It’s Okay to Not Be Okay

even the most ardent fat activist still has “bad fat days” even folks who have done lots of work on different areas of their lives have hard times and it’s okay to not be okay. It’s taken me a lot of work to release the shame that comes up for me when shit I thought was long settled gets stirred up for me again.

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My Reading with Spiritual Advisor Alex and Kazoo

I like to think of meetings with spiritual advisors, psychics, astrologers, past life readers and all manner of woo folks to be a cross between spiritual practice and therapy. You get a chance to work through issues you are having with someone who has more insights than you might at a given time and it also relies on your belief in a power/energy/spirit world greater than yourself.

A friend of mine had a reading with Alex and Kazoo and recommended him. Alex, that is, who is the human part of the duo, Kazoo being the spiritual end. Alex communicates with Kazoo, the name he gave his spirit guide at a young age.

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June Astrology Self Development Worksheet with Empowering Astrology Now Available

This month’s worksheet with Empowering Astrology has some great journaling prompts to use the power of the upcoming Sagittarius full moon to alchemize transition in gentle ways. A reminder about embracing shitty, inconsistent meditation using the Neptune Retrograde on June 9th to get more bang for our meditation buck. And there’s more, including Katie’s thoughts on the month’s astrological highlights.

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Dara’s Experience During Diagnosis and Surgery for Breast Cancer

As a follow-up to my post about Dara’s experience with chemo I thought it might also be helpful, and provide some background for other posts around my care taking lessons learned, to talk about the process of her diagnosis and the surgery prior to chemo for her breast cancer. This is also another information dump sort of post—it’ll be interesting for someone who might be going through this process or having someone they know going through it to read a detailed experience.

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Dara’s Experience During Chemotherapy for Breast Cancer

Before Dara started chemo I’d known plenty of people with cancer at a variety of ages. Other than understanding that chemo is extremely difficult and disabling, I didn’t know what was involved. Going through the chemo process with someone as girlfriend and primary caregiver has been an extremely different experience and there is a lot that I’ve learned. Helping to ease the discomfort of the person you love the most in the world is a huge motivator to suck up information like a sponge! I wrote the below for a friend who asked for a relative about to go through chemo and I thought it might be a helpful blog post. It’s long so I tried to create headers and bold stuff for easy reference. I’ll write more another post about my experience as a caregiver (I’ve learned a lot) and about the other parts of her treatment.

Dara’s experience with chemo hasn’t been consistent as side effects change and shift. Before she started her treatment everyone (doctors, nurses, former/current chemo patients and their caregivers) said that all bodies react differently to chemo and things will be somewhat unpredictable. Even all the research we did ahead of time wasn’t really helpful until she was actually going through the experience. This is an account just of one person’s experience with the physical and emotional affects of chemo as they’re happening.

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Healing Emotional Wounds: April Astrology Self Development with Empowering Astrology

So, with grand triumph that we got through the past week/month/season, I present April’s astrological forecast from Katie at Empowering Astrology, with self-development exercises from me. I include some journaling exercises to take note of what’s going on with you to help heal your deep emotional wounds. I also talked about how I learned to have compassion, which Katie says is the trait that will help us the most during these rough times. There’s also a ritual to acknowledge a significant material loss you’ve had.

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New Episode of the Lesbian Tea Basket–A Visit to the Tea Shop in Woodstock

Since we’re conserving pennies we didn’t want to “go into town” to spend money, but the idea of taking a wander through the adorable storefronts of Woodstock was super appealing. I thought that perhaps we could combine an errand with an adventure and googled tea store in Woodstock thinking I’d find a coffee shop with a smattering of teas. Instead we stumbled upon this gem of a store right in the “downtown” area of Woodstock called The Tea Shop.

It was gorgeous, light-filled and had a literal wall of loose teas, each in a big tin that the shop keeper opened for us and then spilled onto the lid so we could get a good whif of the tea and see the components. Fantastic presentation!

We settled on a few rooibos varieties, and we each picked a black tea (decaf for her, full caf for me) to order a la carte as a cup of tea. I was so delighted by the experience I had to film a Lesbian Tea Basket right then and there. Watch this video below and find out how magical the tea experience was, as well as my rating of the Orange White Chocolate black tea. Click here for more.

I Got Back Together with My Ex and Started Relationship Coaching with the Lesbian Love Guru

With the heady mix of old intimacy and new relationship energy, I suggested we might want to get relationship coaching. In fact, neither of us is willing to call each other “girlfriend” yet because we want to eliminate fears of slipping back into old communication patterns and the stuff that was so hard before. It hasn’t happened yet, we’ve done a great job of communicating through rough spots; often we just stop a conversation that feels like it could get sticky and awkwardly back out of it. But it could happen, and a professional might help us set the kind of foundation we never had before.

Enter Christine Dunn-Cunningham, the Lesbian Love Guru, who I met over the summer. I was thinking of working with her as a single person who wanted to open myself up to finding the future Mx. Branlandingham.

Free Self Development Astrology Exercises Part Two!

Tomorrow, January 15th, is the full moon. Katie predicted that the emotional buttons getting pushed by the full moon and the ongoing Venus retrograde were going to bring to light issues from our relationships with our parents. I wrote some good, heart examining and heart opening work to do about reconciling your relationship with your parents. I hope it is helpful.

I’m in the Happy Healthy Lesbian Telesummit

Amy is the Founder of the Happy Healthy Lesbian, an online community for queer women who want to live their best lives. To help us all off to our best start in happiness and health for 2014, Amy has brought together all of her favorite queer women mentors, coaches and guides in The Happy Healthy Lesbian Telesummit.

And guess who she’s chosen to talk all things Happy and Healthy Body? Your old pal, Bevin Branlandingham!

Life Intentions

Last week I found out a friend of mine passed away. It was unexpected and she was only 45. A couple weeks before that I found out a beloved of mine has been diagnosed with breast cancer–we were already having long conversations about mortality when I got word that Ria passed. And two night ago I found out another friend of mine unexpectedly passed away at 33.

This is kind of bananas.

I’m leaning in a lot on my spirituality through all of this. I do know that the Goddess never gives me more than I can handle. I’m also seeing a lot of the gifts that you can get through grief and difficulty and paring my life down to the important things.

I wrote this piece in my journal the other night while reflecting on Ria’s passing and what a huge influence she was on my life personally and on her community (over 1,000 folks attended her funeral). I have more words to say about her at a later time, but I felt compelled to post these on my blog for now.

A Great Way to Deal with Yucky Feelings: Emotional Freedom Technique aka Tapping

In advance of the #thx4support event on Thursday I wanted to talk about a tool that has been enormously helpful in my life to deal with yucky feelings(on Triggergiving, I mean Thanksgiving, or any other day),

This summer I worked with a woman whose work with lesbian survivors of sexual trauma involves using Emotional Freedom Technique, colloquially called “Tapping.” I had heard of it before but never really learned about it until Dawn told me about it. She walked me through the basic steps, and honestly it seems so simple it can’t possibly work. But, as my health coach Vic from Heart Beets Holistic said about Tapping, “The neuroscience is there. It really works.”