Women on Fire

When we fall in love , we revel in discovery, risk and expansion. Then, when we start to feel vulnerable in our need and newfound sense of safety, often we stop taking chances.

Worse, we make a terrible bargain: 'I'll pretend I won’t change if you promise to give up changing too. I’ll always be the same person you've come to need and love, and you'll do the same for me.'

We've all seen this happen to people we love. Most of us have made this deal ourselves, whether with spouse, parents, children, or whomever we come to count on.

I am writing today to honor certain women -- you know who you are -- who of late have come to me with the cry: 'I am growing and changing and the whole life I’ve built may shatter.'

I am honored by your trust and inspired by your courage.

Intricate webs of family and love and obsolete dynamics hang in the balance. In addressing these, you have chosen to care too for the fire that keeps you going, you as woman unto herself. You came and lit your damp wick in my flame, a flame you have helped me keep burning over the years.

I think of the lamp that is kept ever burning at many an altar, symbol that the deity is present.

Thank you for your fire. Goddess Bless and Goddess keep.

Tale of New Biscotti

As a host gift for a New Year’s Eve party, I made biscotti last night, for the first time.

It did not go as planned.

First, the dough seemed wrong to me. Cristi called just then, like a fairy godmother – one who’s studied cooking in Italy no less – and confirmed that the dough was too dry. I added the necessary moisture and was on my way.

Then the bitter skin did not just ‘flake away’ from the roasted hazelnuts, as promised in my tried-and-true recipe book. Refusing to change course, I engaged in the Cinderella-like task of scraping the thin crust from each nut and fragment. After about 45 minutes of this, however, when no new fairy godmother appeared, I decided that half the hazelnuts were good enough for me.

Biscotti means ‘twice cooked.’ After the first baking, after all that trouble, I tasted one and found it really bland, much more so than a biscotti should be. I turned to Paul who suggested a glaze. Using his ideas, another cookbook's (Julia Child), and my own nose, I concocted one out of fake butter (for our dairy-allergic host), brown sugar, cinnamon, orange extract and grated ginger.

Result: strange and wonderful.

Here's what I learned:

• best to trust my multi-colored senses over the black and white recipe.

• my fairy godmother can be counted on, in whatever form she appears, though I must say she often looks like Cristi.

• it’s worth taking the time to avoid planting bitterness, but it’s not a good idea to spend my whole life doing that.

• it's (almost) never too late to ask for help.

Next discovery: how will the biscotti taste dipped in champagne?

L’Chaim!

I am not the walrus

I dreamt recently of going to the beach with friends, only to find the water dense with walruses! I longed to swim but wasn't sure how to go about it. A few women walked by, dripping wet. I asked them, 'How did you do it?' One answered me, 'Just go on in. There are so many of them, they don't see one or two of us as a threat.'

I've never dreamed of walruses before. My favorite shamanic animal website noted that walruses are about group living. That's when I got it: as I prepare to launch my book, I needn't to worry about the crowded waters. There is room for me. Other women have done this already.

Hats off to them, the list is blessedly long. A few who come to mind this morning, from recent encounters: the fabulous artist Judy Chicago whose Dinner Party has found a home at the Brooklyn Museum. Margaret Starbird went out on a limb to bring us much of the real scholarship used in The Da Vinci Code. The old-world woman at the gym with pinned up hair and faded pink sweater, who told me triumphantly when I admired her bright red patent leather boots, 'I don't try no more to be who my children like me to be.'

I think too of another mother, somewhat more famous, who helped her daughter Muktar Mai risk everything, telling her, 'Someone has to be the first drop of rain.'

I would add: No matter how many walruses are in the water.

Look

I had something on my eyelid, it burned a little. I went to look in the mirror. My skin seemed normal, just little red. Then I thought I should compare it to my other eyelid. So I closed that one too.

I really did. Silly me.

I am often reminded of the quote: Blessed are those who can laugh at themselves, for they will never cease to be amused.

Jenny and Colette taught me how to laugh at myself when I was 12 years old and so terribly, terribly serious.

Bless them too.