~ Welcome
to
MotherRoots Healing Arts ~
Persephone, Persephone,
Speak to me of your mysteries!
Melissa Potter, LICSW, LMT, LADC
Shamballa Master
Persephone, Persephone,
Speak to me of your mysteries!
Every day, I remember I am a daughter of the earth and these words are all I need to remember to embrace the cycles of my life. Embracing the ancient cycles of the earth and moon gives us the opportunity to connect deeply to all the ways in which our life can unfold. Then, the dark and the light are given equal honor and the gifts of wisdom within each experience can be integrated into the soul. Our souls have come to weave many different kinds of teachings into itself. Trust the processes that you are in no matter how they feel. It is all meant to be in the great big picture of your life's journey. Let die what must die and open the door to the opportunities that lie before you. It is a great mystery, your life! Make it so by believing it is so! Goddess Bless!
To Be of the Earth
To be of the Earth is to know
The restlessness of being a seed
The darkness of being planted
The struggle toward the light
The pain of growth into the light
The joy of bursting and bearing fruit
The love of being food for someone
The scattering of your seeds
The decay of the seasons
The mystery of death
And the miracle of birth
~John Soos
MotherRoots Healing Arts Services
Craniosacral Therapy, Somato-Emotional Release, Massage Therapy, Addiction Counseling, Spiritual Counseling, and Astrological Consultation are all ways I can work with clients on their healing journeys. I also love to teach women about the seasons and cycles of the earth and moon, and the ways that living in harmony with them can bring great joy, harmony, and depth to our lives. In my Roots Deep, Branches Rising circles and other classes, women gather to celebrate the journey of being a woman through song, chant, art, ritual, connection to nature, and emotional-healing exercises.
Intuitive Astrology
At the moment of birth we are attuned by the planets, asteroids, and luminaries of our solar system. What does your birth chart have to offer you?
Wisdom, Insight, Affirmations...Gifts, Challenges for Growth, Blessings from your soul.
I am so passionate about doing astrology readings that I can hardly begin to write about it!
For a reading of your natal chart, or a transit reading, which talks about the energies happening in your life presently, you will need the following:
Date of Birth
Location of Birth
Documented Time of Birth
Roots Deep, Branches Rising!
Roots Deep, Branches Rising
Women's Sacred Spirituality Circles
1 and 1/2 hour Bodywork sessions ~ $100.00
1 hour Bodywork sessions ~ $75.00
1 hour Astrological Session ~ $100.00
1 and 1/2 hour Astrological Session ~ $150.00
1 hour Astrological Session ~ $100.00
1 and 1/2 hour Astrological Session ~ $150.00
Intuitive Astrology
At the moment of birth we are attuned by the planets, asteroids, and luminaries of our solar system. What does your birth chart have to offer you?
Wisdom, Insight, Affirmations...Gifts, Challenges for Growth, Blessings from your soul.
I am so passionate about doing astrology readings that I can hardly begin to write about it!
For a reading of your natal chart, or a transit reading, which talks about the energies happening in your life presently, you will need the following:
Date of Birth
Location of Birth
Documented Time of Birth
Roots Deep, Branches Rising!
Roots Deep, Branches Rising
Women's Sacred Spirituality Circles
These are the ancient and forgotten adventures that our authentic self longs for!
Embracing the Feminine Divine Goddess through ritual, magic, learning, and sharing resources for empowerment.
Some things we experience in our circles
Some things we experience in our circles
~Connecting to the rhythms of the new and full moon
~Artwork, poetry, chanting, and singing
~Celebrating and honoring living on a path that aligns with the seasonal Wheel of the Year
~Artwork, poetry, chanting, and singing
~Rattling, drumming, and dancing
~Wildness, women bonding, and telling their stories
~Journaling and partner exercises
~Journeying and meditation
~Journaling and partner exercises
~Journeying and meditation
~Designing and gathering around sacred altars; creating sacred space
~Studying archetypes and symbols
~Suggestions for books and music
And always you will be in safe, sacred space, learning to celebrate yourself and to honor your many different sides, and emotions, as a woman!
~Divination
~Suggestions for books and music
~Women's Mysteries, healing and energy work, creativity and self-expression
And always you will be in safe, sacred space, learning to celebrate yourself and to honor your many different sides, and emotions, as a woman!
Sliding Scale $11 - $22 per evening
Call Melissa for more information at
603-767-3110 or email Wyndinoak@gmail.com
Blessed May You Be!
Ongoing Women's Empowerment Course at Susun Weed's, Wise Woman University
Reclaiming Artemis!
Heart-Centered Therapy at MotherRoots!
Blessed May You Be!
Ongoing Women's Empowerment Course at Susun Weed's, Wise Woman University
Reclaiming Artemis!
Connect to the Goddess Artemis and your Inner Warrior to live an intuitive, authentic life filled with passion, power, and wildness.
~Do you want to feel more comfortable making your own choices?
~Do you need to give yourself permission to start giving yourself permission, to say, "No," to what you don't want, and "Yes," to what you do want, in your everyday life?
~Is your intuition your guiding light? Or do you sometimes feel untrusting of what your own, inner voice guides you to do?
~Do you crave being able to feel brave enough, or strong enough to listen to yourself and what you need?
~Are you having trouble determining what to do next with your life?
Taking my online e-course, Reclaiming Artemis: Calling Passion, Power and Wildness Back Into Your Life at the Wise Woman University can help empower you to do this.
This course consists of:
~Four illustrated e-books
~Homework for each of the lessons, including creative activities and inspiring journaling prompts
~Spiritual Rituals
~Practical Skills for empowerment
~MP3's of Melissa teaching you women's empowerment chants and healing, guided meditations
~Personal Mentoring throughout the course with Melissa
~Excellent additional resources
Once you register, you will gain access to a virtual classroom where all course materials reside as well as the vibrant Wise Woman University community of thousands of women. The classroom is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week so that you may log in whenever it's convenient for you.
It is my deepest honor to introduce the concept of the Divine Feminine Goddess in all the work that I do.
Listen to my most recent Interview with Susun Weed to learn more about me and this online course!
Wild Blessings of Artemis to You!
Heart-Centered Therapy at MotherRoots!
I had the pleasure of doing my training with the founder of Heart-Centered Therapy (HCT), Alaya Chikly, of the Chikly Health Institute, one late-April several years ago. This is how Alaya describes HCT: HCT is a process that is guided by the profound wisdom of the heart. The heart naturally knows how to unify and dissolve beliefs and mental constructs that may have held us in pain, confusion and separation. HCT offers deep healing without reliving the trauma as we are held in the safety, love and compassion of the heart. When we're able to stop identifying with who we are not, we are free to discover who we truly are!
We not only work in the present moment, but also access the original trauma where negative decisions and beliefs were formulated. The masterful dialogue techniques help to guide the client to connect fully with their own heart to identify and transform the emotional component of disease in the body, the related trauma, as well as the ancestral patterns that have sustained wounding within the immediate family and the family lineage. Inside this gentle and respectful process is a very direct, straightforward approach that pierces straight to the core of an issue.
This work will help along your journey of healing, and as a result, can help your family to heal, deepen intimacy and enhance communication. People come because they want to heal, to be free, to love again, and to be loved. HCT is an experience that restores hope. The depths of the work cannot be met until the heart is awakened. The heart is the key, the access point for the journey to begin. Bring yourself on this sacred journey. HCT is not a replacement for counseling with a qualified therapist, but is an alternative, safe way of beginning to understand yourself more clearly.
Call Melissa to set up an appointment at 603-767-3110 or e-mail Wyndinoak@gmail.com
Peaceful Blessings,
Melissa
Gratitude
Have I mentioned how much I love the entire concept and feeling of being grateful? It is TRULY the secret KEY to joy. I even love the word. Just saying the word, GRATITUDE, brings me into my heart, where its energy of thankfulness fills my entire body. Gratitude is the most remarkable feeling. The Grateful Heart is the heart that shines and glows; it is the heart that beats in peace. When I'm grateful for everything I have been given, grateful for the simple gifts of life, it does not mean that I can't also want something else; it just means that what I want is what is more authentic to who I am.
Gratitude is like a washing away of the hunger. It leaves me full of light and love and satisfaction. From this place of love and fullness, I feel Holy. I really do. This is what I have discovered: standing beside peacefulness and happiness, there are other important things that happen when I focus on my blessings. When I am feeling grateful for what I have, all the rest of the busyness and craziness of life, and the media, and the world falls away. When Gratitude Happiness dances in my heart, all of a sudden I can tune into what I TRULY want and need. All the "shoulds" go away. (You should be doing this. You should be working on that...Why don't you have this yet? Why haven't you accomplished that yet? You should have done such and such by this age...) All these wicked, internal pressures go away.
I begin to see and feel my purpose for being alive! I see how one road led to the next. I see the synchronicities. I see the golden thread of a vocation, a calling, woven through my entire life, and how each and every step, turn, twist, fall, and rise of my path has brought me here, to this exact spot. I can see it and follow it to fulfillment when I am at peace with my life, my past, and all the past has taught me. When I focus on what I am grateful for, I also feel who I am INSIDE. When I feel who I am, I am in touch with my Calling. And I remember, YES!
Oh yes, I now remember the things that make me so happy I could scream, jump on the table, fall down and die, right now, because I am so happy and I have lived fully doing this thing I love more than anything in the world! I remember those things and then I can get back on track doing what I most love to do.
My calling does not feel like WORK. It feels like, THIS IS EXACTLY WHY I WAS BORN, inside me. It feels like, GOD, inside me. It feels like, I AM HOME, inside me.
SeaMoon
Melissa Potter, LMT
“The cure for anything is saltwater: sweat, tears, or the sea.”
I have a raw hunger for water; cold, ocean water; flowing water; singing waters over stone. I love the morning, misty peace of a clean pond. Our stormy, wild Atlantic Ocean is the greatest healer I have ever met.
This past weekend I visited the ocean with some friends who live nearby. Whenever I am in the presence of the sea, I'm afraid I'll never leave the rolling, wave~love of the Mother Ocean.
It's late May now and I wonder if there is a more perfect time of the year to offer myself to the body of the Goddess of the Sea!
Walking along the shore or swimming out just past over-my-head is my preference. I once said to my friend Barbara, "I love the ocean!" She replied, in her practical, Taurus way: "No you don't. You love the shore." She's right about this. I'm not a fan of deep, dark water except from a distance and in it's symbolic reference to the depths of our unconscious selves; our deep psyche! Oh, then I love the deep waters!
Water as the Symbol of Our Deepest Self
At the sea, in a bath, or by a crystal-clear, clean pond at sunrise, I am filled all the way through myself and feel overflowing with love. I am welcomed home. I feel so welcomed home.
And that, too, is how it feels when I am at peace with my emotions. This is how it feels after I have held, in honor (even if with great difficulty and feeling like I am being tortured in the process!) the fire of my anger, the depth of my grief, the ecstasy of my joy, and the song of hope and faith that gets me through the journey that is my soulful life. Water is indeed the symbol of our emotions, our soul, and our subconscious selves. Yet it also brings us right here into the very conscious, totally aware place of this very moment.
I have always said that I would rather be fully alive and feeling everything I can, than living in a state of numbness (though sometimes we need this too, for a little while, as a reprieve from pain...) because if I am closing off my feelings of anger, you can believe that I am also closing off my feelings of passion, creativity, and power. If I am closing off my feelings of sadness and grief, you can believe that I am also closing off my feelings of love and joy.
The Sea is my Mother, my Sister, my History
I have a vanity plate. It reads, SEA MOON. I love this because it reminds me of my love of the sea, the moon, and what these things represent to me: intuition, magic, dreams, emotions, history, family, safety and security, rhythm, wildness, healing, peacefulness, the sacred night, ancient women's mysteries, raw beauty, wisdom, and our instinctual nature...
The Song of the Seals
When I spend time near the ocean, it's as if I have risen out of this great, salty cauldron of transformation and I feel that my seal-skin, my soul-skin, as Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes calls it, has been returned to me.
These archetypal stories bring me deeply into my own soul, then up, again, to float on the waves; a reprieve, a rest, a blessing from the bright sun before I
return, again, to the magical depths, to do the work of my soul.
Through the most profound pain of my life, love comes to me through magical synchronicity and divine timing. Divine guidance, blessings, miracles, and messages come to us from every direction. Opening the soul-eyes helps us to see these! Some of my favorite serendipitous experiences involve seals.
One year, at sunrise, on my birthday, we swam naked in the sea on Cape Cod. To my delight and surprise, I noticed a seal, in the water, near me!
On another visit to the Cape, my son and other children were swimming at sunset in the waves. A red glow from the lighthouse behind us rhythmically scanned the waters. "What is that beside the children?" I asked my partner. Seals!
More recently, I went to the ocean at Beltane, the sacred holiday of my Celtic ancestors, falling halfway between Spring Equinox and Summer Solstice. It rained, in the night, by the sea. I pulled my car into several look-out points but kept feeling called to move further along the coast. Finally, I saw the perfect opening between boulders. It drew me closer. "The gateway...", I thought. Even through the thick fog and rain, I saw it. A swimming, jumping seal. Suddenly, another followed behind.
The seals were my gift from the Mother.
First one, then two; swimming in that wild sea!
Magic discovered by my intuition calling me
to that pull-in, to look at the wind-swept waves.
Beyond them, my eyes caught the first Seal Maiden!
And the one following behind is my true love.
This written last spring:
I got lost this past weekend in Maine - took a wrong
turn somewhere, but oh, what a blessing in disguise, and under the direction of La Que Sabe, The One Who Knows, because while driving the winding road within feet of the sea, I came upon a life-sized sculpture of Neptune, with his trident! Oh my God of the Sea, my Goddess of the Sea, how I longed to jump in that body of water, as naked as on the day of my birth like one of the Wild Seal Maidens!
A Sacred Container
In my work, I am a witness to many emotions. For those of you who understand astrology, my Moon is in the fourth house in the sign of Cancer. I am at home with emotions. Creating space for feelings and offering emotional safety to others is one of my highest priorities in life. I am committed to expressing my own emotions, however challenging, and I strive to learn as many skills as I can to strengthen my ability to offer emotional counsel to others. I know that one of my gifts to the world is a true comfort with emotions of all sizes, shapes, and intensities! I tell my clients, "I will create a sacred container for you, a sacred space for you to shed your tears, speak your truth, tell your stories, explore your dreams (night-time or otherwise!) and feel your rage, grief, and pain."
We are mind, body, soul, and emotions. Our emotions are our guides. Our love and passions guide us to our joy. Our anger brings us to our power and informs us about what is, and what is not acceptable and authentic to our life. Our sadness washes us clean, releases the past, and allows new doors to open.
Welcome Home
Welcoming your emotions brings you home to yourself. When I feel something, I say to myself, "Welcome Home. This feeling is welcoming me back into my body. This is where life is. This is where love is. This is where my hope and my dreams are."
Welcome Home to the Beloved.
You are the Beloved you have been waiting for all of your life!