Rebirth

Today is a particularly potent day in the life. At the moment I am sitting at Whole Foods, feeling safe and grateful. I just narrowly escaped a tree falling on my car during a wild thunderstorm here in Washington, D.C.

The day began by moving most of my things into storage in the basement of the house I have been living in in Takoma Park, Maryland for the past five month. It’s been so very lovely to share this house with some wonderful people, and I have grown to really love Maryland and the D.C. metro area. I feel glad to be here, and there are so many wonderful people here who I now call friends.

After I put my boxes in the basement, I loaded up my car with the things that I anticipate wanting to have with me during the month of July, and I left the house feeling extremely somber and apprehensive, tender and vulnerable.

What does the future hold? We never can really know. And yet, some things are more predictable, dependable, stable, and secure than others. If I am paying rent to live somewhere, there is a much higher chance that my place to live is stable, secure. No longer am I in this situation. I have again taken a giant leap of faith and now find myself blowing with the wind in this magnificent, magical Universe.

After I left the house, I parked my car a few blocks away and walked down to the creek that I love so much. Nearly every day, I wake up and walk along Sligo Creek. I have enjoyed so many hours writing and meditating, phone conversations, walks with friends, and walks in solitude along this gorgeous area of Takoma Park. And today I bid her farewell. For now. I sat on a rock along the creek and I cried. Deep sadness washed over me. I felt very, very alone in a very big world.

In one hand I held a leaf, and in the other a piece of wood. Both pieces were from dear friends on whom I have leaned upon this past month as I have walked this transitional transformational path. These sisters have been rocks of support as I made the decision to leave the house I was living in and to trust that I will continue to be cared for as I walk in the metaphorical darkness.

And in this moment it was time to release these pieces back into their natural setting. I released them to affirm my existence as a sovereign being here on the Earth. I am so grateful for my friends and family. And for all the forces of Nature that support me as I walk this long, beautiful road, as I journey from place to place, following my heart and intuition, even when the logical part of me would rather I live a more conventional life.

And yet, a sovereign being I am, and this is a very empowering piece of truth to affirm, especially as I am finding myself once again “on The Road.” The Road is a very familiar place to me, and it’s also a place that I had not anticipated revisiting so soon.

After my most recent chapter of gypsy living, I was exhausted and desperate to get “off The Road.” Please God, please let me live somewhere, let me have a normal life with a home and a community and steady work.

And I had it. For one fleeting moment, it feels. And here I am again, my car is full of my possessions, and tonight I will sleep at my friends’ house in Bethesda, Maryland. I am so blessed to have such wonderful, loving, supportive friends. So very blessed.

So I sit here feeling incredibly vulnerable. I have set my intentions time and time again, writing them down and speaking them aloud. I feel in my heart that God hears me when I pray, that the Universe supports me in manifesting my desires, that Nature is organizing something magnificent on my behalf and on the behalf of the Whole.

So just be patient, Erin, I have told myself time and time again. Trust. Allow life to unfold in all its stunning perfection, it’s divine design, its cosmically magical alignment.

And yet, there is a part of me that is trembling. “This is not what I want!” part of me is crying. I want a home, a community, a stable life! I want to know where I will sleep, work, record my music, be with my friends. I want to know that I am safe and secure and protected.

The truth is that I AM safe and secure and protected. In each and every moment, life is exactly as it should be. This is absolute truth, and yet there is a part of me that feels confused.

And then there is a part of me that is remembering that I chose this. I asked for a magnificent life, and this is what I am creating with each and every breath.

I saw Woody Allen’s new film “Midnight in Paris” the other night and it really touched my heart. I saw these fabulous artists, writers, and musicians from the 1920’s hanging out at Gertrude Stein’s house in Paris, and it stirred something in my heart.

I want to live in a community of artists like this. I want to have friends around me with whom I am creating and recording music, with whom I am working with on lots of different co-creative collaborative projects. My desire is to create art, beauty, events, and music to uplift, inspire, heal, and connect people with their innermost Selves.

I have so many ideas, dreams, inspired aspirations. I am here to raise the vibration here on the Earth. I am here to dream a more and more beautiful world into being. I am here to express and create and dance and sing and live life as the celebration that it is. I am here to radiate joy and shine my light and sing my heart’s song.

I lay down my life on the sacred altar before God, and ask that I be used as a divine vessel of grace, inspiration, Love, and pure joy.

And I ask that the support organize itself around me, so that I can work in the way that I love to work, so that I can sing and feel grounded and supported in a beautiful, loving, creative community of like-hearted souls.

This is what I am creating.

I will be staying with my friends in Bethesda for a few nights, and after this I know not where I will go. I know not how the Universe will enfold me in Her warm and loving arms. I have leapt and I will be caught. I already AM caught, and I stay grounded in this truth as I stay grounded in the present moment of Now.

A great story is being written; I am entering a dramatically more epic and beautiful chapter than I can even imagine.

I love living in the D.C. area, and I am also completely open to relocating again. I am a free bird, ready to go wherever the divine flow carries me. I am moving into a beautiful new space, perhaps a house sitting opportunity which will give me some time to work on my creative projects. This part of the story is yet to be written.

I am open and I am ready. We are living in extraordinarily times here on Planet Earth. It’s 2011 and so much is changing so quickly. We are accelerating into a New Paradigm in which Love and Truth regain their rightful place as the main focus of our attention. And I am here to be a part of it. I am here to sing my song, to play my note, to share my heart and gifts with the world in the way that only I can.

I have been cleared for takeoff, and all of last month I was speeding down the runway. I now take flight, and I am grateful for the prayers and blessings and grace and miracles that fill my heart and my life.

Thank you for being a part of this journey. I am here to reflect back to you your own divine purpose, and your own beauty and light.

Can you see it?

It’s so, so beautiful.

I Am Empowered

Today, more than any other day of my life, I am standing firmly in my power. I accept full responsibility for my power, and am committed to using it for the highest good. I do not give it away to anyone. I do not give it away to anything - not food, not self-defeating behaviors, not ego, not to ANYthing. I am true to mySELF.

Last night I was crying and crying. I was at a fabulous Arthur Lee Land show and I couldn't stop crying because I want to be on a stage, singing my songs. Yes, I was crying and crying, and I knew why. I have been giving my power away to other people, putting myself in support positions when it is my time to have my creations supported by others. It is my time to shine.

Of course we are all interconnected and support each other all the time, but it's time for me to really value what is unique and special about me, and share it with the world. It's time for me to create sustainable streams of income for myself, rather than doing all these odd jobs for so many people.

So last night, and again today I did a ritual of empowerment. Last night it was on the phone with my friend Mark. I told him that we were both going to step into our power on the count of three. We drew invisible lines on the floor, and committed to stepping across that line, into our power, and never going back. I counted down and we both jumped over the line, and were dancing and drumming and screaming and rejoicing.

Then today, I was at a Waking Down sitting and when it was my turn to speak I told them about my commitment to standing firmly in my power. And I took everyone there through a similar ritual. Feel free to do this ritual, wherever you are.

We all spread out so that we would all be able to take giant leaps into our power. We drew our imaginary lines on the ground.

I said, "Close your eyes. Breathe deeply into your heart, into the depths of your being...Feel who you are...Appreciate how unique you are...Know that only you can do the work that you came to Earth to do...Feel how strong you are, how courageous, how powerful..."

I paused and let it sink in, and then continued, "Repeat after me."

"I am powerful."

"I am empowered."

"I accept full responsibility for my power."

"I am cross this line into my power, and I am NEVER going back!!!"

3...2...1...

And we screamed and danced and shrieked and yelped wildy!!! Hooray!!! We are empowered, and it feels SO GOOD!!!

Blue is a River

This song struck me with its ethereal. haunting beauty, and its depth of emotion.

Lyrics by Thomas Dolby...

BLUE IS A RIVER

Like the heather on the hillside as they drove us from the Highlands

Like the iceflow from the Arctic where we landed in Newfoundland

There... Read More’s a colour to my sorrow, there’s a name for all this sadness

Like the ocean in between us, I am blue

Blue is a river, blue remembered

Blue water running clear

Blue like a planet to a spaceman

Blue river of my tears

So I came here to the city

Where the dream burns like a furnace

And I dazzled in these dark streets like a diamond in a coal face

Then the cold wind from the islands

Blew a storm cloud across the new moon

Like the gunsmoke above the houses in my home.

Blue is a river, blue remembered

Blue water running clear

Blue like a planet to a spaceman

Blue river of my tears

Blue river of my tears

© Thomas Dolby 2002

Here is what he wrote about the song on his blog:

There’s a new video clip up on the TED site of a song I performed there a few years ago with the wonderful Cape Breton fiddler Natalie MacMaster. Someone on my Forum spotted it (topic = “Thomas at TED; new stuff!”) and posted the URL, http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/117

….but they said I was singing a traditional song. Not correct! It was actually an original song I wrote specially for the occasion. It’s got a nice story behind it:

I was very taken with Natalie when I saw her performing solo in 2002. Between her lovely jigs and reels she told how her great uncle (I believe) had brought the traditional music with him when he arrived in Nova Scotia from Scotland, and how it had been passed down at barn dances and in the warmth of neighbours’ kitchens! Natalie grew up with a fiddle and bow in her hands, and it’s as if she was born to play it. But as well as the uptempo, knees-up stuff, there was a more plaintive, lamentful side to her playing that took me by surprise. There’s no more powerful music on the planet than that made by people made to leave their homelands.

Next time I was at the public library I did some research. I was interested to learn more about how Natalie’s ancestors came to be on those boats to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland in the first place. I found an edition of Encylopedia Brittanica, dated about 1905, and obviously written by Oxford scholars in their ivy-covered towers. I found a section under ‘Scotland’ entitled ‘The Highland Clearances.’ It went something like this: “During the potato famines of the late Eighteenth to mid-Nineteenth centuries, fearing for the livelihoods of their tentants, many English landowners offered free passage to the New World aboard specially commissioned ships.”

How very compassionate of them! This is what we teach our children. The reality was completely different. In truth the English landlords, with their inherited Scottish land yielding little produce or rent, saw more value in converting their estates to profitable sheep farms or—worse yet—to grouse hunting and trout fishing getaways for the pleasure of their rich Victorian friends from the South. So the landlords forced their tenants to vacate the Highlands and abandon their homes, with little or no compensation. Villages were burned along with the surrounding trees, to prevent rebuilding. Some were forced to move to barren coastal crofts where their only choice was to gather kelp on the beach. In the most extreme cases, for example on the Hebridean island of Barra in 1851, tenants were forced at gunpoint on to freighters bound for settlements in Australia, Canada, or Nova Scotia, where they were dumped and left to fend for themselves. And the Christian Church supported the landlords, because it had failed to convert the islanders from their heathen behaviour and said the Clearances were just retribution for their sins, drunkenness and evil ways.

Anyway. The anger I felt reading Brittanica led me to compose a song. I have no idea where my own Robertson ancestors stood in all this, but I decided to write it from the point of view of a Highlander. as soon as I had a rough version I sent it to Natalie, and asked if she would return to TED the following Ferbruary to perform it with me. To my great delight she agreed. You can check out the video here.

When It Rains, It Pours

(I took this photo at La Tortuga Feliz in Costa Rica.)

I have been so overwhelmed today, crying so much, and accepting the tears, even feeling grateful for them, more than ever before.

I am extremely grateful for all of the wonderful, supportive people in my life who support me by listening to me through my sobbing tears. They are not afraid of my emotions, even though they are powerful and can sometimes come from a shadowy place.

There is so much creativity running through me right now, opportunities blossoming everywhere I look, and boundless goodness in my life right now, and I am completely overwhelmed. I am grateful, too.

Yet I feel so alone and unsupported. I want a constant, loyal, trustworthy business partner to be by my side though all of these projects and emotions and opportunities, to help me navigate through it all.

My friends and partners always leave just when it seems like things are starting to blossom. For instance, I am finally part of an amazing band called Challah, and after 3 gigs we are in 3 different countries, and don't know when we will all be in the same city again. I could make a list of a hundred situations like this that I have experienced.

I want to know why this happens. I want to know why I feel like I have to do it all alone. I want to know what the lesson in this is for me, and how I can move forward most productively, fulfillingly, and effectively with my projects and career, given the independent nature of my life.

I am afraid that I am not supported. I want to trust that I always am, even though it doesn't look the way I imagine that it "should." I want to trust that the people who come into my life stay for the perfect amount of time, that we do the work together that we are meant to, and then we move on.

For years I have been following my bliss networking, and now opportunities are popping up all over the place for me to finally be compensated for the time and diligence that I have taken to gather people's contact information and meticulously organize it.

And yesterday I finished recording the backup lyrics for the track on my friend Gabriel Renfrow's album, "I Heart You: I'm Just Sayin!" We are performing together at Cafe Paradiso on Wednesday night this week. I am going to promote the show, and also his album once it is released, which is going to happen this week.

The children's album I am working on recording with Lynwood King is going to be PHENOMENAL - exquisitely beautiful songs that I love and want children to hear and learn from. I have been yearning to sing songs this beautiful, so full of light, for so long now, and now it's happening! I want to properly market the album so that children all over the world can hear the beautiful messages of these songs.

And there are so many other beautiful projects as well, begging for my time and attention. I have been dreaming about having these kinds of opportunities, and now that it's all here, it's all happening, I don't know what to focus on. It's completely overwhelming.

I am wondering how I will be able to do it all. I'm afraid that I won't be able to control the outcome of all of this well enough and I am afraid that I will fail.

I want to let go and trust that it is all unfolding perfectly. I want to trust that I will act with wisdom and grace in each moment, completely in my center and my power, breathing deeply.

These shadows of fear and doubt are in my face, begging to have light shone on them. I know that I have the courage to persevere, to look honestly at what is happening, to take complete responsibility for my life, and to move forward powerfully and with great awareness.

I know that I can, and I know that I will.

Challah at Cafe Paradiso

Sarah Salberrios, Erin Pillman, Micah Salaberrios & Amine Kouider





































































Last night was our third gig performing as the band Challah, and it was SO much fun! We had a great turnout, thanks to all of the amazing people of Fairfield who came out for the show.

It might be awhile before we perform again as Challah, because Sarah and Micah are heading to Costa Rica next week. They each have a one way ticket down there, so it may be awhile before we are reunited.

Thank you so much to everyone who came last night - it was so wonderful to see so many of your beautiful faces smiling in the audience. Thank you for your presence, your vibrant Spirits, and your fabulous dancing. I am so grateful.