time to reflect

I've noticed I have returned to photographing myself as a shadow or reflection. I catch myself standing by windows looking out but also looking in. And it makes sense to me as I feel I am standing at a threshold - or more accurately lingering by an opening - looking back at where I've been and feeling uncertain as to how I am to step forward.

Part of what is unsettling me emerged when I was considered this week's offering of a reflection for 52 photos project and the injunction to "get creative." Which I know was meant in a playful, encouraging sort of way but landed on surprisingly raw and tender ground for me.

I thought about reflections and despaired at my lack of enthusiasm to really explore this subject with my camera. I almost didn't participate. I just wasn't feeling the enthusiasm to bring forth something new and, well, creative. As if being creative is synonymous with being innovative, original and unique.

And I'm not feeling very unique these days.

Then it struck me - this is where I am right now: I'm done with trying to be creative. My journey isn't so much about discovering a creative self - as if such a self were a new species of exotic bird or monkey (even one that flings paint in an uninhibited way) - as it is coming to understand and befriend myself. I am tired of struggling, striving, mis-perceiving myself as needing to be something more or somehow different, as if a shinier, artier version of myself will make me feel better on the inside. What I need is to bring that inside out and love it and her to pieces. Heaping forgiveness, understanding, respect and appreciation for the me that has survived and thrived on this arduous journey that is life.

So maybe I am waiting to take that step forward because there is unfinished business to tend to within myself.

I've entered the SouLodge and ready to recommit to those practices that nurture and sustain me: meditation, time in nature, an attitude of gratitude for the bounty of gifts that lie scattered all around me but which I overlook as I gaze outward. It is time for some solitude and silence; and it is time to let myself get a little lost because I have spent far too long looking for a final destination. I am already there. I want to know it and yes, I just want to have some fun.

I am creative; life is creativity folding in upon itself. It is not something I need to work at as much as something I need to nourish with attention, commitment and patience. I am surrendering - yet again - to the flow that is my life. I am lighting a candle on my altar as an act of faith and trust in myself to awaken to the gifts that continually fall like ripe fruit into my lap. To comfortably own and express my gifts.

eggshell found on a great spirit walk this past weekend

My circle, my tribe, my family, mentors, teachers, spirit sisters - inspiration swirls all around me. But in the end the task is for me to turn within in order to shine more clearly. To live fully is to embody creativity. And I am beginning to suspect creativity is just an outward expression of Love.

fire spread; Week 5 of The Elements of Art Journaling

Over in Effy's place we've been pondering Fire this week. We explored what is burning within us and took that inquiry onto the page with some active arting to music. Devotion and surrender. They keep coming up for me ...

So excuse me, I'm closing the window, drawing the blinds and cranking up the music. Dancing my crazy dance and doing it for me and me alone. Well, me and perhaps Krishna who plays a mean flute.







Something is about to be cracked open. Until then, I may be a bit reclusive. Or quiet (I am always visual.)

But if you want words ... and you really need these words ... then take a listen to these broadcasts by poet/philosopher John O'Donohue. Just be prepared to have your life - your soul - cracked apart.

And be sure to watch this video - it will be the icing on the cake.








(Mel ... this one's for you ... I will meet you by the lake in the middle of the woods ... and I plan on skinny dipping!)

Don't forget to enter our giveaway this week: two original paintings by Connie Hozvicka of Dirty Footprints Studio and an original piece from me and Cowgirl. All the details are here.

Monday Inspiration Celebration: hello old friend ...

My body has not always been my friend. Or more accurately, I have not been the best of friends to my body.

As a child I had pretty rotten eating habits. I was a picky eater and dinner was often a bowl of cold cereal. Sugar cereal that is. I ate from one of four food groups: carbs, fats, fruits and sugar. And while I rode my bike and ran around the neighborhood, exercise was a foreign concept.

In high school I developed an eating disorder. I did start eating healthier foods - I discovered vegetables, chose salads over carbs, cut out sugar - I just didn't allow myself enough food. I also became a runner and fitness nut.

While I believed I was finally tending to my body, I was really atoning for the crime of having a body. It wasn't something to befriend as much as something to control, tame or subdue.

When I was in graduate school I had an accident and I broke my neck. I had to spend three months in a halo brace and then months in various cervical collars. While I recognized this "accident" was a call for me to stop living mindlessly - to really wake up to what I wanted to be doing with my life - at some level I believed my body had betrayed me.

Soon afterward this upheaval (I dropped out of school one semester before my qualifying exams, moving to our present location for a new job) I discovered yoga. I began a dedicated practice in which I began to heal my relationship with my body. Or so I thought.

While I tended to my body's needs, cultivating deep listening to its wisdom, I believed I was entering into a new relationship defined by respect and trust. Then my body disappointed me yet again.

The dark secret of miscarriage is the shame one assumes; my body's inability to do what it seeming was designed to do left me feeling deficient or defective and angry with its lack of cooperation.









All these stories came tumbling out of me this past weekend as I worked on my art journal spread for Earth, the first topic covered in The Elements of Art Journaling course with Effy Wild. The prompt was to consider the associations I had with the word earth and from there to look at what words or ideas expressed my experience or sense of my body. The phrase I was to consider being "My body is ..."

phase one of my journal spread ... lots of layers, paint and potato stamp

I actually cheated. While I had lots of images/thoughts about earth, I didn't think too much about my body and its connection to earth. As my page evolved it came time to take a photograph of myself to use in the spread. I had just taught my Sunday morning yoga class, so I naturally assumed a favorite pose.

After 17 years of practice, my poses have changed significantly. My body has changed and my relationship with it has softened. Where once I had been strict and disciplined, I am now more gentle and accepting. I am not interested in pushing my body as much as listening to it. As I photographed myself in Warrior I pose it struck me, my body is a map of my journey. It is my compass guiding and directing me. It has never let me down; rather, I was not listening to the wisdom it was trying to impart: open, relax, soften, trust, find contentment within this skin, within this moment, this life.

My Body is the compass for my journey ... it is my guide, my teacher, my friend ... it connects me to all Life

My body has been my best friend on this journey, putting up with a lot of my crap and abuse and still she serves me with patience and tolerance. My body is my friend; she connects me to earth, to life, to my animal nature and is the portal to deeper truths and a wisdom accessible only through living through loss and gain, pleasure and pain, birth, death and rebirth.

honoring my cycles and rhythms

Silly me ... I just can't seem to accept the fact that while Summer may conjure up notions of freedom, play, no hurries, no worries, life as spaciousness, sunshine and sleeping in that is the reality of a child - yes, my child and my childhood - but not the reality of a mother.

Not that I am complaining ... well, just a tad. I enjoy that our summer days are filled with play - the pool, bike rides, the park, getting together with friends - but it is anything but spaciousness or calm.

So I was watching this wild woman/goddess vlog about working with sacred tools, thinking I really needed to get myself a big 'ole hunk of amethyst crystal and selenite to help me find my way, when I stepped away from the computer (okay, my desk at work) only to return 15 minutes later to find a small praying mantis waiting for me upon my pile of papers.

not this fellow (I didn't have my camera that day)
I actually have an archive of praying mantis images when they previously visited me. obviously, they decided I needed a follow-up visit.

Things that make you go hmmmm?

Like, how in the world did that little guy get all the way into the building, up to the second floor and through another room to end up in my office? As he was lazily waving his arms at me, I knew he traveled the arduous path to bring me a very special message.

Find safety in stillness. Pay attention to my energy flow and how I am using it. Move according to my own rhythms, my own instincts. Most of all, cultivate patience.

floor tile from the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence

While in Italy I was taken by the personal emblem for Cosimo de Medici: a turtle with a sail. The motto Festina lente meaning "make haste slowly." This is me right now. Plodding along slowly, methodically, directed but not rushing.

week one of Elements involves making and prepping your journal.
There is still time to join (but hurry, registration closes July 15)

Last week I started Elements of Art Journaling with Effy Wild which is a 6 week course exploring our relationship with each of the natural elements: earth, air, water and fire along with the fifth element of spirit. The timing of this course couldn't be more perfect as I recognize a need to return to self-care through ayurveda (the sister science of Yoga). According to ayurveda, I am pretty much split equally between fire (Pitta) and air (Vata) the result being I need structure, order, discipline and then I crave spontaneity, change, and lots and lots of mental and visual stimulation. A true see-saw life.

i am working on the opening spread ... taking my time!

Here Mel, the full effect ... while I love my journal (little snippet from goddess leonie i love myself inside and out ) I am honoring my need to just "do it" and not sweat the details.
To see a truly breath-taking journal and read a good summary of the course, check out glitter Queen Mel's pimped out and rockin' work here.

What I am realizing is I have natural cycles or rhythms to my energy and to my interests. In the Spring I was all about writing. Now I am craving deep time with my art journal and painting. I'm sure in a few weeks I will want only to play with my camera. Rather than struggle with what I think I ought to be doing right now (keeping the skills up) I have to honor that when I am so inspired, I will return to that part of my being. What soothed me yesterday was sewing.

"what is it?" you may ask. why it is a name banner/bunting for Cowgirl

it was a lot easier to sew than to try and photograph in its entirety!

Easy to say, but hard for this monkey mind to maintain. My mind jumps in with all sorts of proclamations and judgements about what I could manage. But my spirit knows better. My need right now is earth - solidity, groundedness, centeredness - combined with the flowing, moving, cooling qualities of water. A slow stream though, not a raging river.

Speaking of which ... I do have a little project brewing that defies all these resolutions. Announcements to come soon. But as a teaser, let me just say ...






... we're coming back! This August we will be painting up some arty goodness that we will raffling off for charity! Details to follow. Painting with a Purpose, Season Two with a few juicy surprises and bonus goodies.

And with that, this turtle is seeking a light breeze to guide her on her way. Festina lente, my friends, lente.