Coming Out

Cosmic 25 by Rachael Maddox -- Chapter 2 : Coming Out from Rachael Maddox on Vimeo.

dragonflies and death rituals on the front porch of destiny

photo by the ever-magical Corinna Robbins

"I can't give you an accurate description," I confess sharply. "I'm all fucked up about Dragonfly. It's too close to the source. No matter how many times I read the damn descriptions, I just can't get it. I'm blocked."

This is what I sounded like two nights ago on the porch after the kids were put to sleep. Maya and I sat on the wooden swing drinking red wine from old jam jars, pulling animal medicine cards, and two readings in, we landed on Dragonfly. The medicine? Illusion.

"Okay, well don't think about what the book says. What do you know about Dragonflies in general?" she asked.

"They're fast. Magical. Gorgeous. Time-traveling. Fragile. With really long gestation periods to get their wings. They never stay anywhere for long...I mean, have you seen them? They're always just here and gone! And that's what I hate about them!"

At this point, I've traveled so much in the past 3 years that the thought of extended vagabonding and uprooting instantly sends my system into shock trauma. I've been waffling on this cross-country drive, to be honest. Afraid. That the car will die in the middle of nowhere and I'll have to stilt walk to Portland. That something will pull me in some other direction and the never-ending Celestine Prophecy will continue until I have 34 cents in my bank account. That somehow all this wandering will amount to me being alone forever. FOREVER.

Luckily, Maya's a weathered witch, and reminded me that this is not any old flightiness I'm taking on. It's the Bat ritual of rebirth that I've been needing--the integration of my true purpose right now. 

"You have to do it, Rachael," she said matter-of-factly without skipping a beat. "You need to go home, pack up your stuff, and say goodbye to your old life, for real, so you can build your new one all the way." Maya's the one who coincidentally showed up at my airport terminal in black flowing drab and nudged me to go to circus camp a year ago. Her track-record for straight-talk is good, so when she gets sharp and pointed, I let it cut.

What I'm not telling you is I've had a long-standing inextinguishable desire to build my own circular straw bail house: earth slabbed together by bare hands and love near a river 15 minutes from a town, that I can drive my blue scooter in to when I tire from the chickens and plants. A place I can always go home to when the exhaust of magical travel wears on me. A place that stays. It's the dream I've dead-ended on for two years straight, and it's been haunting me especially lately. Naturally, it came up.

"It makes perfect sense, Rachael. You need that house to ground you, so that you can embrace the magic of Dragonfly without burning out. You need it and it's yours," she said, chestnut brown eyes deep with permission and a tad bit of provocation, "but you can't get it until you go through the process of leaving your youth behind. Until you actually put it out there that you're ready. That you're willing to go through the pain of letting go to get it."

Simple true shit I can count on an old lady friend to tell me.

"You're right, Maya. Damn it, you're right."

I took a few drags of her clove cigarette, watched the smoke curl and disappear. The air was cool and foggy and full of moonlight, and I finally felt a tad-bit hopeful--like I could do it, like I wanted it, like maybe everything isn't just disappearing for no good reason, but there's something rooted and real that awaits me. And it's actually up to me to not just dream it, but create it.

Today, it would help me so much to know: What have you left behind to create something truer for your honestly magical life? I'm starting to tell stories again, like a trust that's regrowing inside me. Yours would help my heart feel brave. This much I'm sure is true.

To destruction & creation & glistening rivers of love,
rachael

Age & Meaning with Kate Swoboda :: Real talk on trust, depression, love and life in her 20's.

I love Kate Swoboda for so many reasons. Personally speaking, she was my first-ever life coach and helped me move mountains and mountains of ideas about self-worth, fear and courage. Our relationship has since deepened and evolved to a place of deep love and wild respect, and I'm honored to call Kate friend.

On a professional level, her work is generously robust and sharply focused on teaching people to access their inner-courage in tangible and effective ways. Check her out here: http://www.yourcourageouslife.com/

I'm so excited to share with you her wisdom, radical truth-telling and thorough thought in this Age & Meaning interview.

Some topics we hit big on are:

• Normalizing not knowing what the fuck you're doing
• Course-correcting 
• Depression, anxiety and anger
• Getting curious about your pain
• Aloneness vs. relationships
• How to really learn all the lessons

All my deepest gratitude to you, Kate. And a big big love to all!

Want more Age & Meaning Interviews? Head right here, friend: Age & Meaning Interviews

xo,
Rachael

The spirit road of melted wax, amorphous journeys, and finding my way home.

I'm watching wax drip and harden onto the sturdy home of the wooden desk I found on the corner of my block a month ago, and I'm actually envious. If only I could melt and harden onto something. If only all this transmutation could translate into staying put for a while.

I say it like I'm powerless in the situation. Like I don't hold the match, like I don't have a wick, like there aren't 1,000 wooden desks that would catch my wax if I only I would let them.

But the thing is, all candle metaphors aside, I'm undergoing an epic reshaping. No matter how glad I am with the varying "results", no matter how free I feel leaving behind the structures that no longer serve me, epic reshapings are straight up messy. Especially when your new shape's not certain. For all I know, I could run into the table cloth and get stuck, or drip down the side of the desk, parts of me completely falling off the edge.

I'm about to embark on another cross-country adventure, and while some may read that sentence and think, how lucky, the truth is, I've been dreading the movement. In the past 3 years, I haven't lived in one place for more than 6 months. I want to go home. To a home that stays. But it doesn't exist yet. And that's... tiring.

Additionally, leaving is going to mean facing a lot people who I love, who I've been with forever, and telling them: I won't be seeing you as much. I'm a huge roots person. This will not be easy for me. Nonetheless, I'm flying home and then packing my most important possessions into my 1992 Chrysler Le Barron (also known as Christ Labron...pray for it's Christliness), hugging and kissing my family and friends 10,000 times, and saying goodbye.

I wish I could just snap my fingers and be planted in my "new life." Skip over all the ache. But there's a literal rite of passage from one side of this country to the other that awaits me. An intentional letting go. It's a big deal, and I can't surpass it. So I'm doing the only thing I feel good about doing to make it really work for me: embracing it all the way.

Tomorrow I'll tell you about what I want to share with you as I travel across the country. Until then, thank you for being here. I can feel your support somehow, unexplainably so. I don't feel alone. And I'm glad for that. Also, thank you for your responses to my last post. It's been so long since I shared my truth with the world, that to be received with such deep love was an unbelievable buoy to my spirit. Thank you.

All my love,
Rachael

The Future Is Bright and other sentences told only in the thick of the story

I've lost my writing hands these days, can barely stand to tell any new stories to even myself. But no matter, I convince myself. There are old stories I've nearly memorized that are here to walk me through the dark of disorientation. I walk over to my altar, pull open the tasseled sheer pouch that houses my story-scrolls, and reach in to see which one is reaching out to meet me. It's a tradition derived from card-pulling meets the Torah meets Jen-Lemen-craftiness. 

I pull the Thick One. The one that meets me when I'm at my heart's end. The one that knows doubt and quiet hopelessness--fear and feral longing for a truly better life. The one that I've unravelled and re-raveled so many times over the past year that the origami paper is fraying at the edges and the tape at the end is ridden with residue of glitter and carpet lint. 

Everything will be okay, because you are brave.

I need this one sentence so deeply that I open the beginning of this particular spiral day in and day out just to make sure those words are still there, that sentence is still true. Further in, reminders whisper their way into the depths of me through my cold fingers, rhythmic hands, seesaw wrists, still body. Words spiral down beside me. Tiny breaths. Tiny motions. The story ends and I begin the long process of regathering each word into its rightful spiraled position.

Maybe this is the best we can do when we're wordless in major life transitions. Take walks when the sun shines for the first time in days. Breathe slowly. Read the old stories that gave us solace as we shifted and shed before, can give us solace now as we shift and shed once more. 

Today, I'm sharing this video with you on the off-chance that it's any good (creatively), and on the on-chance that you, too, may be needing the reminder that we truly are okay, us brave-hearted people. That no matter the size of our particular reorientation, there are stories that can help us feel strong as we grow into everything lost and everything found that was ever truly meant for us.

All my love,

Rachael

PS--It's possible... possible... that I'll make Chapter 2. Maybe even Chapter 3. And who knows if they'll look anything like this, or not. I'm experimenting. The truth is, I have over 25 real stories from my life when I was 25 (remember when I talked about writing a book?!) that I'd love to write by hand onto scrolls. Read aloud. Make into short videos. We'll see. They get personal. Which is what I love about them. They get personal. Which is what makes them super vulnerable to share.