All the usual plus an announcement!

For a month my night brain has been on overload. Every night has been filled with dreams. It is exhausting especially considering them some have been bordering on psychic. Only one, a non psychic one, has had a grip on me. In the dream I am doing the mundane task of taking out the compost. We keep our compost pile beyond our fenced yard in the “wild” half of our homestead. Many a nocturnal critter have savored this little domestic gift as we keep finding egg shells half way up trees. In this dream I am taking the compost out in the dead of night only to lock eyes with a coyote. All I can see is the green glow of it’s eyes. I am paralyzed. Not out of fear of the wild canid, but the way it is looking at me with such intensity. I had an overwhelming feeling of not feeling safe to return to the fenced yard, but to stay where I was.

I cannot get the coyote out of my mind. I have wondered if this is my therapy dog. My emotional support animal. Since Jadzia’s birth I have been journeying the unpredictable and dark tunnel of PTSD, which is believed by my doctor to be the root cause of the physical pain I’ve experienced for over a year. Pain that became unmanageable when my Dad was diagnosed with a brain tumor a year after Jadzia was born. I remember the night that it all felt like too much and all I could do was run outside. I laid down in our front yard, barefoot, in a dress, in the chilly fall night. I put my face in the dirt and grabbed onto the grass like I was falling off the face of the earth. By making myself completely flush with the surface of our yard I could finally feel stable. I spent a lot of that winter fantasizing about burrowing into the cold ground, becoming one with the permafrost. I feel as if it is an adult parallel to laying your head on your mother’s chest to find the heartbeat. It is so hard to find mother earth’s heartbeat while living in a time and society that is so desperate to be separate from mom. Americans are a child that moved out too soon in search of independence and never call.

I noticed the past year that I was losing interest in the garden and wanted to be out in the woods foraging for whatever surprises the seasons and rain brought. The garden, which is NEVER predictable, felt too predictable! Too domestic. I am also able to manipulate the garden via soil enhancing products, attention, and the hose. Foraging is sheer luck. Being out in the woods looking for food and medicine is entirely at the mercy of nature. I can’t take the hose out back and will the morel mushrooms to the surface, or rot a tree any faster. While I am still a passionate gardener and plan to be for the rest of my life, I think Jadzia’s birth changed me in that I am much more interested in embracing untamed environments. Many people will say her birth would’ve been better if I had just stayed with an OB and planned a hospital birth all along. Many people will say if I had done more squats and drank more nettle tea I would not have needed to go to the hospital. When in reality all and none of that is true. Every single thing that went wrong was a complete surprise to me, my midwives, and the doctors at UM. Freak occurrences. Nature is the only law maker. No amount of planning or subscribing to philosophies changes that for anyone.

When settling on the name Dandelion I was seeking stability, reliability, prediction. Dandelions are rather predictable, they are strong, resilient, simple. Now that my pain both emotional and physical is more manageable the Dandelion does not feel like a fitting representation of my experience. My greatest teacher has been the wild, merciless, but beautiful and sculpting ways of nature. I cannot think of a more fitting face than a coyote. Coyotes are wild but they are home. Matt and I grew up 15 minutes apart from each other our whole lives and never really knew each other until college. But both of us spent nights lying awake in our beds listening to their song. I wonder sometimes if some of these coyotes were related and we were hearing different members of the same greater family. As adults now we hear a large pack of them howling close to our house and occasionally track them on our property. My favorite evenings are wearing pajamas fresh off the laundry line that smell like outside and listening to the coyotes. It feels like this little secret of pretending I am outside and not in a man made bed in a man made house doing what is demanded of me– spending most of my life indoors.

In little homestead tidbits Jadzia helped me plant the garlic and wash our last carrot harvest. The bus is mostly painted green now and we will begin working on the roof and final coat soon. I have a new favorite salad of kale from the garden, goat cheese, maple toasted pecans, apples, and an ACV dressing. I bought a camping hammock for Jadzia and I to swing in and wow I absolutely love it. We went to a big toddler sensory event at the Whittaker library and Jadzia was the last kid standing, she painted for an hour and needed a lot of convincing to leave! She’s also really enjoyed playing outside after dark and even bribing her with tv will not get her indoors for dinner and bed time. At the Habitat for Humanity Restore we bought some super cheap paint brushes for the bus and she kept saying “beep beep.” She spotted an amazing home made monster truck toy that is so gross and funny and will be included in the gallery. Halloween was a blast we went to the Downtown Ypsi library and danced the night away. I went as Autumn and Jadzia was a rainbow. My mom and sister dropped off my birthday present which was handmade raised beds, their woodworking talent never ceases to amaze me. Matt installed a vent to the upstairs so the stove’s heat is keeping us toasty at night.

So be on the lookout for Coyote Homestead & Doula Services coming soon!