yes. Most of us have no choice but to say yes. Spirit is very difficult to say no to. When you set foot on an awakened path, you no longer have the resources or precious time to have relationships unraveling all around you.

Boundaries practice is exactly that: a practice of honoring your life. Putting yourself first so that others will put themselves first, and then you can help each other from a place of having vital energy with which to do so. Releasing expectations of others to know how not to violate your energies by preserving them in a sacred way. Calling in the able guides who will help you stay protected even when you aren’t thinking about it.

Image by Pamela Singh, Chipko Women Hug Tree to Protect it from Being Cut in Northern Uttar Pradesh, 1994

October 2, 2014

Does It Matter What Others Think of You?

Something that comes up in my circles regularly is the worry about what others are thinking about what you’re doing and how you’re living your life.

When does it matter what others think about you?

Maybe when your most intimate council of friends perceives that you’re acting from a hurt place and want to give you gentle feedback.

Maybe when the elders in your community want to advise or direct you based on what they have seen in you since you were a child.

Maybe when you truly are in danger of losing something precious.

I’m guessing here, based on personal experience and high-quality relationships. Answer for yourself and see if you can debunk your own myths.

I live a relatively independent lifestyle with little concern for what others think of how I’m parenting my children, how I look, show up in community, do my work, relate to Spirit, vote, etc. Not everyone cares to be so free-wheelin’, but what I realize in conversation with women is that most of their fears about what others think of them serve only to keep them small.

Self-conciousness is the opposite of confidence, and our culture seems to be obsessed with showing up in a way that will get them external validation. Why?

Because we’re starving for approval.

My theory on why this occurs is because we were reared during a time when it was considered very important to allow others’ perceptions about us be more important than our own, to the point of dissociating with our own ability to be satisfied and be “enough” for ourselves. Proving worth, climbing ladders, and showing off assets has sort of outlived its short-term usefulness, at least in my communities. What is here to take its place is confidence about the path you’re walking, and a willingness to walk it no matter what other people think or say about you. It requires strength and vulnerability, and a determination to protect your energy when you are walking your walk.

Detaching from other folks’ opinions of you creates room for your opinion of yourself, which has become lost in the chaos of what you think is expected of you. Your values rule when you can stand tall up on those beautiful hind quarters and spread your wings wide.

You are the queen of your realm.

And so it is.

October 1, 2014

One Way to Restore Balance

Boundaries are those lines in the sand no one is supposed to cross. When they get crossed and you lack the confident and fair language to put things right, and quickly, a chain reaction of emotional turmoil tends to ensue. Left untended, relationships become unbalanced and sometimes end. Often after a boundaries violation, we’re left feeling disrespected, which is common in a culture which has put too many things ahead of respect in terms of core values. The tricky part is that we also unwittingly cross others’ boundaries because of how we’ve been cultured.

When boundaries are crossed, we allow others into our personal and private space. It leads to a depletion of our energy, which is so precious in this busy, modern era. The dimension we exist in and the paths we’re walking ask a lot of us! It’s important to preserve what we can and have a plan for how to budget our energy in order to take care of our most basic emotional and spiritual needs.

Boundaries are guidelines for how we want to be respected/respectful, but they’re more than that. They represent how we identify ourselves on the inside, and in the context of the world around us.

What are your basic energy needs? How do you conserve them? Honor them? Leak them?

And here’s a curve ball: What happens when we set limits for ourselves and then cross them?

For one thing, we compromise our integrity, fall prey to our own shadow behaviors, lose confidence in ourselves to stick to our agreements- all which results in a de-pressing of what is true and authentic for us. We get stuck, and can’t find our compass within. It basically seems like all hell is breaking loose in our world. We’ve given our precious energies away and are stealing unknowingly from others. We wander aimlessly not knowing how to take care of ourselves and be an asset to ourselves, our families and the world.

In SouLodge Boot Camps, beautiful, fast-track community conversations take place about how to be, what to do, effective language to use, and how to restore balance to an unbalanced world.

Some healing of thoughts, ideas and childhood injuries usually occur. It starts with us, and we have to begin where we have the most information, which is right inside of our own lives! Fortunately, we have guides (RAWR! SSSssss! Awroooooo!) available to model new ways.

August 12, 2014

She Who Dares Wins

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Two days into working with Raven and I can already sense the fear in the group around what’s going to happen when the truth is spoken. I can sense it in me, too. I have learned many, many times that I cannot teach what I’m not learning. It’s pretty humbling to show up to the women who hire me to facilitate the SouLodge space with them while I’m doing my work right alongside them.

I think I’d be a hypocrite if I showed up to talk about reclaiming the Sacred Voice while I held my own truths back because of my fear of how they would land, or how they seemed to contradict the path I was on. There is something so terrifying about not knowing. The truth is that we know so little. Until we know.

It shakes us at the core and keeps us frozen in our tracks to anticipate saying the unsayable, voicing the risky business, casting our vote in a vulnerable way, making a choice to acknowledge and ask for what we want, because it could find us in a heap down in front of the dishwasher before the coffee has finished brewing.

The problem is that, if we don’t, a nagging What If takes up residence and blocks our flow. The chunk sits in our throats like dry charcoal. The never-knowing becomes a worse houseguest than fear, which is siphoning our life energy away by the day.

In the final analysis, it’s always better to be a fool than a silent invisible with a million unlived dreams and unspoken truths log-jammed in the craw. The taste of regret is chalky, and bitter.

The best we can do is cast our line with the Universe and then nestle down in the unknown and sing ourselves to sleep.

“And there’s a very special property in the trickster: he always breaks in, just as the unconscious does, to trip up the rational situation. He’s both a fool and someone who’s beyond the system. And the trickster represents all those possibilities of life that your mind hasn’t decided it wants to deal with. The mind structures a lifestyle, and the fool or trickster represents another whole range of possibilities. He doesn’t respect the values that you’ve set up for yourself, and smashes them. . . . The fool is the breakthrough of the absolute into the field of controlled social orders.”

Joseph Campbell

Graphic credit

June 19, 2014

Expanding My Frontier

This is a story of divine wo-manifestation, which will not likely be told to completion today, or perhaps for a long, long, time.

It’s kind of the story of the rest of my life.

For an unbelievable and intolerable amount of time, I’ve made myself and everyone around me crazy while I looked for home. High and low, east and west, in the country and in the city, near my dearest friends, and in the middle of nowhere… I’ve been on the prowl for over a decade at least — I might’ve lost count the year I stopped working for other people.

When you’re searching everywhere for home, no place will really satisfy you. You want home to have all the things that you need and nothing you don’t, including your own despicable and persistent habits.

The moment I’d think I’d landed on it, my mind began a mean game of fault-finding, and then pluck every good feather until there’d be nothing left to love. And then I’d temporarily hate myself for being harder to please than a widow.

When I came to Portland a year ago, it was with a giant piece of paper folded up and overstuffed into my journal, covered in magic marker with a mind map to SouLodge Ranch (working title) with no directions or compass whatsoever — just a big tipi in the middle of the page with bubbles around it indicating what I’d do when I found my way home scrawled inside of them.

My word for the year for 2013 was HOME and I was determined to find it in the Pacific Northwest, so I packed up and headed North. North is always true, right? That year turned over and gave way to MOTHER, my way of committing to radical self-nurturance in this beautiful place.

Part of the concept of self-nurture meant to embody my own motto: Know what you need and ask for what you want, the catch mantra of everything we do in SouLodge from day one three years ago. Why had it taken me this long to be specific? What was I waiting for?

The other part of it was to actively practice naming what I wanted and then surrendering it to the divine creatrix herself, my Mother and yours, Mama Earth. The key has been knowing enough information to feel solid when I call for it. I’m getting better at it.

It seems paradoxical to declare a thing so boldly, having worked up my nerve and all, just to let the chips fall where they may. However, this is the ONLY thing that has ever worked for me when I’m wanting to call something in. I have to step up to the altar, say *it* out loud, and then honor my duty of getting back to work while the cosmos sorts out the details.

I have to trust that my way is being prepared for me.

No easy feat… but worthwhile to note that I’ll have cabin and gate keys to 68 acres of ranch land in Central Oregon at the end of next week. This land has my heart, my soul — and I am her official caretaker.

I am to Mother her.

She is my Home.

May 26, 2014

Vulnerability Training: Mighty In One Hand, Gentle In the Other

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I love juxtaposition. Counterpoise. The Hanged Man theory. It allows me to delve deep into the nature of conflict…and forgive everything. To be human and divine, all at once.

Strength and vulnerability. Sunshine and rain. Black and white. Sacred and profane. Masculine and feminine. Pause and action.

Paradox gets my gears turning and inspiration flowing. As a painter, contrast is something I’m constantly working with and attempting to harmonize.

I’ve been working with the medicine of Deer since my awakening in 2003, particularly to balance the predatory nature found in Wolf, Mountain Lion, Bear and other Type-Apexes in my lineup of helpers. Every animal has a counter, usually it’s prey or predator. What’s most fascinating to me is that when each creature stands alone, we can find their softness, nurturing and also their fierceness. Deer’s antlers are like antennae which connect them to the clear messages of the heavenlies, while four hoofs keep them rooted to the ground. Earth and Sky.

This is important to carry with you when doing soul work because there will be two sides to every story living within you. There will be a curse, followed by a blessing. A wrong done to you, and the courage it took to stand up for yourself. A fragmented, lost piece, and the joyful recovery and re-integration of it. Blind spots and a-ha moments.

Deer balances the fierce work we do with Black Panther and Mountain Lion, and compliments our adventures with Fox and Rabbit.. It also stands alone quite nicely, regal creature that it is. Our adventures with the fierce ones sets the tone (in this case, the healing and the boundaries, respectively) for being in a strong place of power. Deer is here to work with us around vulnerability and strength, together at last.

Grow closer to the medicine of Deer, learn to embody it’s grace and to call up it’s majestic strength in matters of cleaning up your energy, fortifying your relationships to your spiritual guides and allies, honor what is sacred in you, and stand proud in community knowing that your Voice counts.

Image of Deer at SouLodge Ranch, Redmond, Oregon.

May 17, 2014

Belly Up & Naked

Ever have one of those phases in your life when you just feel SO vulnerable? Spirit cracks you wide open and says, “Have a look!” and the Mystery is so profound that you don’t want to look away or leave that liminal space? That’s where I’ve been for the last few weeks, which is an amazing benefit of working for 3-4 weeks and then taking a month off. I get to recharge and refuel for what’s next, and also get out of teacher/leader mind, reconnect my soul deeply to the Mother, and be humbled by what I don’t know and never will fully come to understand in one lifetime.

Such is the cosmic journey I am on after leaving a conventional family life in favor of one in which I am fully and unapologetically mySelf, mySoul, mySpirit. A gypsy butterfly’s existence, with it’s many pricetags, less-than-stellar mothering moments (What, divorce didn’t cure that?), flittering about, and monkish isolation/cocooning. I’ve been so close to the Source in the past few weeks, even my body is telling me (with no decoder ring required) that BIG CHANGE is occurring. It goes beyond ritual release and shedding, but there’s that, too.

My experience has been that from a very young age, I have been open to what lies beyond our human experience. Having nearly left this world twice by six months of age, I have no cognitive recollection of being tapped in, but I can imagine that whatever I saw and felt out there was a big deal, because it’s been calling me back home ever since. The melodies of songs that have played inside of me for as long as I can remember are coming forth loud and clear now.

Do you ever think about how childhood hardwiring and adaptations cause us to dim our lights down so we don’t frighten anyone away? If you’ve ever heard a message which says, “Don’t show them who you really are”, or “Tone it down”, are you obedient to it? Do you know where it came from? Why does it feel so risky to take off the masks, lay down the sword, shed the armor, and stand up?

Vulnerability is the way. It is the only way that we can feel the touch of the Creator, the depth of the Mother, and have our bellies tickled by the Earth. It can be so hard to strip down, to get naked and purge the excess. It can be so hard to show up fully in your song.

Today is Saturday, which means I ate soup from the saucepan at inappropriate hours of the morning because the wildbabes are with their Daddy. I’ve been working with a slick new skin and staying inside for a few days, out of the world, safe in my shelter, choosing my moment. As I slink and slither with my newly awakened and permissioned sensitivities (on the eve of Boundaries Boot Camp, no less), I am hyper-aware of what composes my environment, where I feel safe, and how I’ll integrate back into the big world again after insulating on this sabbatical.

I opened the mailbox earlier to find a thank you card, and a little medicine gift inside of it. It’s as if the Mystery was winking at me from the vast cosmos inside of a copper-colored envelope, nodding in agreement about the quantum jump I’m taking, and giving me the big ole thumbs up.

February 5, 2014

My Forties: It’s a Good Thing I Like Crows

I’m in denial that I’m in my forties. But the crows stomping around about my eyes are getting less deniable by the year. The last few years of ending marriage has taken its toll, and I’m wearing the stress of it on this face. All kinds of fleshy bits are moving south, and I’m reminded that “gravity always wins” each time I spin my favorite Radiohead.

Aging is tough, and I don’t know that I’m doing it very gracefully. Giving birth at 38 has kept me young in some ways and in others I’m just damn tired. So where is the gold, the wisdom in acknowledging this reality within the mortal coil? If I was oblivious in my twenties, and waking up in my thirties, my forties are akin to walking in the sunshine of mid-day. I can see with clarity I couldn’t back then. My voice is strong, and I’m not afraid to protect what’s important to me, nor renegotiate terms in favor of freedom on all counts.

I’m a little spikier along the fence line, softer in my heart, flames taller in my soul, liquid-centered. Within me, flow. Beyond me, the second half, accompanied by an unflinching desire for creating new ways to raise hell, in order to see what needs a little whip cracking down there.

In my twenties, I listened to loud music, drove at speeds well over the legal limit, mixed it up with thrill-seekers, took uncalculated risks, and exceeded my expectations. It looked like getting lucky.

In my thirties, it meant a challenge to stand in the Light of myself and take a good look. Adjusting. Filling up. Loss. Letting go. Shine anyway. It looked ripe, as motherhood is apt to.

These days, the journey looks no less precarious: laying down my sword, while knowing exactly where it is and how to swing it, it means learning more about what’s really going on out there, and taking appropriate action. It means no time for pussyfooting around. It feels like trusting deeply that I belong, and having a responsibility to those who don’t know they do yet.

The forties are a paradox. The luxury of innocence lies behind, and the wisdom to step up and be accountable lies ahead. The laughter has increased, thankfully, and so have my support systems. Though I’m two years in, I find myself lingering on the bridge, still curling my fingers around the young woman I was, asking again for her gifts and messages, for her brightness to emblazon across my chest.

Meanwhile, the crows are calling, and there’s no way to go but forward. Good thing I have an appreciation for cacophonous sentinels who’ve made themselves right at home where my smile continues to widen.

Image by Andrea Jenkins

January 14, 2014

Share Your Story

“We’re not them,” she said, lengthening her letters, sharpening them like knives. I heard the conviction in her voice as she made sense of her world, and her immense growth and understanding beyond the legacy handed to her. I listened for the whisper of her spirit which prompted her to make meaning of her own life. To save someone else the trouble by sharing her story.

We want everyone going through what we’re going through to know that they are not alone. We were fortunate to have someone guiding us through the rough patches, laying a hand on top of our own without a word, holding back the kleenex so as not to stop our flow.

Share your story. It may help someone immensely.

{image by Catherine Basso}