Etakwyze is a personal blog where I explore my ideas about what makes a good life from a multitude of perspectives, but mostly from the deeply subjective experience of my own living.
Why Etakwyze?
Etak is a me that was.
Or at least a part of me or a version of me.
Once upon a time, in those magical years when young girls know who they are as individuals, at the moment before the chaos of puberty, I was part of a group of friends. We were magical maidens who loved the world and ourselves with all their hearts and dreamed of lives unburdened by the drives of biological fertility or the demands of adulthood.
In those days, we sensed that the magic of childhood was about to fade. We created an initiatory rite, casting a protective spell over that moment in time, and gave ourselves new names. For that is what you do when what you treasure about yourself must go into hiding for a time.
In that moment, I was Etak. Etak is, of course, my name spelled backwards. It was also a reference to the otak familiar of Ged, Ursula le Guin’s wizard of Earthsea, and symbolized many things I first learned of as I wandered with Ged through his trials.
Etak was wrapped up in a precious bundle to be kept safe as Kate stepped into the next phase of life.
Over the next decades, I did and learned so many things, anthropology, art, law, theater, grant writing, entrepreneurship, organizational development, ministry, dance, adult development and the Theory of Positive Disintegration, coaching, leadership, Agile, software development, fiction writing, parenting.
I did time in the corporate world and as a parent. Being responsible and learning to do what to do to live successfully in the mundane world, with my wild self, my artist, my mystic, and my muse peeking out from time to time to see if there was space and time to come out to play.
And while my children needed me, there was precious little time for play beyond that which was valuable for us as a family. I poured my creativity into my professional life, saving a small amount for creative hobbies (fibre arts, theatre, writing).
But now, my children are on their own journeys into adulthood. I am stand on a new threshold, in a culture that does not do adult rites of passage well. I am being pushed/pulled/called into a new being and need to develop my own path through the spaces of liminality that spread between Present Me and Future Me.
Etakwyze is what I hope I am becoming.
Or the guide I need.
Or the phase I am going through.
It’s hard to tell.
If Etak was my magical childhood self, Etakwyze points to my wise woman, my crone, my elder.
One hopes to become wise as one ages.
And it is not unusual for elders to recover parts of themselves they had to set aside to meet the demands of the middle part of life in the modern world.
Magic and wonder fare poorly in the modern, corporate world, where things are supposed to be productive, analytical, and efficient.
I am grateful to my soul for failing to fit comfortably into the world of work, staying alive in the background, keeping me on my edge.
And now, as I step into the part of my life that Bill Plotkin calls The Artist in the Wild Orchard, with my sights set on becoming a Master in the Grove of Elders, I find myself spilling out of my responsible persona, emerging with new names.
Mythopoetic job descriptions have been lodging in my psyche. I’m not sure what to do with them and what they are asking me to become, but in this place, I intend to engage in a dance of discernment.
What are these roles? Are they mine to chose? Have they been given to me and must not refuse? Are they nonsense? Wishful thinking? Delusions of grandeur?
Grace Operative
Grief Walker
Emissary of Presence
The Embodiment of Both/And
I invite you to join me as I play with these ideas and more.
I will be asking the questions: What is the world? What is it asking of me? How shall I answer?
And more…