P.E.A.C.E.

Last year, when I met my friend Carol in southern Illinois, during our campaigning to Springfield legislators, four of us came up with an idea about an organization called "P.E.A.C.E.: Pathways to Effective Active Cannabis Education.

Pathways due to the fact that there would be very many different methods or paths that could be funded by PEACE.

One of those paths was a traveling teacher. Me. Someone to distribute learning material across the nation to people about cannabis sativa (including industrial hemp) and cannabis indica and what types of benefit they are to living organisms as well as the benefits to our earth.

The trip that I have now started, to travel across from one Washington to the other, gathering a convoy with us as we go is just the beginning. 

As we travel, we will be bringing materials for sale (by friends who are writers & have entrusted us with their materials) as well as free magazines supplied by Cannabis Health News Magazine.

Apparently the person who was entrusted with the legal tasks of creating the non profit corp of PEACE did not follow through. Therefor, there is currently no P.E.A.C.E.

I will be looking to find people who are interested in becoming a part of PEACE by becoming members of the nonprofit's board of directors. I will also be obtaining more legal advice in regards to continuing the effort to create this nonprofit.

There will be PEACE on Earth.... well, at least in my Maggic corner of it.

Overgrow Flyers Day One

In preparation of the adventure I am undertaking; I want to let everyone know how much I appreciate all of their interest in my life and my goals.

I LOVE helping people. It IS what I live for. That is WHY I support Industrial Hemp and Cannabis.

Within those goals, my next adventure (Maggic Road to Overgrow) is one where I will be traveling across this country gathering a convoy of patients & activists as I go towards the protest "Overgrow the Government" in Washington DC on April 20th.

We will be accepting donations of support along the way, as well as picking up any willing participant as we go. This will be a convoy.

For those interested supporting such an effort, I will be keeping a daily blog about our adventures, and the URL for that blog will be exclusively shared with supporters.

We will be looking for ALL types of support.

As we travel, we will be camping and seeing this beautiful nation. We will also be educating & distributing educational materials about industrial hemp and medical cannabis. I am looking for good sources of easily distributable educational materials as well.

Please help me in my quest to share LOVE and LIGHTE with the entire nation as we do our best to help the United States progress the ignorance of prohibition to the enLIGHTEnment of legal industrial hemp & cannabis. This CAN be achieved!

Love and Lighte, I am off to print flyers for Overgrow & meet new people in my old home town! Have a WONDERFUL day!!!! — in Olympia.

The Silence Before the Storm

From Feb 15 through Feb 22, I did my level best to "shut up." For once, I believe I was successful. Almost too much so. In the past year, I have stopped talking on the phone, preferring to text over talking. My Facebook posts have been nearly my sole form of communication with not only new friends, but also my close friends and family. On February 15, 2012, I stopped posting.

When I first started being quiet, I frankly didn't understand why I was doing it. It was a conscious choice, but I didn't really know why I was making it.

There was a point that I was a bit depressed, but it was almost more of a physical hibernation and allowing my body to heal. I had contracted a cold the day before my daughter's birthday. It weighed heavily in my chest, eventually causing a mild infection deep in my lungs. I felt compelled to shut not only my body, but also my brain, down and hibernate. I guess I was attempting to allow my body to heal the best it could, without allowing my conscious brain to interfere.

The fact that Valentines Day, also my son's birthday was the 14th, actually forced me to be a bit more social than I truly wanted to be, but once the loneliness of that day passed, I was done wanting to communicate. The physical circumstances I was living in were a source of humor for all around. Who chooses to stay with their EX boyfriend during mid February?

Yes, I have been staying with my best friend, who everyone knows as my ex-boyfriend. Frankly for the past 2 years, he has been the person who has listened to my every secret, CAUSED, but also comforted MANY of my tears. He isn't who I am having a relationship with, but having been the person who I allowed closest to me for almost 2 years, he understands me the best right now and the idea of having to defend my decision to stay with him exhausted me.

He is my best friend.  While I was sick, I felt I needed the security of knowing I didn't have to worry about my dog or what needed to be done, I could rest. I knew he would take care of me, by leaving me alone to take care of myself.
Yes, it would have been nice to have someone to take care of me. But that wasn't about to happen during this period of time. I needed to do it myself. But I didn't even know what I needed. I just wanted everything to stop so that I could think.

I have been uncertain. Nervous about the next few steps that I see myself taking. Overwhelmed a bit by the road ahead, yet doing my best to resist every urge to self-sabotage my goals.

So, instead of broadcasting every little ache and pain of a lonely February, being single yet being surrounded by people who loved and cared for me(coming from my background; that is a TOTAL mind fuck, by the way) while I nursed an aggravating cough and intermittent fever; I chose to completely "go quiet."

For almost 2 days, I not only abstained from communicating on my favorite medium, but I also didn't journal. This part was not a good thing. I had been making a point of journaling daily since the beginning of the year, but I suppose I just wanted to ignore the fact that those few particular days existed. I rested. I only came out of my friends' room to make tea, go to the bathroom and briefly say hi.

During those first days, I thought I may have been depressed. I decided to impose an "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all" rule on myself. It resulted in several days of introspection and healing. Not that I planned it, but I am considering that decision fairly logical when I consider the journey on which I am embarking March 20th.

The "Maggic Tour to Overgrow the Government" is beyond anything I have attempted before. It requires a faith in my fellow travelers as well as a faith in those who are supporting the journey. I can not do it alone. I know it needs to be done, I know we need to make this trip and I am willing to give everything I have, financially, energetically, intellectually and spiritually towards it.

I know that we need to make this trip, but I have not acquired even a fraction of the material needs of this journey, and I needed to contemplate the enormity of the situation before I could come close to articulating it to others. I may be close. Close enough, and my body and brain have healed enough to begin to come out of my self-imposed hermitage.

To those who love and care about me, and follow me, I do apologize. It wasn't meant to hurt anyone or discount anyone's caring for me, I just needed to look inward for a change. I do love my friends and "fans"... but I needed to rediscover the Maggic. Love and Lighte. 

Child Abuse

Her mom thinks I am joking, but I am more than ready to kidnap her youngest child.

One more beating I have to listen to.... and yet it's not my role.
I can NOT listen to it. I CAN NOT abide by it. I MUST leave. But when I leave, what will happen? Will she stop beating them when they no longer have an audience of a "stranger"... will it be worse??

Either way, by leaving, am I doing anything good? Am I just hiding the situation from my own eyes?

I am VERY aware of the fact that I am a stranger, and an "audience". But, will the removal thereof do ANY good for the two children in question?

My uncomfortability is mine. I am VERY uncomfortable around children being spanked and yelled at. I was not the best parent, myself, having episodes of very psycho behavior including mood swings and yelling. I even hit my children occasionally. I am VERY sorry about that. I would have been SHATTERED if anyone would have taken my children.

What is the solution??? I don't know. The parent in question, I had never even met until a few days ago. Not my business. But when that two year old baby looks into my eyes with those beautiful brown eyes, WHAT do I tell HER???? 

Upcoming Holidaze

When I was thinking about the upcoming season, it occurred to me that it may not be the best timing to run my Florida errand, as it may be misconstrued by the family. I don't want that. 

Last year, a Facebook friend asked me to spend 2 weeks in Michigan with her. It was an unmitigated disaster. She and her son were both in profound depressions. I did not help the situation, and my moods suffered as well.

This year I have an invitation to spend the holiday season with a friend in Virginia near the Roanoke area.  After a bit of prayer, lots of meditation, and some VERY interesting Tarot readings, I am accepting the invitation. 

I have friends in the Carolinas as well as Georgia, who I hope to visit before I head to Virginia. If you are in that general area, and your schedule is amenable to a meeting during this time of year, please send me a message.

I will be heading to Florida in January. I like Florida in January, it was fun last year. January is a good month to be in Florida.  Love and LIghte!!!

Rest Area Chapter 1: Trip to Denver

I can't begin the story of the Rest Area without first telling the story of what lead up to it... and that began over a month previous to my leaving  Denver on a cold windy October Friday night. 

It was coming upon fall once again. I found myself in the Thurston County/ Olympia area after a quick trip to Denver and back with my best friend in August. In September came the news that I had lost the remainder of my possessions, including about 20 or so of my personal journals, all of my children's baby pictures, as well as parts of the book that I had written long hand during the previous spring and winter. 

It was all gone. But as much as I cried, the moisture of my tears couldn't ease the burning in my heart. I trusted that the man I was in love with would some how fix it all, but he didn't. 
Not only had he not fixed the legal matters we were involved in together, he broke my heart on my way out the door, saying that he knew that I never had the potential to be his soul mate. 

If he had spent the entire year and a half of our on-again-off-again relationship attempting to find something that could hurt me more than anything else, he couldn't have found a statement that would hurt me more.

I left town determined not to answer any of his text messages or calls. I made it four days. He pleaded with me to remain his friend. I am still ambivalent about that idea.

When I left town, I headed east. In the quiet of the early morning, I wound my way through the roads around the Cascade mountains and watched a beautiful sunrise with my puppy, Athena. 
I attempted to take in the beauty of the northwest that I was leaving, not sure when I would really return except to visit my adult children and their children.

I stopped at a friend's house in Idaho, but it wasn't much of a visit. Fortunately, she and I had visited a couple of times before this quick stop-over. I left for Colorado early the next day. 
When I drove through Utah I forgot about I-70 and the fact that their are no services aka no bathrooms for about 150 miles. Someone should warn disabled people not to travel that way from Utah to Colorado. 
For me, being someone with a very sensitive bladder (several surgeries), it caused me to get a speeding ticket on my first trip through in June, and a LOT of pain on this, my second trip.

By the time I got to my friend's home in Grand Junction, I was ready for a rest. I received a wonderful burst of energy via their wonderful princesses aka daughters.

I spent a couple of days with my family of friends in Grand Junction. They even drove us all up to Grand Mesa, where we took pictures of all the gorgeous autumn colors throughout the mesas. It was a day I will always treasure! 

Beautiful. Just gorgeous. Before this trip I had never realized that the desert changed colors with the seasons as much as a forest does. I had just never thought about it. 

My friends in Grand Junction said good-bye to me with hesitation, but they were aware that a friend in Denver had begged me to spend my birthday with her. I was on my way to do just that.

When I had put out on Facebook that I didn't know where I should spend my 45th birthday doing what, my friend Kim, in Denver who I had visited early in the summer, had posted "I don't have much, but I will share everything I have, come spend your birthday with me". So, I had planned out the trip to end up in Denver on October 19th, my 45th birthday. 

My second birthday as a single, homeless woman. A transient.

But I had friends. A friend had, in fact, invited me to spend time with her on my birthday. 

My birthday came and went, as any other day. The differences included that I went to sleep hungry, not wanting to venture out in the cold Denver night to my car, to the emergency food I had stored in it. I had already been admonished for drinking their milk, I wouldn't want to take any other food out of my friends' 15 year old child's mouth.

One other difference was the fact that the friend in question shared a blunt with me. But, in retrospect, she did charge me for that as well. 

My birthday was on a Wednesday, I was looking to leave around Friday for points southeast, but my friend kept insisting that I stay longer. When snow pummeled Denver on the next Wednesday, I again voiced my intentions to leave Thursday or Friday. Another friend of mine who I contacted, not wanting to leave the area without making such contact, informed me of a rally for a MMJ patient  in Colorado Springs. This seemed like a much better use of my time, than sitting on my bed in the middle of my friend's living room, so I agreed to meet in the morning to join the energies. 

Thursday, I was gone for most of the day with my other friends in support of medical cannabis patient, Bob Crouse, in Colorado Springs. His rights to use cannabis as medication were to be on trial. Once again, as I usually do during these gatherings of patients, friends, advocates and activists, I became re-energized. I remembered my goals.

We also touched base with the "Occupy Colorado Springs" movement while we were south of Denver. When I returned to my friends' house in Denver, I was not in the glum spirit that I had been feeling. I was back to wanting to change the world. 

That night  I slept a fitful sleep.  In the morning, I was to discover the reason. When I mentioned that I was still looking at leaving in the next few days, my friend stated to me that she wanted me to stay until I got my disability payment for the next month. She wanted me to pay for being there.

I was astonished, but not surprised. During my time there, I had come to understand that this friend of mine was still VERY embroiled in a self-destructive paradigm, being a chain smoker with pulmonary hypertension and a hole in her heart. She was also still wrapped in the cold comfort of pharmaceuticals: morphine, percocet and anti-anxiety medications while adding cannabis concentrates.  

Living out of her bed, she was a shadow of many of my memories. I wish her nothing but hope and health and love and lighte. 

I could not continue to exist there. My energy was overwhelmingly stifled. 
When she left that day to spend time with her family, I commenced  washing myself and my dog, then her bathtub, and packing up my bags and car.

I left a blank check with her teenage son, who had shared tears with me as I prepared to leave. I asked him to please remind her that I only have $850 each month to live on, but for her to please make the check for whatever she felt I owed her. 

With that, I took my puppy (who had her own issues saying goodbye to 5 other dogs), got in my car, and headed out to say goodbye to another friend before heading north. 

One Year In on the Pot Farm Facebook Tour

One year. 365 days. I have traveled a great deal in a year. I have meet many wonderful people. I haven't yet met all of those who have invited me to meet them. I haven't met nearly as many people as I desire to. But why? What is pushing me towards all of these beings? These beacons. My lighthouses.

I kept finding lighthouses in the people's homes who I was visiting. There were even a few cases in which the friend who I was visiting  had previously forgotten about the lighthouse printed on something, and denied their being one in the house.
The first stranger-friend (met within the game of "Pot Farm" on Facebook) who I visited had decorated her house with ceramic lighthouses of all sizes and types. They were beautiful. They reminded me of my grandma (who passed 18 years ago), and visiting the coast of Washington with her when I was a child. Wonderful memories.
My lighthouses followed me across the country, from Oregon to Wisconsin, to DC to Florida; they came to represent the beacons of light my friends are for me. Let your little light shine. More happy memories.
The not so happy memories of the last year: Loosing every bit of anything I had saved in my 45 years on this earth, including my journals and my kids' baby pictures; having my heart broken by my best friend; becoming truely homeless having absolutely nothing to my name besides a few suitcases of clothing and toiletries. Finalizing a divorce from my husband of 22 years, something I previously had never imagined I would ever do.
I don't consider living out of my car the times it was necessary as anything but what it has been: I have had fun camping with people and with my puppy. I have lived in a way that I was comfortable at the time.
My puppy. The first dog I have owned in my adult life. Athena Brooke was born on April 1, 2011, to a dog owned by a family of friends of mine while I was staying with them. She was one of a litter of five females and one male, who's mother Brandy, is a chocolate lab, and her father Rugar, is a blue pit bull. She looks like a black lab.... Silly dogs.
I have been in her life since the day she was born. She will be with me until one of us passes. I never thought I could have this much affection for an animal. It's pretty cool. I look forward to training her to work as a companion and certified service animal for me. She is already learning to know when I am not feeling well, and seeks to assist. Now it's a matter of teaching her what to do. I am looking forward to continuing to watch her grow and learn.
In the past year, I have seen places exhibiting beauty I have previously never even imagined. The sunny winter beaches of Florida, the desolate beauty of the Rocky Mountains, the powerful and immense waterfalls of Idaho and a sunset in in Arizona that took my breath away. From the never ending California highways to the gorgeous and deceptively solitary-appearing Olympic Forest in the back yard of the area I have lived for almost my entire life.
I long to see so much more. To continue to experience the beauty of this earth guided by the people who have invited me to their corner of this planet. Show me what you love about where you live. Please continue to share with me the beauty of you and the people around you.
My love and light goes out to the people who have, and continue to, share their love and light with me on-line. I haven't been the easiest of people to be friends with sometimes, I have many issues that I am continuing to learn from. I have been challenged with many lessons this past year from which I continue to learn and grow with the love and support from so many friends who have reached out to me on FaceBook. Thank you.
For the romantic interests... I have attempted not to tease. This has been a year of on again off again romance with my best friend. Unfortunately, when I have been attempting to free myself of a love for someone who does not return that same affection, I fear I may have trampled on a few hearts. For this I sincerely apologize. This was truly never my intention.
If I chose to spend time with you online or on the phone, I was there, at that moment, entirely. Unfortunately, a spark of hope kept reigniting every time I saw my best friend, thinking he may have fallen for me. It takes a long time to get over the person who opens the proverbial cage door.
I have, and will continue to follow my heart. I have yet to know where it will end up leading me. Please, be patient with me in this regard. I have a bit of healing to do after 22 years of marriage.
My never-ending love and light continues to shine on those who have shared with me so incredibly much: from a moment in a train station where a story was shared, to a couple of weeks in a spare room. All of my friends are very dear to me, their gifts to me I will treasure forever.
Thank you all; my lighthouses of hope for this world (well, at least for my little corner of it). 

Now I am heading out for another trip: to celebrate my 45th birthday. Happy Birthday to me. Look out world, here I come!