You can now call me Epiphany Paris. Epiphany Ayla Paris.

It’s been a bit of a process to get here, and will be a bit of a process still for people to get used to this name…

I informally changed my last name to Paris around the time Joy was born, because I wanted rid of my family name, and also I wanted the same name as Joy. Joy’s papa’s last name is Paris, and even though he and I were not getting married, his family really took me in as one of their own, which meant a lot to me. Also, Paris sounds cool, and I couldn’t find a last name I liked the sound of better. Brian was fine with it, as was his family. I figured the name-changing would end there.

However, this last Spring, as I was in the beginning of an intense re-birth process that went from Spring to Fall, the name Epiphany came to me. I was playing pretend with Joy and she asked me what my name was, and I said, “Epiphany.” As I said it, I felt a click inside, and realized that Virginia was not me anymore. I started the change by saying my new name over and over. Then, I changed it on Facebook.

Since changing my last name, I’ve intended to do a legal name change. Since receiving Epiphany, I’ve waited to choose a new middle name so I could change it all at once. I did that about a month ago now, on November 14th. I decided on “Ayla.” Ayla means Oak Tree in Hebrew, and it is also the first name of the protagonist in a semi-autobiographical short film I wrote and directed in college. By taking this as part of my name, I feel that I am coming full-circle in my healing, and that my re-birth is complete. Soon, I’ll legally change my name.

It is an adjustment for people to adapt to someone changing their name. I remember this from times when friends of mine have changed their names. At first, the name may not feel right, and occasionally there is resistance or even resentment at having to change what you call someone. But, a name change is very important, and respecting it is an act of honoring the changes a person goes through.

Not surprisingly, the people I have known less time adjust easier. I introduce myself to new friends with my new name. Those I have known for years and years are having a harder time, but trying. If you see me in person, or on Facebook, please try to call me by my new name, because it is who I am. I am no longer Virginia. I honor the person she was, but she is no longer. It’s understandable to have a hard time with it, but I deeply appreciate the effort.

UPDATE

On 4/6/12, the County of Arlington, Virginia declared my new name official and legal. The legal process was a lot less hard than I thought it would be, although once I turned in the paperwork, waiting for it to come back was agonizing. I got the order in the mail 4/10/12. So, it’s official. I am Epiphany Ayla Paris. Next steps include the social security office and DMV, to let them know the change happened.

It’s been some time.

Too long.

I went months without enough internet access to blog. I’ve had access again for a couple months, but have been busy job-searching. It’s been quite a journey. I’ll update more soon, I hope. : )

I was asked by Angela Shelton to be an author/contributor to the Survival Manual! How exciting is that?

This transpired after this weekend, I shared with her my post from a few days ago about Forgiving Dad, and also after someone sent her a link to my radio interview from this last Sunday (click HERE to listen to the Systemic Effect interview on 11/20 with Ohia, Lania and Daniel about Our Voice, addressing and preventing sexual violence, and healing, interview is about 5 minutes in). What’s really interesting about this last weekend, is I didn’t plan to have two parts of this thread come together. The interview had already been planned, but I had no idea that Saturday is the day I was going to forgive dad. It’s interesting the way synchronicity works sometimes.

I have been a fan of Angela Shelton’s for a long time. I first saw her film about 5 years ago, which is around the time I was creating a confrontation letter to send to my dad about him sexually abusing me. Her movie brought a real sense of peace and hope to me, that it was really possible to heal and live joyfully. It also brought me a sense of power, and really getting that I was not alone.

Since then, I have met Angela two times in person, the first time at a workshop in Iowa, the second time at a book signing in Champaign, IL. I also interviewed her on my radio show, you can listen HERE. Now I also “see” her around on facebook, and say hi occasionally.

I’m really excited to be a contributor to the Survival Manual, which is a great resource that really helps survivors find tools for healing and support. I feel like, in a sense, I am coming full circle. The healing that I have done is really something that I can share, I have tools to share, and that’s a pretty exciting feeling! This is how change happens, you know? People wake up, heal, reclaim their power, and then share the tools and also the truth that it is possible. Angela started, inspired and empowered waves of healing to take place, and while I can’t say that my exposure to her started my healing, it certainly strengthened it, and now I can share what I have learned with others as well! Pretty cool!

In rituals, one gift that I have is holding space. I have a sense of the room, of the energies in the room, of the people, and where the energies of the people are at and are going. I hold deep witness for all that is happening. I participate as well, but with my energy I create a feeling of grounded safety for the other participants, and I can do all this while being deeply in trance and/or experiencing pretty profound transportation myself. It’s interesting, because people who consciously can sense such things tend to be aware of my grounding and deepening presence (even though I don’t even consciously purposefully do it, it’s just the way I roll), and even people who don’t think they perceive energy, still tend to report feeling as if they are safe with me there, and I am the person they tend to go to if they have little questions and they aren’t sure what they should do about something. It’s funny, because I’ll be super deep in trance, and also witnessing everything that’s going on, and someone will wiggle up to me and ask if its okay to leave to pee, or ask what order things are supposed to happen in. Or, if a person tends to process deep energies by talking about anything, I tend to be the one this person goes to to make a brief humorous or sarcastic remark. I don’t encourage it exactly, because I don’t want people to be disruptive, but I don’t shut them down either. I am good at dual-awareness, so I can handle it, but I still feel amused when this happens, because these people don’t realize that I am very deep in the energies.

On a walk today, I received the message that part of my role right now, in the next few months and next few years is to hold space for people as they wake up. Waking up can be such a tumultuous experience, as it includes not only facing inner demons and also illusions about the outer world. Like, as Americans wake up to the fact that our government is not at all what we’ve been taught, and that the American Dream is a lie (as George Carlin said, “They call it a dream because you have to be asleep to believe it”), it can be pretty painful. Even when people accept changes that are happening, it can be painful, but when we fight change, it is excruciating.

So, as people wake up, and the world around us appears to crumble, part of my role is holding sacred space as people experience turmoil. This doesn’t mean inactivity, not at all. I will do whatever I can to ease people’s transitions, either with spiritual, intellectual or physical tools. I don’t believe in being hands-off with my spirituality, and action is a huge way to shift energy. Sometimes “spiritual” people use their spirituality as an excuse for being passive, but I feel the opposite is the best way to go… for me, my impetus to ACT comes from my spiritual feeling (deep inside my body) that we are all connected, and what happens to one person effects us all.

So, deep listening is a big part for me of holding space… it includes not only being able to listen to individual people, but also listen to the people of the world. It includes witnessing the struggles of people across the globe who are fighting for freedom, to regain their power. It includes showing solidarity in whatever ways I can, to show that I see/hear what is happening (just as I might make eye contact in ritual with someone who is sharing something important, and my eye contact bears deep witness to where they are at).

Holding space also includes finding peace within my heart even in difficult situations. When I do this, I bring the energy of peace into my interactions, energetically and also because my actions will be more peaceful. In acting peacefully towards those in my immediate circle, I spread peace. This still includes standing for what is right and standing with people as they work to make changes in their lives. We can do all of these things with peace in our hearts, and that is one of the great gifts that spirituality brings activism.

Sometimes, in all the changes that are taking place and will be taking place, things feel out of control, and may in fact be outside of our control. Another gift in holding space is that I can show that it is possible to be centered. It is possible to be the eye of the storm. It is possible, even in chaos, to be steady. This is not a rigid stance, it is intense flexibility. Unhealed wounds are rigid, and allow a person to be thrown around by circumstances. Healing allows motion, and the ability to think before reacting. From a centered place, we can choose the best possible decision in any given situation because we can calmly reason through all of the information.

I am deeply grateful for all of the healing work I have done and for the healing work I’m on the verge of doing. This all aids me in the work to come. Because I have learned how to be centered even in chaos or pain, I can do it now at such an important time when I can help other people learn how to do the same.

I have been striving for a while to reach a point of forgiveness towards both of my parents. Forgiveness isn’t about thinking or saying or acting like what somebody did is okay, condoning their actions, but it is about letting go of the anger, hurt etc around what happened. The energy of those old woulds doesn’t hurt the people who did the hurtful thing, it hurts the person carrying the old, stale emotions. So, because I have gotten tired of carrying the weight, I have been working towards becoming ready to forgive both my mom and dad, and others who hurt me when I was a child. I have done so much healing work in my life, but a few old energies remain which I am ready to release.

Today, for an Evolver Asheville event, we did a meditation at the Warrior’s Cairn near the VA Medical Center in Asheville. It was a touching event, Geri Littlejohn played flute, and the energy was very deep. We had the opportunity to place stones within the Ciarn to honor veterans, and I felt called to place a stone for Dad. He is a Vietnam veteran.

As I was holding the stone and sending a blessing into it, I suddenly felt ready to let go! To let go of that hurt and anger. To stop carrying his actions around with me in my life. I was ready to honor him by laying down this stone for him, and honor myself by letting go of the heavy burden. I spoke to the group, and shared that this stone was for my father, a Vietnam vet. I said that I honored him for being a veteran. I said that our relationship was too broken to ever be healed, but that I was ready to forgive him, to let go of the anger and hurt, and send him all my love. As I spoke, my voice broke, but not from the sadness of events long past, but from the relief of finally letting go. I set the stone down, and I felt the weight release in my heart. Geri played another song, a deeper one, and I felt the energy in my body recalibrate, in the depth, adjusting to the release. I felt deep love for him, for myself, for my daughter who would not be hurt by him, for the circle of people standing present, and for the land underneath us, witnessing our honoring ritual. A sense of fear that had shadowed me my entire life dissolved into the wind, and I felt a sense of my own power for the first time without also feeling fear of owning it. Usually, when I have moments of feeling this kind of calm, there is also an underlying nervousness that the calm will soon fade again, but this time it felt more stable, permanent.

I also felt the ripples of this healing extend to the other veterans honored within that Cairn, not just today but since it was built last year. I felt healing ripples extend to these veteran’s families, whose lives may have been touched by the violence of war, even indirectly. I felt forgiveness for other veterans who carry violence from our wars in their hearts and sow that violence upon those they love. I touched a deeper sadness that wars continue all over the world, and I think I touched just a bit of that with the healing energies I sent out.

As long as we live in a culture that does violence on a large scale, we will do violence in our homes. As long as we live in a culture of exploitation, war and cruelty, our children will not all be safe. How can we love each other deeply enough to heal the sadness of what has been done, heal deeply enough that we can truly change our patterns? I’m not saying Dad’s actions were okay. It’s never okay to hurt a child. But, I do forgive him, and I also see that behaviors like his are inevitable in a culture so infatuated with violence and domination. Can we heal ourselves now, and let go of the pain? Can we wake up, and all together end the violence in our world?

I am doing it, starting with my own heart.

Haven’t posted since September, perhaps you may have noticed. This is partly because I got incredibly, impossibly busy, and it is also because I started feeling like the blog wasn’t suiting me anymore. I starting feeling like I had figured out what I had started the blog to figure out, and so wasn’t chasing frogs anymore…

Before I go further to talk about what I’ve been so busy with, all the things I did figure out, and the things I apparently have yet to learn, I want to discuss the name of this blog a bit, again. There has been some confusion. Many assume I’m talking about trying to find a frog that will turn into a prince, or some other man-chasing reference. This is so completely not the case, as I hate princess stories that revolve around women thinking that finding a man is going to solve their problems.

Frogs symbolize magic, transformation. When I thought the blog might be finished, I was imagining that it had been about my awakening into a certain level of knowing, and that being I had reached the stage I had been envisioning, I would be done with this. However, I forgot how my life cycles and that change nearly as present as air, and there would be more evolving to do, always. So, the blog will continue.

I have learned more than I could have imagined since starting my radio show in particular, but also hosting Evolver Asheville, doing my Trickster Goddess readings, and being involved in other various ways. I have recordings of all my shows and all my readings, and some of these will be included in my book which I am finally really getting geared up to write. My book will be a roadmap of awakening, both personal and global, spiritual and political. I will include my own life experiences, as well as what I have observed on an energy level, and how those observations fall in line with my external observations and research. I have observed so many patterns that are exciting and transformative, and it is coming time to share them in an all-inclusive way instead of just in bits and pieces as I currently share my insights and observations.

I still have much to learn. An epiphany that came to me yesterday is that I need to reclaim my lyrical voice. I think in poetry but talk in prose, and prose is not my heart’s language. Before I go too much further with any of my work, I would like to reclaim my natural way of speaking, so that I can better convey all that I see. Prose has its place, but tends to only work when preaching to the choir, which I feel I do a lot. To truly transform people’s perceptions, in my opinion, poetry or at least lyricism works much better.

Many changes are coming for me in the next few months. I am searching out life solutions that will allow me to get closer to source, while still nurturing myself and my daughter. Another answer that came to me yesterday was that instead of using my effort to try to force words in writing this book, I need to focus my energies on increasing intuitive openings. With my intuition open, the words will all come in the best possible way.

So, I continue with my journey, and I accept that the journey is the reason for living. I will be once again posting on this blog often. And, I welcome your support, both tangible and moral. All moral and spiritual support is welcomed, and definitely leave me notes of encouragement, prayer or healing if you wish. Also, if you feel like supporting my work in a more physical way (like in a way that would support me buying toilet paper or other necessities), donations are welcome as well. Just click on the “donate” button on the home page.

Anyway… thank you for re-joining me on this continuing journey, I already have so much to share, and will continue to have much to tell you!

Have you ever, in working to free yourself from an old or destructive cycle, felt a moment where you knew you were going to make it? I call that moment reaching escape velocity. I can feel it approaching when things start going bad more slowly than I can fix them.

It’s the time right before reaching this speed that’s often the hardest to keep faith, because it feels like everything is standing still. And, for a brief moment, everything really does seem to stop. It’s because the rate of things going wrong evens with the rate of things going right. And, at this moment, it’s easy to question everything, question the path, because no effect is seen (although the momentary stasis is actually a sign of having effect).

Then, suddenly, little bit by little bit, things start getting easier. Goals start getting more attainable, progress becomes more real.

Without going into the details, this is what I’m feeling right now. The last month and a half or so has really felt out of control, starting with the whole apartment situation. Just now, I’m starting to feel more settled, starting to feel like my actions have traction. I still have a lot of things to sort out, but I’m feeling like I am having positive impact on my life!

Could be that the effects of this intense retrograde season are lessoning now. Planets are turning direct again. I think it’s going to be fun to see how things fold the next month or so, with all the effort finally having some footing!

Just created a new website, all by myself!

www.trickstergoddess.com

Check it out!