Learning to Identify and Accept Masculine Gifts.

I was in the feed store buying my usual large bag of dog food from the same nice man I had always bought it from.

As soon as the transaction was done, he politely asked the same question he always does at that point, “Do you want some help out with that?”

My body instantly stiffened and become taller—like a child trying to prove herself worthy. The habitual, tired, angry, ready refusal rose up in my throat to be spat at him as insincerely grateful as usual.

I used to instantly think that any offer of help from a man was him simply pointing out that he thought I was not capable of doing it myself—yikes! No wonder I could never accept help from anyone—especially from a man. It was a horrible habit I’d brought forward from a dysfunctional childhood.

I had asked the universe to show me good men and masculine gifts, and here they obviously were. Hoping to prove to the universe that I meant business, I wanted to accept his gift. So this time, instead of refusing his help, I squeezed out a difficult, “Yes, thank you,” between tight lips.

When I began researching the Divine Masculine and Feminine, I had no idea what a masculine or feminine “gift” was. All the books and websites talked about gifting men with your feminine gifts—and accepting his masculine gifts.

This idea of gifts mystified me. I found most of the information too vague for me to understand—until I read Rachel Jayne Groover’s book, Powerful and Feminine, and began taking her advice on paying attention and then to practice being a vessel of praise for the masculine.

When I began paying attention, I noticed that masculine gifts can be as obvious as an offer to help.

More masculine gifts (most of them from strangers) that I have recently accepted:

~ He taught me how to blues dance.

~ He offered me his seat.

~ He assertively, and without aggression, defended me against another man’s verbal attack.

~ He taught me all the fancy salsa moves.

~ He didn’t comment or even act like he noticed when I missed his cues and messed up dancing with him.

~ He is a good, strong dance lead.

~ He got up and closed the door in a public place because he saw I was cold.

~ He went and found me a chair to sit in and brought it back to the table.

~ He helped me lift my bike onto the bike rack on the bus.

~ He opened the door for me and let me go through first.

~ He asked me to dance.

~ He rode his bike into the grass to let me pass on the trail when it was too narrow for us both (more than one occasion by different men).

~ He asked me to lunch/coffee/dinner.

~ He showed me how to put my bike handlebar grip back on.

~ He gave me very specific, useful, heart-felt advice when I asked for it—in a lovely, non-condescending way.

~ He complimented my writing.

~ He backed up and scooted his truck over at a stoplight to make room for me and my bike beside him.

~ He offered me his hankie.

~ He told me how to repair my bike when I asked—then offered to help me.

~ He let me borrow his truck.

~ He held me as I cried on his literal shoulder and let me get snot and tears all over his nice, fancy shirt.

~ He came and picked me up when my car broke down.

~ He cooked me dinner.

~ He called me “feminine.”

~ He shoveled the snow on my walkway.

~ He showed me how to use Google Hangouts.

Could I have done most of these things myself? Yes. But that is not the point. It is a gift to someone when I accept what they offer. It is me telling them their gift is worthy, and therefore they are worthy.

It is also me telling myself that I deserve gifts/help. I now graciously accept every masculine gift I possibly can when it is offered to me.

Masculine gifts can also come in more subtle forms.

“One of the deepest feminine pleasures is when a man stands full, present and nonreactive in the midst of his woman’s emotional storms. When he stays present with her, and loves her through the layers of wildness and closure, then she feels his trustability, and she can relax.”

~ David Deida, The Way of the Superior Man

It is a gift from the masculine when a man stands firm in his decisions—when he does not change his mind just because I ask him to.

Other subtle masculine gifts:

~ His consistency—so I can feel safe with him.

~ When he has an obvious purpose in, and for, his life and is working toward that purpose.

~ When he defines and lives by his N.U.T.s.

~ Being impeccable with his word and the way he lives his life.

~ When he stands strong against the wildness of my feminine emotions, offering me that acceptance without trying to shame me.

~ When a man first honors himself by having the integrity to stand for and live by his own values.

~ Being assertive and tender—but forceful when showing his attraction (when he “takes” or “ravishes” me).

~ When he accepts my feminine gifts without trying to make me act like a man—when he just accepts the feminine for what it is.

~ When he shows he trusts me by allowing himself to be vulnerable with me.

~ When he matches my intensity with his own brand of intensity, and I can still feel safe with him.

There are reasons the Masculine and Feminine are constantly balancing, gifting and polarizing each other. Each needs the other. Like the poles on a magnet, like repels like and opposite poles attract.

The Masculine is in his head and is directed, trustworthy and grounded for her, he is the immovable cliff against which she can throw her waves of emotion; she needs that cliff, that strength. This is a masculine gift to the feminine and will assist a woman in getting into her feminine energy.

The Feminine is in her heart and womb and is love incarnate for him; she inspires him into his heart, into love, into life, simply by being fully, emotionally feminine. She is the well of love, into which he fears he will fall and never return. Yet he must master this fear and be strong anyway—for himself first. It is the only way to insure trust. This is how the feminine gifts the masculine—by calling him up into masculine polarization.

So I wish to extend my gratitude to you, the Masculine, for your patience, acceptance, assistance and strength—as I continue to learn to identify your gifts in all their forms, and as I learn to accept and appreciate you and those gifts. Your Masculine energy is an amazing, life-giving, loving, freeing gift.

Originally published at elephant journal as What is a Masculine Gift?

Grace is a Certified Hypnotherapist and Registered Psychotherapist in Ft. Collins, CO, USA. She sees clients and facilitates Divine Feminine Hypnotherapy workshops for women. She’s a flaming, Earth-loving, tree-hugging, save-the-bees, believes-in-faeries, bike-riding, card-carrying, spiritual but not religious, hippie cowgirl liberal poet—yep, they do exist. She writes for The Scarlet Orchid and elephant journal. You can find her blog here and her creations here. You can also connect with her on Facebook and Twitter.

It Takes One Person to Die.

Wouldn’t it be more about the dying person and not the living at that point?

“As I lay dying, the woman with the dog’s eyes would not close my eyes as I descended into Hades.”
~ Homer, The Odyssey.

My female Dachshund, Miss Weenie, turned 12 years old in January of this year, so she’s an old lady weenie dog. I can call her that only because I am an old lady now too. Dachshunds don’t live as long as some dogs, so I’ve really begun to worry about her in the last year or two. The vet is not really able to help her out much.

She is just getting old.

She’s a bit wheezy and overweight (even though she doesn’t eat much), and she doesn’t get around as easily as she used to. I built ramps for the bed and the deck a couple of years ago to help ease her life some.

She was gifted to me as a puppy on Valentine’s Day by my, then, husband. She remains one of the very best gifts I have every received. She was my first dog as an adult. We had dogs on the farm when I was a kid, but they were big dogs that stayed outside, although I loved them completely.

She has always slept on the bed with me (she with her weenie dog “brother,” Stormy). They both burrow under the covers every night—even in summer. Lately, she’s been having accidents—from both ends—sometimes on the bed.

I’ve always had two good mattress pads expressly because I had a daughter, cats and dogs and know that a middle-of-the-night bed clothing change is sometimes necessary with so many bodies. Lately, it’s been a challenge to keep them clean and ready.

I used to be a CNA working in home care. Every time she soils the bed, I think of the bed-bound folks I used to take care of. Just like them, she requires a lot of cleaning up after at her age.

I keep telling her to just do whatever she needs to do, that I love her no matter what. When she is ready to go, I don’t want her hanging around, in pain, because my fear of losing her is holding her here in physicality.

I will miss her more than I can possibly understand right now, but it would be much worse to have her not go when she needs to.

Today, as I sat on my bed with my laptop writing, I noticed she was coughing and trying to clear her throat. I looked over at her to see if she was okay (and to quickly pick her up and whisk her off the bed if need be), and I experienced such a profound feeling of helplessness looking at her old, knobby and weary body and cloudy eyes.

I asked her if she was okay, and we made eye contact. As I watched my sweet, sassy weenie dog coughing, I suddenly though of my daughter—my only child. My daughter is grown now, doing her own thing, living her life—and this is as it should be.

The thought came to me, that this is how my daughter is going to feel one day about me.

She is going to look at me, making messes on the bed every day, in my old age with my cloudy eyes as I’m circling the drain, and know there is nothing to be done for me except to release me. She will feel helpless too.

And I began to cry, because I did not want to be the cause of my girlie ever feeling helpless like that.

I remember when my mother’s mom, Big Mama (yes, I was raised in the south), was dying. I was living in Berlin, Germany at the time and was not there when she passed.

My mother later spoke of spending those last days with her in the hospital and how she would periodically ask, “Momma, do you know who I am?” Because she couldn’t tell if she was lucid or not just by looking at her.

She said Big Mama responded each time with an impatient, disgusted look and with her characteristic spunk, “Of course I know who you are, Sissy,” using my mother’s nickname from childhood—given to her by my aunt Linda who was born after my mother.

“Because I just had to know,” my mother explained with such a desperate look on her face. I remember wondering about her desperation. What would it matter, exactly, even if she didn’t remember?

Wouldn’t it be more about the dying person and not the living at that point?

“It takes two people to make you, and one people to die. That’s how the world is going to end.”
~ William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying.

Would it somehow diminish me if my mother, on her deathbed, could not remember who I am?

If she were fading in and out, test-driving the spirit world to be ready when she finally decided to call it complete, would I expect, need, her to remember me?

I’m not sure I would expect her to be concerned with me at all, as I should think she’d be awfully busy orchestrating her own exit.

Would it make me feel desperate? I’d like to believe I’d feel okay if my mother didn’t remember who I was on her deathbed. I wonder, though.

And what about my own dear Chickabee, my daughter? Will she be offended or upset or sad if and when I am casting off my humanness, my bodily control, and I’m making messes too, just like Miss Weenie, in the midst of rehearsing for my return to spirit, that I cannot remember her sweet, lovely face?

Because that thought brings tears again and a sort of deep, wild pain starts up in my chest. I cannot stand to think, for even one second, of somehow forgetting my own girl-child.

Maybe that is what’s so desperate about it. Maybe my mother was thinking not about being forgotten, but about the possibility of forgetting.

Originally published at elephant journal as As I Lay Aging

Grace is a Certified Hypnotherapist and Registered Psychotherapist in Ft. Collins, CO, USA. She sees clients and facilitates Divine Feminine Hypnotherapy workshops for women. She’s a flaming, Earth-loving, tree-hugging, save-the-bees, believes-in-faeries, bike-riding, card-carrying, spiritual but not religious, hippie cowgirl liberal poet—yep, they do exist. She writes for The Scarlet Orchid and elephant journal. You can find her blog here and her creations here. You can also connect with her on Facebook and Twitter.

I’m Done with Getting Beat Up

Do not mistake my silence for acquiescence, agreement or approval.

Do not mistake my silence for lack of depth or reasoning skills.

Do not mistake my silence for lack of contemplation on the subject.

Just because I am silent, does not mean I haven’t given it serious thought.

Do not mistake my silence for lack of courage to speak up, either.

It is because I have given it so much thought, that I do not speak. Has it ever occurred to you that I thought very seriously about confronting you and for quite some time, but from having known you for several years, I realize you not only will not take it seriously, you will use it against me passive-aggressively for months, and perhaps years, to come?

You will attempt to make me feel guilty about speaking up and hurting your feelings—no matter how kindly and conscientiously I say it. I have learned this. Perhaps you have me trained?

Yet you say you welcome feedback/conflict. I do not agree. You take it badly and immaturely, using it against the other person, making them feel guilty for daring to think and say out loud, that you are not perfect.

When you ask my opinion, and I decline to contribute, have you thought that there are many reasons why a person may not want to talk? And many, or most, of them have nothing to do with you? And that no one is obligated to share their reasons for silence with you?

You relish being the misunderstood martyr—the quirky genius. You seem to think the immature, quirky behavior is cute and distinguishes you as unique.

I see it as dysfunctional. And it is anything but unique. It is quite boring, in fact. Go sell it somewhere else; I’m all full up here.

Life is short. I don’t have time to babysit your dysfunctions.

My assessment results come back, and they say I am an “avoider,” because I do not confront others around me when the median would.

“We tell our vulnerable, shameful stories to those who have earned the right to hear them.” ~Brene Brown

That is because with history as my guide, I see when it will not do any good. I can see it will cause more issues than it resolves.

I do not believe in asking someone to change for me. It has never worked, and I think it is arrogant. I also know that when I look at how difficult it is to change myself, I know it is impossible to change anyone else.

That leaves me in a place of ignoring you—or of leaving. I have to decide for myself if and which of these violates my self-integrity or not. I must weigh the good with the bad and make a decision about how that impacts me.

Is it that I don’t trust you to change? That I think I know you so well that I can predict your behavior? Maybe. Perhaps I am enabling you. Maybe I am being arrogant in assuming I know you that well, thinking I can predict your behavior.

Perhaps I see the futility.

I have seen that you have seldom (if ever) changed your behavior or your way of thinking when anyone else has brought you anything but praise. At best, you tend to ignore anything you don’t want to hear—even as you send out evaluations and ask for honest feedback.

Perhaps I am lacking in trust. Perhaps I am just old and have known a lot of people. Maybe I have trust issues.

Maybe I am simply a coward, walking around in my justifying skin.

Or maybe I just pay attention.

You are welcome to continue, what I define as, your dysfunction, in your world. I have no need to bash against the dysfunctions (that serve as armor) you have built around your heart in self-protection in any attempt to reach you in there.

I’m done with getting beat up in that process.

I seek always to come from a place of love and respect. And that necessarily must include myself first. I am the only one responsible for taking care of me. If I don’t do it, it will not be done.

Ahimsa (non-violence) begins with the self.
~ Gandhi

Grace is a Certified Hypnotherapist and Registered Psychotherapist in Ft. Collins, CO, USA. She sees clients and facilitates Divine Feminine Hypnotherapy workshops for women. She’s a flaming, Earth-loving, tree-hugging, save-the-Planet, believes-in-faeries, bike-riding, card-carrying, spiritual but not religious, hippie cowgirl liberal poet—yep, they do exist. She writes for The Scarlet Orchid and elephant journal. You can find her blog here and her creations here. You can also connect with her on Facebook and Twitter.

(not) finding Mr. Right.

I’ve fallen in love with someone who is not available.

“Loving someone is not painful. It’s when we must stop loving someone and withdraw our affection that we feel pain.”  ~ Barbara DeAngelis

I just had lunch with a man from a dating website. Yes, I’m back on a dating website.

Please don’t judge me. Mostly I got back on a site because I need to be distracted—pleasantly and permanently.

Despite my best efforts (okay, so some of my efforts may have been half-assed. I am human. Because love is love, for fuck’s sake and it feels sublime even when it’s also total agony, right?) to not allow my heart that liberty, I have fallen in love with a man I can’t have.

I didn’t try to fall in love with him; in fact, I felt that instant attraction thing upon meeting him months ago and tried to avoid falling in love with him. But it happened.

This feeds back into the perpetual argument I have with myself: Can one control one’s own heart? One can control one’s thoughts, but the heart?

The jury’s still out.

And, I’m pretty sure it’s time to stop whining about it, put on my big girl pants, saddle up and ride respectfully right on past him and the enticing speculations of what that would be like, into the next town over—called Distraction—to hopefully be quickly followed by a day-trip into the small village of Love (with someone else).

This necessary plan depresses me in its contemplation and my heart grows heavy, gray and sluggish at the injury of the thought. If I think about it too much, I start to lose my resolve.

I desire, though, to be so very carefully respectful—to everyone involved—including me.

I have good days and bad days with this situation. Sometimes I know what I have to do; other days I think about it too much and get sucked down by the undertow of emotions.

Most days, I feel like an idiot that I’ve somehow allowed myself to be in this predicament.

I’m already suffering, but will remaining friends or cutting all contact cause less suffering? Mostly, as you probably notice, I can easily get on the proverbial fence about this.

I love him enough that I want him to be happy, even if it’s not with me. I love him enough that I feel it would be unfair and too disruptive of me to say anything to him about it. Does this make me brave or just a chickenshit? Perhaps just pathetic. I’m not sure—nor does it matter.

This distraction plan may or may not work. I have tried it more than once before, and it has only been marginally successful. Some of my past attempts have inversely highlighted what/who I genuinely wanted instead of distracting me.

After one such attempt, I ended up sad and crying to my friend Liz after a perfectly wonderful kiss goodnight from a really hot man, only because the kiss was not from the man I was wildly attracted to (read: soul mate material) and who said he was not ready for a relationship.

And then there was the big, costly (on all fronts) distraction of me getting married at 38 because I felt I was old and ugly and it might be my last chance for a relationship, to be happy and to not be alone.

Oh, I loved him—but I knew, on some level, that I was settling because I was afraid of being old and alone. I saw him and that marriage as my last chance for happiness. Which is a theory I have proven incorrect since our divorce years ago, but I truly did believe it at the time.

My lunch date was a nice man. He was masculine, directed and full of purpose—all of this was obvious to me, and I liked these things about him. He held the door for me, pulled out my chair; he was a gentleman. We had a very nice conversation.

I wasn’t attracted to him, but I didn’t let that stop me from appreciating him and our conversation.

So at the end of our lunch date, he asked if I would like to get together again sometime; I could tell he was thinking I would say no. But because I wanted to give him—a very decent, acceptable man—a chance, I quite honestly said yes.

And I meant it.

I said yes because I am tired of waiting for Mr. Right.

I am tired of my own ideas of who/what that should be (hint: some weird, interesting mix of Cullen Bohannon, Walt Longmire, David Deida and Tom Hanks, I think—like a good chocolate: hard and crunchy on the outside, soft and gooey and a little nutty on the inside once you bite ‘em).

I wanted to give a decent, nice man a try. I’m tired of being ruled by my heart, and/or my increasingly lonely lady parts. I want to make good decisions—with my head.

Which is in the exact opposite direction from the feminine energy I have been cultivating, by the way, too, seeing as feminine energy is all about the heart, body and emotions.

I noticed as I began to pedal away from the restaurant, that I felt extremely sad and kind of hopeless. So with a respectful nod in the direction of the Divine Feminine, my heart and all things emotional—and with no small amount of dread—I turned to face the emotions waiting their turn and told them to bring it.

I was on my bike, so I had plenty of time to suss it out, and the longer I pedaled, the sadder I became. But I stayed with it, sitting with myself the same way I would sit with a girlfriend in this state, and allowed each emotion to present its case.

After many layers had peeled off, I finally felt an intense, deep, aching loss at the thought of giving up what I really need and want in trade for a “safe bet” again.

Crying, pedaling down Mountain Avenue, I could feel the edge I need in a man to keep me interested and attracted, and the lunch man was just not close enough to that edge. He felt so far away from what I need and want.

I knew, though, that it had nothing to do with him. He was still a very nice man. However, it had everything to do with already being in love with someone who, if he’s not Mr. Right, is pretty gawd damned close.

How is it I can have that Mr. Right feeling with someone not available to me? Shouldn’t his lack of availability, recuse him on some big, cosmic level—take him out of consideration?

I’m thinking this should be, like, a law or something, right? A Federal Statute. Or fuck that; let’s make it a Universal Law.

I think it’d make life much easier.

 

Originally published at elephant journal as I’ve Fallen in Love with a Man I Can’t Have.

Grace is a Certified Hypnotherapist and Registered Psychotherapist in Ft. Collins, CO, USA. She sees clients and facilitates Divine Feminine Hypnotherapy workshops for women. She’s a flaming, Earth-loving, tree-hugging, save-the-Planet, believes-in-faeries, bike-riding, card-carrying, spiritual but not religious, hippie cowgirl liberal poet—yep, they do exist. She writes for The Scarlet Orchid and elephant journal. You can find her blog here and her creations here. You can also connect with her on Facebook and Twitter.

Soul Mates

Originally published at elephant journal as Don’t Miss Your Soul Mate Flags

It can be exhilarating to meet a soul mate—that feeling of having known them forever as I look into their eyes is familiar and strange all at the same time.

It can be pleasant, funny, loving and soft. Or it can be like two freight trains colliding head-on. It can also be hauntingly sad.

I have met and loved several soul mates—in many different forms and relationships. Years ago, a soul mate came into my life and only stayed for a few weeks; it was very intense and somewhat confusing. I came home to a Dear Jane letter. I have neither seen nor heard from him again.

One was only in my life for a week or so, before vanishing back into the universe again, exiting my stage to step onto another one somewhere else. This relationship was so intense and immediate, that we burned the karma quickly and completely, no longer romantically/sexually attracted to each other by the end of those short days, but still loved each other.

Upon meeting, we tried to play by society’s rules. We really did. But we couldn’t.

Within a day of meeting we were naked in my house, breathing each other’s breath again, just like before in other places and times. His mouth was familiar, his kisses exquisite; they felt like coming home. I have not had such beautiful, satisfying kisses since. Just the memory of them can make my breath change tempo.

As soon as we immediately, easily and mutually rotated into one specific and unusual sexual position, we looked at each other in exposed recognition, “Having you right here, right like this, is all I have been able to think about since I met you yesterday.”

I could only agree. It was exactly how I had seen us together too.

This was a man for whom I had no attraction whatsoever until I looked into his eyes. When I looked at his body, I felt no attraction. When our eyes met each time, however, I fell in love all over again. I quite literally, for the first time in my life, felt weak in the knees every time he looked at me.

All I wanted to do was be as close to him as possible as much as possible. It always felt like he would be taken from me. I felt almost desperate to love him as much and as intensely as possible in what felt like the very short time we had together.

Perhaps needless to say, we spent most of our time together naked—talking, crying, laughing, making love, f*cking; it was intense, beautiful, raw and cathartic.

We split amicably a few days later, having processed through whatever it was we needed to process together. We gave each other those karmic gifts and were done. We did, indeed, it turned out, only have a few days. But this time we were not torn from each other. This time we truly were complete at the end of our time together.

I have come across many soul mates in many different lifetimes over the years. As a hypnotherapist, I find them all the time—mine and for clients too—in past lives and in this current life. So much so, that I had to change my definition of “soul mate” at some point.

 I now define “soul mate” as a soul with whom I have had so many meaningful encounters in so many other lifetimes and dimensions, that I feel I know them almost instantly upon meeting them again. They feel so familiar, like family, like instant friends. We can play just about any role for each other too: friend, lover, child, grandchild. I think most folks think of soul mates only as lovers, but I have found that is not necessarily the case.

From so many years of working with past lives, it is my understanding that we, as pure souls/energy, get together before each lifetime and kind of plan out how we are going to meet each other. We set up “flags” for ourselves, so that we recognize the significance of the meeting.

A “flag” is anything that happens in our current life that grabs our attention enough to make us stop and take a second look, or make us become aware that we need to pay special attention to someone/thing. Flags often look or feel like déjà vu, or like something weird and surreal. It gets our attention. It causes us to “wake up,” to come up out of the habitual, treadmill, hazy state we usually coast along in.

“I knew I had known you before, because when I saw you, time seemed to slow down and everything was moving in slow motion,” was what one lover said to me, explaining the flag he experienced on seeing me for the first time.

I have met and loved soul mates that feel like friendly companions—like the only reason we agreed to meet again was just because we love and miss each other and want to be together again. We don’t necessarily have any big lessons for each other. We just want to give each other the gift of resting into a nice, easy, calm relationship.

The ones that are heart breaking, though, are the ones where timing is an issue. We meet them as planned, we experience the flag and know it is important, but we have made past decisions that prevent us from being lovers.

It is not that I love my current lover less after I meet a soul mate, but I can very clearly feel the missed opportunity with the soul mate and must accept it—maybe even mourn its passing. I have never broken up with a current lover to be with a new soul mate, but I have been very attracted to and tempted by that idea.

It can be so sad when it happens—to meet them, recognize them and maybe even admit and discuss it with them, but to be unable or unwilling to actually do anything about it.

Brian Weiss, the famous hypnotherapist who has written several books on the subject, writes about this in Only Love is Real, a book about hypnosis and soul mates finding each other again.

When I think of them, those unrequited soul mates, I can still feel the sudden sting of recognition, how my heart seems to fly up out of my chest into the sky when I look into their eyes, followed quickly by the descending realization that we will not be lovers this lifetime, the heartache, and finally the soft longing and sadness that still linger for paths not taken.

Of course you are thinking, “But you can still be friends with them, right?” Yes, that is possible, but I find it can be difficult, because as the friendship grows, so does the longing. Have you ever had a friend that you fell in love with, only to know (or find) that they cannot or do not or will not reciprocate? It is not fun for anyone involved.

My wish for you, Dear Reader? May your flags be obvious and your timing and decisions always impeccable. Godspeed.

 

 

Grace is a Certified Hypnotherapist and Registered Psychotherapist in Ft. Collins, CO, USA. She sees clients and facilitates Divine Feminine Hypnotherapy workshops for women. She’s a flaming, Earth-loving, tree-hugging, save-the-Planet, believes-in-faeries, bike-riding, card-carrying, spiritual but not religious, hippie cowgirl liberal poet—yep, they do exist. You can find her blog here and her creations here. You can also connect with her on Facebook and Twitter.