For the Horses **HeartFull Living Self Care Adventure**

I promise to be brief ... especially as I seem to dwell in a realm below the surface of words and thinky thoughts these past few months years. 

There is so much chatter out there, I find myself retreating back into full on hermit mode in an effort to hear my heart speak.  What is important here? Where do I want to place my energy?  My attention? How can I keep clear the lines of communication between heart, mind and intuition? 

Simplicity, devotion and play. I return again and again to these three conceptions. The first two guided me through 2017, an unexpectedly hard year.  I feel my life shifting with  inquiry, discovery, and growth sending forth gentle tendrils of inspiration to lure me out of my cave and back into my world. The gesture which embodies all these qualities, for me, is Play. 

This year as part of my HeartFull Living experiment, I want to explore how self care, self inquiry and creative play allow us to embrace ourselves, our lives with great joy and with whole heartedness. As Brené Brown says, "Our capacity for wholeheartedness can never be greater than our willingness to be broken-hearted. It means engaging with the world from a place of vulnerability and worthiness." 

Vulnerability for me means sharing my practice with others. 

I think our capacity for wholeheartedness can never be greater than our willingness to be broken-hearted. It means engaging with the world from a place of vulnerability and worthiness.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/brene_brown_5530

I think our capacity for wholeheartedness can never be greater than our willingness to be broken-hearted. It means engaging with the world from a place of vulnerability and worthiness.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/brene_brown_553088

Beginning February 14 and running through March 2, I will offer weekly (Monday through Friday) emails to subscribers sharing my current process of self care as an expression of HeartFull living. This practice centers upon my art journal as a place for inquiry, devotion, play, and inspiration.  My hope is to inspire you to craft a practice of self care unique to your desires, talents and interests. Setting for myself the challenge to connect in a public way will certainly help me to stretch and grow in unexpected ways; sharing my experience I hope will be a catalyst for expansive living and loving in others.




As with previous HeartFull Living offerings, subscription fees will be donated to Heartland Equine Therapeutic Riding Academy (HETRA), a nonprofit organization where I have volunteered for the past three years.  Specifically, all monies collected will go to the care of the therapy horses. Working with these horses has been a master class in HeartFull living and this is my way of thanking them for all that they do. (For more information on this year's campaign and the horse I am supporting, Red, visit my InnerGlow site)

Thank you for the amazing support! HeartFull Living 2018 is closed for this session.  

Play is not frivolous.  It is about trying things on, shaking things up, cultivating fresh insights and welcoming learning through the process. It is light and open. It is the epitome of HeartFull Living.  

This is not a class or a how-to or must-do. This will be simple emails where I share my process, my images and experiences, questions and thoughts with you to inspire your process.  You do not have to keep a journal or do any specific practice. Rather, I would hope you would find your way to what lights up your heart and your imagination and allow that to guide you towards the journey that fulfills your heart and world. Let's be empty of expectations and judgements and come with an open mind, and an eager heart ready for spaciousness, play and connection. 

my nature journal practice

It seems my life consists of many practices. Or more accurately: living an engaged life IS a practice that encompasses many threads weaving together into a rich, colorful and  abstract pattern that is wildly unique and personal.  Over time the individual elements will shift and change - sometimes it is all I can do to commit to one note - but the beauty of it surfaces when I can stay curious and open to the natural flow. 

This isn't my habit. I like completion. Or perhaps I was trained to view accomplishment as a long list of items carefully and methodically checked off. Complete A and move onto B. But I am learning life is never so tidy and that I am not so much returning (starting over/starting again) as I am circling back around for a deeper dive in. 

It was over a year ago that I began a nature journal inspired by a course I was taking with writer/mythologist Sharon Blackie called  Reclaiming the Wise Woman (the material for that offering is woven into her inspiring book If Women Rose Rooted).  So much of the course material shook me wide awake - how the struggle to feel I belonged was/is rooted in a disconnection from Nature and more specifically from landscape which is my current home. 

The sense of knowing our place is fundamental to developing the rootedness, the grounding, which is necessary to progress down a path of Wise Womanhood. It’s all too easy to get stuck inside our own heads, to live out of our imagination. But the deep, honest, authentic ancestral wisdom we’re looking to reclaim is the wisdom of the land, the wisdom of place, and in order to develop that wisdom we need to get out of our heads and out onto the land.

 - Sharon Blackie, "Becoming Native to Place" from Reclaiming the Wise Woman

Just a mile and a half away from my home is a nature center/park with over 6 miles of trails around a lake.  When we first moved here, I used to take Cowgirl there for mini nature explorations but we never ventured further than a half mile from the parking lot. Wedged in between the interstate and local highway, you can hear the hum of traffic and signs for the truck stop (a large and wonderfully kitschy coffee pot) hover over the distant tree line. For years I considered it too tame and I stewed in my envy of others living in wilder places. 


Thankfully my impatience is yoked to stubbornness (or a stick-to-it-ness) and if there is one thing I KNOW about any practice, it is to show up consistently and with an attitude of open readiness. (Yoga Sutra 1:14 Practice becomes firmly grounded when well attended to for a long time, without break and in all earnestness.  Two out of three ain't bad!) When I first ventures into the park, I saw robins, blue jays, geese, dandelions and clover. Returning day after day, season after season, a wider and more varied world emerged as my senses adjusted. Taking pictures, I return home and research the unfamiliar plants and birds (who are totally familiar!) and then I transfer the information to my journal. 

Slowly, I am learning.  Trees and bushes  challenge me still (other than the most common ones - Cottonwood, Mulberry, Blue  and Black Hill Spruce, Ponderosa Pine, Sycamore, Staghorn Sumac and Dogwood) but my eyes and brain have gathered up quite a few of the native flowers. As I take time to learn the names and the faces of the locals, so I find myself welcomed into a community that reveals itself to me more and more as my willingness to show up earns me the gift of presence. Mine and theirs.

Here is one truth I've uncovered about myself (and which is a personal mantra whenever I find myself retreating into seclusion): my relationship with Nature is the foundation for all my relationships. 


 


Nature Journal on Vimeo

poems with wings

Perhaps I conjure up what I want to avoid? Each April I cannot help but hear echoing throughout the gradually warming days:

"April is the cruelest month, breeding

lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

memory and desire, stirring

dull roots with spring rain." 

- T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

Spring rains accompanied ceremonies of grieving and celebration. The month began with a fire ceremony marking the passing of one friend ...

and ended at our city's botanical center with a memorial for our neighbors whose unexpected deaths while on vacation has me stumbling pass their house in continual confusion and disbelief.  Witnessing the rawness of grief in their daughter's eyes has stirred up emotions that had settled to the bottom of my own heart. Each new drop of sorrow and loss is added to a swelling pool: my mother, my aunt, my friend, my neighbors ... the list swells backwards and forwards.

I suppose that is how it is in middle age. The longer my tenure here, the more I will have to say goodbye. It is the balance to so many hellos. What has become apparent to me with the loss of my neighbors is the urgency to making each hello count. At their memorial service I was made aware that I really hardly knew them. I mean, we would often meet while walking our dogs and talk of neighborly things: the dogs, the weather, our gardens. A little residents gossip and updating on local events. We each had busy and full lives and our worlds intersected in a narrow margin at sidewalks and driveways. 

Hearing their children, grandchildren, lifelong friends and colleagues share their memories was a privilege. For it gave me pause to consider: What will my legacy be? What do I hope to create with this, my "one wild and precious life?" (Mary Oliver) For my neighbors certainly lived full, attentive, loving and passionately engaged lives.

By opening myself up to the vulnerability of deep grieving, I discover within that dark pool immense inspiration. Listening to person after person talk about my neighbors what slowly emerged was a picture of life anchored in love and purpose. That purpose was to nurture within each individual their unique passions, interests and gifts. 

Assisting me in uncovering purpose and meaning are my art journals and words. My own words, yes (scribbled in more notebooks) but also the bountiful collection of words, insights and meaning found in poetry. As David Whyte so astutely noted, all poets eventually become philosophers.  So I gather close by those books, those writers like Oliver and Whyte who offer so many thresholds into deeper meaning and living.

"One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting 

their bad advice--"

- Mary Oliver, The Journey

I lay in my bathtub listening to David Whyte recite the above poem along with other favorites (like Wild Geese) ... the water and the words soothing aches of the body and of the heart.  (I believe what I've found is an excerpted segment from a longer recording of  The Poetry of Self Compassion.) 

Still feeling raw and tender, I am easing myself back into everyday routines. I don't want to lose these gifts of insight. Considering what would be the most loving action I could offer myself, I headed out for a long walk.  Inspiring me is the work of Sharon Blackie and these words which I had read the night before from her new and immensely powerful book If Women Rose Rooted:

"We spend out lives searching for meaning in ourselves ... trained to be ever-mindful of what is going on inside us -- our breath, and our thoughts and emotions -- when so much of the meaning we need is beneath our feet, in the plants and animals around us, in the air we breathe. We swaddle ourselves so tightly in the centrality of our own self-referential humanness that we forget that we are creatives of the Earth, and need also to connect with the land. We need to get out of the confines of our own heads. We need -- we badly need -- grounding; we need to find our anchor in place, wherever it is that we live. Once we find that anchor, so many of our problems fade away. And once we find that anchor, so often we uncover the nature of our true work, the nature of the gift we can offer up to the world."

On this day many winged ones greeted me. To truly grasp I share the same space with these powerful and magical creatures is to crack open some secret chamber of hope and possibility within. The fullness of life - life with stunning and unexpected hellos and life with heart-wrenching good-byes - flew up before me. And it slipped quietly below me. All around me ... and within me. 

 

 

circles of support

Like a jar you housed infinite tenderness

And the infinite tenderness shattered you like a jar

- Pablo Neruda

You would think given my silence here, I have little to say.

Well.

It seems my words (along with images and miscellanea of my days) are filling a growing assortment of notebooks and journals. It actually has become a bit of a job keeping things in some semblance of order ...

It strikes me that my many notebooks are like jars housing the various collections that comprise my ever-increasing curiosity which is the strength and the vulnerability of a multi-passionate creative.  

Or the makings of a looney bird. But I've always admired the eccentric, the independent minded, the cackling and colorful crone making her own damned way thank-you-very-much!

My little neighborhood has been rocked by devastating news. Neighbors on an exotic vacation were in a terrible accident. They won't be coming home. I look out my front window and I see their dog being walked by their adult children and my knees buckle.

They won't be coming home. 

It's not like we need any reminders that life is incredibly short and unpredictable. But we do ... I know I fall into the trance ... that I will have second chances, that I will continue to have options, that I will skirt accidents and disasters along with illness and traffic jams. When the veil drops and life comes crashing in I realize how grateful I am for the many circles of support I've gathered about me. My spiritual practice. My family. My friends. My notebooks filled with reminders of why I choose to live life with an open heart, even though doing so leaves me vulnerable to the pain of loss and grief.

I am grateful to be part of many circles of women choosing to come together to hold space for each other. My own local circle met this past weekend and in the spirit of Spring we each shared what the circle has been for us in the past and what seeds we want to plant for our future. 

what remains after circle ... tea leaves and heart wisdom

I look at my girl and I want for her to know how it feels to sit in circle and to have her experiences witnessed and valued. To be seen in such a manner is powerful beyond words. When I was waiting for our adoption referral, I attended a prenatal yoga training program. At the end of our weekend the instructor invited all of the pregnant women to move to the center of our circle for a blessing. Not being pregnant in the traditional sense of the word, I stayed on the outside of the circle. Afterwards, I shared with another in the training my hurt over being excluded. That I could have gotten up and moved to the center, only occurred to me after the fact. My reaction was fueled by my own exclusion, my own lack of imagination to claim what I wanted.

Thankfully, that woman spoke to the instructor and it turned out a group of us traveled to the airport together. There I was invited to the tiny meditation chapel where this intimate group circled around me and blessed me and my future child with chants of love and blessing. 

I am looking at this book as a possible starting point for a mother/daughter circle.  It is a seedling of an idea ... And until it happens, I make sure when my circle meets at my home to invite my daughter over to say hi. These women - who are my dear friends -  are like her aunties. That she knows she is seen and welcomed and love by each of these women is such good medicine. For my heart and hers.

So I circle back to what supports and sustains me. My creative practice.

My spiritual practice. Family time. Nature.

And circles created by loving hearts and arms. 

I am finding deep support and inspiration through Fierce Grace Collective and Painted Pages Workshop. If you want a good hour or so of inspiration, if you want to be stirred by the question "How can I stretch myself to live fully with purpose, with heart?" then watch this and be ready to link arms.  

exploring

Wow. It's been awhile.

I suppose I am a victim of the season ... this betwixt  and between time ... not yet Spring yet clearly no longer Winter. It has me all tangled up inside. I awake to hear the raucous sounds of randy robins mingled with the clatter of shovels, spades and boomboxes as armies of landscapers descend upon my neighbor's yard to ready it for a new season. (My neighbor owns his own landscaping company, so there is a continual stream of his employees prepping and primping his yard. This is not the case in our wild landscape.) I sip my morning coffee and plan my day which is quickly sabotaged by my spring fever. There is just too much productivity happening around me and I must escape.

I've been hitting the trails of the neighboring park. For eight years I have lived near this recreation center and managed to overlook it. Way back in the early days, Cowgirl and I would pack a backpack with sketch books and snacks and walk a half mile or so to a bench to sit and draw. I admit a snobbery and insensitivity to the landscape of my home. Dried grasses,milkweed, and scraggly mulberry trees did not capture my imagination. Wildlife appeared to be limited to Canada Geese, seagulls and wooly caterpillars.  

Of course it was not the landscape that suffered from lack of imagination, but this viewer.  Thankfully Nature has been patiently going about her business, unbothered by my lack of enthusiasm. (Seems like a good model for me to follow as Cowgirl enters into the preteen Eye Rolling and Deep-Sighing-from annoyance and/or boredom stage of development.) And thankfully, the writing and influence of this teacher has inspired me to take a longer and more studied look into the spaces and places I now embrace as home. 

It is only recently that I've made the conscious attempt to consider and refer to this place as home. 

"Later I would look back at my time with the cedar trees and say I was visited by the mythical crone - the old woman of the crossroads who allows travelers to ask her one question, which she is bound by the laws of nature to answer in truth. My question might well have been: where do I belong? And her answer, with a gesture to the wild forests, sprawling meadows and dark waters of the earth, would have been: here." 

-Eila Carrico, The Other Side of the River: Stories of Women, Water, and the World  

I feel the pull to venture out. I pack my backpack with camera, binoculars, and bird guide.  I tuck inside my journal, pencils and pens. Fill my water bottle and strike out. Each ramble I discover more and more. I hold in my hand the map of the Arboretum tour with the hope of familiarizing myself with the over 90 different tree and shrubs lining the trails. I have found a tuft of a fox's tail, the shedding coat of some deer, feathers, seeds - signs of life vaster than I had realized. 

Porcupine have been feasting on the tender flesh of young shrubs. A corridor of trees hosts Downy Woodpeckers late in the day while the  Black Capped Chickadees have an earlier commute. I have been seeing a Bald Eagle and now know it has a nest safety tucked away in one of the park's larger sycamore trees. 

"Maureen Murdock, author of The Heroine's Journey, says that women find their way back to themselves differently than men do. Men move up and out into the lights of the world, but women's challenge is to move down into the depths of their own ground of being."

-Eila Carrico, The Other Side of the River 

I am drawn to exploring this patch of world around me because I believe it holds a key to understanding myself. For too long I have felt unrooted, out of place, free-floating through my life like a dandelion seed blasted by the wind across my lawn. To understand myself, I believe I must discover my relationship to this place. Or more accurately, uncover where and how I belong in the web of being. What is my place among the Ponderosa Pines, the Mulberries, the Geese, the rabbits and the coyotes? 

I want to understand how the rhythms of Nature move through me. I am taking part in a new and exciting offering: The Lunar Womb. I am following the moon's rhythms and charting my own. I am examining the dance between the Moon, Sun and Earth and learning how those energies play out within and around me.  

It is immersion into my self and my days which takes me out of modern time. I come here and it seems as if lifetimes have been lived out in 24 hours. I cannot operate within the rhythms of social media and am accepting that now is a period when I orbit far away from connections that once were regular and daily. I know things will shift and so I surrender myself to this new way of being ... I want to see where it takes me. Deeper within, I hope.  

 

I have every intention of regularly reporting back here. But just in case, I am trying to leave a breadcrumb trail.