“I lacked that nurturing. I lacked that kind of cradling that a child needed.”

…”Why it all happens…the answer is often right in front of me.”

by Nahko

“Mothering”

Fiction. Based on a True Carl Jung Solution.

by Angelie

This journal entry is inspired by true events. Some of the characters, names, businesses, incidents, and certain locations and events have been fictionalized for dramatic purposes. Any similarity to the name, character or history of any person is entirely coincidental and unintentional.

Trigger Warning: our program often motivates people to discuss their trauma. If you find yourself feeling overwhelmed, please, take a step back to address emotional flashbacks and trauma before continuing to push yourself. If you are experiencing a medical emergency, call 911 or the National Suicide Hotline at (1-800) 273-8255.

You are taking yourself out on a mother-daughter date to see the opera at the Caracalla Baths. You see a mother and daughter smiling and joking ahead of you. You have a mother and she is currently busying herself, dismissing herself, and keeping herself out of your sphere because there is so much shame and guilt surrounding her.

You feel guilty that your mother is not walking with you alongside this romantic path. Perhaps, your mother has been hoping to take a trip with you like this. Perhaps, you just need to quicken the pacing of your maturation so you can show up for your mother the way she was unable to show up for you.

You think of Kevin Hart’s story of his absent father that he ended up fathering. Perhaps, that’s what is expected of you when you obtain the elixir and perhaps that’s why you had been avoiding taking the elixir because there is a stubborn part of you that can’t imagine being of service and showing up for you own parents, yet that is exactly what your soul is screaming out for you to do.

As you move along the Baths of Caracalla at 20:00 or 6 pm, the sun is still shining, but with the kind of illumination that gives the ancient ruins a presence of romance, the kind you see in a Thomas Kinkade painting. Everything in its divine timing, you tell yourself. You are coming back to Los Angeles in late August. You will take her on the trip she wants to take and you will show up for her the way you would want Rylie to show up for you—a cradling of acceptance. Mothering the unmothered mother after you first learn how to mother yourself.

You begin telling yourself that you look beautiful in the blue dress you are wearing with the stripes—how your arms and muscles have tightened from all the lifting, walking, and moving. You tell yourself that your eyes are wide, sparkling, and light brown. It is like the beautiful rocks of the ancient rocks that surround you. You tell yourself that you are surrounded by good angels and saints; namely Saint Paul, who looks after you, especially when you stumble in your journey of becoming a better person. As well as Mother Mary, who is the wisest and most beautiful of the apostles and who is setting you up for a beautiful, awe-inspiring, soul transforming show.

Indeed.

You are seated center right in just the right amount of distance—not too close, not too far, and as Goldilocks would say, “just right.”

The moon shines fully to your right and you are surrounded by a pair of trees on each side that look like broccoli, to your right and to your left. Behind the orchestra and choir, there are the Caracella rocks of yore.

You read James Joyce and his autobiography fictionalized into the protagonist Stephen Daelus, and your soul smiles because you know it is Joyce’s spirit encouraging you to keep on the mark.

You’ll be arching these journal entries into the third, sooner than later, he says.

You smile. You are giddy.
Thank you Joyce.

Joyce-ful Sorrows
The opening was transcendental. The speaker tells the audience that any kind of filming or pictures of the music is strictly prohibited. You see others ignoring this after intermission and sure enough, you cave and begin capturing bits and pieces of the music.

You knew that by capturing, you are tempted to post on Social media and you tried uploading the video clips on your Instagram a few times, but each time, the connection to the post failed. You realize that this is Divine Mary orchestrating a divine intervention on your behalf, pun intended.

When you did post a simple picture, it went through, but video? No.

Let Go.
Trust God.
Stop trying to show off.
Who are you trying to show off to?
Rylie.
Well stop.
Trust God that what is meant for you will be yours. There will be nothing in the universe to stop something that has been planted in the heart.
Star crossed lovers will be crossed again.
Trust.

With that you are satisfied with just the picture posted.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Byv8366BMpx/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

This is what Mysty meant when she gave you constructive feedback.

Stop striving.

This is for you sleeping beauty, your good mother teased.
Stay present to you.
You capture the song called “Mission;” it was at the opening and closing. During this performance, the rocks were tinged with red and orange. And then the closing, the final song, the rocks were tinged with purple. The stage was shone in royal blue and the rocks were glazed with purple. The rocks…the reflection of your brown eyes…are now tinged purple.

What beauty, what glory, what sophistication that God had orchestrated everything for you to experience this at this moment. You think of the long years of practicing the craft from each musician and singer, the long hours of toiling to build the Caracalla Baths, and the lady in purple, singing a kind of painful longing, a wild Mongolian cry to the skies, during sunset, singing the longings of the human condition from sunset into the moon-lit evening.

You smile.
You feel the tingling, the kind that heals, from the crown to the root chakra and back up, like a mini-shock wave that boomerangs back.

Sanctum.

Royal blue mixed with Purple Crown.
Third eye and Crown reflecting the eyes of perception upon looking at the Caracalla Rocks.
You look to the moon which is now positioned to your right hindsight, so you look back. The moon looks glossy because of the mist, yet it shines so brightly, so you think perhaps the blanket of mist is designed to protect you from going blind when you dare to stare straight into its eyes. The filter is there so you can still observe its majestic presence without harm when you observe it observing you.

You, the journal-artist.
You clever girl, you.

Mother Mary smiles along with all the other divine saints and angels, in high ranking.


ArchAngel Michael

In the middle of the Papal courtyard, when the ambitious Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor threatened the Papal seat, specifically during Pope Clement VII’s position in a zero sum game of thrones and when Martin Luther began becoming more popular among the masses. When Rome was being invaded in the 16th century, there was an artist by the name of Raphael who sculpted Archangel Michael to stand in the middle of the courtyard center to watch over the papacy after he had announced that the Black Death plague was officially over.

You stare at this structure, as if Archangel Michael and you are just getting acquainted with one another. Perhaps Paul and Peter set it up for you because you had no intention of coming to the burial place of an Emperor Hadrian that you have no significant attachments to.

You admire the masculine ferocity of Michael…from what you heard from a friend who communes with him, he is a fierce warrior—to be respected, revered, and remembered as still relevant, still breaking strongholds in real time, leading the war against evil principalities.

You think he embodied Neo in the Matrix, John Wick, and the real Keanu Reeves who embodies the virtues of character roles he plays. The spirit of Michael is pure divine Masculine. And perhaps you came here to understand what the true divine masculine represents—fortitude, courage, precision, strategy, endurance, metamorphosis, honor, majestic pride…true pride, earned pride, and the ability to transform the fires of homicidal rage into faithful fortitude in God—in the intimacy of connection to purpose, a power that is true blue and crown purple.

https://www.instagram.com/p/ByxUxVEFEDn/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

You are at the one and only bar and cafe of Castel Sant’Angelo, where you find a beautiful white seagull perched on the ledge, just looking at you. For a split second, you think that this is the spirit of Michael, observing you half thinking, “This is our Jesuit warrior princess?!” perhaps half-joking, the way Rylie was surprised and half-joking when he met you in person. One of his first comments about you is how you’re so short that you may qualify for handicap status for short persons. You found this quite funny, but it gets lost in textlation—especially on Facebook messenger, and you pretended to take offense but not realizing that Rylie may think you were actually taking offense. The two of you both have wit, wisdom, and a dark sense of humor that both charms and harms one another.

You would like to think it’s Archangel Michael continually observing you. Or you may act like a normie, and just write it off as the bird is hungry and wants your food.

https://www.instagram.com/p/ByxaebclEiE/?utm_source=ig_web_options_share_sheet

You ordered a Salmon pasta with fresh orange juice and you wonder if you’d share some with the bird.

No.

A beautiful couple before you leaves the table next to you and another beautiful couple sits at the table directly before you. A delicate brunette with grey eyes elegantly smells her espresso before she sips on it.

You order the orange juice. You find both the men in the couples attractive and you observe the women who make love to them. The women are calm, patient, tiny and fierce.

You have the tiny and fierce part down, but you realize you needed to discipline yourself in forgiveness to master calm and patience…the two qualities that come when your soul truly connects to Source, when you build trust in God and a new center of the divine feminine springs forth. Right when you write this down on your Notes app on your iPhone, a family comes to the empty table on your right, and a sweaty old dad sits next to you, his sweaty back to you, and you are irritated.

When you’re ready to get over the fear of snakes, snakes will show up.
Sweaty old men.
Do you have a fear of sweaty old men?


You Write like a Girl…and thank God for that!

You remember Aaron telling you that you write like a girl and you were relieved at hearing this. It means your innocence is still there. The little girl who hopes, dreams, and sings…the true blue of her soul still being cultivated…and now the sharpened woman…the good mother…is being refined and integrating with the little girl here in Rome.

As you are reading Joyce and underlining the parts when he mentions the lustful daemon that yearns to burn with another sinful human carrying the same lustful daemon, a gust of wind suddenly blows hard and the note card where you had written a few lines whilst you were at Caracas Bathhouse flies over the ledge. You think, this is why you must write on your Notes app, or at least copy over what you have written from your note card into your Google drive. You’ve encouraged the journal-artist community to start creating Three Act folders and to start filling the first two folders up with confession letters unsent and the second person observation of signs, symbols, and surrounding valences and synchronizations. The valence part you took from Dr. Jordan Peterson’s Maps of Meaning, who took from Carl Jung, and on and on the circus we go. Still, it is meaningful. Still, it is worthy of this time to write.

Write you must.
Stay calm and Journal.


Santa Maria
An old woman begs in front of every basilica and you wonder if this is an angel in disguise, or a hopeless old person on the end of her rope, or an opportunist preying on the heart strings of vulnerable tourists. Most times you pass through, you observe people just ignoring her and you interpret this as most people thinking of her as the latter, or at least they hope so, because overcoming the fear by being kind to her, looking at her and saying hi, or parting with a Euro or two may break some kind of principal they hold dear—like feeding the zoo animals…you just don’t feed the zoo animals…the zoo people will feed the zoo animals and so will God; only people forget that they are the vessels of God.

Ingresso
While they walk into the basilica of St. Mary, they pass the beggar woman, who is sitting at the entrance to the basilica. People rush to find sanctum forgetting that sanctum comes from the actions in microscopic moves. In this context, sanctum is the 30 seconds it takes to take out your wallet, find the one Euro, and drop it in her cup.