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[0:13] Introduction to Your Heart Magic

Music, Aloha and welcome to Your Heart magic, an illuminating space where psychology, spirituality and heart wisdom. Meet. Here's your host, Dr bethanne kapansky Wright, the clinical psychologist with a mystic mind.


Aloha, everyone. Welcome to Your Heart magic. This is Dr bethanne kapansky Wright, and today we have a talk Story Time episode where I will be sharing a few passages that I wrote from one of my books and sharing just some of my thoughts behind the words, what inspired it. I love doing talk story time episodes because usually I will pre plan what I'm going to read, but I don't put a lot of thought into what I'm going to say about it. 

And so whenever I do these, they always feel a little bit more off the cuff and more about improv and just allowing for sharing more openly from my heart and some of the inspirations behind some of the things I wrote. And since it is September, I decided today that all the poems I'm going to share are, first of all, they are poems, and they are from a poetry book called cranberry dusk, a journey of becoming and this was a self published book. 

It was, I think, the first thing I ever published and all the poetry are almost all of it, I should say, was written around this time of year, and it was really inspired by the fall season in Alaska and nature and the themes of death and decay mixed with life and honoring the completion of something and the beauty of how an ending also leads to a beginning. 

[2:02] Themes of "Cranberry Dusk"

There's a lot of wisdom in these poems that, to me, really ties in with the autumn equinox and honoring both the light and the dark, and that balancing out of how the shadows contribute to the light and the light weave into the shadows and this beautiful interplay and dance of all that it means to be human. 

And so the themes of this book are very much tied up and inspired by my personal journey, but they're really heavy and nature metaphors from nature, and these observations about what it is to be human, and this strange alchemical dance that we all see as we move through our personal timelines, and each engage with the mysteries of life and develop that awareness of how life is so beautiful something ends and something else begins. 

And sometimes we look back on the journey and say, if not for these things that happened that seem like decay or destruction of my life at the time, this beautiful new life might not have grown out of it. And so I think part of what wisdom gives us as we develop and we grow and we mature is the ability to understand that there are so many nuances in life, and things that might look good on the surface aren't always good, and things that look bad on the surface aren't always bad, and there's the psychological complexity to all of it. 

And sometimes we might not see how something supports the alchemy of our becoming. And yet, months later, years later, we might have this moment of looking back and realizing, wow, there I was all along, and I really was supported, and all of these things were leading me to the spot and where I'm at, and I just couldn't see it at the time. 

So this book celebrates a lot of themes and wisdom around that, and some of the main poems that I wrote in this book were written in the fall of 2015, it encompasses poetry written before that as well. But some of those poems that to me felt the most powerful were written during that time, and that was a time in my life that I was getting married in just a couple months and really going through that completion of a cycle and getting ready to cross the threshold into something new. And I feel like that's really echoed in some of these poems. 

[4:29] Poem: Equinox

So the first one I want to share is called Equinox, and it was very much inspired by autumn equinox and the mountains of Alaska during that time period. I would like to press my cheek against her frozen ground.

 Hear her whisper secrets of the changing tides and molting leaves and what it means to be standing after so long, she would tell me of how many seasons she has watched turn, how the world doesn't stop for anyone, how no matter what.

 That life has a way of coming back round again. Whoever we are, whatever our prayers may we be, our own offering the life we cast out into the world an act of worship as each steady breath invokes our belonging to this time and place, even on my coldest of days, I still long for the press of that hallowed ground so I can bury myself in the lull of cranberry dust and rest and assurance of life's promises.

Below the leaves rustle as somewhere in me, I can almost hear them say, only love will win in the end. Only love will win in the end. 

[5:40] The Art of Life

One of my favorite lines from that poem is, whoever we are, whatever our prayers may we be, our own offering the life we cast out into the world, an act of worship as each steady breath invokes our belonging to this time and place and so often on your heart, magic. I've talked about the idea that we are the art. 

Our life is the art. It is the canvas, it's the palette, and what we choose to create with that that is our offering to the world, and we have so many choices with what we want to offer, and the more we can engage with our personal palette from a space of authenticity and working with colors that we have and the gifts and talents and shadows and light and strengths and weaknesses and all of that, and the more we can own that, the more we belong to ourselves, and we become our own art. We belong to the art that is us. 

And in that belonging, we know that we have a place here, and we can offer that art to the world around us, and whatever way we feel called to engage with life, whether that is a structured offering and a life purpose or a path that we feel called to create, or whether that is just our act of being and how we move about the world and think and The energy that we bring to a space, it can be all of those things. 

[7:04] Poem: "Falling Copper Leaves"

And so this idea of our life is the offering is really powerful, and I was really origining my philosophies around that idea during the time a lot of these poems were written. 

So there's these really powerful lines where I was kind of nailing down, yeah, this is it, and I was really putting into words what I had been witnessing, not only and people that I knew, but really in my own life journey and how I'd feel called to show up in this world. So the next poem that I want to read is falling copper leaves. 

And I wrote this in the fall of 2015, I remember sitting on my red couch in the living room and anchorage where I lived, and there was this, like tiny tree that was in the patio section of the yard at our townhome, and it had been so beautiful just the week before, and then, like the wind came and it turned really fast and the temperatures dropped, and I remember staring at this tree on a weekend night as I was sitting there writing, and I wrote this next poem falling copper leaves— 

Last week, I stared at the rainbow tree strutting magnificently outside my door, its branches brim with saffron strands and Carmine kiss wrapped in ginger grace. 

This week, my tree waves Hazel limbs drunkenly in the sky bear in reach as a last few henna fronds thoughtfully Hold on, dipping to and fro while the wind gasps in dismissal. Life moves too fast to hold on to. 

One day, bright Symphony the next, one chord, the fullness of its voice made whole and the softness of its trace, sometimes you just have to let it wash over you a torrent of tiny moments and sonorous breath and falling copper leaves that somehow compose the heart songs of these days. 

I can't take it all with me, but I can let it beat in my blood and break into my heart and bathe me in the love of its gaze. And I can know that for today and every day since I have a place here, it is enough. 

[9:22] The Transience of Life 

If you've ever been in a moment and like, you just want to hold on to it, there's something about it that just speaks to you and the heart, and you just want to, like, take it into you and be like, Oh my gosh, if I could memorize how this felt, and return to this moment where something really magical happens, or maybe we just have a sense of belonging or being part of something greater than ourselves, and something stirs and us, and it resonates on this experiential level that we can't even put words to.

 I was having a moment when I wrote that poem. And. And I just wanted to, like, grasp that season in my in my hand, and grasp that fullness of being. There was something about that time in my life that things had really come together, and it was kind of this golden season. And I knew it, you know, I knew that I was under this kind of grace cloud at the time, and that I was just in a really good place with these beautiful things happening. 

And fall moves so quickly. In Alaska, it really can be as fast as like all these golden leaves. And if the temperature drops overnight, and the wind comes in, all of it can be gone so quickly. And it was that knowledge of transience and how finite it is. And looking at this tree that the week before had been red and yellow and orange, and still very height of fall looking and then, like, just a week later, now it's copper and kind of brown, and a lot of the leaves are gone, and there's these bare branches. 

And I was like, Oh my gosh, that came and went so fast, and that's just a metaphor for life. We don't know how long something will last, and we don't always know how long seasons will last, and as much as we want to hold on to them sometimes and just stay in that moment and not have anything change, that's not the way our world works, right or hardwired for change, and we're in a changeful universe. 

So our life is changing. Everything's always in motion. And so it was this reflection that I can't hold on to it, but I can try and like just take it into me and immerse myself in the beauty of the moment and appreciate it for what it is, and appreciate that the transience of it somehow makes the sacredness of it even more sacred. If it stayed that way all the time, it might lose that magic. 

But there's that finiteness that allows it to be something truly magical, because we know it doesn't last forever. So was really this reflection on that and a celebration of being in the present moment and knowing that it's enough whatever the present moment is, and that I can find contentment and peace and that moment, we can find contentment and peace within those moments. 

So with that, I'm going to share one last poem today before we wrap up, it is called equanimity, and I feel like it sums up what I was just talking about, this idea that we can't take it with us, but we can pour the beauty of each moment into our hearts and just find gratitude that we get to be a participant in it.

[12:39] Poem "Equanimity"

We get to be a part of this immortal flow that is always changing and weaving into the next, and how do we surrender and become a part of that? And I feel like this poem speaks to that equanimity. The Sky will tell you what it's like to live without walls, how to weather change, how we must learn to find our equanimity and the constant flux of this place that there is a trick to balancing on the cusp of how you thought things would be and how things are, then letting your shape drift like the continents of clouds. 

There is a holy rhythm beating in the veins of these times. I hear it when the rain falls, I see it in the gentle dance of dark and light, the warmth of sun always returning to this beggar's heart, whose palms lay open in supplication to love, I can almost reach it as I yearn towards the edge of Horizon. Someday I will run where the sea meets sky, cast myself into the grace of change, and there I will find myself free, 

Happy Equinox everyone, whether you live in the northern hemisphere and it is autumn equinox for you, or whether you are in the southern and it is Spring, I hope that it is a beautiful season of balancing both light and dark and death and rebirth and renewal and finding your balance and the flows of life and gratitude and appreciation. 

Have a beautiful week. I will be back next week. We have a archetypes of the Tarot episode, and we are moving on to the archetype of the moon. I love the moon, so this will be a really fun one to share with everybody. And the meantime, be well, be love. Be you and be magic

you've been listening to your heart magic with Dr bethanne kapansky Wright, tune in next week for a new episode to support and empower your light you.