Hello lovely people, I hope this email finds you navigating these times with some grace, and appreciating the beauty when it comes.
With so much going on “out there” and coming up “in here”, it can be hard to keep our center. The one consistent message I keep getting is, “It’s all energy.” I suspect we are all in this boat of learning even more intensely how energy in the form of our thoughts or emotions influences everything. Here’s a story of how a Finch came into my life and exited my life leaving behind a powerful message about how my judgements effect even the smallest beings around us.
A few weeks ago, a small Finch had oddly decided to build her nest on a dried wreath hanging on the front door of my boyfriend’s house. Despite the fact that we went in and out of that door several times a day, the Finch was determined to build her nest there. And so she went on, day after day, meticulously building it and lining it with the softest materials she could find. She then proceeded to lay a couple of eggs a day until there were a total of 6 blue speckled eggs in the nest! We noticed she would carefully rotate them every night into a different configuration so that all of the eggs were receiving equal warmth. It was so strange and yet delightful and heartwarming that this bird clearly felt that “our” front door was a good, safe place to bring her chicks into the world.
Every day for nearly two weeks we checked the nest, excited to see if any of the eggs had hatched. We felt like eager parents awaiting the arrival of “our” Finch babies! Lol
It’s important to give a little context at this point. Prior to this event with the Finch, I had spent several months re-designing my boyfriend’s house. When we met, his home was in dire need of some TLC and a feminine touch. The interior was painted various shades of gray. The furniture was gray. Most of the area rugs were gray, and a large piece of gray scale art hung above the couch. One very nice aspect was a deep red accent wall encircling the fireplace in the living room. Other than that, the house felt like, well, a man cave. Nearly every square inch of wall space was occupied with dusty furniture, electronics, work out gear, crates of old dvds and albums, books, crystals, and piles of shoes, the result of almost a decade of bachelorhood and neglect from a very busy work schedule. He admitted to me one day that he rarely spent any time in his living room because “the energy felt dark and depressing.” After finding it difficult myself to spend much time in there, I offered to help re-design the space. Since then, I’ve also re-designed his dining room, and am now re-designing the bedroom, backyard and we are planting a rose garden!
Here are some before and after photos of the living and dining rooms.
A cleaned up version of the old living room.
Re-designs don’t have to be large projects or involve remodels. A space can feel significantly better simply by de-cluttering, balancing negative and positive space, and bringing in more color and plants.
His second couch was removed and replaced with an altar and meditation area to align with the the Feng Shui “wisdom/knowledge” quadrant of his home. The room is now flooded with light from the large window and filled with life giving energy from plants, crystals, cascading water from the wall mounted water feature, and the meaningful items on his altar. Shoes are now hidden away in the storage bench underneath the water feature. This formerly dark and stagnant room is now filled with light, and life!
Former dining room
After re-design. I painted the gray walls off white, added a teal accent wall and brought in some colorful ocean themed items including a jellyfish painting, a woven blue and turquoise rug, seaweed looking plants and a new wooden redwood top for his room divider/console.
By giving these rooms a good energetic and physical cleaning, downsizing and removing the clutter, bringing in more light and color, and adding in natural elements of water, wood, and earth (plants) as well as applying the Feng Shui Bagua map (so the rooms are now in energetic alignment with their intended uses), I was able to transform them into true LIVING rooms, filled with light, and life! My boyfriend told me his living room used to be his least favorite room and now he loves coming home from a long day at work and relaxing there.
So, when the mother Finch decided to make her own home on the front door, it felt like a stamp of approval from nature herself for the changes that had been made and the obvious shift in energy within his home.
Unfortunately the story of the Finch does not have a happy ending, but an ending that came with a powerful lesson about how energy works.
Last weekend I became disappointed about some choices my boyfriend had made one night. Rather than spend the rest of the weekend with him, I chose to leave and return to my home where I spent the following 24 hours in deep judgement of him. About 11pm that night, 2 hours after I had left, my boyfriend heard a loud bang on his front door. He got up to see what had happened and discovered that the nest had been destroyed, the eggs smashed on the threshold below, and the only thing left of the mother bird were a few scattered feathers. A white cat sat on the sidewalk nearby, the likely culprit.
I woke the next day to texts and photos of the destruction. I was devastated, not only for the loss of life, but because deep down I knew it wasn’t a coincidence. I knew my judgmental energy and his anger had contributed to the attack.
A friend told me recently that love is like a shield and has its own protective power. When we are in our hearts and being loving toward the world, it not only attracts loving energy, it acts as a protective shield from negative forces. And conversely, when love is withdrawn and negative energy is directed toward someone, that shield of protection dissolves creating an opening for negativity to be directed back toward us like a boomerang. That night my boyfriend was feeling attacked by me, and so that energy dissolved our love shield, creating the opening for the cat to attack the bird. “Like attracts like” as they say. Overnight, the sweet mother Finch, who had blessed us with such a beautiful gift and (seeming) affirmation of the beautiful loving nest we were creating, was gone.
My heart sank as the realization of what had transpired continued to dawn on me. I can’t imagine a more perfectly “orchestrated” lesson for my boyfriend and I about energy and what homemaking truly means. While it’s certainly important for our well being to have well-designed homes that support us, what makes the biggest difference is the energy that we bring into and cultivate within our homes and our relationships. The outer material environment of a home will always start to reflect the inner world of its inhabitants.
We truly are intricately connected to everyone and everything around us.
Our thoughts are not safely contained within our minds as we often assume. In actuality, they are conscious energy streams, always rippling outward and drawing back to us matching energy. With our thoughts we are either creating a more loving and beautiful world, or contributing to its destruction. Closing off our hearts to each other creates a break in the great web of relationship. This has been a powerful lesson for my boyfriend and I, and I hope our story can serve you too. Love yourselves, and love each other!