Celebrating an Aquarian and Pisces, Supporting those who Love Big *

Update: 2/15/2021: Aurora was released from the hospital on 2/23/2021. Her Community Circle of Care, 117 donors, has raised $9,021 toward the goal of $9,000. 

Here are Aurora’s Facebook posts on Fri 2/13 and Sat 2/13/2021

 Sat 2/13/2021 11:15am PST

Goodbye longtime hospital room.

 Sat 2/13/2021 6:00am PST

Thanks to the collaboration and support of the medical student who took the time to research my concerns, I am about to be released. Thanks to you, I have support for the transition and can create the conditions for people to help me in an ongoing way. Tonight I will sleep in a real bed with no interruptions for blood draws and vitals!!!

That's terrific news. All the very best to you, Aurora with our love and support! Moki and Pete 

Susun Weed from her website www.susunweed.com

"My first commitment to joy occurred when I was eleven. I was riding the city bus home from my daily swim at the Y, full of enthusiasm, thrilled to be alive, tingling in all parts of my body, eager to savor every moment of life. As I gazed at the adults around me I was struck by how gloomy, dull, and dead they seemed. 'Whatever's gotten into them, I hereby promise it won't get into me.' I swore to myself." - In Her Own Words: Susun S. Weed Pioneer, Publisher, Pagan "Making my dreams real means jumping into the icy waters of life..." Intuitive Astrology, Elizabeth Rose Campbell

My first meeting with Susun Weed was in the pages of Elizabeth Rose Campbell's book Intuitive Astrology. We had newly moved from my family home and land in Kuli'ou'ou Valley on the island of O'ahu. Big changes were on the way; just how big I'd have to live those years to know. It was 2004 and we were renting a wonderful home in Hilo. Many years passed between reading about the woman who rediscovered the Wiise Woman Tradition: healing by nourishment and learning to live the Wise Woman Tradition. 

Moving to Whidbey Island, inching our way into the woods of Forest Lane in 2010, we were on our way to learning and rediscovering how life spirals.  I would rediscover Susun Weed when a chronic urinary tract infection finally got my attention. Ten years later, yesterday Pete and I were invited to join her on ZOOM for a celebration of her 75th birthday. 

We did just that, CELEBRATED LIFE, this morning.

Moki and Pete in our Dikka Ballantine original hats filled with chocolate-coconut oatmeal, with astragalus and a birthday breakfast with Susun Weed!!

 

 

Another teacher and very special woman Pisces-born teacher, activist, curandera, and writer Aurora Levins Morales will celebrate her 67th birthday on February, 24, 2021. Aurora, Puerto Rican  Ashkenazi, writer, activist, poet, and visual artist is also chronically disabled, lives with environmental illness (MCS) and 

"Aurora Levins Morales is in the hospital being treated for atrial fibrillation- she went in on Jan 18th, 2021, and is back in the ER in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico now. She needs emergency funds to pay for a person to assist her with 24/7 care for the next 3-4 weeks when she gets out of the hospital, and these funds are also helping local folks by food and supplies Aurora needs while in the hospital."

 

Pete and I are Patreon supporters of Aurora. We learned about her hospitalization, but did not know there was a fundraiser to help care for Aurora once she leaves the hospital. If you would like to donate to her care, link here.

If you are unfamiliar with Aurora Levins Morales, here is one of many favorite medicine stories that feed me on a regular basis:

"There's a term in Spanish that was part of all the leftist speeches on my youth: la coyuntura. It means "the situation," "the circumstances." "The current historical moment." If the big picture is a constellation of stars by which we plot our course, the coyuntura is the muddy ground we stand on while we stargaze. The bloody, difficult present. In the coyuntura, we have not yet won. Each act carries risks we must weigh. Not all our alliances will hold...Standing there in the mud, our job is to keep talking about stars while we shovel slush, add gravel, pass around hot Thermoses. Sometimes that means supporting solutions that are painfully inadequate, that cost us, but that still move us toward the universally humane future we long for.

"The combination of celestial navigation and a good working knowledge of mud gives us the flexibility we need to respond in powerful and creative ways to even the most harrowing of circumstances." - ' Bigger is Better', Medicine Stories Essays for Radicals, Aurora Levins Morales.

In 1969, the original cast and production of the musical HAIR included two friends, and a cousin. My first job as a preschool teacher at Island Paradise School, in Kaimuki, O'ahu was highlighted by a May Day Program where that sweet group of four-year olds wore cardboard poi bowl cups painted with tempera and cut-out paper petals while they danced to the music from Hair. 

Supporting those who love big, and small, is one of the acts we can all do. These two women, have helped us in so many ways. Sharing their stories here, we pass that love along. xoxo

Happy Birthday Aquarians, thank you Susun and Aurora!!  ☮

* This post was updated and corrected, on February 11, 2021. Aurora Levins Morales is Pisces-born.