Tag: choices
Love letter to my past; what to do with my mother’s house…
It’s my mother’s house (even though she gave it to me years ago and in truth we are both on the title). That is the issue, that is the question, that is the thing that sits at the back of my mind and pokes at me from time to time…what to do with my mother’s house?
I moved out of it more than two and ½ years ago, my mother two years or more before that. I have been saying I was going to sell it and I have had every intention to do so…except that… I haven’t. I haven’t sold it. I haven’t even listed it.
She looks at it rationally
Now part of that is because the housing market has totally tanked and it’s worth half of what it was 5 years ago. If the market was where it was back then, I am not sure I would even be having this constant internal dialog with myself about this house. Yet at the same time I am not 100% certain; and I believe that is the crux of all of this. If I talk to anyone else it seems a simple thing and as soon as I walk away I find myself unable or unwilling or distracted and the house continues not to sell (not being on the market and all). It also has fallen in value over and over again, making any of this far less appealing.
Let’s add to this that I am renting the house to someone. I had fully intended on selling it the summer after I moved out and bought the home I am currently living in 3000 miles away. This came on the heels of renting to someone my then partner swore by and who never actually paid me rent and left the house sad and unkempt. I was “done with renters” and I wanted to sell. But then what actually happened was that the woman who was helping clean out the house really wanted to rent it for her and her son, and since I didn’t have to do anything to rent it other than say yes and accept some rent which I needed badly, the house never made it on the market.
There are pros and cons to renting to a friend/acquaintance. One of which is that the person who used to be glad to see you or hear from you will stop answering calls and emails and basically cease to exist other than sending rent each month. This has been problematic both emotionally and logistically.
There had been talk twice in as many years about this person buying the house, and yet nothing has come of it. Now as I look at it, it almost doesn’t make sense to sell the home because I would be losing money given the market. This of course brings me to the next item of issue…property taxes. Ah yes these are the things that when you are really broke, fall by the way side and become overdue then delinquent and thus adding hundreds of dollars to the already unpaid bill.
This is what is staring me in the face currently; that and the fact I have been told by my tax person that if I wait until after this year to sell I will be paying a lot of taxes on anything I get for the house even if it goes lower than it’s current value…so as I write this perhaps I should list it and just see what happens. Provided the renter will even show up to show the house (part of the problem when the person really doesn’t want you to sell it).
This however is actually not about my head…oh no dear readers; this is all about my heart
This comes down to what I started writing about; the house itself.
If I had a lot of money (this is the sentence that I use to find out how I really feel about something separate from my issues around the money involved) would I sell this house?
If money wasn’t an issue would I sell this house?
This is the house I spent time in toddling around with my parents and grandparents. The house with the 80 year old wisteria, honeysuckle and camellia tree; the house with the garage that my grandfather built; the house with a history that always started with “this house began as a chicken coop when this whole area was a large farm and the farm house was that house way over there on the corner” to which there would be a pointing finger attached and I would dutifully follow the finger down the block to the largish home that housed one of my childhood schoolmates.
This is the house that has a well on the property that no longer is used or accessible but I always remembered it and thought that if the world fell apart at least I would be able to find water…This well had been filled in by my grandfather long before I was born. He used many things to accomplish this feat; including dumping a claw foot bathtub down the shaft; at least this is the mythology that I was taught at an early age when hearing the history of the house.
This is the house that I moved to when I was 14 after my grandfather passed away. The house that held me through all my psychedelic wanderings and coming out on many levels; saw me through High School and learning to drive and reading about UFO’s, reading countless Sci-Fi novels, listening to David Bowie and hitchhiking to Seattle on the Friday nights. This is where I wrote my college essay to get into the vegetarian co-op that was housing for the alternative school that I eventually was accepted into and moved out of the house in order to attend.
This was the house that I would come home to visit on breaks and the occasional weekend; the one that I would visit my mother in after my father passed away, the one that I came more often down to, to visit her as she became farther away mentally and that I had to eventually move her out of when the dementia became too difficult.
This is the house that I moved back into in order to be closer to her and in order to make ends meet financially and as a result became very depressed about being back in Tacoma.
And yet even moved through that over time and found a new place and contentment with being in my old home town which had grown up even more than I had. I came to love Tacoma for the first time. I lived here with my partner and actually had some really nice times together in that house, planned our move to Hawaii, planned and had our wedding while living in that house. Watched fences get built and plants planted and renovations planned.
This is the house where I created so many dreams. Some which came true and some which sadly did not; such as the dream of the marriage that had barely more than a few breaths into life before it started to pass away into something else.
This house represented family and history and possibility; it also represented my adolescence and the baggage and old pain of things perhaps better left in the past. It has also come to be connected in my heart with my mother; who still lives in the same city at a lovely care facility that is thankfully more like a 4 star hotel; and which is only a 10 minute drive, but light-years away from the life once lived in this house.
It’s no wonder that I avoid these issues. There are so many layers here; one on the next and on the next and on the next. In my fantasies I keep the house and rebuild it, add an apartment above the garage where I come to stay when I am in town. I move my soon to be ex-husband into the home for some kind of more than fair rent and we have b-b-ques when I am in town, he with his partner(s) and I with mine (who ever those people are to be) and in my dreams it feels good and connected and family like…maybe I eventually sell it and maybe I don’t.
I ask myself am I just keeping some kind of connection to the mainland; one that I don’t even know why I have since I rarely ever want to leave the island on which I now live? Do I envision that some day I will want to have the kind of jet set life where I would like to have an apartment 30 miles outside of a huge metropolitan city?
Perhaps it’s not about that at all but just the idea of a feeling that I have had about this little piece of land. A little piece of my history; a tree we planted for my mother; an idea of what is still yet to be; connections to many people I love through an address I have to fly for 6 hours just to visit.
And of course where the money comes from in this fantasy I am at a loss to know, but that is the same question as where the money is to come from for the taxes. And yes of course being me I have to say that ultimately it all comes from the Universe; and while that is absolutely true and reveals itself even in the writing of all this; I also know this post is about something small I hold in my hands, something personal and delicate like a empty tiny blue egg shell that has been left in the grass, in the spring, under a tree; someone’s former home.
Do I have to make these decisions now? Well not today it’s a holiday weekend, but it feels like soon. Perhaps I am just not willing to let this go until my mother has passed from this world; perhaps I am not yet ready to let go of all of this history; but then again maybe I am. We’ll just have to see.
Aloha and Blessings,
Erika
Love is the source code of this reality…Welcome February.
It is that time in the year when our attention in drawn towards love. Hearts and flowers, and perhaps even chocolate; all of which I am a total fan of by the way!
There is a lot of information about the origins of what we speak of as “Valentines day” most of which are interesting, surprising, and valid. None of which I am going to write on today (doncha just love me!!).
I am going to take this at face value and speak about the expressed reason for the upcoming celebration. I am going to look at it from a completely different angle. This comes from something that came to me while working today with 4 different people on four seemingly different things.
It is the reason why this kind of work actually “works” why metaphysics or healing or energetics aren’t just words but call forth actual experience. So put on your goggles and join me in inner and outer space. I am going to speak on Love.
Love is the source code of this reality. It is what everything is built from and built on. It is at the core of every particle, every idea, every thought, and every cell.
It is the fundamental building block of this Universe. It is the single indivisible particle at the heart of all particles, that is itself the entirely in which the particles move in and return to. It is the wave form; the Om; the Alpha and the Omega.
Love is the note that birthed the chorus and still sings in the surrounding harmonics and ringing overtones.
Find it, return to it and you have in your hands the basis for all creation and all manifestation. Reside in it and you will find at once that place that holds the stillness between the undeniable impulse to expand in all directions and all dimensions; and the total fulfillment and richness of the singular moment; desire without need, enthusiasm without fear.
(100% commitment and 100% nonattachment)
Embrace the triune nature that is created and maintained by Love: The enthusiasm of initiation and forward movement; complete fulfillment and contentment in the perfection of the existent unfolding “now”; and the paradox of momentarily infinite space between these states, within which whole galaxies can reside.
Love calls to itself and it expands because of itself.
It is what we feel and think of as love, in all its many forms; but beyond that as well. The love within us when we find it; feel it; connect to it; is the terminal through which we access the enormity of Life’s expression.
Travel at the speed of Love.
Faster than the speed of light, faster even than the speed of thought. It has no need to traverse distances because it is already at the destination; it is simply a shift of focus and perception. Have your attention on something and perceive it; find yourself shifted by the “addition” of Love and your perception immediately changes.
Suggestion:
1. Think of someone who had been annoying you; someone in your life you are having a hard time loving. This can be someone close to you, or someone in the world at large.
2. Spend some time every day from now until Valentines Day thinking of them in a new way. Imagine them with the kind of deep things that you would want/seek for yourself; imagine them happy and well, understood, accepted, appreciated, surrounded by people who really know them and cherish them, see them as feeling safe, secure and loved, held in the gentlest most caring arms imaginable.
3. Do this daily. Granted you may feel at first that you have to fake it for a few days (sometimes it can help imagining them as a young child…everybody was one at one time) just give it time. Ideally you will do this until they can walk through your mind unharmed 🙂
4. Do not tell them about this, or make a big outward deal about it. You are not actually doing this for them. You are doing it for you. It will change not only your relationship with them, but it will change your relationship to your reality. Trust me. It is worth every minute you spend on it.
Love is the source code of this reality. Get out your code book and start where you can start. Pet your cat, hug your dog, hold your child, cherish the characters in a favorite book whose actions you may not agree with but whose heart you understand. Some author somewhere knew them and placed them in the events; told their story. From within their journey they spoke to you and you came to love them. You understand them because they were written from Love.
Translate that to you.
Aloha and Blessings,
Erika
Amazing choirs at the Heathrow airport. Welcome Home.
I know this is an advert, but so was that amazing discovery channel video, and I watched that a million times too!
This was so much God/Universe/Source/Love in action. The feeling in this touches me and reminds me why people are so precious and I love them/us so much.
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NB3NPNM4xgo
I absolutely believe that that is the greeting we are getting from the Universe every single day that we open our eyes in this life, and that it is totally what greets us as we make our transition from this reality to the next.
Yes.
Aloha and Blessings,
Erika
Truth in advertising; unedited evolution ~ Erika Ginnis
Something I did the other day, maybe two days ago. Was to take my iPhone (which I use way more than I ever thought I would) and start a new note. Not a big deal right? Well maybe, but it was really helpful to me at least the evening I did it because I started a list of things that have gone well for me.
Let me back up a bit and let you know why I was doing that in the first place…Sometimes I am not sure what to share on my blog. I have three all together (but of course, if one is good m-u-s-t add MORE) and this one is really dedicated to the process of evolution that I believe we are all hip deep in, on this lovely blue planet here at the beginning of the 21st Century.
I started this blog because I had ideas and visions and experiences that I thought might be of use to other people out there who may be having something similar happening to them in the midst of all this change. Being a metaphysical teacher and counselor, it kind of made sense to me. I am still very much in line with that intention. The thing is, I find that I sometimes edit my own experience because I want to be a place of inspiration rather than adding to the angst.
This is good in theory, but more difficult in practice, because I find I can be in such an “editing” mode that I don’t write as often as I might, or share all that I might. The thing is, there are most likely not that many people reading this anyway, so why all the self-critique? Part of it is just old habits, part of it is training, part is wanting to show up differently in various aspects of my life. What is occurring to me however, is that I often get so much value out of the experience of others as I hear their stories; what makes me think that only the “cream” of my experience will be of use to someone else? This is a process of shifting and change we are all involved in and sometimes it isn’t all neat and tidy.
If all I show is the neat and tidy aspects of what is going on, what kind of message does that give? And once again I have to ask who am I really writing for? If I am writing for my self and my own evolution then I need to be willing to process all that I am really processing, not just what I judge as being helpful to someone else; if I am writing for other people (and that gets sticky all on its own) then what makes me think that they are not going to relate to what ever it is that is up for me in my life at that moment? Law of attraction being what it is, wouldn’t it follow that whoever finds me on a given day will be drawn there simply by the vibrations of the thoughts and words that I am pondering, and wouldn’t that mean it is perfect all along?
Thoughts are like stars, they have their own gravity and collect their own solar system around them.
I am the creator of these thoughts, or perhaps I am the medium through which they come into this reality. Regardless I want to be in a place to respect that creative process and also revel in it; let my thoughts and ideas and observations come up from inside of me and spread out in all directions gathering what they will. I want to trust that whoever is reading, is here for some good of their own, and whatever I am sharing is going add to it in some fashion.
So back to the other evening…I am juggling a lot of emotional things these days. I have lost a parent recently; and by lost meaning their energy is still around but their body is not. I have another parent who is living in a “memory care” unit of a lovely facility, but which costs a fair bit to maintain. I have someone who I am technically married to who no longer lives with me and I am completely unsure about which direction that relationship should or will go; and while I attract a lot of dollars, I have also created a series of situations where what was promised did not actually arrive.
I understand this is my creation; it doesn’t always help to know that (especially if I use it to beat myself up) and it isn’t the bit of information that will help change it. How often do we rack our brains trying to find the place that originated the issue in the first place? What was I thinking, why did I attract that? Why am I still dealing with “..fill in the blank..”?
We are all in the process of sifting through the stuff that needs to change; it is happening on a personal level; a governmental level; an environmental level; and a consciousness level. These shifts can be enormous or tiny; we are all part of this larger moving energy and the whole thing is evolving is leaps and bounds. I am sure you have noticed!
This is a lot to chew on, and I sometimes let it all go, and dive into the deep of me. Then there are times where the things of the day require my attention; I must attend to the various details which are mine to do. I find myself scared, or hurt, or angry. I find myself tempted to stay in those places longer than it is prudent for my own peace of mind.
I generally don’t stay there too long, it’s just much to uncomfortable; but I would be lying if I said I was never there, because I am, and I do feel those things.
I have been working with some of that this last week, after one of my bills (the one for my Mom) went up, while one particular income stream went way down (eek). This brought up fear, and anger and hurt all at the same time. In the midst of all of this I found myself thinking about the many many times (in the past) that amazing answers, and ideas, and opportunities, and even cash, came my way to solve my “dilema du jour”.
So I thought maybe I should write some of that down, remind myself about it, see if I am just making that up or if it really has happened that way. I starting with the note screen on my phone and now it is so long it takes at least 10 scrolls (with my finger) to get to the end; even writing this I have added two more.
I am writing about this because it is what is going on with me. The list I made helped remind me of all the “out of the blue” things that have happened over and over again. This is important because those are the “solar systems” I want to populate.
I now find that I could probably use re-reading this list more than once. I am not sure how this next phase will right itself. However I have this blog, and since this is definitely “spiritual evolution on a personal level” this topic is totally applicable. And I will keep you (whoever you are) and me posted.
Aloha and Blessings,
Erika