There is nothing like the tragic devastation of the worst environmental disaster in history executed by a powerful few to uproot the depths of grief and rage that has been felt in only small tolerable doses.

Witnessing the oil covered birds with their pitiful cry of, “Why?” has unleashed grief buried so deep and so vast it is as if it is coming from the same reservoir of oil that is flowing from the Earth’s core.

It is inconceivable and extremely unnerving to witness such disrespect. Unfortunately these few are the culmination of all the seemingly small disrespectful actions that each of us takes in our lives. Multiply each of our unconscious thoughts and actions by every one of us, pour that all into one pot and you have what we see before us. Our little piece doesn’t seem like much, so we think, but, when you add up all the small pieces it makes a very big pot of toxic, destructive soup that can poison our entire world.

Don’t want to think about it? Don’t want to claim any of it? If we all claimed just our little piece it would add up to an equally large pot of pristine, delicious, nourishing soup. If we sit back and just blame those few who embody the totality of our unconsciousness, we miss a necessary deep healing, we feel helpless and disempowered, and our rage will ravage us just as we are ravaging our Earth. What we see before us is a physical manifestation of a collective consciousness that has escalated to a momentum of this magnitude. It is a single picture that gives us a reflection of our path as humanity. Think it’s time to choose another path?

Say our prayers that the right action will be taken to rectify this unconscionable disaster. Include in our prayers that each of us takes the action in our own lives that will put a stop to this insanity.

What is a simple step we can take? One obvious step is to drive less and support clean energy. Expand this outward and another obvious step is to nourish our self with seasonal, local, organic food. This may not seem like much, but consider how much fuel is used transporting our food all over the world. Food transportation and industry is a huge contributor to our addiction to oil, the life blood of our Mother. This simple step empowers us as we demand safe, organic, local food and not tolerate the continuation of this excessive need for oil. This simple step will vastly improve the health of every living being on Earth, including the Earth herself.

Our power is where we put our money and attention. Put your money and attention toward a sustainable, respectful relationship with our world such as a backyard garden, or the local farmers at the farmers market. Demand local organic food at your community grocery stores. Use the power of money and intention and transform our world instead of feeling helpless to the path of destruction.

If everyone stewarded their small piece of land, yard, or balcony that would multiply and reverberate out to the entire planet. If everyone one of us drive less, live simpler, and eat locally that would multiply and reverberate out to the collective. It is up to every one of us to right this horrific wrong we have inflicted on our Mother.

Use this outrage as the fuel needed to make these shifts. The seemingly simple act of feeding ourselves can have a huge impact. Take a serious, honest look at your life. How can you simplify and use less of our precious resources? Our prayers must be united with our actions.

My own grief and outrage has made me stop in my tracks and take a deep look at how I can reduce my impact on this increasingly fragile environment. I thank you for allowing me to speak these words as a way to cry out to others and transform this into a sense of joy and well being in the knowing that we are able to make a difference in our everyday lives that honors our Great Mother.

I know I am unique as well as no different. I know we are riding a collective wave of transformation, and I know we all have our unique experience with collective similarities.  Embracing these polarities and bringing them both into focus seems to be important these days. We are being asked to honor our unique expression of the Divine and embrace it with passion so we can live who we were designed to be. At the same time we are being asked to acknowledge our oneness, not only with other human beings, but with all sentient beings on every level of existence. This is a necessary awareness that will lead us toward honoring our diversity and transform our self rejection to self love.

For peace on Earth we need to come to peace with ourselves and allow that to radiate outward. As I navigate this transformational journey I am finding there is a diversity within myself, and I am having to honor and reclaim all these unique expressions. So here I go with honoring, claiming and allowing you to witness my vulnerability. The part of me that I couldn’t afford to feel or even know existed. After all, how will I survive in this crazy world if I am vulnerable?

I admit that launching my book took me right to the edge with my vulnerability, feelings that I hadn’t allowed myself –ever. As I reflected on this it became clear that this act brought to a head the wounding of lifetimes that I carried as unfinished business from incarnation to incarnation. The very act of walking toward this moment in time became the journey for my healing of this. The gift that I was groomed to offer is the support for other women to do the same. Finally clean up and heal our old collective wounding, come out of the shadows and offer our gifts while reconnecting with our oneness with our very Mother Earth and reclaiming our self similar wisdom.

I am in awe how my personal wounding is woven into the collective wounding, my journey of healing my piece of this collective issue became my gift to offer others, and while I was preparing myself to offer it, it was working me over and supporting me to heal the very thing that I am offering to support others to heal. When I reflected even deeper it became obvious that what is supporting my healing in this lifetime is the very thing that annihilated me in the past incarnation that set all this in motion. The Divine design is beyond remarkable.

I shared on my blog right before I launched my book that I felt like I was about to jump off a cliff with my book as my magic carpet that will help me fly. Well guess what. I jumped. Did I fly? I flapped and flapped my wings bogged down with the last residual toxic slime of my old wounding. I crashed, licked myself off, dealt with the final residue and continued to flap myself silly until I could finally begin to fly. This residual was not ready to be released until I took this leap. Nothing like flapping and plunging to rid yourself of excess baggage.

If I waited until all this old toxic waste was completely cleaned up before walking toward the cliff to offer my gifts I would have never done it. Nothing was powerful enough to drive me to the edge to transform and honor my journey enough to heal on such a deep level.

We are all connected, we all have our unique gifts. The oiled slicked birds in the Gulf are a reflection of our unconscious, laden down, dying from the toxicity of the environment we all have created from not healing these olds wounds hidden in the shadows. Allow your gifts to heal you as they help heal others. Don’t wait until you feel healed yourself. Your gifts are designed to heal you as well. Just keep walking toward it, take the journey and reach out for support when you need it. But don’t stop, whatever you do. Take the baby steps, keep going. Our world is counting on all of us to clean ourselves off and come out the other side of this shining bright. If we all shine bright in our unique way, and add it all together, our collective world can shine.