Weekly Reflection (week 9): Facing forward

What am I needing to face in order to move forward?

Years ago, I had the privilege of hearing the yoga master T.K.V. Desikachar lecture at the Estes Park Yoga Journal conference. His name may not be familiar to many, but if you study or practice Hatha yoga at all, you are indebted to his father, Krishnamacharya whose teachings inspired the three main branches of yoga currently being taught here in the West. The workshop with Desikachar was an opportunity to drink from the source.

I cannot even remember what the title or subject of the workshop was supposed to be, perhaps something on meditation? I was surprised to find it was more a lecture style forum and even more surprised when Desikachar walked out on stage, a small man in a short sleeved button up shirt, looking more like an engineer (which he had studied before becoming his father's student) than a yogi from India. He immediately struck me as very personable, sincere, humble, and very profound. Over nine years later, I still marvel at the deep wisdom he shared with us that day.




He talked about making choices on our journey; how there are moments when we may feel confused as to which direction we should go and how often we are conflicted between two choices. He then explained how we should write down on slips of paper the two choices we were contemplating and then ask a friend to pick at random one of those slips. He wisely pointed out that many of us would find such randomness unacceptable. He explained how we should reflect upon each option, visualizing ourselves living each choice and how that might reveal to us a preference for one path over the other. And if we feel still feel equally torn between the two, then in contemplating allowing another person to randomly pick one slip, we may also recognize we favor one choice over the other.

If we still feel conflicted and cannot decide, then Desikachar counseled us to use the slips of paper and let fate decide. And here is the heart of his teaching: whatever choice is pulled, we are to embrace it fully and with the force of our full commitment to that path, allow it to carry us forward. Here is the sticking point for me, and what Desikachar so astutely understood: we make choices half heartedly and then spend our time looking back over our shoulders wonder "maybe I should have gone that way? Maybe I should change directions?" If things don't work out, we then blame the choice we made rather than the fact that we did not give it our full attention or commitment.

How many myths and legends address this notion of moving forward and not looking back? I realize that much of my struggles revolve around my wanting to hold on with both hands the past and the present. I want to make changes, create a new future and at the same time, hang onto the security of my current life even when that is what I wanted to shed in the first place.

I also am aware that there are choices and dreams that have been buried deep in my subconscious that need to be brought out into daylight and either embraced or discarded. What I fear encountering, and what holds me back right now, are the dreams that I need to acknowledge as no longer feasible. At least in this life time. There are certain realities that need to be face, lost opportunities mourned and choices delayed that now longer fit with who I am or where I am in the seasons of my life which must be acknowledge before I can whole heartedly embrace any new path. I have to let go in order to make room for new dreams and realities to be birthed.

I believe in dreaming big and not giving up. But there are times to clean out the closets and get rid of what I can no longer realistically use. Some dreams no longer fit me and as painful as it will be to acknowledge this truth, I must do so in order to move forward open and free.

I know I am being vague here ... I know what dragon I need to face, befriend and set free. The particulars are not necessary; the challenge is the process of letting go and believing something new will come in to fill the void.

2009 Reflections: the greatest gift of all

In amidst all the swirl of busyness and flurries of this final month of the year, the tendency to reflect upon the previous 11 months and project forward to the coming year seems a tad counter intuitive. I mean, I’ve got things to do: knitting to finish (okay, start and finish), cards to write, lists to check off and very little time to sit still and think.

Oh. Okay. I guess time for reflection would be a welcome break for my nervous system and my checking account. 2009 has been a busy year. But not busy in the usual sense of places visited (there were some) or things accomplished (which I did) but busy in an internal way. If I had to put it down in a sentence, I’d say in 2009 I was busy reacquainting myself with me.

One of the things I reconnected with in this past year is my love of photography. During my teenage and college years, my camera rarely left my side. I held ambitions of honing my craft, showing my work and I even had an unsolicited offer to buy one of my photos during a student show. And then I placed the opinion of others over my passion and the camera was put aside. Or in poetic terms: in the end, I was afraid. Afraid of not being good enough, afraid of appearing amateurish, afraid of running dry of ideas, afraid of being, well, plain.

What I’ve discovered through the journey of many amazing courses I’ve already discussed here is my love of creating for my own pleasure. It is a tricky tight rope to walk. It seems I’m conditioned to downplay the value of my own pleasure. I have trouble justifying my actions as being for my own enjoyment and that being reason enough to validate my work in my life. To say photography is my hobby also seems to deny the significant role it plays in my world. The temptation then is to believe I have to make this hobby into a profession to legitimize it but then I run the risk of opening myself to the need to please others. And as I’ve said, I do this for me.

A year ago I snapped away with the little point and shoot digital camera we bought to document our joining together with Cowgirl. And then I took my first ecourse that invited me to use the camera as a way of looking more intently at my life and my world. The camera was not an instrument of art making, but a tool for self-reflection and examination. Back in my hands, my camera was (and now is) an extension of my mind, my eye and my heart. And so I rediscovered the lonely teenager within me who longed to connect in a deep and real way with others, but was too shy to believe her voice was worth hearing. Now the Mother in me is showing that girl she has the power and the right to express herself, if only as a reminder to others we all have this right to our voice and to our vision.

In reflecting upon this past year, I would have to say the single most important thing in my life right now, beside my family of course, is my camera and my Unravelling 365 flickr group. We are a band of 30 or so who have been together over 5 months now, posting pictures daily, weekly or whenever we can. We are sharing the details of our lives with others all over the world. We are sharing our vision, sharing our humor, our hopes, frustrations, fears and dreams. Because of this group (I am committed to the self portrait a day project – committed in all sense of the word) I have found myself pulling my sick body out of bed to roll around a room in the name of self-expression;

moving out of a funk to capture a flash of inspiration;

up on my head to celebrate another’s birthday;

pausing in the midst of my life to record, reflect, and celebrate my life.

By taking time everyday to snap some part of myself (even just one finger will suffice) I am reminding myself that my life is worth noting and indeed there is much to celebrate.

And my tribe of Unravellers is celebrating with me, and I with them. Every day they remind me the world is generous, filled with beauty, light and great humor as well as great courage, passion and love. Each day my self-portrait is like a life line that keeps me connected with myself and then connects me with others. And in the process, they inspire me to challenge myself to grow artistically, technically, and creatively. (I mean, I am using Photo Shop for goodness sakes! Me, a slide librarian who is clinging to old technology.)

And now it is back to business as usual. Some online shopping to do (we are in the midst of a massive snowstorm) and a secret santa gift to finish for one of my Unravellers. We may have a cyber relationship that moves on the spiritual plane, but it is branching out into the material world. Just wait until we have our first retreat. You’ll know us by all the cameras going off, self timers beeping away.

What I want to carry with me into the new year is this habit of looking always towards inspiration and listening deeply to the voice within. She has a lot to teach me.

This is why I create every day. ♥

Random Thoughts Monday - Again!

Mommy brain or hormones? Well, Mondays seem to be a reset button for my scrambled brain and coherent thoughts are just not my bag these days. So, another sampling from the Poo Poo platter that is my brain:

Where did November go?! Even Cowgirl was amazed to learn the month is almost up. Today also marks the end of Art Every Day Month, one of the seemingly effortless challenges I've posed to myself recently. The trick was for me to acknowledge this was just for fun, no pressure. The greatest joy of this process, besides the nice mound of projects completed this month, is the realization that art every day has become a habit for me. In my spare moments instead of turning on the t.v. or grabbing a magazine, I find myself collaging, writing, knitting and playing. Things went so well, I am considering the Art Every Day challenge for the new year. We'll see if I survive the knitting-until-your-fingers-seize-up month that is December. As any knitter will tell you, a common phenomenon this time of year is to believe you can knit in a month what any sane person would realize would require 4 months.

So this month I finished my Creative Goddess painting; knit a bag,


some wrist warmers and a scarf; made some button wreaths as an adventure into the wonders of Elmer's glue;


created a pile of cards that will be winding their way to some special folk in my life. (shhhh ... a secret!)



Monumental for me is the realization Just Do It! I have wide ambitions and often the scope of my dreams prevents me from starting or finishing a project. So many things I have done lately have been in the spirit of better something now than wistful "I had hoped to ..." dreams or projects. So my creations come into the world, warts and all.

A side gift from this process: I rediscovered a friend from my childhood! We last saw each other - gulp - 27 years ago. Julie, I am still pinching myself! When the dust settles, I need to mine the goodies in her inspiring blog. Art, writing, poetry, family life ... how perfect is all that?!

In other news: we had a grand time at the annual Mother Grandmother tea party this year - the last one as next year Cowgirl will attend public school. To say I was weepy when I realized this fact would be an understatement.


A new member of the household made his appearance over the holiday weekend. Welcome Fred, our house gnome.


If you didn't know this, every home needs a gnome to protect you from the pranks and misbehavior of rogue gnomes and especially those underpant gnomes who thrive on stealing our delicates whiles we sleep. Fred is settling in nicely and left Cowgirl a lollipop this morning as a sign of his gratitude to be here.

Finally, I treated myself to a guidance session with the divine goddess Leonie. Lots of good stuff that I am still processing. I mention it now as she is only booking appointments in December and then will take a break as she prepares for the arrival of her first little goddess babe. I have felt like my life is a kaleidoscope of ideas, feelings, desires and she helped me to pull things into focus and put down some concrete actions to take as I move into my dreams.

A phrase I love from goddess Leonie is Divine Messes. Divinely inspired, inspiring and alive - that's our corner of the world. What messes are you making in your special corner?

Soapy thoughts

It occurred to me,

While canary

Rubber gloved hands

Reached into soapy water

Another pan to wash,

Many women artists and writers

Probably didn’t have

Families to care for.

Or if they did,

They had

To have had

Some assistance.

Someone to help them

Do the dirty work

Of shopping, cooking, cleaning,

Walking the dog,

Packing the next day’s lunch

In fire truck lunchbox

And my god!

Remembering all the details –

Music class on Wednesdays

Martial Arts on Tuesdays and Thursdays

Chinese on Saturdays

Backpack Thursdays

Trash on Mondays

Vitamins

Nose spray

Allergy medicine

Doctor and dentist appointments

Birthday party presents

Parties to attend

Parties to plan

Thank you notes to write

The minutiae that goes into

A child’s life

Never mind my own.

I know Stieglitz did not want

O’Keeffe to have children

Believing it would

Take energy away from her art

And I can understand that perspective.

I find myself longing for the chance

To opt to skip a meal

For a longer yoga session,

Paint or write

Instead of cooking dinner,

Go out on a photo journey

Rather than a trek to the store.

I think of these things

Longingly

As I turn to see

Food to be put away

Trash to be emptied

The dog waiting for his supper.

Perhaps tonight I might

Trade this all in

For free time for myself.

But truthfully,

I know that this all is the grit,

The bit of irritant

Within me,

That compels me

To make my pearl.

My life

Frustrating, overwhelming,

Maddeningly mundane,

Fulfilling,

Nurturing,

Rich in details

Overflowing with love

And laughter

I would not change a thing.

I am happy O’Keeffe’s art

Hangs in museums for all to enjoy;

For me, it is pure bliss and

Contentment

Knowing

My art sleeps

Well fed, comfortable and cared for

In my home.

My Life, Right Now, As Is

Today's Wishcasting asks "What do you wish to Embrace?"

Very simply, I wish to embrace my life as it is in this moment. To truly know and feel Contentment, or Santosha as described by the yogis. To be as I am and not to look outside myself for happiness. Try as I might to fully inhabit the Now, I still feel in the pit of my stomach an anxious yearning feeling for something more. A je ne sais quoi about my life that has wrapped itself around my neck like a scarf I seem to wear all the time; a "yes, I am engaged in this BUT I wish it could last longer, be fuller, be freer ..." I'm not even sure what. I just am aware that I am living my life in small blocks of time and there is this fractured quality to my world. And as a part time worker, full time mother, part time teacher, part time dabbler in many fields well, what else could my life be?

So I wish to let go of feeling anxious about it all. Right now my life is a wonderful blend of contrasts: busy and still, chaotic and structured, forward moving and stuck in the mud, muddled and inspired. Some days I am amazed by what spills out of my pen, brush and finger tips; other days I feel myself thrashing against the constraints of family and work life, barely able to make toast much less magic. But it is all necessary - the gaps, the pauses, the blank days providing the nourishment and incentive for the days of rich, full bodied living.

And most of all, I want to embrace my perspective as being worthy of expression. There are days I can barely contain myself, I am so excited by the inspiring words and images available for my perusal here on the web; other days I despair and wonder why I would even consider adding my doodles, snapshots and crazy chatter to the world. Then I watch my Cowgirl painting and I remember creating is an act by which we stake our claim upon this world and our life. We were here, this is what we saw, felt, believed. And we had a great time doing it.





My life, right now, as it is, is pretty amazing and I want to be sure to let everyone know this is so ...

... especially myself.



(A quick AED update: I've finished another felted tote bag, started some knitted wrist warmers, have a new canvas awaiting paints and collage materials while my other canvas sits quietly in my yoga room. I am waiting to see if it calls for anything else or if it is complete. I did add a blue jay feather I found to it and it feels about done. Brown on top, springy to the touch ♥ Am off to paint right now ...)

Random Thoughts Monday

Totally unrelated to anything here: a girl who enjoys a good sub sandwich

Today is that kind of a Monday which bodes ill for the coming week. Grey, damp, rumors of snow or freezing drizzle buzzing about, and just bone numbingly cold. I know, I know, come January, this weather will feel tropical but right now I am feeling a strong pull towards hibernation. So I am making up my own theme for this day as my brain waves are refusing to adhere into anything coherent. Welcome then to Random Thought Monday!

Over the weekend we took Cowgirl to see a performance of the Shaolin Warriors. She had seen the flier come in the mail and had been asking to go. Wanting to encourage her interest in martial arts, we decided it was worth the risk of her falling asleep during the performance and got tickets. Once the show started, there was no way was she going to sleep through it! For two hours she sat enraptured of every kick, leap, punch, spin and flip, clapping enthusiastically with the rest of the audience.





She is in her second year of a Little Dragons martial arts program and holds one of the highest ranks in her group (most families sign up for one year and do not renew, but we renewed and now have a new crop of kids joining her) and is very proud of this fact. A natural leader (yes, a spin on the moniker Bossy Britches) she loves mentoring the new students. Having seen her instructors demonstrating stick fighting, she began to grab dried stalks from the day lilies for her practice. I can only imagine what she will try next now that she's seen the monks breaking metal rods over their heads!



Yes, she is wearing a dog's snout mask on her head. She more accurately looks like the Monkey King warrior, but she adamantly refuses to accept she was born in the year of the monkey. I am a tiger and apparently monkeys and tigers are not compatible. This topic came up the other day in my Chinese class. My teacher very delicately informed me "tigers and monkeys generally do not mix well together." She went on to explain "In China there is a saying, in the forest where there is no tiger, monkey can be king." And that, my friends, was my A HA! moment. Summed up in one phrase is a description of the relationship between Cowgirl and myself. The poor hubby (Soda Pop Pop as Cowgirl likes to call him) is the meekest of all the zodiac: a rabbit.

Continuing to explore the fascinating workings of a five year old's mind ... a recent development is an imaginary friend named Binker. Now, I have to take the blame for planting this seed: Binker is a poem by A. A. Milne which I have read to her on a number of occasions. It starts out:

Binker (what I call him) is a secret of my own,
And Binker is the reason why I never feel alone.
Playing in the nursery, sitting on the stair,
Whatever I am busy at, Binker will be there.

So the twist is Binker is the one responsible for anything that might get Cowgirl into trouble. For example, when she asks if she can watch television and I tell her "it is a school day - remember our rule? No television on a school day." She will response "That was Binker asking." Or if she makes a rude noise she will inform me "Mommy, that wasn't me - that was Binker!" We are getting a lot of "Binker said that" around here.

Another fun phrase I want to remember is "all the numbers." This generally means A Lot or also can be referencing an amount equal to any previously mentioned number. Cowgirl has a penchant for rattling off a stream of numbers rather than saying one amount. So if she telling me a story about super heroes, she might say all these monsters - 39, 101, 1045 - came in to attack Spiderman. But then the other super heroes, all the numbers, came to help out. Or when discussing how much she loves me, she might say "I love you 101, 525, one thousand - ALL the numbers!"

Final random thought for today: either I am just living my life like a squirrel madly amassing her nuts for the long winter haul, or else I am seriously embarking upon a career in collaging. As part of the Art Every Day month, I've been making these postcards.


This first stage is just the collaging and I plan to add writing or stamping of some kind to the pieces but I seem to be in a collage making trance. I have finishing touches to do to my final project for Goddess school


but I already bought another canvas today for a larger scale version of my postcards. It's not that I have an idea of what I want to make, but I have an inkling of how I want to make a piece. And stashed away in envelopes, file folders and notebooks are bits and pieces of elements I'd begun amassing for this next project before I was even aware I was going to be making it. Could Mod Podge fumes be responsible? Perhaps a the suburban fairy cousin to La Feé Verté or the abstinthe green fairy of Moulin Rouge fame?

Oh my, now I'm really on a roll ... have I mentioned Ewan McGregor is my bizarro world husband? Okay, I'll save that for another post ...

Art Day

Cowgirl helping me with my project

I hesitate to post this for fear I someone will stage an intervention for me but yes, I have jumped abroad another 30 day challenge. Normally, the 30 days of November herald the slow but steady build up to the holiday madness that is December. My intention is to savor the holidays this year and not fall victim to the frenzy of consumerism that usually whips my butt - and wallet - into a sorry state. I am embracing the challenge of Art Every Day Month which I am joining a few days late. I reason that I am committed to taking a self portrait every day, so really I am already doing this challenge. But I have had some ideas simmering in my feverish brain and I hope to tackle them this month.

In honor of our Art Month, today Cowgirl and I enjoyed a full day of art play. We met friends at the local art museum for the Friday kids class. Today's project was using watercolors and oil crayons to make a picture inspired by a Chihuly sculpture hanging in the atrium.


After lunch and a rousing game of witches and monsters chasing children in the sculpture garden (mommies being witches AND monsters), Cowgirl and I came home where I began work on my final project for the Goddess Creativity Course.

Work in progress

Today I am trusting in abundance. There is always enough of what I need, whether that be energy, time, inspiration, or monetary resources. The trick is to recognize the difference between wants and needs. I received a package of Japanese paper samples and my tendency would be to hoard each precious scrap, waiting for The Perfect Project which, of course, never materializes. So one of this month's activities is to use these beautiful papers in various collage projects. Here is stage one of some art cards I am making.



Today I am grateful for my health. A good friend has been suffering for over a year with a condition which the many doctors she has seen have failed to accurately diagnosis or treat. Despite the increasing aches and pains of being the ripe age of 7, I am in excellent health and so is my family. And I do not want to take that for granted. Yesterday Cowgirl and I waited in line, outside in cool temperatures for 3 hours so she could get one of the few N1H1 flu shots available through a county health clinic. I felt as if I had been skiing all day; I was that sore and tired. But we met some great people in line and it reminded me that people are kind, good, caring and giving.

And speaking of giving, I am continually inspired by the generosity and enthusiasm of Goddess Leonie. I know I will be seeing the gifts of her ecourse for months to come. To say I have felt inspired, empowered, supported and encouraged is an understatement. She is a beacon of sunshine, bubbly joyfulness and positivity that confirms to me outlook and attitude are the key. As I say to Cowgirl (and she will probably tell me years from now how much this annoyed her): we can choose Happy.

What in your life is giving you joy? How you do plan to spend this holiday season? How do you choose Happy in your day?

A proud artist ready to hang her work

(p.s. For the one person who I may have neglected to tell, Goddess Leonie ran a lovely interview of me and our adoption story on her blog which you can read here. I am so honored and thrilled to be a part of her birthing stories series and to be the first story in the series was a healing gift. Thank you lovely goddess!)