A Life of Balance

Extremes are easy, strive for balance ~ Colin Wright 

 Miki Kashtan's Core Commitment # 6 BALANCE: Even when I am drawn to overstretching myself (including towards any of these commitments), I want to remain attentive to the limits of my capacity in any given moment. If I find myself pushing myself, I want to seek support to honor the natural wisdom of my organism and to trust that remaining within my current limits will support me in increasing my capacity over time.

Balance might be one of the hardest in our society. A culture of pushing ourselves too hard. The rewards are given to the ones that push themselves harder. Do more, Be more.  We praise the supermoms and super-dads that can do it all. 

We talk about binging on Netflix,  Our restaurants serve us too much to eat at one siting. We over schedule our children at school. Regularly I hear in the news that our society is sleep deprived. 

How in the world are we to live in a balanced way in this culture? I have no answers. I want to do so much more than I do.  I have had to learn to say no to doing to much as I have fibromyalgia and over doing it puts me in a place of great suffering.  Yet I want to accomplish so much more than I do..  I want to write more.  I want to take my children out to more places, I want to go camping more I want to go hiking, I want to dance like I did one upon a time. I want to explore the world more. I want to learn more.  I want offer Nonviolent Communication Study groups both in person and online yet sometimes there is just too many other things to take care of. 

It can be so easy to follow what seems to need the most attention in a particular moment but if I pull back and do things a bit more mindfully all seems to go better than if I just stay in a state of chaos and take care of what appears to me.  

This can even be true of my children they can vie for my attention and compete and it will be chaos but if I pull back and make time for each child separately they feel more heard and loved than if I just show attention to whoever is being the loudest.  Because even when I show the attention to the one who is the loudest she or he is wondering underneath if I really care or if I am just showing the attention because they were the loudest.So even though it is so so easy to push myself too hard especially when it comes to Studying Nonviolent Communication, because I so long to live in a better world and who else is going to create that more compassionate world than me?  I must remember to pull myself away and take care of other things that are also important. 

Sometimes I forget the balance aspect of Studying Nonviolent Communication and I am too hard on myself for not being the Superwoman of Empathy. Don don don da! Able to leap tall judgments in a single bound. Able to fly offering compassion to anyone who she comes into contact with! Which is of course not anything that anyone can accomplish. We must all take time to fill our cup. I and everyone else in the world must time to receive as well as give. 

  Oceana SisterMoon is currently living her dream of a sustainable life, raising chickens, and growing food with her 4 children. She seeks to help women unearth their power through sisterhood and healing through self-connection , interdependence, power in vulnerability, and authenticity. 

Nature the Balm for My Soul

"Nothing in Nature Lives for Itself. Rivers don't drink their own water. Trees don't eat their own fruit. Sun doesn't give heat for itself. Flowers don't give fragrance for the themselves"

Sisters getting along

Washing Breakfast Dishes

Cooking Dinner at the Fire

Oceana SisterMoon is currently living her dream of a sustainable life, raising chickens, and growing food with her 4 children. She seeks to help women unearth their power through sisterhood and healing through self-connection , interdependence, power in vulnerability, and authenticity. 

Gratitude 365

 "We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude"  ~Cynthia Ozick

Keeping a journal of Gratitude helps me to be rooted in what is working in my life. The act of writing can help me be more present in the now rather than lost in the past of what was or lost in a possible future where I might one day be happy or where the worst can happen.

So often when I write my gratitides I wrie about the most simple things I can be grateful about for example I will start many lists with having a house, a roof over my head. it's so easy to get lost in how my house doesn't live up to this standard or that standard. It's not big enough I don't like this or that, I don't like the color etc. But taking the time to have appreciation for having a home 4 walls and a roof, protection from the elements grounds me in what is really important about my life.

My children like everyone's children can be loud and not clean up after themselves.  It would be easy to lose myself in the difficulties of parenting especially as a single mom and there are days that I do. But doing this mindful practice of writing down.

So starting with the simplest of things to be grateful for.....

I am grateful for a home to live in that gives me shelter from the elements.

I am grateful for my beautiful children

I am grateful for my wonderful friends.

I am grateful for a place to plant my flowers and vegetables

I am grateful for sunsets and sunrises

I am grateful for clean water to drink

I am grateful for healthy food to eat and feed my family

I am grateful for birds that sing

I am grateful for rain

I am grateful for sunshine


Oceana SisterMoon is currently living her dream of a sustainable life, raising chickens, and growing food with her 4 children. She seeks to help women unearth their power through sisterhood and healing through self-connection , interdependence, power in vulnerability, and authenticity. 

Re_Creating my Rituals for Radical Self Care..

“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
~ Audre Lorde

I see self care as a radical act. Particularly for women. To move away from the care taker roll of taking care of everyone to slowing down often allowing things to be done in a less than perfect way by others is near impossible for many of us.

Yet taking care of myself is key to the life I want to live. Taking time to do yoga or eat healthy is next to impossible for some of us. And the further down on the ladder of socioeconomic priviledge we go the less resources we have available to us to do self care.

Finding ways to care for myself has been a struggle in my life. If I don't take care of myself I am more short with myself, my kids, and other people. This is why I am creating and recreating my rituals of self care. it is an one going practice not something I do once and forget.

Here are some ideas for doing self care that I use and will be accessible to many though honestly not all people. But if you have access to a computer to read this then you will probably be able to do most of this. I would love to hear from you about what you do for self care in the comments

• Yoga on youtube so many wonderful people have offered their time to post great videos
• Time in nature either go for a walk or even just take a chair and sit their listening to the sounds (I am lucky enough to be in Tennesssee and there is so much nature you almost can't get away from it.)
• Take a hot bath (bonus with epsom salt and candles)
• Practice some mindfulness or mediation again youtube will have many many resources. Here's a nice one
• listen/read to a favorite speaker/author, I really enjoy Pema Chodron, Tara Brach, and Miki Kashtan
• Take time to forgive yourself. You are not perfect you are human that comes with mistakes this is called self compassion.
• Eat the most nourishing foods you can afford, in my area kale has gotten really affordable and I have started to grow a garden
• Get a massage or trade with a friend 
• Take time to do what you love
• find or create a red tent near you
• drink nourishing herbal infusions 
• journal taking time to write down your feelings and needs

If we aren't taking better care of ourselves how can we take care of the world or change it?

Oceana SisterMoon is currently living her dream of a sustainable life, raising chickens, and growing food with her 4 children. She seeks to help women unearth their power through sisterhood and healing through self-connection , interdependence, power in vulnerability, and authenticity. 

The World Needs You Now

“You matter.

You are important.

There is a reason for your existence.

You may not see or understand how this is true, but truth doesn't cease to be truth because of doubt, blindness, or ignorance. 

And the truth is―you matter.” 

~Richelle E. Goodrich

I have been meditating on Miki Kashtan's Core Commitments for several months. This is a series of blog posts for me to explore these with the greater world.  Practicing risking my significance. 

3. Risking my Significance: even when I am full of doubt, I want to offer myself in full to the world. If I find myself thinking that I am not important or that my actions are of no significance, I want to seek support to come back to my knowledge that my presence and my gifts matter.

What would change in your life if you trusted that you matter? 

I grew up like so many children do.  My needs came last after all the grown ups in my world. First, my mother then grandparents, when I started school my teachers. I wasn't listened too. If there was a time in my life that I knew how to speak up for myself I forgot. There were sometimes in high school I tried to speak up but teachers either criticized or ignored for whatever their reasons were at the time. 

Speaking up has always been hard for me.  Now close to middle age,  like many times before I am trying to find my voice again.  I have had and lost so many relationships because my needs in the end didn't matter enough to the other person for them to attempt to work through our conflict.  There is still significance ache at the loss of these friends. 

My first thought when I think about this question is not about trusting that I mattered because I have never entered a relationship in which I thought otherwise. Entities are a different thing. Do I matter to the government or a Restaurant that seems an easy no. But the important relationships in my life I have (at least until shown otherwise) that we each mattered equally.  

And yet I know I have so much to offer the world. 

When my oldest was born (16 years ago) I read a book a book called The Continuum Concept by Jean Liedloff. It changed my thinking on life in so many ways. The author was traveling in the Amazon and met a tribe that cared for their children in the complete opposite way as most people in the United States at the time. Of course nursing their children but also tying them on their backs. They didn't have a word for work.  Even though they "worked" harder than many white people on a daily basis for them it was just life. And each member of the tribe had intrinsic value regardless of whether or not they preformed "work" 

 I longed to live my life this way for myself and for my children. Little did I know then when I was only in my early twenties and so naive how much of a hold our culture had on me. I mistakenly thought if I thought about it differently then I could live it differently. Oh, the isolation and criticism I encountered. While I was ready to change our culture to what I say as something different others didn't see what was "wrong" with our culture and I was at best naive to some people and at worst severely harming my children according to others. I can only imagine these encounters where I mattered intrinsically and they did too to the world. 

I can feel my body relax a bit, I unthinkingly breath a bit deeper my muscles that i hold so tight let go at least for the moment.  For a moment at least I just enjoy this relaxation in my body that I hold so tight so often prepared for fight-flight-freeze. Almost always on alert prepared for the next disaster.  i have spent so many hours trying t calm this being told by the new age movement that I have caused the bad things to happen to myself by being afraid adding insult to injury. 

I would love to offer more of myself to the world . Really this is what I am doing with this blog at least that is the attempt to offer up moments from my life. The thoughts I have about studying Nonviolent Communication for the last 4 years.  I also share it because I still dream of living in a peaceful world despite it all and I want more people to know what can be gotten out of studying NVC.  I  think NVC is a major peace in creating a sustainable future. 


Studying NVC learning to identify my needs in times of frustration and hurt helps me matter to myself even when I the other person appears to not be putting value on my needs this gives me the strength to offer myself more fully to the world no matter the response. So here I am working to offer myself to the world through this blog risking my significance. 

Go to mettacenter.org  for more info about the Core Commitments. 

Oceana SisterMoon is currently living her dream of a sustainable life, raising chickens, and growing food with her 4 children. She seeks to help women unearth their power through sisterhood and healing through self-connection , interdependence, power in vulnerability, and authenticity. 

Adventures in Committing Myself to Nonviolence

“But feelings can't be ignored, no matter how unjust or ungrateful they seem.” 

― Anne Frank

Robert Plutchik's "Wheel of Emotions"

I am working through  Miki Kashtan's Core Commitments from her website The Fearless Heart. 

Today I am meditating on #2 

 Openness to the Full Emotional Range: even when my feelings are uncomfortable for me, I want to stay present with myself and keep my heart open to the fullness of my emotional experience. If I find myself contracting away from my experience, numb or shut down, I want to seek support to release defendedness and open to what is.

This one is a big one for me as it seems to be for so many. For women allowing themselves to be angry is often unacceptable and therefore hard for many. I have met women who are practically unable to express anger except in the most extreme circumstances or who cry when they are mad because this is more acceptable form of expression. For men feeling sad or scared is unacceptable in our society.  These social constructs make is very hard for us  be open to our "full emotional range." One of my goals in blogging about this is to offer support to those out there and in turn I am hoping that a larger community that wants to create such a world that men, women and people may join at least an online community in support of creating more communities that are in local spaces also.

Being open to the full emotional range does not mean that is okay to take actions when we are angry particularly when they would hurt another person or vice versa.  It seems to me that many people struggle to feel their emotions without acting on them. We want change if we are angry we want the person we see as the cause to know or sometimes even to suffer or if we are afraid we want to leave the situation. Our bodies were designed for action as in fight or flight. Or to prepare for death as in freeze. 

But we do not have full access to all of our creativity when we are in a state of fight flight or freeze and so often we end up making decisions that do not help us and sometimes make the situation worse because we are not truly in life or death situations which is where or fight/flight/freeze reaction evolved from.

Learning to sit with an uncomfortable emotion has been a process for me. But one that I enjoy now. In the beginning is was new and very scary and uncomfortable. Now I find  the practice easier.  Though going through each emotion has it's own struggles. 

Anger for me is often a protective shielding for something that is too scary or too sad. Through this practice I am learning to soften myself and allow myself to be vulnerable.  I am still working on finding my peace with sometimes being an angry woman, learning to recognize that this view of myself is influenced by the society I live in that separates us in a binary way allowing some to feel some emotions and others to feel other emotions. 

Miki Kashtan has published some of her thoughts about this topic at Metta Center complete with suggested activities.  I hope you enjoy. Please leave feedback thank you. 

Oceana SisterMoon is currently living her dream of a sustainable life, raising chickens, and growing food with her 4 children. She seeks to help women unearth their power through sisterhood and healing through self-connection , interdependence, power in vulnerability, and authenticity. 

Studying Nonviolence

"Inner peace begins the moment you choose not to allow another person or event to control your emotions"

I've been studying Nonviolent Communication now for 4 years. So far I think that the teacher who has contributed the most to my growth so far has been Miki Kashtan.

I have read her book Spinning Threads of Radical Aliveness and have been meditating on the 17 Core Commitments with a goal of one per day. As a part of my practice I am going to take one commitment and write about it openly here as part of  my vulnerability practice

Core Commitment #1

Openness to Myself: even when I act in ways I really don’t like, I want to keep my heart open to myself. If I find myself in self-judgment, I want to seek support to reconnect with myself and hold with compassion the needs that motivate my actions.

I like that it starts this way one of the most profound things about studying Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg is that I had needs, I was allowed to have needs, and my needs made me human.  I had lived most of my life putting everyone's needs before mine. I had lived my life trying to be needless. I wasn't working I was judging myself all over the place for having needs and not being able to overcome them. It was incredibly painful. 

Some days keeping my heart open to myself is the hardest thing I do all day long. But after practicing NVC for the last 4 years it is slowing getting easier. Having the ablity to connect with myself is perhaps the greatest gift that I have received from my practice.  As Miki talks about in her book Spinning Threads living in our society we go through a process of socialization which is to teach us to not have needs since our needs won't be met anyway.  Learning that I was not created as less than has been so helpful knowing that this is the product of the society that I live in and not a flaw inside of me for not being able to comply has been empowering.   In someways reading Miki's book was such validation of what had been going on inside of me for years but that I had not trusted my own experience.  It gave me a place to start that maybe I could trust myself and my own feelings. Another aspect of nvc is that our emotions are connected to our needs either met or unmet and there are 2 sets of emotions that we can expect to experience. Feeling sad, mad, or scared is not good or bad they are only the gauge for which to help me recognize that my needs are unmet. On the reverse so is feeling  happiness neither good nor bad but only a gauge to tell me that my needs are more met than unmet. Pulling myself out of judging myself for feeling so called negative feelings has been very freeing for me. Allowing me to keep my heart open to myself even when I am feeling sad or mad. Grounding myself in the knowledge that my need is unmet pointing me in the direction of focusing on my need rather than my feeling.  Focusing on how it is my having the need that makes me a beautiful HUMAN rather than if the need is met or unmet . This is what brings me back to reconnecting with myself rather than disconnecting over having a negative feeling. 


Oceana SisterMoon is currently living her dream of a sustainable life, raising chickens, and growing food with her 4 children. She seeks to help women unearth their power through sisterhood and healing through self-connection , interdependence, power in vulnerability, and authenticity.

A Journey to Self Love

“I think the reward for conformity is that everyone likes you except yourself.”
― Rita Mae Brown

I finished building my own home at the end of October 2014. It has been an amazing experience.

This journey began in May of 2013 when  I held my breathe and applied to Habitat for Humanity to see if I qualified. I found out that I did, but I had a mistake on my credit that I had to clear up first.

All the horror stories of fixing misinformed credit bureaus information were true. It took me until October of 2013 - six months - to make my credit accurate.

During that time often I wanted to give up, but I had had a dream of owning my own house for over 15 years and I knew I couldn't give up on myself. So I stayed committed. I was accepted in my local program at the end of October almost exactly a year ago.

Little did I know that it was going to get harder. Now I started my sweat equity hours, going to other people’s houses being built and learning how to build houses.

All of my fears about making mistakes came up for me. Often I would ask the same questions over and over or do tasks with my heart pounding and perhaps my hands shaking. And I often did make mistakes but this amazing group of volunteers and staff who build all of the homes would teach and explain as many times as I needed until I found myself looking forward to going and learning new things.

It was quite the shock to me that I was enjoying myself more than feeling awkward and  afraid. This is how I realized that the journey  to self-love I had begun years ago had taken another leap.

I suppose for some self-love comes easy, but I think those people are few and far between I think the rest of us have to work toward it. I know I have. I thought I loved myself when I was younger. I floated through my childhood into college never really having to try very hard. Never realizing that I only did things half assed because indeed I was afraid, deeply afraid of failing.

In order to really love ourselves we have to admit to ourselves that we have dreams and if we really allow ourselves to want/desire then we might fail. This can be too terrifying, it was for me for a long long time.

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. - Anais Nin

Around 9 years ago I read a book called Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg Phd. This was the beginning of some serious change brewing in my life.  I was reading the book as a conflict resolution manual (but have since learned it is so much more) I was mostly focused on trying to communicate with my children better.

The first thing I remember being in awe about was the idea that “negative” feelings are related to having unmet need rather than personal failings and all people have these unmet needs This was an aha moment for me in that I had needs. I realized I had been living my life trying to not have needs.

I was trying to meet everyone’s need all around me only to deplete myself of all reserves and be unable to give anymore. Often leading to feelings of resentment inside of me that the people around me were not more attentive to my needs. Even though truly I was training them to not care about my needs by how I took care of myself.

When I finally realized my needs matter and even though the info was coming from outside of myself I had something I could work with. But as life often goes I got busy with the life of being a single parent with two young girls and little support so focusing on myself was hard.

Time passed things changed. I had twin sons and many other things changed in my life. One of those things was I started to learn how to ask for my needs to be met. Slowly. I was able to attend a Nonviolent Communication workshop in my area. This was a truly EYE OPENING experience. I was in a room with 50-60 other people with all of us learning to think in a new way. Learning to view relationships and communication in a much different way than our society trains us.

I continued on this journey immersing myself by attending workshops and reading as much free info as I could. I also found recordings of teleclasses I could listen to over and over and great videos on YouTube that I could learn from. I read Marshall’s book again as well as other books like Connecting Across Differences.

Many things continued to change in my life.

My relationships changed because I changed. I was stronger. I had something I could turn to that required no one else to help me when something was wrong. I could turn to my materials and find the need that was unmet. And even when there is no answer right now just knowing what my need is can relieve so much of the pain of it being unmet.

I am learning to stop thinking that the problem was others around me or a failed part of my being and I started to connect with my feelings and my needs. This is an amazing feeling to move the focus from out there to inside myself.

Self-Love has been and continues to be an amazing journey of self discovery in part by learning to embrace and love deeply my shadow side and equally embrace and learn to claim out loud my positive qualities. It means for me learning to ask out loud for things that will help me meet my needs rather than suffer in silence or make demands for others to meet my needs.

I am learning to participate in the world in a more compassionate way for me and all of humanity. I am getting to know myself in deeper and deeper ways. I am becoming more and more consciously here in the moment. I am able to say no without feeling guilty more often. I may have further to go on this path of self-love but I have already traveled far and learned much.



Oceana SisterMoon is currently living her dream of a sustainable life, raising chickens, and growing food with her 4 children. She seeks to help women unearth their power through sisterhood and healing through self-connection , interdependence, power in vulnerability, and authenticity. 

Back to Homeschool Field Day!

 “Because schools suffocate children’s hunger to learn, learning appears to be difficult and we assume that children must be externally motivated to do it. As a society, we must own up to the damage we do to our children…in our families and in our schools. We must also be willing to make the sweeping changes in our institutions, public policies and personal lives that are necessary to reverse that harm to our children and to our society.” ~ Wendy Priesnitz

Field Day at our Homeschool Secular Coop

Starting a new year this will be my first year officially homeschooling the twins. 

The boys really love a lot of physical time bike riding, swimming, tree climbing, playing in creeks etc. 

We are focusing on Math this year because this is what the boys enjoy.  And I want them to enjoy learning the most. We have already been doing many math games all summer long such as counting by 2's and 5's and 10's  along with addition and some subtraction. We do also play rhyming games and listen to the sounds words make. We enjoy computer websites such as starfall.com and abcmouse.com.

I am also making it a point to speak to them in Spanish which means improving my Spanish.  I am watching Destinos and playing Duolingo to do this along with doing working in book called The Ultimate Spanish Review and Practice.  But for the boys since they are only 5 their Spanish is limited to my speaking to them and telling them what words mean which is enough for the is age.  In the future I would like to find people for them to speak with regularly and I will as some point in the year add watching cartoons in Spanish

For Science and Social Studies we will be visiting local museums such as The Adventure Science Center and The Discovery Center both focus on Science. Along with trips to our local Zoo.  We also watch shows such as Octonauts, and Wild Krats which the boys love. So we learn many things about animals including conversations we have about plants and animals for example discussing the difference between evergreen trees and diciduous trees or the difference between mammals and birds. 

Oceana SisterMoon is currently living her dream of a sustainable life, raising chickens, and growing food with her 4 children. She seeks to help women unearth their power through sisterhood and healing through self-connection , interdependence, power in vulnerability, and authenticity. 

About Me

OCEANA SISTERMOON

Oceana was born at home (in a premie house) in Maryland with a midwife and breastfeed until she was three. She moved around with her family until I was 9 when they settled in TN. She went to a Montessori Middle School in NC where she chopped wood and went on hiking trips and learned how to do things by consensus. This is the time she got interested in becoming an Herbalist by living so close to nature and the Mother Earth.

She loves to read and learn. She dreams of world peace which is why she studies Nonviolent Communication and aspires to live a life of Radical Compassion. She wants to live as Sustainably as possible and deeply believes in creating a better world through compassion And interdependence.  She live with her 2 teenage daughters and 5 y.o. twin sons,  she moved into her very own home last November and is working on turning it into her very own urban homestead. She is raising meat chickens and gardening as best as her red clay soil will let her.