If Home is where the heart is
Then may your Home be blessed
A shelter from the storms of Life
A place of rest,
And when each day is over
And toil put in its place
Your Home's dear warmth
Will bring its smile
To light the saddest face!
~John McLoed ~
Eleven years ago, after the end of my near three decade long marriage, I was cast adrift on a sea that I was ill-prepared to sail upon. After several moves and some near disastrous mistakes, I settled down into a little older townhome where I lived for 8 years. But when you have a lifetime of accrued possessions and left the 3000 square foot marriage home for a teeny, tiny cottage no bigger than a tissue box, with most of your possessions in a garage that flooded during a hurricane, ruining a life's worth of over 300 journals, many of my beloved books and other possessions, you are at the beginning of the metamorphosis that would, eventually, be the beginning of a new life. Then, I could not imagine it, I could only see and feel the loss.
It was at this time that while trying to survive physically and emotionally I created a little garden around the tiny white cottage with it's sweet little picket fence -- the year was 1999 and I had moved out of my married home on April 30, 1999, my 45th birthday, not intentionally on my birthday, it just happened that way. Gardening has always been my salvation, the most healing activity for me, and so there I was in my tiny garden planting flowers and herbs, and it didn't surprise me that there were dragonflies all around, as they often are in gardens, but there was no water anywhere around that they might have been drawn to, and there seemed to be, well, quite a lot of them.
My little place was up above the garage, surrounded by large old trees so close to my windows that I would open them and hang bird feeders in the trees just outside the second story, and watch the wild birds come to the feeders which fascinated my parrots inside no end. There was a very long, tall metal outdoor staircase that led up to my little cottage in the clouds and I began to find it odd that several dragonflies would follow me up the stairs and hover around the little landing as I went in the door. I hung baskets of flowers and a little hanging water dish for them and for the wild birds on this tiny landing to offer them a place of respite, but the numbers of them and their continuing close proximity to me I found rather fascinating and perplexing. Then, I started dreaming of dragonflies.
Having studied Native American spirituality I was very aware of totems, and I have quite a collection of Zuni and Navajo fetishes from my trips to New Mexico. That's when I realized that the dragonflies were not just a happy coincidence but that they had come, as teachers and healers, to lead me out of the darkness and into the light, and to teach me the lessons I needed to learn. Dragonflies represent metamorphosis, and I was at the beginning of a huge life change that I couldn't even yet fathom. I had left a decades long marriage, my children were grown, and I had finally come out as a lesbian. The dragonfly was leading me out of the shadows I had lived in my entire life since the days when my childhood, rife with abuse, dark corners, and frightening secrets made me more comfortable with hiding and living in a cloistered world. Now it was time to turn the corner toward the light. I loved my husband and children, but the time had come to be who I really was. I thought the change might be the death of me, in fact it was the death of my old self. I named my little cottage Dragonfly Cottage in honor of the totem creatures who had come to lead me through this dark passage and to honor the journey toward the light.
In the intervening years I would move 6 times before finding this precious home of mine, my seventh move, and each place I lived in was "Dragonfly Cottage." For me, it became more than a physical place, it was a state of mind, something that I carried inside myself like a precious gem, the eternal flame inside of me that would not go out, the spark that kept me alive and going when I did not believe that it was possible. More than once I came to the precipice of deepest darkness, but the dragonfly always pulled me back, literally. Once, in the little old townhome, I was really at the brink of despair. I was dangling so far off the edge that it seemed the only peace I would ever find was just to let go completely, and then a miracle happened. I heard the softest, barely audible bump against my patio door, and much to my amazement, when I opened the door, the most beautiful dragonfly I have ever seen in my life flew right inside. Not just for a moment, for over an hour.
He sat with me on my hand, on my shoulder, on my knee. He just sat. Afraid to move or breathe I reached for my camera and took as many pictures as I could. I could feel my whole body relax. I don't know what kind of dragonfly he was but he was huge, and a bright glittering, irridescent gold. I will share with you, here, some of the pictures I took then...
And after an hour or so, he flew off of my hand and back onto the window ledge next to the door where he had come in.
His work was done. I was pulled back from the brink, never again to consider death as an option. I was turned toward the light by a shimmering golden creature lighter than air, and he left such an indelible mark on me that I had a huge dragonfly flying over a full moon with tiny stars twinkling up to my ring finger and in the other direction up my arm tattoed on the back of my right hand/wrist. I had taken my totem permanently as a reminder not only of he who came to save me at a crucial juncture, but, putting it on the back of my right hand so that I, as a right-handed writer, would always remember to use my writing for spiritual good.
It was at this time that while trying to survive physically and emotionally I created a little garden around the tiny white cottage with it's sweet little picket fence -- the year was 1999 and I had moved out of my married home on April 30, 1999, my 45th birthday, not intentionally on my birthday, it just happened that way. Gardening has always been my salvation, the most healing activity for me, and so there I was in my tiny garden planting flowers and herbs, and it didn't surprise me that there were dragonflies all around, as they often are in gardens, but there was no water anywhere around that they might have been drawn to, and there seemed to be, well, quite a lot of them.
My little place was up above the garage, surrounded by large old trees so close to my windows that I would open them and hang bird feeders in the trees just outside the second story, and watch the wild birds come to the feeders which fascinated my parrots inside no end. There was a very long, tall metal outdoor staircase that led up to my little cottage in the clouds and I began to find it odd that several dragonflies would follow me up the stairs and hover around the little landing as I went in the door. I hung baskets of flowers and a little hanging water dish for them and for the wild birds on this tiny landing to offer them a place of respite, but the numbers of them and their continuing close proximity to me I found rather fascinating and perplexing. Then, I started dreaming of dragonflies.
Having studied Native American spirituality I was very aware of totems, and I have quite a collection of Zuni and Navajo fetishes from my trips to New Mexico. That's when I realized that the dragonflies were not just a happy coincidence but that they had come, as teachers and healers, to lead me out of the darkness and into the light, and to teach me the lessons I needed to learn. Dragonflies represent metamorphosis, and I was at the beginning of a huge life change that I couldn't even yet fathom. I had left a decades long marriage, my children were grown, and I had finally come out as a lesbian. The dragonfly was leading me out of the shadows I had lived in my entire life since the days when my childhood, rife with abuse, dark corners, and frightening secrets made me more comfortable with hiding and living in a cloistered world. Now it was time to turn the corner toward the light. I loved my husband and children, but the time had come to be who I really was. I thought the change might be the death of me, in fact it was the death of my old self. I named my little cottage Dragonfly Cottage in honor of the totem creatures who had come to lead me through this dark passage and to honor the journey toward the light.
In the intervening years I would move 6 times before finding this precious home of mine, my seventh move, and each place I lived in was "Dragonfly Cottage." For me, it became more than a physical place, it was a state of mind, something that I carried inside myself like a precious gem, the eternal flame inside of me that would not go out, the spark that kept me alive and going when I did not believe that it was possible. More than once I came to the precipice of deepest darkness, but the dragonfly always pulled me back, literally. Once, in the little old townhome, I was really at the brink of despair. I was dangling so far off the edge that it seemed the only peace I would ever find was just to let go completely, and then a miracle happened. I heard the softest, barely audible bump against my patio door, and much to my amazement, when I opened the door, the most beautiful dragonfly I have ever seen in my life flew right inside. Not just for a moment, for over an hour.
He sat with me on my hand, on my shoulder, on my knee. He just sat. Afraid to move or breathe I reached for my camera and took as many pictures as I could. I could feel my whole body relax. I don't know what kind of dragonfly he was but he was huge, and a bright glittering, irridescent gold. I will share with you, here, some of the pictures I took then...
And after an hour or so, he flew off of my hand and back onto the window ledge next to the door where he had come in.
His work was done. I was pulled back from the brink, never again to consider death as an option. I was turned toward the light by a shimmering golden creature lighter than air, and he left such an indelible mark on me that I had a huge dragonfly flying over a full moon with tiny stars twinkling up to my ring finger and in the other direction up my arm tattoed on the back of my right hand/wrist. I had taken my totem permanently as a reminder not only of he who came to save me at a crucial juncture, but, putting it on the back of my right hand so that I, as a right-handed writer, would always remember to use my writing for spiritual good.
In June 2005 our divorce was final. At that time I felt a deep need to change my name, a name that would represent the spiritual path that I was on and would be on, going deeper and deeper, for the rest of my life. Having been a student of Buddhism for over 30 years at that point, and having decided that my work was meant to be centered in the teaching of maitri, the teaching not only of loving-kindness and compassion, but most importantly that you must first have love and compassion for yourself. You cannot give from an empty well, and in trying to do so the consequences may be dire, at the very least in that empty dark state where you have nothing to give to others, you cannot flourish and live as you were meant to. I took Maitri as my first name, and Libellule, the French word for Dragonfly, as my last name.
I am half French, and my biological grandmother's maiden name was Papillon. Butterfly. It seemed only fitting that I would take the last name Libellule, the name of my totem, and my name, Maitri Libellule, would be my guiding star for the rest of my days, it would remind me of the way I wanted to walk in the world, what I wanted to share and teach, what my purpose and responsibilities were, and I knew it would take me all of my life, the rest of my days, to come close to learning what I need to know, and to teach and share all that I am meant to.
In July of 2005 I walked outside on the courthouse steps, legally, and for all time, Maitri Libellule. I did not, at that time, begin to realize the impact that taking the mantle of the teaching I meant to follow and to share, and my totem, the dragonfly, would mean. I had not chosen an easy path, but I wouldn't have chosen any other for all the world. And my life and work continued on from there, going deeper and deeper through the following years.
I need not record the details of the journey to this point other than to say that on the brink of the new year, 2010, 5 years after changing my name, I knew that something enormous was happening. I was about to cross a threshold into the new life that I had been preparing for for nearly 11 years. My mother passed in mid-December after a courageous 5 year battle with cancer, and in January I bought the home I had seen the summer before, surprised that it was still available and the price dropped considerably. With the sale of my townhouse and a little extra I bought my dream home, the little cottage that was years in the making, and I came home to the real Dragonfly Cottage where I was meant to live, and do my work, creating a magic garden for solitude, delight, a place to heal and meditate, and be close to nature; the place where I would write my books and teach what I was meant to teach; and to do the fiber work that tied me to the centuries of women who have worked with their hands, spinning fiber into yarn into tapestries and more. I had landed, finally, where I was supposed to be. It had been a long journey, but I needed to walk every step of that journey, and I know I am still only beginning. It is as if at 56, now, my real work can begin, and I am finally settled in my own home, my sacred space, where I was meant to be.
Without really thinking about it, in March I found myself going into a tattoo studio to have my rather simple dragonfly tattoo embellished and it is now quite complex and stunning. I hadn't really thought about it but now that I had a home, and the real Dragonfly Cottage had finally materialized as it was long meant to, my life was beginning to metamorphose once again, and the dragonfly on my hand did as well. I don't have a picture of the new tattoo but I will post a picture when I take one sometime soon.
Finally, I was working in my studio last week. The studio is a very large room with windows all the way around that look out onto my deck on one side hung all the way around with bird feeders and windchimes, the windows I look out as I work at my computer, watching the birds just a foot away from me eating, afraid to breathe I am so delighted to be so close to them, and the long wall of windows down the other side look out over The Magic Ship Garden that I am working on. This particular day was a gorgeous, sunny, breezy day, and all of the windows were open letting the fresh air waft through the house "rinsing it clean" as I always think. All of a sudden, out of nowhere it seemed (Had it come in the dog door with the dogs?) something flew past me and it was so big I thought it was a bird. It flew directly into the screen and couldn't find it's way out. As I looked closer I realized that it was a dragonfly, and I had no idea they could get that big! Right in the middle of my Dragonfly Cottage Studio was the biggest dragonfly I had ever seen and he took my breath away. I didn't know what to do.
Gently, very gently, I cupped my hands around him, called to my friend to come open the door, and I set him free. I believe he had come to welcome me home, and to let me know that he was here with me too, that he would always be near me. We are of the same tribe, this dragonfly and I. And this beautiful little spot that I have finally found, after 11 years, and had the ability, at near 56, to move into, is without a doubt one of the greatest gifts of my life and meant to be.
And so I am home, and I am writing the book I had put off for some time and all of the fiber and fiber equipment are being set up in my studio so that I will begin selling my yarns and fiber creations and more by June, donating a portion of the proceeds to pug rescue, and the pugs and the parrots and Big Dog Moe and I will live here in perfect harmony, and I fall to my knees in deep gratitude, and every morning and every night as I go to bed the first and last words I utter are "Thank you God." I am here, I have made it, now my work can begin in earnest, and I am no longer running toward, or away from, anything. I am here.
Welcome to Dragonfly Cottage. It feels good to be home...
