tikkun olam
tikkun olam is the idea that we are on this earth to heal the broken pieces of the world.
this is me in the struggle to do just that
I wrote this 13 years ago
I struggle every day
sometimes it’s hard to wake up. sometimes the list of things to do is so overwhelming I think it will never be done. sometimes I look at the condition of this world and I fear that nothing can ever be done to heal the broken pieces.
I don’t understand who I am. I know I’m on a journey towards personal growth and I trust that someday I might arrive at a conclusion of identity.
I’ve had 6 jobs as an adult all of them successful in the ways of learning a lot, mostly learning a lot about what I did not want to do with the rest of my life and an awful lot about interrelationships and their complications. I do trust that these experiences are also leading me to a conclusion. this is the start of job number 7-that’s supposed to be lucky right.
it is an auspicious time in this world. in my struggle to figure out how best to serve my planet and the fellow creatures who live on it I have transformed myself in the hopes that others can be inspired. inspired to also look at the broken pieces of themselves and their lives and to understand it is thought these broken bits that we will transform and heal.
I am currently on route back home after spending 3 weeks away. In Disney World and New Orleans, I played in make-believe worlds, was inspired by creativity, taught a class on divination to harry potter fans, build houses with habitat and couldn’t find a decent meal to save my life after a week of the most exquisite food ever. This trip has changed me in ways I will be understanding for years to come. Never have I experienced such arrays of contrasts.
I do know it is time. Time to act. To start figuring out my service, not the one I choose to make money in but the one that fills my heart and body with such longing and love that it makes me cry.
Coming from a Western culture I have struggled with my shortcomings. My lack of desire to live a traditional (white American) life has caused me much pain and fear. Each day I wonder if this is the day I have to give up my life to work at a low paying job to stay afloat. Being self-employed I wondered at the audacity of taking 3 weeks away-how could I afford it, how will I pay for it. I realize now it was a gift I gave myself, a gift of discovery and contrasts and adventure and challenge.
This manifestation of 32 years collected knowledge, stories, and myths, and life events brought me to this moment where I am finally ready to write it all down.
Much of this book will be a collaboration with the fae, beings from the places in-between, the caretakers of the earth.
May you walk in beauty
may you look upon the world with the eyes of a child
may you love deeply
may your journey be filled with delight
May 25th 2007
13 years late I look back and want to pat that sweet little white girl on the head and hold her close. How precious she is. how zealous but unfocused and how much she wanted to save others instead of listening and hearing.
Suffice it to say that the book never came to a manifestation. But reading back now I really feel I understand why. That little girl didn’t know how to listen. That young woman didn’t know how to really see what happened there in New Orleans. That young lady was curious about voodoo and faeries and concepts like tikkun olam but she didn’t have the width and the breath and the personal space to claim her own truth as present it as a possibility to other. She wanted to shove all our fractured pieces together and make some beautiful mosaic with it.
She wasn’t wrong, her intentions were good, but I am really glad she got scared and backed off and restocked and learned more and tried more and healed more and got cancer and healed up good and maybe… maybe now she might be ready to really speak form that place of broken vulnerability.
32 year old me was imitating others’ words, trying to find her own in the array of others and trying to find her way through the imitation of others. Playing healer whilst sometimes actually doing profoundly deep and amazing work.
45 year old me finally is truly beginning to see that the world does not need another knock-off imitation of a healer. But in fact what the world needs is for amy to be amy in all her wacky, whimsical, seemingly disorganized way.
I’m struggling to be a good citizen of the earth, to understand my inherent privilege and to find my way of expressing and communicating that does not steal and rob from other cultures or use words that diminish. In my heart I know there are deep and big words waiting inside of me to really sit down and listen to them. Finding this journal insert has really given me pause to own this old passion that is still a deep passion today.
May you rekindle old passions and delights
May you find the strength to pursue your creativity
May you find awe and whimsy in each day
May you trust in the wisdom of broken pieces and listen to their stories
May the broken pieces tell you where they belong in this world mosaic
January 9 2020