Month: September 2020

Happy Full Moon from Full Moon Cottage! We christened her the night we moved in, 24 years ago. We pulled up the creepy carpeting just inside the door, covered the floor with clean shelf paper, and set our mattress down. A huge bow window opened to the tree-covered lawn and that May’s Full Flower Moon kept us awake all night long, offering a dazzling introduction to life in the country and a new appreciation for lined curtains. It astonished me that I could walk outside at midnight and so clearly see my way, see the trees and their shadows, and see the ribbons of light that formed our drive and the trail beyond, leading to the bridge and shining river.

I began to collect the names people had given these Full Moons throughout history. I love the imagery these names conjure, and what they tell us about those who lived, moved, and had their being beneath the moon centuries before us. In most cases, the names reveal how deeply connected to the Earth these humans were, how intimately they knew her seasons, and the gifts, signals, and dangers each one contributed to these people’s survival. The moon names show an intimate awareness of the Earth and her creatures and plant life. They speak of the seasons’ colors; the wind flow; the air temperature; the weather conditions; the varying states and levels of water; what can be harvested; what is still; and what is in motion. To me they are precious historical poetry. In the past few years, I’ve started a monthly post of the moon names on Facebook, and I usually add my own. (Feel free to share yours in the comments!)

This October, we’ll benefit from two Full Moons, October 1st and October 31st. The first earns all the traditional names for the month’s Full Moons, except for Harvest Moon, a name that alternates between September and October, depending upon which month’s Full Moon falls closer to the Autumnal Equinox, so this year, the October 1st Full Moon is our Harvest Moon, and it will be ”officially full” at approximately 4:05 P.M.; rise at 5:57 P.M.; and reach its highest altitude at about 11 P.M. (All times are Central Time.)

The October Full Moon is also known as the Hunter’s Moon; Travel or Migrating Moon; Dying Grass Moon; Sanguine or Blood Moon; Freezing Moon; Long Hair Moon; Ten Colds Moon; Falling Leaves Moon; Corn Ripe Moon; Leaf Fall Moon; Raven Moon; Blackberry Moon; Wine Moon; Spirit Moon; Snow Moon; Shedding Moon; Winterfelleth (Winter Coming Moon); Windermanoth (Vintage Month Moon); Moon When Quilling and Beading is Done; Moon of the Changing Season; Kindly Moon; and White Frost Moon.

In the Southern Hemisphere, where spring is just beginning, the days are waking earlier and stretching towards their summer length, so the Full Moon names we see in spring now appear: Waking Moon; Pink Moon; Seed Moon; Fish Moon; and Egg Moon.

Our second Full Moon this month occurs on Halloween, October 31st. Today, when a single month has two Full Moons, the second is known as a Blue Moon. The older definition of Blue Moon was seasonal, referring to the third of four Full Moons in a season (a season meaning the time between a solstice and equinox). The next “seasonal” blue moon will be August 22, 2021. I’ve read some articles referencing this second Full Moon as the month’s Hunter’s Moon. It’s rare to have one on Halloween, so I think it invites a merry celebration, and we’re looking forward to it at Full Moon Cottage!

My own names for the October Full Moon: Moon when the Houseplants Come Indoors; Gardens Put to Bed Moon; Caramel-Making Moon; Stop Eating So Many Caramels Moon; Extra Quilt Moon; First Fire Moon; People Still Staying Home Moon; Colored Trail Moon; Halloween Moon; and this year: Vote Blue Election Moon. May it augur healthy and necessary change.

Be well and safe, and gentle peace to your hearts and spirits.

© Copyright of all visual and written materials on The Daily Round belongs solely to Catherine M. O’Meara, 2011-Present. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited, without the author’s written approval. No one is authorized to use Catherine O’Meara’s copyrighted material for material gain without the author’s engagement and written permission. All other visual, written, and linked materials are credited to their authors. Thank you, and gentle peace.

May you have
an autumn
of blue skies
and shining rivers
flowing through
your mind, rounding
your heart, whispering
your truth: remember,
remember who you are;
may you tend your spirit-fire,
shedding old stories, dying
falling leaves: name them
and in gratitude, let them go,
and listen for the new story
rising from these ashes…

May everything tender and gentle
quiet your anxious heart. Artist,
weave your questions, weave
your power and joy; beneath
your autumn quilt, may you
sweetly deeply rest.

May you have
an autumn
of peaceful harvest,
summer lessons gathering
in circling flocks of farewell,
calling: notice, notice and learn;
recollect wisdom you have
lived and call yours, summer
now softer and softly departing
in amethyst twilight,
descending dusk; you’re alone
but not lonely, for here is
your shadow, with secrets
unlocked: breathe courage, heal,
and love yourself truer and truly…

May everything tender and gentle
quiet your anxious heart. Artist,
weave your questions, weave
your power and joy; beneath
your autumn quilt, may you
sweetly deeply rest.

May you have
an autumn
of darkening solitude,
sacred incense of woodsmoke,
hushed intimacy of bare trees
exposed, your wide heart
welcoming hallowed stillness,
long starlight, the vast patient moon
sighing: oneness, beloved,
all is one; coyote and owl
sing you gently into
your sacred mystery
and dreams…

The past fades;
the garden sleeps, sheltering
the growing possible…

May everything tender and gentle
quiet your anxious heart. Artist,
weave your questions, weave
your power and joy; beneath
your autumn quilt, may you
sweetly deeply rest.

© Copyright of all visual and written materials on The Daily Round belongs solely to Catherine M. O’Meara, 2011-Present. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited, without the author’s written approval. No one is authorized to use Catherine O’Meara’s copyrighted material for material gain without the author’s engagement and written permission. All other visual, written, and linked materials are credited to their authors. Thank you, and gentle peace.

Another loss among so many,
and this the brightest star–
massive energy so
tightly contained,
collapsing at her core,
releasing potential
in shock waves, oh
universe expanding,
accelerating beyond
hope, without love,
or so it has felt,
but see the sky radiant
with her brilliant starstuff
spinning, luminous:
paths of light shine
through the darkness
her loss creates
the seeds of new stars
we
who grieve now burn
with her fire,
we
who mourn
will dance her light
into the night,
each of us
a new sun
rising.

(SN 2020: RBG)

© Copyright of all visual and written materials on The Daily Round belongs solely to Catherine M. O’Meara, 2011-Present. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited, without the author’s written approval. No one is authorized to use Catherine O’Meara’s copyrighted material for material gain without the author’s engagement and written permission. All other visual, written, and linked materials are credited to their authors. Thank you, and gentle peace.

To say goodbye is to die a little.
~ Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

(Edna Eicke, artist. The New Yorker, July 29, 1950)

We’ve had some challenging weeks at Full Moon Cottage. I’ve heard from two close friends that they are moving to different states within the month. One to IL (not that far) for work, and the other to TX, for her long-awaited retirement. (That far. 1250 miles. I checked right away. Damn.) Phillip’s best friend for decades has also recently moved, so we’re grieving losses we hadn’t expected in the midst of pandemic isolation.

The friend who’s moving to Texas has been my dearest friend for 20 years, a time span that has so intimately opened us to one another’s dreams, flaws, truths, high joys, and deep griefs, that it feels like part of my soul will be severed by our imminent separation. (Of 1250 miles!) Women friends are treasures. It took years for me to land in a place where I could form and tend these friendships. They mean everything to me, and while I’m not losing them altogether, I’m losing their immediate presence. The long good visits, the shared holidays, the laughter, and tears.

The pandemic makes these partings harder; in 6 months, these are the only two people I’ve seen besides Phillip. Both friends came to Full Moon more than once, with their coolers of food and refreshments, their masks, gloves, and lovely willingness to sit with us on the deck for an afternoon of visiting. But the pandemic keeps me from helping my friends pack up their lives and set up their new homes. There’s no foreseeable adventure of traveling to visit them and celebrating their new lives. There are some things Zoom can’t manage.

I’m so very grateful for these recent afternoons together at Full Moon; now, of course, they’re gilded in my memory…I understand there is a possibility we may not share such visits again on this side of life. I’d like to think a vaccine will be developed and that climate chaos will be mitigated, but it seems everything is, “Maybe yes, maybe no,” these days.

Stress, loss, threats to our carefully-structured lives, and changes that surprise us can cause us to regress emotionally. We retreat to seek comfort and safety, to hide from pain. What we do next matters in terms of our healing and growth. I know this; I looked for it when I heard my friends’ news, and I noticed myself re-experiencing feelings that recurred often in my childhood. I thought about all the times we moved when I was growing up, always being the “new girl,” always starting over with friendships, working to maintain them, and then moving away again and losing touch (as children do). I realized that it felt like a rejection to have two longtime friends surprise me in the same week with news that they were “leaving me.” 

Grown Up Kitty knew she would miss them very much, but was happy for them and wished them joy; Inner Child Kitty wondered what she did wrong to drive them away and felt only sadness, thinking, “Here we go again: New school; new strangers.” I gave her–that always-healing part of myself–some time to be sad. I listened to her fears and grief.

The past is always walking with us; events that happen now trigger feelings felt in response to similar events we lived through long ago. It’s helpful to pay attention, and to allow these feelings to be felt, while acknowledging that we can separate the events and actors into “then” and “now,” and choose new responses that best suit who we are now, and who we desire to  become. I reassured myself: women friends keep in touch; we’ll still share good visits. Transitions are hard but suffering passes. Goodbyes, as Raymond Chandler said, cause us to die a little; they elicit grief and require healing. So I tell myself to breathe. To hold the moment and let it go. To feel the feeling and watch it pass. So we mend; so we go on.

I know that tending these griefs will be ongoing, and there will be days when my friends’ absences are more sharply felt. Life transitions always involve a midwife’s penetrating attention: something is dying; something’s being born, and the gestations follow no prescribed timetable. Watch and wait. Listen and learn. Celebrate and find joy where, with whom, and when you can.

Late today, some plants I’d ordered arrived at my door. Tomorrow, I’ll plant them in the garden spaces we’ve designated, and I’ll connect them in my mind with this time of partings, but also in gratitude for the holy, wonderful memories of these friends, and all the ways they’ve blessed our lives, and how, across distances, we can continue to be blessing to one another.

So we mend; so we go on.

© Copyright of all visual and written materials on The Daily Round belongs solely to Catherine M. O’Meara, 2011-Present. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited, without the author’s written approval. No one is authorized to use Catherine O’Meara’s copyrighted material for material gain without the author’s engagement and written permission. All other visual, written, and linked materials are credited to their authors. Thank you, and gentle peace.

Let us greet and name
life’s strange blossoms,
two on every stem:
the grace of doubt,
the blessing of darkness,
the gift of grief,
the insight of fear,
the lessons of loss.

Each light has its shadow,
opposite and equal,
both required for either to be,
and balanced, then, in benefit
and harmony.

The gardener’s gratitude
is owed not only
for the harvest,
but for the planting and pruning,
the weeding and watering
the tending and turning;
days of drought, plague,
and pests. Let us welcome
them all and all
they bring, as time
reveals, unfolding;
may we be open
to receive life
as it is, knowing
every season
matters,
and we are here
in this garden,
sometimes in joy,
sometimes in agony
and on our knees,
to name the gift
of this moment,
holding it roundly,
letting it
go.

My blogging friend, Yacoob Manjoo, has compiled a beautiful collection of writing from many gifted authors (and an essay of mine, too :)), all touching upon the pandemic, but approaching it from unique and creative directions. This book is a gift, free for reading online, or downloading. It represents many hours and weeks of work for Yacoob, making me all the more honored to know him. I hope you’ll take time to enjoy this beautiful anthology, and be as touched by the writing as I have been. Gentle peace to you. Be safe and well.

© Copyright of all visual and written materials on The Daily Round belongs solely to Catherine M. O’Meara, 2011-Present. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited, without the author’s written approval. No one is authorized to use Catherine O’Meara’s copyrighted material for material gain without the author’s engagement and written permission. All other visual, written, and linked materials are credited to their authors. Thank you, and gentle peace.

My barn, having burned down, I can now see the moon. ~ Mizuta

The weather has been autumnal at Full Moon Cottage, cooler than temperatures established as “normal,” but perfect for blowing up gardens. More about that later.

Our Labor Day weekend was filled with our labor and its fruits. The vegetable garden was harvested, yielding dozens of butternut, acorn, and spaghetti squash, and those beds were turned and blanketed for winter. Lettuce, peas, and some herbs are still growing in raised beds, and there looks to be a second grand harvest of raspberries coming down the pike as well.

Then, since the weather was so enticing, I tackled the front flower garden. Well, I enticed Phillip to tackle it, and joined in with my smaller shovel. I’d meant to do all of this a year ago, and then, for a month, we put our home on the market before deciding it was too late in the year to move further North. And to be perfectly honest, we struggled with leaving Full Moon. Also, the car we use for transporting dogs is an old VW bug, and every time we had a showing, we had to cram into it with five dogs, one of whom reliably puked all over us before we’d gotten to the end of the drive…We looked like a third-rate clown car in search of a circus. The move wasn’t meant to be. When we took Full Moon off the market in late October, it was too late to rearrange the garden.

Now is the acceptable time. Some plants were ill and needed a heave-ho; some needed to go forward and others back; and everyone needed to be divided. Way at the back was a flowering quince that for years has flowered beautifully…in a ring around her ankles. No matter how I pruned, fertilized, cajoled, danced under the moon, sang to her (or maybe because of these things), she would not bloom from the knees up. I hoped that planting her in a new location might help, but we quickly learned her roots would not yield. Amazing tenacity, or stubbornness: a lesson that a fine line separates these.

We both dug and hauled roots away. We were left with a ball of roots resembling concrete, the circumference of a foot or more, and it would not budge. Phillip used a Sawzall, straps tied to the mower, then the hitch on the pick-up, and we both dug again. Nada. Zip. Zero. He’s 6’3” and was almost knee-deep in the hole surrounding this clump of roots when we called it a day. Last night it rained and softened the earth enough for him to make quicker work of it this morning. Farewell, my stubborn friend. A bit of give would have saved you.

Meanwhile, I cut back and rearranged the plants I could, and uprooted some from our “spare” garden, or from the back gardens, and transplanted them. A few others have been ordered, so their places were chosen and left open till they arrive.

To stand back and look at the garden right now, you’d think me a troubled gardener, at best. I blew up a garden that looked fine two months ago…but I knew it needed rearranging and dividing, and so, we put our backs into it and did the work required.

Gardening is a long game; a gardener truly never knows if she’ll live long enough to see the dreams and designs she plants, but someone will. And all through the winter months, I’ll be dreaming of how the new arrangement will work out, knowing, of course, it will be at least two years before I really see what I envisioned, and what my darling sweetheart helped me create. Knowing, of course, that 3-5 years hence, the dividing will have to be accomplished again. That’s how gardens grow and stay healthy. How all living things stay healthy.

I think that’s what’s happening in the world right now, perhaps not as consciously on the part of everyone, but certainly, systems, institutions, and ideas about the ways we live out equality and justice are changing, and we all know how humans welcome change: like a flowering quince.

We’re being invited to set down old ways and take up new ideas with clearer vision. And it’s happening in many gardens at once, with many gardeners articulating specific ideas about the designs and directions the gardens should grow…during a time of pandemic, and with the constant and dire reminders of our climate crisis. We’re all consuming a diet of unremitting stress, and we’re told the world may well be shaken and bounced substantially more in the months to come. Boom, goes the garden we knew and loved, blind to its flaws and diseases.

My life has been lived during a glorious span of relative peace, economic stability, accessible public education, and in a country where healthcare and vaccines helped most of us avoid disasters less fortunate humans on our planet suffered. But a casual glance at history tells us such golden epochs don’t last, usually because greed, progress, technology, and pleasure exploit others and the Earth, and those choices cannot be sustained. Too few benefit from the toil of too many. At any rate, and at the end of my lifetime, the wheel turns. Rome fell, plagues raged, and World Wars happened at the end of some people’s lives, too.

Right now, the garden is looking quite blown up. And there are a few stubborn-rooted plants that will resist change even if it means their destruction.

And, increasingly, I’m OK with all of this. No one else walking the planet has escaped upheaval, as I’ve written before. Here’s ours. What are our choices and how shall we respond? And can we take a breath and look at the moon? At all the good that can come of this?

The world’s a long game, like a garden. While we can, let’s put our backs into it, figure out what our gifts allow, and get the work done. Many of us won’t live to see how the design turns out, but someone will, and they will recall us as people who hoped; they will remember us as gardeners who planted dreams.

© Copyright of all visual and written materials on The Daily Round belongs solely to Catherine M. O’Meara, 2011-Present. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited, without the author’s written approval. No one is authorized to use Catherine O’Meara’s copyrighted material for material gain without the author’s engagement and written permission. All other visual, written, and linked materials are credited to their authors. Thank you, and gentle peace.

We had a professor named Jack
who was always in a good mood;
he was known for it. Happy Jack,
he juggled his knowledge and wit
and spread light. When you spoke
he listened so hard you could see
your words written on his heart.
Somehow, we always
parted leavened, laughing,
after tutorials with Jack.

One Thanksgiving,
I left the noise of my husband’s family almost
knowing I would leave the marriage soon,
and walked along North Lake Drive sliding
into the silence of empty streets, the hushed
cold world full and alone, shuttered from
holiday noise, lit rooms and memories.
The lake met the gray sky,
a curtain fallen on a closed play.
Sometimes there are
no surprises left.

I walked, from the bay all the way to the
bend in the road that ended the parade of
old money on the lake, by the home
where they wrapped their towering ancient
oak in thousands of lights every
Christmas, and people came
from all over Milwaukee, travelers
following stars, expecting miracles
and answers, or just the light
that will lead you to them.

A car drove by; a man
heading north, somewhere else,
and then, a sudden slam of brakes,
skidding tires and the car
u-turned–right in the middle
of North Lake Drive–and rolled up next to me: it
was Jack, dashing to Sendik’s for something
necessary to the memories this Thanksgiving
would conjure. He shouted my name,
laughing, invited me to sit in the car,
share news, share time. And the damp
and the gray fell away in his light. He listened
so hard I saw my words written on his heart.

I asked Jack where he found his true
deep joy, how he managed such
bright delight. And he had the answer ready:
Grad school in New York, lonely, broke,
trying every day, every day meeting
the guy at the newstand, greeting the guy
with his elemental joy and being rebuffed,
feeling flattened, his spirit mugged,
bright energy punctured, leaking,
momentum dragging, beaten,
till one day he realized, all in a moment,
“I didn’t have to give that guy my joy; I
could share it, and keep it, too.”

I thought I could try that: choose
joy, share it, and keep it.
Sometimes there are
no surprises left but one,
and it saves you
and you take it in, changed,
and become the surprise
for others.

Here is link to a wonderful collection of poetry, essays, and meditations about our experiences during this time of challenges : https://dreamlife.wordpress.com/2020/09/05/corona-times-preview/#comment-8614

I love the wonderful oral interpretation of “And the People Stayed Home” by Kate Winslet and so many others, but it’s hard to top the lilting mellowness of a pure Irish brogue…it so gently holds every word and idea and honors it. You always hear new music in words you’ve turned over a million times. I swear, a shopping list would sound like singing angels (to me) if recited by this man. His name is Dennis Earlie, and he’s a filmmaker in Ireland, who created this with his colleague, Noreen Bingham, to honor their family members who died from Covid-19, and the frontline workers who support us all.

© Copyright of all visual and written materials on The Daily Round belongs solely to Catherine M. O’Meara, 2011-Present. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited, without the author’s written approval. No one is authorized to use Catherine O’Meara’s copyrighted material for material gain without the author’s engagement and written permission. All other visual, written, and linked materials are credited to their authors. Thank you, and gentle peace.

In recent weeks, Phillip and I noticed–in ourselves and friends–a kind of bone-weariness and increasingly short fuses in dealing with confinement, with the government’s ineptitude, with community members who will never comply with recommended (or mandated) best practices, and with the stress and fear of enduring walls around our lives, options, and hopes for possibly as long as we live…It’s not that we want to go “back to normal,” but forward would be nice.

Seeing and embracing loved ones would be nice. Getting lost in a crowd of strangers would be nice. A movie, or a restaurant would be nice. Not having to think through every single step required to get some groceries would be nice. It’s felt like an increasingly cruel burden to be constantly vigilant and following all the correct steps prescribed for our safety. But we have no acceptable alternative.

We’re experiencing a combustion of frustration that Must. Be. Tolerated. There is no other rational choice, until the virus and its treatment are managed, until we’d have better than a fighting chance to survive it. Some days, I want to stand in the yard and scream.

So, yes: grief, anger, cranky pants, pissy moods, rolled eyes, deep sighs.

And not exclusively, of course; the weather’s been gorgeous; the gardens are yielding blossoms and food; we, the 4-leggeds, and our loved ones are safe and well, and we’re both blessed with creative outlets.

And yet. The “we can do this” holiday spirit we wore like leis as we entered quarantine wilted, dried, and blew away rather quickly. We became less flexible, and seemed to jettison our joy in the need for the stability of a schedule to reliably follow as our isolation progressed. And that’s understandable, since, with this virus, we were walking into the darkening woods without a map.

Life became scarier and the bad news seemed to increase daily, so we put energy into organizing our days, something we could control. Living with 8 other dependent mammals has always created a fairly predictable schedule, but we’ve been clinging too tenaciously to it out of our own need to keep occupied and avoid staring into the abyss of “what if’s.”

Happily, really, we’re feeling stronger and ready to let go of the rigidity we needed to feel secure on our journey through the woods. And I think both our weariness and crankiness signaled this…We’re rebelling against confinement, yes, but also against the tightness with which we’ve been enduring it. We’re finding our way back to lightness and balance, and discovering ways to tend and feed our joy.

I’ve begun to check in more consciously with my breathing, because I tend to tighten and to hold my breath when I feel stressed. Now, throughout the day, I practice one of the many breathing exercises I’ve collected for years. Funny, how collecting them hasn’t worked nearly as well as doing them every day.

We relax together every afternoon, and we’re giving ourselves more dedicated reading time than just the half hour before bedtime. (I finally finished the almost-800 page The Mirror and the Light, the last in the Cromwell trilogy by Hilary Mantel, and I feel like I’ve disembarked from a time machine. What another stunning stay in Tudor England, floating in Mantel’s glorious language.) We’ve always eaten healthy food, but we’re having more fun planning our meals together. We take naps if and when we want, and watch old movies in the middle of the day if we feel like it. One day, I jumped back in bed for hours and read the day away. And it is pure joy for me to see Phillip relax, which has reminded me that caring for ourselves can also provide peace to those with whom we’re in relationship.

And daily, I’m lugging my cameras along on a walk. This morning, I even went on an unexpected adventure. I strolled down to the bridge to visit my heron buddy, then returned and followed the trail from our yard towards the neighbor’s woods. For 25 years, this primitive trail has run along our properties, beside the river, and then branches into another trail down to the riverbank, where I thought I might get a better shot of the heron.

But the pandemic has kept both us and our neighbor from maintaining our rudimentary paths, and I rather quickly found myself struggling with fallen limbs, colonies of jewelweed rising over my head, and a kabillion burr-sticker-prickles. Damn. I thought I could go towards the neighbor’s and get through the tangle of vegetation; I couldn’t. I turned right, into the woods, thinking the forest floor would be cleaner; it wasn’t. I stood in the woods, surrounded by branches, grasses, vines, and weeds, and I panicked for a moment. I am short and small, and the woods are thick and tall…but they’re not wide, and I knew the way home, so I began to crawl, burrow, jump over branches, slide through openings, and push towards home. I could hear the dogs and Phillip in the dogpark, but I couldn’t see them or figure out quite how to get there. I have a new appreciation for all that Mother Nature can accomplish in 6 months.

As I scrambled through the last barrier to our yard, the dogs sent up a raucous welcome and Phillip, rather surprised at seeing a Green Woman emerge from the woods, stared, transfixed for a moment, and then crossed to the dogpark gate to meet me. As I recounted my adventure, we both started to laugh and couldn’t stop. Of course, he thought it was absolutely necessary to get a photo. I will never get all these burrs out of my clothes, but I had a sweet little adventure. Into the woods and out again.

And it ended in joy.

And here is another gift of joy in my week. The Basque choral composer and  director, Javier Busto, created a setting for In the Time of Pandemic and then gathered a virtual choir of artists from all over the world to record it…it’s beautiful. I hope it brings you joy!

The picture book version of And the People Stayed Home is also available, for pre-order, at these locations. I think it is a joyful book, a book of hope, and I believe it can be our story in more ways than we imagine.

https://andthepeoplestayedhomebook.com/

Peace to your week!

© Copyright of all visual and written materials on The Daily Round belongs solely to Catherine M. O’Meara, 2011-Present. Unauthorized use is strictly prohibited, without the author’s written approval. No one is authorized to use Catherine O’Meara’s copyrighted material for material gain without the author’s engagement and written permission. All other visual, written, and linked materials are credited to their authors. Thank you, and gentle peace.