The older I get, the better I understand why in college I was targerted to be taken out by the nephilim/dark unincarnated vampiric demonic soul that is what came through when in high school my family was warned, "a window that is safe has been breached" before it burrowed backwards in space/time to lay its feeding networks. Because I always saw this as a private reward life, not one for me to leave any mark in history books or social/political structures -- and yet the things I've been shifting behind the scenes, at a core spiritual level have been world shaking. And every move this nephilim makes to try to destroy me in the present/past, it causes me to find a way to completely change the parameters by making an argument in the name of justice/fairness while staying within the technical rules of unfolding creation and the laws of incarnating versus unincarnating souls but shaking up power structures/paradigms in completely unexpected profound ways. This morning I created another time quake by making a standing supplication to old gods (ones that I personally hadn't previously worked with specifically in my past lives but who are ancient and allies though from different branches of the prismatic pantheons of immortals; apparently they know me and admire my work within the incarnation but having no connections with me waited for me to approach them to ask) and this was such a huge shift that didn't have any time constraints or teleological time constraints (since I tend to exist in the long now and get confused between past/present/future on the sphere of time) that I have no idea how far forward/backward the ripples will go or what major mandela effect shifts I've created this time. I ask one petition to divinities I'd not previously made alliances with and did it in proper spiritual supplication following the old rules of direct contact and the shifts that made are bigger than even I could have imagined.... This is bigger than any of the ripples and past shifts I've caused in the last 15 years by my convincing and asking in the name of justice.... (Let's not talk about the shift I created 15 years ago.... But there are some massive ones I've done in the interim...)

How a chaotic good fey decided "if not me then who" so chose to enter into the cycle of souls to incarnate as a Hand of Ma'at with the gift to shift fate lines in the service of Divine Justice constrained only by a complete unshakeable adherence to the sanctity of free will... And it baffles me WHY this is allowed as a correction for what I chose to step in as an incarnating soul for a while to deal within the rubric of incarnations while fighting those who won't follow the rules....

Also. This powerful nephilim I'm in long multi-life chess battle with is going to be so pissed once it realizes what I just shifted and did.... And I don't know what it will do this time when it gets angry. And given that, it's probably for the best then that I am single and unattached right now so it can't use someone weaker to keep me from doing what must be done for whatever it tries next. because, the best way to get me to backdown from a fight brought to me is the threat to those I love. As long as those I love are safe/protected or don't want me to compromise for anything, then I only "back down" as a strategic setup for a stronger next move.

This is it, boys, this is war. What are we waiting for? Why don't we break the rules already? I was never one to believe the hype. Save that for the black and white. Try twice as hard, and I'm half as liked, But here they come again to jack my style. That's alright (that's alright.) I found a martyr in my bed tonight. She stops my bones from wondering just who I am, who I am, who I am. Oh, who am I? Mmm, mmm-mmm. Well, some nights, I wish that this all would end. 'Cause I could use some friends for a change. And some nights, I'm scared you'll forget me again. Some nights, I always win (I always win.) But I still wake up, I still see your ghost. Oh Lord, I'm still not sure what I stand for. Oh-oh (Oh-ooh-woah) what do I stand for? (Oh-ooh-woah) what do I stand for? Most nights, I don't know. so this is it? I sold my soul for this? Washed my hands of that for this? I miss my mom and dad for this? No, when I see stars, when I see- When I see stars, that's all they are. When I hear songs, They sound like a swan, so come on.

 I'm not joking about the depths of my capacity to sacrifice what I normally cherish and love and to martyr myself while I'm in the hollows. Not just chopping my hair off, my self sacrificing runs far deeper than that.....

After my grandfather died, I gave up dance because my parents were arguing over being too busy/stressed to be able to take me to class (my grandfather had always taken me before he got too sick with his cancer to drive me and then he made sure my grandmother drove him and me to my classes until he was too weak to even make it to the car.) When i saw that I was causing further pain, I told them quietly not to worry about my dance class, I didn't have to go anymore -- it wasn't bringing me joy anymore anyway. I was 9. The two things I had always said I wanted to be when I grew up were a ballerina and an author -- and there I was quietly telling the adults not to worry about taking me to ballet class because it didn't make my heart happy while I was grieving. I didn't step back into a ballet salle to reclaim my love of it until I was 22. I don't have words for the brightness of the joy and sense of rightness I felt reclaiming what I loved and had tried so hard to sacrifice. but it took me 13 years to even decide to put a pair of ballet slippers back on my feet to try to reclaim what I had willingly sacrificed while grieving deep in the hollows....

Being in the hollows of grieving at times in the past, whether over deaths of loved ones, loved pets, endings of relationships I cherished deeply, has also led me to give up writing, sketching, painting, the ocean, letting my polar bear reach me even in dream space after deciding I needed to let him go while grieving over letting go of his band and everything I believed them to be following the bullying ostracism that the girls engaged in in the name of the band... I genuinely don't believe he even misses me or recognizes the hole in his inner space where I always was because he's too busy distracting himself with what he lies to himself that he has always sought. But it doesn't matter. And right now, it doesn't even hurt that I gave up on him and let him go while I was grappling with all my precogs and my knowing that I was experiencing my last times with my sweetest emo  Pisces pup and that I wouldn't be able to heal her because she wouldn't let me-- it doesn't feel like anything. Nothing feels like anything right now with how deep in the hollows I am mourning my dog's physical absence.... Even 8+ inches of snow can't make me light up in joy over the beauty of it -- I know because it didn't a week and a half ago and it isn't yet even making me excited happy impatient for when the next round of beautiful heavy snow starts in the morning.... What's one more absence when you're so deep in the hollows even the excitement and beauty of the fresh snow can't light joy in your heart?

I don't feel anything at all right now when I think of him, or when I think of letting him go, or when I think of how he decided to lie to himself and fall for someone else while I was trying to ready my heart with playing Cassandra that my luck dragon wouldn't see another Spring or another Summer or another Fall and finally not even another snowfall..... O that betrayal and that letting go of him if that's the version of him he chose to be hurt and cut me so deep to grapple with nine months ago -- but these last weeks since the new moon when she died I've just felt nothing at all about it or about him. It's easy to let him go right now and tell myself that our life paths don't cross or belong together this life, because it doesn't hurt right now to accept that just as it doesn't hurt to think of him or let him go with no expectation of ever seeing him or crossing paths again. It doesn't hurt. It doesn't feel anything at all regarding him. So letting him go is easy, I'm not giving up anything that brings me joy just as it's nothing that hurts me. Every night I'm consistently calmly telling Artemis and the Morrigan not to let him reach me in dream space unless he has decided to actually choose me this life, wanting or missing me isn't enough -- he has to consciously and actively choose me as what he wants and seeks in his actions as well as intention for me to let him reach me again. This has been an easy boundary line in the sand to hold and have the Goddesses guard for me in my dream space. At the last new moon is when my Goddess (Artemis/Britomartis) started swapping nights with The Morrigan started bringing to visit me every sleep the soul of my Audrey Pupburn to visit with me in my sleep and asked if she can let him in past her guard since he's been trying to reach me if he's also asleep when I sleep. My Goddess and The Morrigan aren't the same, but The Morrigan has been very interested in me since I saved the life of a baby crow and later was adopted by my crow family. She is one of the crow/raven deities who adopted me and protect me for the last decade or so since that happened. 

While I'm in the hollows, I'll not reach for him or seek him or try to make our paths cross. I accept his past choices and the consequences completely and I feel nothing at all about them or where they currently lead.  I know what fatelines his choices will bring about -- and right now I don't care to fight them, i don't care to try to change his mind. I just feel nothing but to shrug and say "okay then, that's what you say you want" and to walk away without even a glance back. It's how it is for me when I'm in the hollows. letting go is easier than fighting to hold on to things that don't make you feel anything right now and which trying to keep them going causes upset to other people's plans....

It's also not hard right now for me to accept letting go of We Banjo 3 as they take a break that's a breakup. It doesn't hurt me to have muted David and to not see or hear anything of his solo release since October when he went on tour with his energy vampire girlfriend and opened at her European shows was promoting her heavily. She's all through the songs and I find the moldy mango color of her vocals and harmonies disgusting in the one song i tried to listen to last fall. I feel nothing at all about choosing not to listen to his songs or support his solo work due to her involvement in it after I warned him in fall 2020 that there was nothing he could ever do or create that Ajeet was part of that would appeal to me or I would choose to watch or listen to. 

I don't hold any value right now in Eric or Dave, it costs me nothing to let them go because I feel nothing about their absence in my life. They've made their free will choices, and I feel nothing about accepting that and letting them go instead of making nay effort to keep them in my life for the joy they and their music once gave me.... 

There's also a good friend of mine with cptsd (though little to nothing in events this life to warrant it, it's from her last life which she doesn't remember) who I helped grow as much as I could but the last time I visited her, on the drive back from Detroit I diagnosed her as having Munchausen's and Munchausen's by proxy based on her behaviors not taking care of her sister's elderly cat who needs daily meds while her sister was out of town during part of our visit and me calling her out about not taking care of Mia and explaining to Crissy what had been said about Mia's meds. Crissy and I took on taking care of the cat while Debbie was out of town because after that incident of being lied to by Erin I didn't trust her and you don't fuck around with the meds of a dependent animal who can't take care of themself..... When we left, I told Crissy my diagnosis and said that as a Hand of Fate, this situation wasn't fair to Debbie putting her own life on hold so long or the animals situationally dependent on Erin who wasn't taking that responsibility seriously - so while I wished Erin no I'll will, I was done trying to help her and instead she needed to be removed for the sake of Debbie, Mia the cat, and Abby (Erin's dog.) Erin fell in love with a guy online in Hawaii who's still married with a kid and a green card is somehow involved but she moved out there to be the other woman and then complains about the actual wife and the never ending divorce process etc.  Anyway. The day Audrey died, Erin chose to text me reach out in "sympathy" after seeing my post that Audrey was dying and all my friends/family who had written the sweetest kindest most supportive messages about when they have lost their own beloved pets, especially the first pet that was ever theirs alone. I have been genuinely blown away by the amount of love and support and wisdom and sharing of their own hurts that so many people have gifted me these last weeks. Anyway, that's NOT what Erin did. Even after being told I was sitting with Audrey to be there for her in the spirit of love she needed and deserved AND being told that Audrey's breathing had changed, Erin decided that was the time to try to turn the conversation about her own suffering and her situation (of her own making) and kept going despite me being brutally honest in what few responses I gave and then one word responses and finally not responding. (I was checking my phone because Karissa wasn't certain if she had time or wanted the closure of a proper goodbye with audrey but I had told her she could come over after she had spent the morning crying from my post that Audrey was dying.... Karissa had lived with us and living with Audrey was the main impetus for her to want her own dog, Chewie, and to bring me with to meet her and help with her first dog adoption.) I almost didn't check to see Nancy's texts of support and love and Junior (her potties who died of old age over the summer) talking to her in spirit form wanting her to give a message for me and Audrey. But with Erin's texts, I didn't even let me be angry at Erin over it in the moment because that would have decentered me from the place of love I need to be in for Audrey's sake and caused her to experience agitation over my anger instead of peace and love and to let herself die knowing how deeply and fully she was loved. Later that night, Erin tried again to talk to me and spin it about her own suffering AFTER I had posted about Audrey's burial (there are many people who live far away who love Audrey and many who felt she was vicariously in their life through my posts and I had decided when I knew she was dying and I couldn't save her that I wouldn't be selfish in my suffering like my instincts tell me to do, but instead wanted to make sure everyone who loved her knew and could share their love and sorrow with her and me as she died. Because that's what Audrey Pupburn wanted.) I was already in the hollows so I didn't feel my own anger at Erin though I knew I should be (Crissy was angry enough for both of us when I told her) and instead I chose to not even let Erin open that can of worms -- even though she sent me the same message three times of vague knowing what it is to be having a hard time to try to garner my sympathy make it about her suffering again... I know that her uncle died and her mom's dementia has progressed worse and she may die in the next year, but all that Erin wanted to do was make it clear how much she personally is hurting because of the situation of her own making with Jacob's legal wife and the divorce and the kid..... Not about her losses, which she has to share with her sister Debbie (also a friend, currently packing up all her belongings so her dad can sell the house to pay for their mom's medical care -- Debbie is planning to move to Gettysburg area) but to try to make it about her suffering of her own creation. During the last hours of my dog's life when I was doing everything to make those hours about how loved Audrey is and to let her die in peace on her terms..... Anyway, she texted me again to try to commiserate and "support" me but didn't apologize or even acknowledge when I told her  directly that I was most upset on Audrey's death day when anyone tried to derail me from making it about Audrey. And then I basically told her that I didn't need her sympathy, I was sad but as a believer in reincarnation and a precog, it was the many months of "last times" leading up to Audrey's death that hurt me worse than her actual death. And I didn't bite or let her use any of her openers to try to make it about her and then she just stopped when I reminded her that Audrey still visits me until she's ready to move on be born again so while I miss her physical presence, she's still checking in frequently

They can all three make other choices and find paths and fatelines to bring them back to meet up again with my path, but their past choices mean that I accept and do not feel the loss of letting them go down the paths they have chosen for themselves over the last year. I do not consider them under my protection or guidance down the paths of their choosing and until they become brighter versions of themselves again, I will not seek them out of my own free will volition -- they will have to choose to change their courses AND choose to seek me out again if they want to reconnect with me down future paths..

So far while in the hollows  I've only sacrificed people who've made their free will choices that leave no room for me in their present  lives or future life paths. I haven't (yet) tried to sacrifice anything while I'm in the hollows this time that are integral to my own soul's joy and that I can't replace. Only what I had already spent the time of playing Cassandra doing the shadow work to let go of while I still cared and the letting go hurt while it still cut deep to accept. Hopefully I won't let go anything that will diminish me the way giving up dancing diminished me... I haven't danced from my heart since my first precogs about Audrey. but that's different. I didn't sacrifice dance, i just haven't felt the joy in it...  

But just know about me to be extra cautious right now about in anyway making me think that hanging onto something I once loved or cherished is a hardship... it's easy for me to let go and sacrifice and leave what i should love and cherish if I weren't in the hollows where I feel nothing at all about it or about its absence.... Because in general, the things I have a tendency to sacrifice while in the hollows are the very things that almost always bring me joy and would help me to find my way back out of the hollows sooner to the place I normally exist in where all I see and feel are the sparkles of joy in the beauty that IS despite everything that would destroy it or keep it from ever being born.... 

[Post Title: Lyrics from the Fun song Some Nights ]

 My sweet little bear luck dragon emo Pisces pup passed away on Jan 21. She was in doggie diapers across the last couple days when she was too weak to stand. She spent most of her last two days laying across the threshhold of the kitchen and i slept laying on the kitchen floor letting her use my hand as a pillow and talking to her. 

 

She waited until just after the new moon to die but left me enough daylight to take her to my parents house (the house I grew up in) to bury her as the sun set through the gloaming. After she died, I cut off my braid with my athame (and then I evened out the egregiously uneven parts with my sewing shears in the kitchen) so I could bury the braid with her. Once a Greek soul, always a Greek soul -- you cut your hair off to bury with your loved ones and you pour wine (well in Audrey's case whiskey) on their grave/pyre, it's what you do. I didn't cut myself to show my grief, I'm not a barbarian.  I also buried with her a combined braid of her emo bang hair and the ends of mine I cut off the day she stopped eating -- I have one just like it for myself along with the collars/tags of every pet I've loved and lost and some more hair from Audrey. It's in my wooden box with the Celtic tree of life carved on it. 

I buried her in her og Packers jersey she had picked out for herself at a year old (her newer one is on a blue eyed stuffed polar bear that I sleep with)  and lay her in her old bed that she'd had since she was a puppy and would never let me replace no matter how many times I tried. She was buried with her two favorite toys, her huck and her snow frisbee that every time I took her outside I told her, "Remember, return with your shield or on it pup" which is why like any good Spartan she was buried with her shield. She was also buried with toys from her closest canine packmates: the rope of my parents old dog Samson (he was old when I got Audrey and died when she was only a couple years old), the Christmas bobo from my aunt and uncle's dog Jenna (she was 2.5 years old when I got Audrey as a puppy and they were young dogs together while my Uncle Steve brought her into work, she died when Audrey was 10), and the pink spikey ball of my parent's current dog Sophie (she's nearly 8 now, she sits by me stares at my desktop picture of Audrey whenever I'm at my desk at work.) I asked my mom for three pennies right before the burial, one for each eye and the third because dogs pay their tithes to Cerberus who has three heads, but he only asks for pennies not silver like Charon asks.

I did go to get my haircut fixed the following Weds.  But actually when Maggie saw me on Weds to cut it properly, she laughed because she said she never would have guessed looking at it that I did one of those improbable movie scenes where the heroine cuts her hair and next scene has a perfect bob. This was my haircut after I cut it:

This is it how it looked after Maggie cut it properly for me:

Anyway. I miss her but I knew it was coming. As a precog, I always deal with grieving and mourning out of sync with events. The last time realizations started in the Spring, every time I had the Knowing that she and I would never again do something we had loved doing. I tried to fight it, said it was just shadows of fear from my old prophecy I had told Mikaela when she was six and having a sad about Audrey (who was then four) dying some day and I said, "Don't worry love. She'll live to over 14.5 but not 15 -- unless I'm really good and can get her through a crisis and then she'll live to be 21.5." And Mikaela instantly said, "Well you're stubborn and I can't imagine you not winning anything you set your heart on. So 21.5 it is." And I patiently reminded her, "Only if I can get her to 15 sweetling." She's been reminding me since Audrey turned 14 "you promised 21.5." And I've had to remind her, "Only if I can get her past her 15th birthday."  That said, I spent most of the last year fighting it, trying to find another way.  I was pouring so much energy into healing her and keeping her healthy pain free that I spent much of last year in chronic exhaustion and constant over-extending my gifts migraines. It was Audrey's choice when and how she wanted to be done. Starting around Samhain, Audrey told me I was harming myself pouring so much of my life force into her that she started refusing to let me pour my life force into her to heal her, she'd pull away whenever I tried and if I persisted she would get up and leave the room to make it clear she meant it. She would let me take her pain from her, but she stopped letting me heal her or run a full body chakra energy reset.  It was just after Christmas she started refusing hard kibble and she stayed alive for 11 days on sheer will power and my energy after she stopped eating entirely. On the 8th day of her hunger strike she insisted on walking all the way down to Tiedemann Pond so we could just sit together by the water. The last two weeks watching her dying was harder than her death, even though she wasn't in pain since I took all her pain from her but it was harder at every single "last time" knowing than when her time met up with her.

I'm still very emo with my nails painted black and wearing mostly black all the time.  I'm still very deep "in the hollows" as I called it when I was a kid, the place where I go to not feel anything in order to not feel my own sorrow so deep I could drown in it. It's a place where I can't cry and where my smiles don't touch my eyes. It's how I cope, until I reach the point my grief doesn't feel like I could drown in it. This is me tonight:

Like I said, I'm very emo "in the hollows" still. Even when my little emo pup visits me. (She visits me all the time at work and in the car and while I go do things -- but at home due to my warding she can only visit me in dream space when Artemis Britomartis or The Morrigan brings her to visit. Which one of the two goddesses most protective of me at this time has done every time I sleep. And Audrey knows she has a standing invitation to spend her next life with me, either as my child (should I have children before I get so old I biologically can't) or again as a beloved pet. But if as a pet, I reminded her to send me dream visions of her and precogs of our future together to be certain I know to look for her and find her to adopt her. She's not yet ready for her next life, she's still in soul review and watching over those she loved until she knows when/where she wants to be born next. And she visits me as often as she can. Her soul has always been devoted to me like that, even if she did make a better dog in this life than she made a husband last life....

The other thing to know about me when I'm in the hollows is that because I don't feel much of anything, it's VERY easy for me to sacrifice things I once loved if I feel I need to because it's not currently bringing me joy.  This is a warning -- if you make choices that make me feel I need to cut you out from my life or from reaching me, I will. Your choices are yours to make, but if you push me to the point of giving you up, sacrificing anyone or anything out is easy.

Also. In May I will be bringing my sister's family's dog Waffles home to live with me.  They have been done since just after I left from my Nov/Dec visit when Waffles decided to destroy her bed (and every bed they bought her) after I left until they put the blanket I had been sleeping with in her kennel with her. They've been doing the back and forth for over a year, my parents planned two separate roadtrips out there specifically planned around bringing Waffles back and then they changed their mind last minute. This time is different though, especially since they're all moving out in August for a house renno to add a third floor on their house. Also they're paying for my flight out there on May 2 and they'll be renting a car for me to drive back with the dog at some point to end the trip.  The only thing is, i don't yet have anyone to drive back with me and that stretch through the badlands is not safe for a girl by herself -- more women go missing along the highways through the Dakotas than anywhere else in the US. Everyone I've asked isn't available in May or is on the end of the roadtrip not in the Seattle area...except maybe Alana who I asked first because she's who I first precogged on that drive with me a year and a half ago. Only May isn't while Skerryvore is in Washington so I don't know if there's a good reason for her to fly out to Washington other than to accompany me on that drive back.... I'll figure out someone I trust to drive back with me and Waffles. Before May. Nancy could join me in June, and she would be good choice for it, but Waffles has a miserable existence of having her physical needs met but never being allowed to come upstairs or trusted or properly loved or accepted into the family... My sister is a cat person and doesn't trust the dog with the kids because Waffles is young excitable so my sister won't let her lick them in case she puppy nips them and Waffles spends far too much of her life in a kennel whenever they don't want to deal with her... It's a horrible situation and Waffles has tried so hard to do everything right and please them and just wants to be loved.... And the only time she gets her energy properly run off and she gets loved is when I visit or when my parents visit.... And from what I understand, it's been worse since I left because of how Waffles acted out over me leaving. bad enough my sister threatened to send her air cargo, in winter, because it's not safe for anyone to drive out to get Waffles...after my parents and I have bent backwards to try to rehome Waffles to her pack in Wisconsin who love her and are dog people It's a bad situation... and after I told Audrey about it, she got so excited for Waffles coming to live with us -- she wouldn't let Spock or Sophie use the new dog beds I bought Audrey at home and work because Audrey insisted they're for Waffles when she gets here. And then Audrey would pick out toys she thought Waffles would like put them in the bed waiting for Waffles to arrive.

To conclude, this is the polar bear in Audrey's stitched jersey which I washed when I washed her a couple days before her death day:

Sometimes, especially when it's laying and you can't see the head it looks like her in my bed. And the last couple weeks I hug that bear to fall asleep right now, the jersey still smells like the dog shampoo, as Audrey Pupburn would smell right after getting showered.