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Last Friday - April 15, 2011 - marked the first anniversary of my mother’s death. I have been eagerly anticipating this moment when the circle/cycle comes back around on itself to simultaneously close one chapter and begin another; quite selfishly hoping (praying) that it would allow me a sense of completion with acute grief and a natural shift into a place of more overt productivity. In the way this miracle of a process that is Life/Death naturally unfolds when unobstructed by human hubris, my extraordinary sister gave birth to her second child this morning. Beautiful, vibrant dark-haired William Field Shenstone Eddy, was born in a paradoxical flurry of certainty, speed, ease and pain (and more pain!) insistent upon his arrival while his parents bundled an unflappable 3 year old off to day care, attended to last minute business and parked the family car in a legal spot.

Somewhere around my 36th birthday I crossed a slippery imperceptible threshold. Deposited on the other side, I found myself in a land where nearly everything that had previously felt like mine, now no longer fit. At the time I focused on the necessity of redefining my marriage. But truthfully, the redefinition of my marriage was only one (albeit impossibly painful) necessary step in a much larger process that had already begun, a process in which everything - now actively dying - would fall away, leaving only the barest of my essence; the core of me.

I still carry shame. After all the work I've done with others, still....perhaps always....I have my own shame. In the first light of dawn my husband takes his powerful hand and guides my own to my breasts. He says, "...these beautiful breasts that have nursed two strong boys into the world, the soft skin and curves of this belly and the marks on it are proof of your full womanhood...tell me you see how beautiful you are."

Yesterday my 16 year old son, Henry, got his driver's license. Really, this is huge. In this culture there isn't much available to our young men in the way of rites of passage so this one, this first moment when the culture turns its attention on him and says, "we see you as a responsible young man" (or something like that) is monumental. In reality, the process isn't nearly as dramatic or noble. The DMV is a wild place of 'neither here nor there' where folks whose lives have been shattered by alcohol, are contesting DUIs or meeting with their attorneys to plead with the Driving Magistrate rub shoulders with people perturbed by the mundane requirements of changing addresses, getting licenses and permits or updating information.

A few years back, as I was birthing a project that has, since, been named The Global Culture of Women, I stumbled across the poem 'Kathe Kollwitz' by Muriel Rukeyser. There is a line in this poem that changed my life, much the way Margaret Atwood did when I was just 13. The line reads: "What if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open."This became my love affair. I fell in love with the simple beauty and profound medicine of female truth. All truth really, but for some reason it felt more within my purview to cultivate safe landscapes within which women would sing their truths to the world, as if all life depended upon it, because it most assuredly does. This was five years ago now, and I had forgotten this powerful quote that had been the impetus for what is now a glorious organization.

by Christiane Pelmas This morning it is cold frigid air has cast a spell and from where I stand in my parka and boots warm on the inside of the door nothing moves out there

by Christiane Pelmas My wild predator Cat companion Jet-black Artemis on four legs Comes racing home Up and over the patio fence

This morning, January 1st, 2011, I sit in the warm and beautiful home of my husband and his two children. Actually, this home is now our home as well. But this will take some getting used to. Miraculously, this sweet dwelling is slowly accommodating our belongings and the bigness of our lives. This has been a big year.

Christiane Pelmas I favor the scorpions and the mid-depth fish Those translucent, dark-loving creatures Whose bodies leave nothing to the imagination I think they would recognize my longing For the dark dismembering moments when I am reduced To nothing more than the most transparent of filaments Subject to the subtlest of breezes Breezes which cause me to twist and turn The beautiful roots of me Disconnected from everything known Swirling in a seductive and inviting way Over the great black abyss below As if the dismantling that has just occurred Isn’t quite enough and we - those aspects of me still on board - Are now calling for more As if there were anything left to be given away