Bonja the Bodger

The rest of it…

January 11th, 2026

When I get frustrated and the exhaustion sets in, my skin tends to get a little thin…and it did this morning. I’ve learned that when things get like this, it’s usually a sign that I’m pushing too hard. And so, I need to just take some time and rest.

And that’s the thing: rest is also a big part of this recovery process. Learning to sit. Learning to love ourselves enough to take care of ourselves and to just be…to just chill out, breathe, relax when we need to.

To feel these things; not to numb them out, not to stuff them down.

Because running away from our feelings – stuffing them down, hiding from them, not showing them in public – is a lot of the reason that we carry these wounds in the first place…

If you’d like to see more, please check out my podcast, “Putting it on the wind,” on YouTube:
Standing in the shadows…

January 7th, 2026

As we get older, if we’re lucky, if we’re brave enough – strong enough –
to look at these things from our past, to really, really sit with them, and to examine the consequences as we look out at the wake that we leave behind us through our lives, we begin to realize how we’ve affected others.

And sometimes, the desire to make amends comes about.

Not everybody wants an apology. Sometimes, our apologies are good, true, honest things, and other times, we just want to be left off the cross. But nobody can really do that for us; that’s something we have to do for ourselves.

And so, what’s left, then, is what’s referred to as a living amend:
looking honestly at what we’ve done – the effects of our actions –
and deciding, “I will not do that again,”

and doing our damnedest not to…

If you’d like to see more, please check out the latest episode of my podcast, “Putting it on the wind,” on YouTube:
Getting back to it…

January 6th, 2026

Just me, the kerosene heater, a few sharp knives, a Kestrel adze, and a hatchet.

Now that the holidays are finally over, I’m back in the garage, getting to work on a couple of orders I’ve received.

Today’s session consisted of knocking out the rough cuts for a Cherry and a Butternut cooking spoon. Mass-production’s just not something I do. For me it’s all about the work: getting lost in the carving, stopping to admire the grain, practicing my Germanic expletives when things go sideways every now and again.

While no two spoons are ever completely alike, it’s pretty much a guarantee that many of them have at least a swear word or two embedded in them; especially if the grain is funky or the wood’s a little dry, as was the case with this particular piece of Butternut.

Swear words are an important part of the process, like a tube of stropping compound, or a first aid kit. Maybe they’re not always necessary, but it’s good to know they’re around if you have to reach for one…
Checking in…

January 2nd, 2026

Grandfather Joseph Rael teaches us that ceremony begins as soon as you say “Yes” to it. And I really become aware of that about a week or so before our gatherings occur, which they do on the first Saturday of every month. I start to slow down. I start to pay attention to what’s going on inside me, what’s going on in my environment. I start to take a little more notice of what I eat, what I drink, how I move through my day.

And then, as time draws closer, especially on this last day, it really begins to wind up. And the simple chores that we have to do, like putting an extra leaf in the table or taking out the plates and the silverware, getting the crockpot ready for the potluck after the ceremony, raking out the firepit, making sure that we have enough chairs…all those things that go into it, they tend to become more like prayers…

If you’d like to see more, please check out the latest episode of my podcast, “Putting it on the wind,” on YouTube:
Reflections…

December 29th, 2025

As we’re getting down to the last few scraps of 2025, it’s probably a good time to do a little bit of reflecting on what this past year has been like.

Speaking from the perspective of my own emotional recovery – my own spiritual healing – the work’s been pretty difficult, and at times, it’s just been downright exhausting.

But there’s one thing I’ve learned these last many years, and that is, that when you plow deep, you’re going to hit some big stones. It takes a lot to dig them out, but when you do, buried beneath them, you can usually find some pretty good, rich, fertile soil. And that’s definitely been the case this year…

If you’d like to see more, please check out the latest episode of my podcast, “Putting it on the wind,” on YouTube:
Today’s project…

December 27th, 2025

I picked up a few requests over the holiday, so I’m out in the garage, cutting some Cherry and Butternut blanks, and getting to work on the initial steps of bringing an antique handaxe back to life.

The heater’s finally taken the edge off the chill, and the workshop’s warm and welcoming; it’s the perfect day to be out here with my tools, enjoying the space that inevitably opens up after the blissful chaos of the annual celebrations.

I’m reminded, in the silence of this space, of the feeling of sitting on the beach when the waves have withdrawn. There’s an openness to it; and a deep and palpable grace that only comes from the knowing and accepting of its impermanence…
The give is in the gifting…

December 24th, 2025

Codependency, counter-dependency, and the inability to receive…

It’s been said that you can’t pour from an empty cup. It’s also been said that you can’t receive in a cup that’s filled. For a cup to be of true value, to be truly serviceable, it doesn’t remain full or empty; it transitions between those states as necessary:

I’m thirsty, so I fill a cup. I drink from it. The cup empties.

My friend is thirsty, so I fill a cup. I give it to my friend. They drink from it. The cup empties.

When we’re healthy, we learn to become both the full and empty cup as required. In the sickness of codependency and counter-dependency, however, the truth of the matter is that cup is never empty. It’s always filled with one thing: my own need for safety, for love…

If you’d like to see more, please check out the latest episode of my podcast, “Putting it on the wind,” on YouTube.
What’s yours is yours; what’s mine is mine…

December 17th, 2025

As a kid, you walk into a room and you feel anger there…well, you feel angry, so you must be angry. You feel sad, so you must be sad. We learn to internalize those things, to take them on, and to come at the world from the perspective of those things that we’re feeling – believing that they’re our own.

As we get older and lean a little heavier into our work, hopefully, we begin to sort some of that stuff out. We begin to learn what’s ours and what’s not; what we can let go of – what we can hang onto.

And this can be incredibly difficult when we see people we really love going through a tough time. One trap in particular that it’s easy to fall into as someone who’s empathic, is the fix, save, and rescue trap. We see someone suffering, and we want to fix the situation. We want to save them from it; to rescue them from their peril.

Sometimes our motivations aren’t as unselfish as they seem, whether we’re aware of that or not. Part and parcel of growing up in a house full of emotional instability is often the dance of codependence: “I love you because of how you make me feel.”

In the presence of suffering, especially when it’s the suffering of those we care for, we don’t like the way we feel when we see them suffer, and so we want to rescue them; to stop their pain in order to stop our own.

If you’d like to hear more, please check out the latest episode of my podcast, “Putting it on the wind,” on YouTube…
Sunday refurb…

December 14th, 2025

Well, they passed the paper test…

I guess it’s a good idea to go back to the beginning.

Lately, I’ve been watching some videos on YouTube where a bunch of guys have been touting some inexpensive axes from Harbor Freight. The story goes that with a little tweaking, these bad boys can become a fairly decent camp axe. I’ve always wanted to try my hand at something like this, and at just under twelve bucks a pop, I figured I had nothing to lose.

I won’t go too heavily into the details; there’s a ton of videos out there explaining the process, so there’s no need for me to reinvent the wheel. But the upshot is that the videos I’ve been watching do seem pretty accurate.

Here’s a picture of what I started out with:

First, I removed the stickers and sanded the varnish off the handles. I left them rough to ensure a better grip. Then I drilled each of them out to accommodate a lanyard. I’ll be using paracord for this, but I don’t have any on hand, so I’ll attach the lanyards later, when it comes in.

After sanding the paint off the heads of the axes, I got to work reprofiling them with a rag and Bastard file. They were pretty thick, so I thinned them out and lengthened the cutting edges. When that was done, I ran them across some diamond sharpening pads and took them down to 3200 grit.

Once they were sufficiently sharpened, I burned in my maker’s mark and oiled the handles.

They’re drying on my carving block in the workshop, and I’m really looking forward to testing-driving them when I get the chance.

Overall, I’d say it was a pretty good way to spend a Sunday afternoon…
You don’t have to…

December 10th, 2025

One of the great blessings of my own healing work has been that I have found myself in the presence of teachers who, consciously or unconsciously, have never been afraid to show their humanity. Some of it has been extremely noble, and some of it hasn’t. But the wonderful thing about that, is that I have learned lessons along the way that I could not have learned any other way.

I have gotten to see people being completely human in my presence, and that has opened up space and allowed me to do the same…