Hard Worker and Community Builder...Yep I am a Beaver

People often ask me how I found out what my Spirit Animal was.  When I begin to tell them they usually think I am crazy or taking some extremely potent drugs.  Well, I am not on any extremely potent drugs that make me loopy.  I also am not crazy, even though I am living with the mental illness known as Bi-Polar Disorder.  Having a mental illness does not make one crazy or nuts.  It just means they have a biological
(Psychical) brain disorder.  Any way, I digress.  My Spirit animal came to me in not just one dream but several dreams.  My spirit animal that kept visiting me each and every night for few years was the Beaver. 

The significance of the beaver was not known to me at first.  The more I dreamed the more the connections came to me.  Why a beaver?  Why not a Black Bear or a Mountain Lion?  No, the animal in my dreams, was always the beaver.  Sure other animals would appear like the doe and her fawn drinking water from the big pond with its natural springs and the creek that runs through it that never freezes.  But the beaver played the major role every time I entered into the dream state of my sleeping.  After about it year, I would start having dreams about beavers in my waking hours as well.

Why the beaver?  I thought for moment that this really made no sense at all.  What is the significance of a beaver?  I wondered many questions.  I would walk out in to a wooded area by a creek and see a beaver dam.  I would see the pond that would accumulate water on the one side of the beaver's dam.  Being Polish and not Native American, I thought for a while I maybe was crazy.  What does the beaver have to offer?  What do I have to offer? 

One Saturday morning I went to a Writer's Group at a restaurant in a local market.  After our group writing session ended, I noticed that a fair was going on.  They had  massage therapists there, healing touch practitioners and some psychic people.  I was sort of a believer but I did not give it my full attention.  I was walking down the aisles when this surge of energy came shooting through my right side of my body.  It was a good energy.  It was not painful or upsetting.  This energy was pleasant and peaceful but it also was very strong.  The energy started pulling towards this woman with a massage table.  Her sign said she did energy work and could tell people the names of their guardian angels. I was intrigued but hesitant.  I mean I was raised in a traditional Roman Catholic family.  Yes, we did believe in angels and Saints. But I never put much stock into it.  I attempted to avoid this woman as she had some kind of plague.  I could not escape the power of her positive energy.  She came up to me and asked if I wanted a demonstration session.     Since I am poor, I started to tell her I can not afford the $45 for this demonstration session.  "I am on disability," I told her.  She asked well how much can you afford today.  I informed her I had $10 on me and that is it.

"That is fine," she said with a gentle smile.  So, I hopped up on her massage table without any other conversing.  I laid there for about five minutes when she said, "You are a Beaver. I am not sure what that means.  I do not do Spirit Animals. Do you mind if after the session we look it up in this book I just purchased."

An energy more powerful than her positive energy flowed over me.  I knew my Spirit Guides were with me. How did she come up with the beaver?  I had never told anyone about this beaver thing up to this point. After my non existent response, she repeated herself, "You are a beaver."

I was intrigued so I finally informed her that I would like to see her book about Spirit Animals. "Well, I do not know if the beaver is in this book.  But you are a Beaver."

Well, I had been called worse things in life.  She did some more energy work on me.  When she was doing this energy work the energy started pulsating through every piece of my body and being.  I actually felt as if I could float on the air.  The energy was so powerful.  I got up slowly with her assistance. She looked through the book. No Beaver.  Then she flipped through it slower and the beaver appeared.

It was like a magic trick.  The beaver has a lot of significance.  The Beaver's personality qualities are that it is determined, resourceful, opinionated,  and methodical.  The beaver is very high strung, industrious and has a strong-willed, businesslike aspect to it.  It is persistent and can be possessive, self-indulgent and inflexible.  I thought wow, it is appearing like I am a beaver.  Then she tells me that it also says, the beaver must cultivate adaptability and compassion.

More and more the magic feeling was leaving me and the power of something higher than myself was in me and around me.  It was above and below me.  My two spirit guides led me to a a dreamy awakened state.  I no longer noticed the practitioner.  It was just me and my spirits guides moving down the creek in my father's woods.  I was a birch bark canoe and my spirit guides were using oars made of oak to paddle me down the creek.  We came to the pond.  It was flooded.  Higher water levels than I have noticed back there.  The beaver's dam appeared on the other side of the pond.  Holding back the water and building a natural drinking fountain for the other animals and themselves.  Building community, so the doe and her fawn would have a place to see their reflection and drink the cool water.  The ducks now having a place to swim and dip their heads below the surface of the refreshing water.  I was on a journey.  The journey to battle through the rough spots with the diagnosis of Bi-Polar disorder.  I was engaging and building a community that could support me on my journey.  I was persistent.  I wanted to be well.  My determination had kept me going for years.  I was five years old when I had my first suicidal thoughts.  My persistence and my strong-will to not give up even when those thoughts were flowing intensely like the river does when the winter's snow from the many blizzards of the season melt.  I learned to achieve my goal of being well and of keeping myself of committing the dreadful act of suicide that I had to be resourceful.

I am the beaver.  I gain my energy from the birch bark I feed on.  I ride the creek on the birch bark canoe with my spirit guides by sides always keeping me from getting snagged in the debris of the flowing and ever changing creek.  This is the best I have felt in many years.  Thank you Beaver for coming to me. 

As I started to walk away the practitioner called out to me, "Your guardian angels.  I forgot to tell you the names of your guardian angels."  She said them quickly but I was so in tuned with the beaver that the guardian angels' names slipped right through my being.  I was a beaver.  And that is all that mattered that day.

Homeward Bound...Well to what used to be my home

Homeward Bound to the land I grew up on.  My parents' expecting me earlier in the day but trains which are always on time (ha) got delayed today because of flooding in Fargo.  I knew earlier this week that I should have built an Ark.  But I just did not have the patience to do so or the money for the building permit. The measurements, since I lack in math skills would have been off.  My boat probably would have sunk.  Luckily, I am better at other things.  I performed this past Monday at the comedy club after not having done stand-up comedy in three years.  It was a natural high lacking hangovers, police involvement, and all the other garbage that goes with getting high on drugs.  Still feeling pretty good and enjoying the train ride.  I probably would have gotten motion sickness on the Ark anyways.  I often wondered how Noah handled motion sickness.  But I digress.

Journey to the otherside

Once upon a time, okay it was about 10 years ago in February.  I was prescribed a medication to help with my mental illness and suicidal thoughts.  I was on the medication for three and half days when I began to tremble uncontrollably.  What ensued was a Gran Mal Seizure on the fourth night.  I not only had the seizure I fell backwards, cracked my head open on the cement floor, dislocated my left shoulder and died.  That is right!  I died.  A first responder was there and did the life saving CPR on me.  I came back quickly, as if pushed back into my shell by the Creator.  She said it was not my time.  Re-birthed was I as came to.  Knowing that not only the medication that was supposed to keep me from killing myself made me lifeless, but that my breath was sacred and needed to be returned to me.  Dying changes a person life when they come back to tell about.  It sure changed mine.

Revise This...

I started out as an oral story teller and did not start putting pen to paper or typing the fingers in the keyboard till much later in life for example when I got to college the first time.  I always had stories in my head, jokes and poems that I could do.  I even did impressions of people but writing was not my strong suit.  So, when I got an opportunity to take a Creative Writing class in college...I was quite frankly nervous.  I knew I could tell stories quite well but write them that was a whole different thing.

The creative writing class involved writing poetry.  Something that I did not think I would ever write in my lifetime.  The professor was also a writer and not just a professor.  He was working on a book.  He was immensely into revising your work as I think all English professors are.

It came time for the first assignment.  The professor was so delighted by my writing and overly praising the excellent writing he then had the nerve to ask me "How many times did you revise this?"   "Revise,"  I said.  "This here on the paper is the first and only draft there will be.  I did not revise nor will I.  It flowed out of me like the creek to the river which in turn flows to the sea."  He turned beat red when I added, "I wrote it in five minutes.  Thanks for all the wonderful compliments about my work but I never revise.  It is what it is."  He did not believe me about the no revision thing.  Every class, I got wonderful praises for my work and then the question came..."How many times did you revise this?"  "NONE!"  Would always be my answer and I felt a lot of tension in classroom between us. With all his wonderful praises and never critiquing my work I was sure I was going to get an A in the class.  Disappointment set in when my final grade was a C.  He apparently was jealous that I never had to revise and he was making constant revisions. 

The morale of the story is trust. Trust in the talents God gave you, God made you and said you were good just like the rest of what God created.  Trust in that.  Don't revise yourself and lose who you are just adapt to things around you.  You are good.

Prepare Ye The Way of the Lord....Build the community

Last week at Bible Study, my roommate and I were leading the discussion/the group.  We were focused on the theme of inclusiveness and community that we found throughout our studies of the Bible and of Jesus.  Then today, while I was looking at our disorganized bookshelf, I found a book I had not read since my first attempt at college.  "Dorothy Day:  The Long Loneliness", had jumped almost right off the shelf into my hands.  Before turning her autobiography over to see the cover with her standing there in the woods, I noticed the following quote:

"We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes from community." ~ Dorothy Day

How powerful, I thought.  She was speaking right to me.  Love being the solution and community being so vital in bringing about that love.  I started to think about the Golden Rule: Treat each other how you would like to be treated.  or as I always heard it.  "Love thy neighbor as thyself."  The question for me always was how was I treating myself?  Did I love myself if not how could I love anyone else?  This puts us in a disadvantage point.  We become isolated and withdrawn.  We do not see the good in ourselves and possibly in others because of our inability to love ourselves.  Years of loneliness and isolation had brought me down.  But a community of love and compassion built me up. 

The Beaver is central to building a community.  The Beaver family only gnaws down enough trees to feed on and to build the dam which in return makes a pond.  Then the deer and the ducks and all the other animals including the fish have a place to live.  It is a co-operative community.  It is inclusive and full of love.  Each animal and plant, the soil and water and rocks, all know what their role is in the community. Let us be busy beavers and build a compassionate, loving community.

The Beaver

The Beaver gnaws and feeds on the Spirit of the Birch and the Weeping Willow.  The crystal tears with hues of pink run down my cheeks as I journey through this sacred land called Mother Earth.  The wind breathes in and out through my being as rays of light from the glorious Sun shines upon my Spirit.  The prairie grasses blow in the wind holding their roots firm to the rocks and soil.  The seeds of hope, compassion, love, growth and beautiful bounty are spread through their breath. ~ Theresa Dolata (The South Dakota Fall Trip 2010)

Differently abled and as abnormal as can be...That is me!

When I was a young third generation Polish American girl growing up in a small town in Central Wisconsin, I learned that I was very different from every one else.  They had abilities and strengths.  They seem to be more intelligent then I.  Of course, I felt worthless and had low self esteem because of that.  I had a disability or two that had not been acknowledged until young adulthood.  I had no idea that someday my disabilities would turn into triumphs. 

Kindergarten through eighth grade at the same school, had left me no options to figure out why I was different.  Why did I struggle so?  I told great stories always but my reading and writing were very poor.  I would score high on standardized English test but be failing English.  I was told I was not trying hard enough.  I was lazy.  Many of times I sat at the principles office because I did not have my homework done.  They thought I was lazy and I thought I was stupid.  Who was right? 

It took into adulthood to figure out that I am neither.  I am not lazy and I am not stupid.  I am a narcoleptic dyslexic young woman, who although received grades of D's and F's in school for English and in Speech class, does a lot of writing and public speaking.  I have strengths in my weaknesses.  I have weaknesses in my strengths.  But I know now that I am not stupid or disabled.  I am differently abled and thankfully as abnormal as can be....That is me!