Tales of a Story Tailor

Here you will find some of my written work. As much as I like to sink my creativity into fabrics and various materials, I really love shaping experiences into words. I hope some of these stories may inspire! 

 

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The story of letting go of my beloved store 

Truth be told… originally I never wanted to have a store. 

That seemed like waaay too much work having store-hours. But when I met Raina Satori a seed was planted and she found this magical gem called 1013 Cedar Street. I checked in with myself I felt the inner lights blinking green. Why not do something a little scary??? So we opened a store together. Lo and behold I learned to LOVE having a store. I loved the structured grounded-ness after years of vending all over the place. Walking into that place gave me purpose. It upheld me. I loved so many interactions I got to have with friends and strangers alike. I learned so much. I had visions for that place beyond the clothing. I always felt like the clothing was just the merch for the energies that I get to represent. Some of you understood my deeper alignment with that place. It was a 3D anchor from where many other dimensions unfolded. A place where you could also find support for your double and DDD’s. 

I felt married to the energies of that place. Woven into the tapestry of downtown. Loyal. 

And then when it came time to shut things down due to a mysterious virus I had to look at things in a new way. I could feel right away that there was a big ask hovering over me. A big leap into the unknown. But I was far from ready to do so. That place had become my identity. And yet while in my meditations I dared to walk myself through various scenarios as a form of exercise for what may come. 

I did all the mathematical equations and while I was definitely affording it all somehow and was on a focused path to pay down some debts from building our home in the hills…. I had to get eye to eye with the truth that I was more of a helpless romantic and less of a capitalist. Because there are SOOOO many things that can make you feel rich that have nothing to do with money. But I also knew that I could not work any more while potentially making less. And 2020 felt too much like a gamble with the overhead I had going on. I was already way too strapped-in time-wise and not living life outside my shop much. While I DID love being there and continuously rearranged my energies to meet the tasks at hand. And when I got really honest with myself under the loyalty I felt overwhelmed by the responsibility. Too many open tabs in my brain. 

One night while receiving a sound-healing I asked the energies of that place “Why is it so hard to leave here?” To which they replied “ You know… you CAN leave…. but before you leave you need to graduate. Because this is your ‘Magical Life School of Leom’…. You cannot just bail. How are you going to move through this portal empowered?

Good question. Thank you!  


Part of the 6 year curriculum was: 


~ organization 

~ structure and flow 

~ human relations 

~ emotional and creative intelligence 

~ accountability 

~ boundaries 

~ storytelling 101 

~ bad jokes (and testing them on new customers) 

~ how to dodge classic marketing like a bullet 

~ beginner twerking for prudey pants like me (taught by Raina) 

~ authenticity (how to be professionally you) 

~ how to fly by the seat of your Leom pants 

~ letting go 

~ and more.... 

And then I arrived at that place where all that I had created within that place and all I was gearing towards…. that intricate vision... and most beautiful inter-dimensional tapestry.... turned out to be .... a curtain ….. I pulled it aside and peaked around into a whole new world of possibilities. 

One without store hours. One with much, much lower overhead, and much less to oversee. One with more time for new endeavors. One with ongoing possibility for more magic and creativity. Because duh…. Creativity can't help itself. 

All the while my main bread and butter (website) was still in effect. 

I definitely was a big, big letting go and came with buckets of tears and a shit ton to disassemble and move. It was a mini death.... and a good practice. 

I am relieved. I would have never chosen this without the added global pressure cooker. But I think it was meant to be. There were so many things that took place prior to the virus that hinted at this change. My two main employees had moved on from Leom unrelated to the shutdown, my lease was up in May...  it was as if things were dismantling themselves in stages and when I look back at 2019 and all I did in restructuring the way I did biz it was all prepping me to do it with less lose ends. 

If someone said…. juuuuuust joking, I have a magic wand... you can have it all back! Would I take it? 

I actually don’t think so. 

I went through a portal…. And there is no going back. 

I want to thank all my teachers. Thank you for kicking my butt and for loving me through it all. 


Margot Leom 

Life School of Leom graduate 2020 

 

 

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The house of many candles 

As I cleared out one of the cupboards in the kitchen of my shop in preparation for my imminent move I found this artifact.

A piece I made 22 years ago while I was working at a ceramic store just two doors down from my shop on Cedar Street. It was towards the end of 1998 and I was going through a deep process around cutting my dreadlocks off. I was terrified to let go of them, yet I knew on a deeper level that it was time. But I thought I would always have them. I thought that I would become an old lady with long grey medusa locks. I was attached. They had been with me since I spent a life-changing month living in a cave on Crete when I was 19. And I was afraid about what I would look like without them and how naked my face would be. My identity was all wrapped up in those knotted locks. It’s weird how we do that with things. During that time I made this particular artifact. Generally, all my lil figurines had long hair that I melded into the creations in flowing shapes. Not this one. This one I made bald. I made her for courage. But it took me another while until the scissors came out. I denied the call a little longer…. just in case I could still get away with keeping them. One morning I went down into the kitchen of my downtown Locust Street home, a converted carriage house where I lived with Lopi LaRoe. She was having a tough day and so was I. And I could tell that every day I denied the call to jump through the hoop I was losing energy. I decided to go back to my room and sat in front of the mirror, trying to see again what I would look like without my hair when a voice inside said: Don’t look at your hair, look yourself in the eyes. Unwaveringly. And so I did… for a long time…. until a voice shaped a word over my lips. It said ‘Today’? And I replied ‘Yes, today’. And so they came off. One by one. About two thirds through Lopi came upstairs and I quickly put on a hat and hid my pile of locks under a piece of fabric on the floor. She asked me: Hey, Can I borrow your scissors? “No…. I said…. They are in use” and pulled off my hat to reveal my chopped down, frizzy, funky situation that was going on on my noggin. To which she proclaimed: You are beautiful!!!!!! …while she received my laughing, sobbing head into her lap. After cleaning myself up with the clippers I gathered my hair and rode my bike to the ocean where I gave every single lock to the waters with a prayer for my life. It was a major deal.

That night I had a potent dream. I dreamt that a girl came to me and handed me a letter. The letter was written by the clay figurines that I made during those times. They thanked me for making them and for pouring so much love into them and into their expressions while bringing them to life. It was true…. I always felt so tapped into love when shaping these little beings. They were so grateful for my love... yet they came to tell me not fear to take on bigger projects.

OK! wow…. “Who are you?” I asked the delivery girl… And how did you know to come and find me and where did you come from? “I live very far away, she said... in a house that has many candles. And one of these candles is your life. I saw the flame of your candle change colors…. So I knew it was time to come and find you.

I woke up from that dream and laid in my bed imagining all my dreadies floating through the waves of the ocean… now all on their own journeys. All the little fish wondered wtf this particular seaweed was all about. They felt like vast extensions that still belonged to my life …. yet not attached anymore.

This is how I now feel about letting go of my magical shop at 1013 Cedar Street. I look forward to spelling out the journey I went through to arrive here. But I still have a few weeks before I hand over the keys…. 

 

 

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:: >>> Patching the ship <<< ::

I want to share a potent and true story.

I’ll do my best to pack it in a nutshell. May it inspire through these times.

When I was 20 years old (1992) I decided to move into an old wooden wagon (aka tiny home) in a funky and creative community in Germany. A community that lived off the grid out of old circus wagons, trucks and interesting contraptions of other kinds. We were a colorful bunch that laughed a lot and celebrated the fact that we were taking care of our selves rather than confining ourselves to the system as it presented itself. We occupied a piece of land at the edge of our home town. It was an old abandoned orchard with water supply. We did not own the land and were considered illegal squatters.

We spent a few epic years living it up and sitting by the fire every night. We actually had a ridiculous amount of fun at many things. I want to go into detail of all or silly shenanigans… but I am afraid you won’t make it to the end of my story if I do… It's worth it… Please read on.

Occasionally the cops would come by to attempt some kind of action. We had ongoing court cases to show up for (we accepted them as a form of rent payment for our otherwise very affordable lives). Yet by about the fourth year of an ongoing and strenuous legal battle, we were slowly but surely losing the case. They decided it was not safe for us to live this way, due to the cold winters… ha… as if we weren’t our own judges of that fact… We knew how to survive. Other cities that dealt with communities like ours had already been brutally evicted, oftentimes destroying the tiny homes while they were at it.

By the time it was clear that eviction was upon us it was winter. It takes a lot of energy just to maintain the basics during the freezing months. Under the circumstances and fear of this eviction, we were feeling super grim and negative. As we had another community meeting in one of our tiny homes … talking through our options of defense heads sunken into our hands in depression... we were bummed.... All of us dreaded losing that which has been created.

That night a lightbulb lit up in my head. It seemed irrational, yet the words: ‘But we are still here! We are not gone yet' came through loud and clear. I began to realize that our ship had leaks and we were sinking. Their plan to weaken our magic had succeeded. I asked the question: What have we done for our community to re~enforce positivity?

We were letting things fall apart. It became clear that on some level we had given up. We had let fear crack our ship and we were hanging sideways in the water. We needed to give some love to the ship. Some of our crew were not responding to my concept. But some were. It was too easy to give all our energy to the battle rather than to Creation.

Some of us put our heads together and came up with an idea. We rented a space where we could all gather and was bigger than our humble abodes, so we could be in a warm space in which we could move. For the first portion of the day, we played all kinds of fun group games that made us laugh again. It simply felt so good to see each other's joy!!

So yes ~ seek fun! It boosts our immunities ~ strengthens our communities

And then… don’t ask me how we came up with this stuff…. we also role-played out our most inner fears. As we all had fears around this eviction, we acted out scenarios we feared most. Splitting up into playing cops and community members and fully went there! It was intense. Real screaming, dragging, tears, fears.... My particular fear was to be woken early by the cops when feeling most vulnerable and separated from my community. We did not do it for very long. It was not fun and very uncomfortable. Then we huddled back into a circle. As some of us were struggling to comprehend what just happened, something inside of me began to reveal itself. I saw it in several of us. I tuned into the fact that if we confronted our fears within a safe setting and really went there, then the world out there won't need to show us where they are. It had been done. Check.

So yes ~ face your demons. This is the hardest part and can be done in many ways….

With that said, some of us continued working our magic. In the days that followed I painted a few art banners to hang on a hilltop overlooking the community. One was the Eye of Horus, a symbol of protection and the other one was the Sun. I figured since the sun did not shine enough for us during that time I could help along with that a little. While painting the upward corners of the smile on the sun's face, I began to smile. It was as if it was smiling back at me for recognizing the power of intention. And so we smiled at each other in gratitude for the knowledge that our community was safe.

I had found my prayer.

I did not tell anyone about the intention of these pieces. I just let them do their thing. Sometimes magic has to be held this way. Yet the following morning people woke up to an alternate sun shining upon our community. And there were smiles.

During all this time we were waiting for the man in charge of the eviction to show himself. After the long legal journey, there was one man in charge to decide the details of this event. Will he assign a hundred cops in combat gear to brutally evict us? Will they destroy our lives? It really was up to him. And he was taking his time.

Spring was nearing and the soil was not frozen anymore. So a few of us bought a lot of seeds. With every throw of seeds, we thanked the land for being our home. During this time I began cultivating a deeper connection to the land. I asked the land itself if it was my home. I felt the power of 'fake authority' fall away and shifted my attention towards the Source.

Eventually, he showed up. Magically he spoke with one of the girls on our ‘positivity committee’. He asked her what she imagined this eviction to look like and she said: We just need this to be fair… we are nonviolent people and we need to be respected.’ He asked: So, who are you? And she said: Me? … I am just a little witch. And he asked her back: of dark or light? And she said: light.

After he took off, she ran over to my tiny home and told me about their unique dialogue and that they had made eye contact in a way that was telling her that s.o.m.e.t.h.i.n.g was going to happen. We left it at that.

The next time he showed up it was me who was there. I was sitting in my little garden drinking coffee, soaking up the spring sun. He muttered something about the eviction. Yet I told him that we could not be evicted for a good while now, because I had planted tomatoes and I would have to be around to harvest them. He should have come around before those seeds went in the ground... He said something about not being quite able to let the cat out of the bag, but that we would hear from him about it eventually. Fair enough! And off he went. Time went on and it took a very long time to hear anything more from him. Life felt normal in our community and we had the best garden growing that year.

So…. It turned out that this man, who was the theeee man who could have put an end to our homemade dream… went to court, fought for us and won the case!!!!!! The one guy who we thought would be our doom turned out to be our angel.

True Story!!!!!!!!!!!!

So yes, I share this story in the name of magic and in the name of the shifts that take place within us. May we shift and rearrange our internal landscapes to accommodate the most of beautiful outcomes for our lives. Fears are real and are not to be denied. May we metabolize them to create fertile soil.

I always knew that the teachings of this experience will need to be applied to a much bigger and scarier scenario...

 

Thank you Tessa Mythos for your beautiful Art

 

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Diaz de Los Muertos

 If I were a musician I would write music…. Yet since I am a poet and love dressing experiences in words, I would like to share a true story of healing to inspire through these complex times. 

 When I was about 23 years old my mother called me and told me that my grandmother, who was my father's mother was laying on her death bed. It was time to go see her. She hadn’t always been in approval of my unique development as a teenager and was known to wave her arthritic finger in disapproval at my looks. So when I became old enough to go my own way I had let those years go by. Six years had passed without a visit and I had morphed into a young woman with dreadlocks. Just recently returned from India, now living in a wooden wagon (aka tiny home) off the grid in Darmstadt, Germany. I feared she would reject me. Yet my friend told me all I had to do was get in the car. I was nervous. We arrived the next day at my uncle's house, who walked me to the clinic. He warned me that she would not be able to speak or make any sense, even if she tried. 

 She looked at me yet shortly after turned away. There it was. She did not want to see me. Just as I thought. Yet to my surprise she turned back around, looked at me and I saw that her lips were forming my name. Margot. There was no sound, just the movement of her toothless mouth. I now realized it had taken her time to recognize me. My eyes began to overflow and flowed on while thanking her for all she had done to raise five children amid World War II with a manic depressive, alcoholic soldier/ prisoner of war as a husband. How strong she was for keeping everybody safe through such challenging times. Hiding my young aunt in the chimney during the Russian invasion and disheveling her appearance, so they would not take advantage of her or her children. 

 Here she was now. She weighed not much more than a feather. She began to point at the palm of her hand, repeating over and over: 'Something green, something green’... I wasn’t sure what she was asking for, yet I had brought a green fluorite crystal with me for courage and to remove any blocks and obstacles between us. I placed it into the palm of her hand. Her heart began to beat faster and my mind raced to meet her pulse. Wow. Was it possible that we were connected on a plane much more vast than ever before imagined? And this crystal in her hand was a fitting piece to a mysterious puzzle?! For a moment I let myself experience this possibility until I dropped back out into frazzled confusion. Margot, you are tripping… This cannot be true. I took the crystal out of her hand, in hopes for her heartbeat to slow back down again. I asked her if she wanted me to leave. She nodded. Okay. I wrapped myself into my poncho and thanked her one last time, already in a position to escape the intensity of this unknown awkwardness. Only to hear her cry out: NO! don’t leave. Another unexpected flood of tears flowed through me like warm rivers. Anything that ever had stood between us was being washed down this river. Our faces close to each other. Closer than I had ever felt to her, I looked into her small almond-shaped eyes. Feeling such clarity I thought to myself 'This moment ….This is God….God reflecting through us… And she said in complete alignment to my thought: 'God sees everything!' I know, I said, I know… kissing her on the lips as they were only an inch away. Still holding her hand she spoke to me. I could not understand any actual words and somehow instead of straining myself to make sense of things I allowed myself to just listen to the sounds she was forming with her mouth. Just the sound of her voice. And that was when her face revealed herself as that of a Native American woman, a squaw… speaking to me in her native tongue. I had never before noticed her high cheekbones quite like this before. I sat back into my chair receiving the mystery. Amazed. Information passing through us beyond comprehension. I was content with that while being blown open at the same time. At times she was the elder and I was the child and then I was the elder and she was the child. Eventually, I knew that everything had been said and I felt complete with her in a way I never had dreamt to feel. I kissed her goodbye and left the room with tears still rolling down my cheeks. The crystal decided to stay and hold vigil. My life would be forever changed. 

 

California, Diaz de Los Muertos 2013, New Moon in Scorpio Eclipse

 I am sitting in a yurt in a sacred circle, breathing deep into my own courage to face a night in quest for healing. I state the intention to understand better my own gifts without suffering in confusion the depths of my own soul. Feeling held in the space by gifted healers, I reside present waiting for the healing journey to begin. Every time so different. Open to be taken in any direction possible. Pleasant, unpleasant. We’ve got options. I had tucked a double-terminated quartz crystal up against my heart center, awaiting my assignment. And there… Unexpectedly…18 years after her passing… there she was again. My grandmother. Entering the yurt through the portal of my chest, my heart, through the crystal into our space. Wow. Day of the dead, grandmother spirit… Couldn’t be more aligned. She took her seat... as me... lending me her strength. I was going to need it she said. Right after… I saw my grandfather's coffin. Okay, I thought 'you want to join?' He came right in through the same door. And a couple of steps behind him… a dark figure, semi hunched, stumbled into the space. Who dat? I wondered. Not sure if he was welcome. Yet at the same time, I trusted that whoever entered through the clarity of a quartz crystal was here to find the light. Holding presence I wondered who he was and what had him hunched in darkness. It did not take all that long to see that it was my grandfather's shadow. What do you bring, I asked. Is it Shame? I offered him a place to lay in our sacred circle. And he collapsed, weak onto the mat. 

 Days before the ceremony I had come to the sweet revelation that if we don’t want to carry the pain of our ancestors in dark confusion we have to begin to see them in strength and honor them whole. So they may carry their own weight rather than passing it on to the next generation. I was giving it back where it belonged, yet holding space for him to find his own deep honor within that particular lifetime as my grandfather. I am not here to carry on his burden. Yet I am here to sit in a sacred circle through the darkness of this night. 

 My only memory of him as a child was a bath-robed, toothless man, smelling of cigs, repeating a few jokes over and over, within the walls of a mental hospital where he eventually passed. After what he had experienced in life, this was all that was left of him. He had never been a significant person in my life. I kind of forgot about him. How to honor him whole? You are quite a victim laying there in the unwillingness to show me your better side. I could not find anything to hold onto. The fire spewed out dark images of death and skulls and I saw vividly for the first time that my grandfather had experienced the tragedy of death beyond comprehension… too intense to remain open. He was contorted in shame. I genuinely wept for this. For the deep confusion of being drafted into the nightmare of World War II … I saw that yes indeed my grandfather was a victim. And yet I invited him to sit up. 'Sit up grandpa!' I heard my gentle voice say. A voice I never heard in relation to him before. It was clear that I wasn’t going to do the work for him. I was only offering him a spot in the yurt, a blanket and an invitation to reside and rise into his true honor beyond all past identifications. 

 By experiencing, being let into his true pain and complex agony I knew that a speck of light entered him within the acknowledgment of his profound burden. And in return, I took a speck of his dark, honored to hold it sacred like a gem on the altar of life and death. That... somehow was just enough to un-wiggle the catch22 of his contorted, twisted body. Enough for a new possibility… a new story to unfold. Eventually, he sat up. It took him everything. He still felt faint and grey, but his new posture opened up a whole new world. Now my memory of my grandfather is forever changed. I am proud of him. The hunched dark entity living inside my chest has been replaced by a man willing to rise again. Accepting him as my heritage. The father of my father. I am beginning to sense a new connection through the blood of my veins. 

 Also… Mysteriously a 3-week severe cough I had been dealing with before this completely cleared. 

 

 

 

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A Demon Feeding Story 


I had a potent experience within a ceremony in which I visited a neighborhood of my childhood. I grew up near a high rise colony in Germany. I sensed the presence of dark permeating the air. A predator. Dark patterns of twisted behaviors preying on the innocence of my environment. My present self took a seat within this darkness. I sat with the clarity I have come to know now. Holding the tools I have gathered throughout my life. Simply sitting vigil in the dark. I saw my old classroom and the girl I used to be at age 13. Androgynous, lit up little activist, wearing an afghan scarf with peace symbols drawn on her jeans. I spent days pulling trash out of creeks and riding my bike through the woods…. during an era that had me doing handstands on galloping horses as a sport... all the while Russia pointed its nuclear weapons in our general direction, in a time of Tchernobyl… shorty before the wall came down.

As the darkness grew, I rose my light… becoming even brighter. Wondering if the darkness may peel out and move onto the light. Yet low and behold the dark grew to meet the light. I called in more allies. I sat up up taller. Yet the dark mirrored me in strength. It eventually dawned on me that there was no winning to be had. Yet it was too late to step down. The dark had so much force, it was beginning to sense my questioning. I had to stay in place. And so I found my self in a potent standoff with the dark. The intensity grew… and when I realized that I could not hold that much-sustained energy in the long haul my nervous system finally faltered. A true HOLY SHIT moment. Black tongues were wrapping themselves around me…licking my head… as it took advantage of my doubt. Yet again… with all my might I peeled myself back into clarity… eye gazing with a candle as the dark kept having its way. It was life over death. I silently pleaded for help…. sending out an SOS from the center of my heart... Yet I knew this was my own battle. My own quest.

Then, in my great despair… I REMEMBERED!!! I remembered to ask a crucial question. Following the format of the Tibetan Chöd Meditation (an ancient demon feeding technique I learned about last year), I asked the unfathomable dark ‘WHAT DO YOU WANT?’ To which it answered without hesitation ‘DEATH ON ALL LEVELS’. Yea… apparently. Luckily there is a follow-up question….‘Yes, I feel you and I hear you… BUT WHAT DO YOU ACTUALLY NEED?’ speaking to the original wound of the matter.

This is when I saw the dark (to my utter surprise) down on its knees…. actually pleading me… BEGGING me…. for FORGIVENESS!!! It needed to be moved through the mechanisms of my heart to be set free…. WOW. First, you are eating me alive threatening me with death on all levels, but what you REALLY actually NEED from me is forgiveness??? PLOT TWIST. Holy shit. I had found the access within the labyrinth of my being! Something I could actually work with! Something to quest with, rather than just sitting here in a standoff with the dark. Something that stopped the black tongues from devouring me alive.

And so I embarked on a journey of forgiveness. What does that mean? To be forgiven? To forgive? To be willing to clear the cache of old karmic debt. I understand that some energetic debts may require justice, yet there may also be MANY that simply require forgiveness and trust in the beauty way to provide for us. And to remember that forgiveness is an act of badassery….not weakness. To utilize our hearts device in the most optimum way. Trusting its capacity to step up the game. And so I fed this demon of darkness. I did not feed it what it wanted. I fed it what it needed. I fed it with my entire being, liquifying myself into the mana that it needed. Following the meditation, you feed it until it is entirely satiated and acknowledged. Topped off and peaceful. And then… eeeeeventually….. you get to ask to be shown the ally that lives at the center of the demon. Again, without hesitation, it immediately said ‘ YOU … you are your own ally…. precisely your 13-year-old self’ is your ally.
It was the sweetest homecoming. To receive and reintegrate my own self as my ally and friend. She is my raw energy and life force. It’s so good to feel her in my bones. I feel more alive and whole with her at my core.

I believe that we are powerful devices once we vibrate at a particular frequency willing to rise from the victim story. When we trust our divine selves to metabolize, to alchemize the seemingly impossible and move it through the chambers of our hearts, transforming, recycling, re-inventing the old material into something beautiful and vast…..

With love
Margot Leom

I drew this piece of art (my guardian angel) on Maui in 1999 and it has its own potent story.