a gift to my 46year old self

(this was from my work on the amazing Unravelling course by Susannah Conway - we have just had a week of examining and being kind to our faces which,as i seldom look in the mirror for fear of the horror that aging has wreaked on my life and general self distain evokes, was challenging and ultimately rewarding.

i write this here as a birthday present for myself

Looking at my face
26th april 2011

when i hold my own gaze i am more attracted to me

Yes i am tired and wrinkly but there is more to look at than that.

My lips are thinner than i deserve but i look better in a smile.

I have passable eyebrows

I deserve to take care of this face.

I can't hide it away, so i might as well cherish it...

treat it tenderly...

it greets the world for me so why not let it tell the world that beauty lives here?

I can smile lovingly at myself then, not withold kindness from my self as kind of honourable sacrifice.

No more.

Yes i am wrinkly and greay

AND YES, i am going to cherish every bit of beautiful i have.

(Maybe even grow some more)

i had a big shift the other day

you know the kind where you hear an audible clunk inside yourself?

it centered around my constant need to be seen

which of course is part of the reason i come here

why i read your comments obsessively

why the kindness of your words fills my thirsty heart so deeply

i have desired the experience being seen for as long as i can remember

the times when i sang with gusto out of tune, danced badly but with passion, became sick,(particularly useful in my family of origin)performed, was the class clown, all of it was my desire to be seen

and in the middle of that desire to be seen was the need to be acknowledged

to define the reality of me

which i am unsure of without hearing about it from the mouth of others....

the sense of only really being real when i am seen through the eyes of others

but the down side to this means that i can only get nourishment outside myself as well - if i need soothing, redirection, dusting off, solace - all of it has to come from outside myself to be valid too...

so with the effort i have been making to soothe myself i was checking in when i remembered - looking inside myself to find out how I felt - and validating myself and being kind to myself whatever it was that i was feeling



and then the clunk

and it felt like just being in my skin was enough

REVOLUTIONARY

AND as a consequence i feel like all i need to do here is share,

not prove

just open my heart further to my friends that come here

and just be

soothing

my journal page - with self soothing words written underneath the sleeping woman held up by a feather

I am entering a place in my life where i am opening my heart to the possibility that it might be a good thing to take care of myself.

And that to treat myself with loving kindness is a gift to all those around me.

To try the possibility that finding validation within myself is the only way that i can be living the life i was sent here to live. If i seek validation outside myself i will only be twisting my truth to suit other people's needs instead of letting it stand for itself.

And to do this, when things get rough, i need to be able to say the kind words to myself that i long to hear outside myself.

I am making an effort to notice when i am scared, when i am on alert.

i take a breath and i say the kind of things i want to hear in those moments (inside my head - i am not ready to be taken away in the white van just yet)

"It's alright sweetheart" "You are safe" "It's ok honey" "You are loved" "Just breathe through this"

The words are seldom the same but the effect is always a softening, a loosening, more energy flows through me, i don't feel the need to defend or barricade or go on the attack... i just stay with the softeness.

As i thought about this today (for an artjournal page) i looked up the word SOOTHE and it comes from the Old English word sothian which means "to show to be true"

To soothe myself takes me back to my truth, my true nature, softness, kindness and love.....

intersection

I was doodling today - circles - and more circles and i was thinking about being open

and the circles began to intersect

and i realised something...

the wider the circles the more they intersect.

lines can intersect but only in tiny places - at one point - and a circle, the wider it is the more it can connect...

And the same is true for me.

The more i remain open the more i connect;
with others
with beauty
with magic
with miracles

and yes with pain and fear

but that payoff is SO worth it

living wide open and intersecting is part of who i am

A flotilla of puriri moths - a faerie tale

After that amazing session with Andrea i have been digesting all the truth that i learned and i wrote the following faerietale to contain some of those ideas....there is something about the mythical quality of these stories that helps these truths sink into my bones.... so here goes
here is the cover i made on canvas, and i printed out the story on canvas as well

i think this is where my future lies




Once upon a time, there was a little girl whose light was so bright it radiated heat.

When people around her were cold, or when it was very dark they were pleased to have her and her light near.

But often the intensity of the light made their eyes hurt.

And often the heat made them sweaty and uncomfortable.

She began wearing layers and layers of clothes to shield the light and the heat from the others, so they didn’t feel uncomfortable.

This made her weak from heat exhaustion and smelly from the sweat.

This made her more unpleasant to be around.

And it made her sick. So sick that one day she fell into a deep, deep sleep.

And where she lay she burnt the grass. The earthworms dried out and died. And the longer she lay there, with the trapped light and the trapped heat the more she destroyed.

The animals saw what was happening but were too afraid of the smell and the air of death around her until a small black cricket said
“This must stop”.

And the courageous cricket went through the charred grass and the worm carcasses and he began to eat away at her clothing.

Slowly at first, he chewed at the seam until a faint beam of light came through.

Seeing what he was doing, other insects, cicadas and puriri moths hopped and flew to his side and began to eat through the clothing too, right through into the light. Until the rank clothing fell away.

The light and heat radiated from the form of the woman of light. The stifling pressure was gone and the woman awoke to find insects crawling from her body. She felt revulsion and fear.

As she leant forward to squash them she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the carapace of a small black cricket.

She saw herself shining for the first time in a long long time.

She felt the warmth of the light.

She felt alive.

She knew she would not hide again.

She stepped up from her steaming clothes with a flotilla of puriri moths.

She walked towards the town and the sunglasses shop because the people who want to be with her from now on just might need them.

abc creativity and closing the circle

Andrea with me in my creative space!



As i relistened i doodled on the page, writing down the words, drawing pictures of the things that seemed significant to me


the almost finished project (i put a purple circle around us later) me and my scared self - in the light and being kind to each other....


Today i want to talk about a being of light - Andrea of abc creativity -
I met her through the awesome SARK forum where she is a moderator and all round generous soul.

Last year Andrea quit her employment to live her dream and deliver her goodness to the world. When I read about what she is doing on her blog I feel like she is beaming so much light into the world that she is one of the things I think about when I need balance….

And she was kind enough to ask me to guinea pig with her for some of the work she is developing…

Via Skype, Andrea lead me through a fantastic visualisation and then offered me the chance to work with and embed the revelations from the visualisation with journaling exercises…

With Andrea, I met a part of me that is scared to live my dreams – drab little thing that she was. I realised how much she was present for me when I get triggered, feel judged, find the world out of step with me…. She allowed me to see that when I judge her and feel ashamed of her, push her away she is diminished and less and less able to breathe and more triggered next time.

All she asked for was acceptance – that she just needed soothing – talking to kindly, being noticed and she promised she would walk with me even though she was scared…

She is a dimension of vulnerability – admitting that I feel vulnerable when I am putting myself out there is staying true to myself – the very essence of living my truth.

And when Andrea offered me the compliment on my openness - I was being honoured for something that I had often seen as a fault…. then I felt like the circle was complete.

jealousy and yearning

For many years i experienced yearning and jealousy

these were the times of my life where i was constantly unsure of myself

trying to please others to feel a sense of worth

i was often filled to the eyeballs with that toxic mix of yearning and jealousy - wanting to be where i saw others standing

longing for what they possessed

or what i imagined they possessed

that yearning and jealousy poisoned me, stultified me, paralysed me.

I inadvertantly found that by taking homeopathically tiny steps in the direction of the yearning i became stronger

with each step more able to step again
and again

and now i find that i seldom feel filled with those bitter juices

and i see that all yearning and jealousy are are signposts to my heart's desires that are dirtied and obscured by lack of self worth, self confidence, vision.

navigation

the ancient volcanoes and Whangarei Habour... can you imagine sailing in here not knowing what lay in those hills?


how do you navigate through life?

do you have a map and follow it assiduously? - spending more time looking at the map than the landscape around you?

whose map is it? is it a map you inherited directly from your parents? from your mentors? from your fears? or your intuition?

does the map have something on the front - a title page? Can you close your eyes and imagine what that might be? "Freedom?" "Wisdom?" "Small?"

do you have no map?

do you walk around spontaneously taking the turns that appeal to you? seeing a good coloured roof and taking the street that looks like it heads in that direction?

do you find yourself taking turns that always lead to dark places? or into the light? or the edge of a cliff?

do you like to travel alone? or could you not dream of being without another person to compare notes with, chat to?

do you think there is the possibility of setting your own path? or is that only possible when the sea is calm?

or do you say to hell with the weather and set sail on schedule whether there is a storm brewing or not?


do you feel lost?

being vulnerable

being vulnerable has always seemed to me to be a little like a beaten dog,

rolling over, showing your weakest point,

saying here i lay myself out to you, to your power.

I am only worth being lower than you.

But i am growing to realise that when i am vulnerable and in integrity i am so deeply powerful.

Vulnerability doesn't mean relenquishing my power.

It means honouring my truth and where my weakness is as a part of the wholeness of me

It means honouring my value as a human being - even a weak, tender, flawed human being.

It means i am not surreptitiously competing with you - trying to prove i am better

It means i am allowing you the chance, offering you permission to be in your weakness and feel whole,

and in that honouring we become stronger and more loving towards ourselves,

and more compassionate towards others,

and the vulnerabilities they work so hard to hide.