the life you save may be your own

I am back in Charlotte, North Carolina, at the little house on the creek I call Belle Rive, after Blanche Dubois's homeplace in Tennessee William's 1947 play, A Streetcar Named Desire. It is a little house, made of cedar, in a bustling city of where lots of bankers live. The economy has me back, from Edisto Island, my dream diminished there by the squeeze of this economy. Dreams deferring.

I have been buried in my bed with all my books, Callings, by Gregg Levoy, which is all too worth another read, Women Who Run With the Wolves, by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, the marvelous collection of stories that illuminate truth. Lately I have been completely reimmerced with midwives and birth. I used to teach childbirth classes and my own childbirth experiences were mind blowing doors to strength and self. My journals are filling with penciled pages rapidly, as Julia Cameron taught me to do. And I awake in the night to write down my dreams, with hints of what new door is opening for me. Yesterday morning it was "Women are dying!" ...the mortality rates worldwide for women in childbirth are indeed atrocious - a woman dies every minute from pregnancy related causes. And this morning, when I awoke, I had written in my dream journal, "Are you a nurse?" No I am not. I am an ARTIST midwife. I just walked into my library and staring at me was the spine of the book, whose title read, "The Life You Save May Be Your Own".

Socrates said it best. Know Thyself. THEN give. I am on to something about giving where I am supposed to, to a bigger place. I am awed and grateful for grace today.