It was Saturday around noon and my roommate noticed a praying mantis (a brown one) hanging out above the shade over the patio sliding door. I tried to get it to climb on my hand to get it outside but it was really reluctant to do that so we got a soup bowl and a bit of cardboard and I captured it and took it outside to a small garden. When I took the cardboard of the bowl the mantis  immediately climbed on my hand and started climbing up my arm. It was really fun to see this creature that was so fearful moments ago now becoming gregarious, but I had to keep it from getting tangled in my hair.

I blocked it’s path with my other hand and put my arm close to the ground. (Brown mantises are ground-dwelling, which is why their camouflage is brown instead of green.) The creature then strolled of my arm in to the ground and made it’s way too a more natural habitat.

This has me thinking of a parallel in my own life. The mantis didn’t want to leave our house – it was content where it was. But had it remained there, it would have not found sustenance; it would have starved.

When I was living in New Hampshire, I was not being fed spiritually or emotionally, and I didn’t have an opportunity to perform my my music, and I wasn’t writing. I was stuck, I was starving.

There was a time in my life when I was very depressed – multiple times actually, but during one of these times this song, Secret of the Crossroads Devil by Gaia Consort became incredibly important to me. Christopher Bingham is a brilliant songwriter and a musician whose skill I can only dream of possessing, and this song simply spoke to my soul. The line “If you want to read the mystic story written in your future, you better start to write it now” meant a great deal to me, and I did manage to begin that writing. I opened up to some friends, I began understanding myself, I got myself into a 2 week residential trauma program for women. Things were changing.

But it was just over 2-1/2 years ago that I did for myself what I did for that praying mantis today. I took myself out of an environment that wasn’t sustaining me and moved myself to a place that was better able to do so.

Sometimes, I think, we all need to find that special place that sustains us. Are you being sustained where you are? Or are you like that praying mantis in need of relocation? Perhaps you don’t need as drastic a move as I made, maybe it’s a new job, a new hobby, or maybe you can explore some new genres of film it music or reading. Maybe you have some as-yet unresolved issues that a therapist might be able to help you with, it perhaps you’ve been putting off some medical tests or a physical. Change isn’t easy. Like the Praying Mantis, we don’t always approach it willingly. But often enough, it’s exactly what we need.