I am honoured to be taking the talking stick from Licia, healer, author, facilitator, coach, artist, wife and mother, mentor and lightening rod for deep wisdom. She accesses deep wisdom in her work and is currently working on I Am My Own Daughter, a healing process that I can attest to as clean, strong and powerfully shifting.  I mean generations worth!  Licia asked me to join her in this blog hop, where women talk about Voice, about creativity and writing.  Each of us respond to 4 questions  Her wonderful post is here. And here is mine.

I begin in deep gratitude for this chance to join a group of women talking about the liberation of voice.

WHAT AM I WORKING ON?

Right now I am working on supporting my sick girl to get over a cold.  As a woman with girls on the cusp of teenage-hood I am in that realm of attending... listening to when they need me and when they need to be following their own light.  I often get that wrong.  So I am working on forgiving myself too.

I am working on being tender with myself.  I am a new shape after supporting Vicki through her death in the way I did.  I am not the same.  This is as it should be.

I am  in my other expressions of myself in the world in the final stages of preparing to pass Facing The Minotaur, the self study guide for exploring shadow self to my counsel of wise testers.  It has been 2 years in the gestation and is a culmination of self healing- tending to my own shadow lovingly, learning and stumbling, getting back up and trying again- and gathering the wisdom of others.  I am, for the first time working with a graphic designer who is making it look as beautiful as it feels to me.  I am putting it into the world with no buts, no loopholes for making it small.  It is something I am immensely proud of.

My other work is for my exhibition "From the Shadow" which opens next week (!)  Following the theme of my work the exhibition is a celebration of shadow and my discoveries.  It is another chance to back my voice in the world.  A huge leap of faith in myself and another vote for my bigger self.

HOW DOES MY WORK DIFFER FROM OTHERS IN ITS GENRE?

Honestly I can only answer that by saying I am listening to the Voice that guides me.  "Yes that."  "Not that."  "Now."  "Not now."  By attending to that, Listening, and then acting, I am making an expression of what is true for me and delivering that out into the world.  And because there is one  me I guess the more true I can be to my expression the more unique I am.  I would also like to honour how because we are all trying our best, in one way or another to do that expression of the instruction we receive and we all receive instruction from the same place, there is a thread of truth that is universal.  It may look a little different through the lens each of us is given but truly we are all just singing the same song in a different voice.




WHY DO I WRITE WHAT I DO?

I write because I have come to trust that when we honour our own voice and speak up there will always be someone nourished by what we say.  I have found such solace in the offering of others, in the truth as expressed as clearly and straight from the heart as can be mustered that I feel an obrigado (a word gifted to us in Mysterium by Dr Estes) and obligation to turn up as true as I can in the world.  Obrigado, as offered by Dr E, is about how we all come from the Divine and making it into life is a miracle all on its own.  The trials and pitfalls are many.  And yet here we are.  We are obliged to be as true as we can be in our expression of who we are and how the Divine need to express through us.  So short answer.  I write because I am in obrigado.  I am paying my dues  for making it here.




HOW DOES MY WRITING PROCESS WORK?

I turn up.  I write like hell.  Words usually clatter in like a herd of goats at a narrow gate.  All clever.  All looking for some way through.  Some leaping over others in their haste to get out in the world.  All making noise.  Many out of right order.  So really my writing is a process of soothing and sorting clever goats. Sometimes I often have to go over and over the herd.  Sometimes they come out just as they are meant to.  I recognise that the words often have very little to do with me and a lot to do with my obrigado.  I often just have to get out of the way. 



More about me.

I am a conduit for Love and a creativity activist.  I am deeply connected to life through the land I live in.   I am a storyteller an artist, a teacher of women's soul work.  I practise turning up bravely every day.




I now pass the talking stick to Meghan Genge.  Meghan Genge is a storyteller, a teacher and author of the novel, Unfurl. After learning very early how precious life is, she started a journey that involved many leaps of faith and a firm belief in magic. She has taught in classrooms, lecture halls and beside campfires, and now knows for sure that the most powerful way to reach the soul is by telling it a story.

Meg's post is here.  Meg is my heart's sister and someone I trust and admire deeply.  She has just released the amazing book "Unfurl" which I could fangirl about till the cows come home.  Read it.  I mean it.  It is truly one of those books you want all your friends to read.  And your non-friends too.  I love her so.

This should start with a confession.

I am a recovering martyr.  I have martyr archetype deep in my cells.  It bleeds a little but i won't complain.

I have been trying to meet this in me.  Trying to resist the cell-deep urge to refuse all but the opportunity to be the giver.

It made me pious.  Hard to live with.  

Wise women like Chris Zydel  encouraged me to see receiving in a whole new light.  Here is her beautiful talk that inspired me so...

Receiving as a wisdom, as a gift.  As an integral part of the flow.

The life death life cycle.

Oh it seemed all very well theoretically but when my beloved Vicki was dying i got to see the gift of it in action.

Vicki was working hard out to finish her Winston Churchill Fellowship paper on sexual abuse perpetrated against women with disabilities.   It is a huge largely unseen problem in our community the world over.  Vicki's legacy includes her raising this issue kindly and cogently.  She proposed strategies and a pathway out of this particular darkness.  She finished it the week of her death.

And i am proud to say she asked me to paint the picture (below) to accompany it.

Her asking was a gesture of love.  A connection.  A gesture of faith in me.  A gesture of her unique perspective, her creativity.

I was so thrilled to tautoko her and her work in this way - it really was a gift to say yes.  And a gift to be the conduit for the creative force that made the painiting so effortless... i truly had to keep up with it...  I made it with love.  So glad to reach out to this woman who lived too far away.

She did not tell me how sick she was.  Her second to last email specifically said "I am not dying yet!"  and i believed her.

But knowing it was coming sometime she also made another request that i want to talk about here - she gave her family the gift of asking for the death she wanted.  The funeral she wanted.

Always putting that end off though, because she had too damned much to do, to die.  Children and grandchildren to love, an entire human service to organise, a husband to adore, friends to laugh with... so much to do.

In the scheme of asking - asking for a painting from a friend finding her feet as an artist and for the kind of send off you want don't seem very big.  I am not that well versed in the art of asking, but those two things seem pretty small.

From my view point as a learner it seems that the quality of the request has something to do with the outcome.  Clean and loving seem important.  Without agenda or greed seem important.  Asking for what you need.  That seems crucial.  

And here is the gift part.

Having received the ask (and i guess that is where receiving starts, or maybe it is before that, when we acknowledge our own needs, receive that inside ourselves perhaps.) those of us who were the recipients could set about saying yes, taking the action required.

It gave us a pathway.
It gave us comfort knowing we were doing what she wanted.  No mucking around prevaricating or second guessing.  We could take action and lovingly carry the requests out knowing we were doing her work. 

We were held up through hard intense stuff by that.

We were held up through the sorrow of the loss by that.

Knowing that our actions were honouring her made that abyss-time easier because it was enfolding us in her wishes.

As for the art, which i am sad to say she only saw in the photo because death snuck up on her, the gift to me was immense.

Because i live away from Vicki and our connection began many years ago there are people in her life whom i don't know.   To m many, I was a stranger in one of life's most intimate times.  But people greeted me like family because of the joy the painting had given Vicki.  They felt that the painting had articulated a piece of who Vicki was and they were grateful i had honoured her.  I had no idea she would show so many people.  I made it for her.  But she received it so lovingly it became much more than a gift between the two of us.  The gift of her asking me and finding me a way to encapsulate my love and admiration was received in a way that meant i could in turn, receive so much more.  She honoured me by receiving my response in that generous way.

By asking for the painting she gave me the chance to give her a heart-felt expression of the Deep Rooted Love and gratitude for all that she was.  She gave me a chance to capture my love for her in a moment, perhaps allowing some of the gratitude floating around out there in the world to move through the brush onto the canvas and meet her eyes and her heart.

She gave me a point of connection, a doorway into her life in the tenderest of times.  She gave me the chance to see that even without being a heroine of her proportions i can be someone who, through her heart's work, can make a difference.

The gift of the clean ask.
The gift of the the honoured receive.

I am going to practice now.  Ask for what i want.  Receive generously.  Give generously.  And always remember love is in both the giving and the receiving.

Yesterday she went home.  She didn't really want to go - she had so much to do, her family to love, her work to continue. God knows how, but cancer's will was stronger than hers.  I can't credit that.  That little picture there is one page of my art journaling about her... where i made a prayer that cancer would leave her body.  I suppose it did but it took her with it.

When she died she was surrounded by love.  Literally.  Her children and her husband and some friends, including me, in the room with her all honoring her.  Telling her they love her.  Telling them how good she was.  How it was ok.  Only the last one was kind of a lie. None of them having to gloss over anything unsavoury in order to make themselves feel better, just able to say, because of who she was and how she lived her life, that she was loved.  Her family in the lounge and the kitchen.  All there honoring her.  Talking about her childhood, and her quirks and her achievements.


Simon, her husband and best friend was talking about making a business card for her with all her achievements on it. We were joking about how he would have to ditch the card, there was not font small enough.  It would have to be a concertina affair.  Or just a scroll.  Hours before she died she was awarded her Winston Churchill Fellowship for her project on women with disabilities and sexual abuse.  She handed it in last week.  She was still at work this week.


i was so honored that she asked me to paint a cover painting for her Fellowship paper. This is the painting - i delivered it to her yesterday and was so glad to hear how she loved it.  That is her in the middle... maybe she looks a bit resolute but there was a steely determination that she walked in the world with... she was able to imagine possibilities where others saw problems and then do something about it.  Visionary and hard working. 

i don't want this to be a eulogy really because i want to focus on the parts of Vicki that will live on.  And although her work is part of it what is really the truth of it is love.  She will live on in the love she invested in others  She will help drive our choices because she always made good ones and helped us see we can to.  She will live on in the giggling laughter that she spread everywhere she went and the dignity she gave others because of how she saw them  

And it seems i am in eulogy territory again.

It is impossible to not start on about all she did because it was inextricably linked to who she was.  Her accolades weren't gathered for her glory although she was rightfully proud of them.  They were gathered with her sense of mission.  Her zeal.  My husband said, as he was driving to the airport to drop me off for the exorbitantly expensive flight, that Vicki was like a saint.  Had that kind of otherworldly slightly out of the ordinary drive that seems to inhabit the work of people who do those extraordinary things.  Her heroines were Suzanne Aubert, Mother Theresa, Therese of Avila and all i can imagine is that those women will be scooting over on the couch about now.  There is a place for her in their company.

They just better prepare to be shook up.  Questioned.  Maybe organised.

And meanwhile down here, the echo of her is ringing out.  It is strong in her children whom she truly treasured.  It is strong in her friends. In her colleagues.   A legacy of Love.

Hers is the kind of echo that will never go away.  She made a strong enough ring of her bell to ensure that never happens. 

 

i have big news.

I am having my first solo exhibition in two weeks.  It is very spur of the moment, They had a gap and so i got brave and said "can i have that space?" 

This is bloody nerve wracking because although i have long wanted to stand up and offer my work out to the world in this way.... well it requires me to stand up and offer my work out into the world in that way!

I mean little peices of my soul will be up there on the wall to be judged and dissected.

That is part of what an exhibition is about.

But it is more than that - it is a chance to stand up. To back myself.  To stop imagining what it might feel like and actually do it.

Yes i don't have a huge body of work.  Yes i could be better prepared.  Yes ideally i would have done other things.

But the chance doesn't feel coincidental.

I have been making art around the theme of shadow for some time now.  The work i am doing with my beautiful, soon to be born self study course has been rich and fertile soil for all kinds of soul seeds.

So the theme for the exhibition, which is called "From the Shadow" was there.  A technique i learnt with the wonderful Judy Wise just made me gasp when i saw the possibilities and i began to play with the idea a while before the chance came up.

And there you have it.

What seems to be the crucial componants of making magic in my world.  Listening, playing, leaping.

I listened to the inspiration my soul work was feeding me, i played around with some ideas and when the chance came i leapt.

Listen
Play.
Leap.

This morning i had my 6th art journalling workshop here in my hometown.  (Which was another listen play leap experience, but a whole other story.)

We were working on our theme (from Dr Estes' list of how wolves live their lives) of "Cavil* in the Moonlight"  Very appropriate given the massive moon that has been stirring my pot, and the family bickering.

Each of us in the circle had ideas about Cavilling and yet our work could not have been different. some of us saw the layers and how deep a tiny bicker can dig, there were paintings of layers, of pecking birds, of aging backwards and forwards through time.

When we took the time to turn up for ourselves to the creative process magic happened.  We listened to the theme, listened to what wanted to happen, we played with our tools and what turned up, and we could leap into a new way of framing things, of seeing what in the beginning had been troublesome.

LISTEN
PLAY 
LEAP.

I would love to hear your listen, play, leap stories.

I just listened to an idea... how about you play with me by writing a listen, play, leap story from your own life in the comments and i will draw someone to do an ogham or Patupaiarehe reading for.

I have been working with boundaries a lot lately.    In my dream work.  In my family relationships, in my internal world.  

Boundaries... the idea used to be loaded with the idea of fear and anger and hurt.  I saw boundaries as things that were prickly and excluding.  I had grown up learning that boundaries equated to selfishness.  That giving and all accepting was the only way to win approval and yet  I wanted to be warm generous and connecting.  Boundaries felt like the antithesis of where i wanted to place myself in the world.

And yet i found myself over giving, tired, resentful and going down dead ends in terms of what i did with my precious time.

So i began to learn.  Watching friends who are clear, well boundaried and still kind.  Learning from wise teachers like  Pixie Campbell here and Randi Buckley here.  


Now i see that boundaries are the part of my life that are leading to the most growth.  Allowing me to flourish in the spaces that I want to.  To shut down the things i least want. 

My sense of boundaries have expanded what i think i am capable of.  I can choose what I want. 

I see them as a kindness and an act of generosity because it means i am truly who i am in the world.  With this clarity   People can choose to be with me in that or not.  That is their choice.  Not a meanness because they don't waste their time either.

I was up in the early hours of the morning thinking about how much of my time has been spent seeking others to maintain my boundaries.  How i let others decide the meaning of my life.

How i felt responsible for the feelings of others.  How hard it became when I was looking for good things to be injected by others because without boundaries i was not equipped to offer them to myself.  How what it took was to have the boundaries and loyalty to self that ensure i had the conditions i required to step up for the life that i most wanted.

I was dabbling my feet in the awareness of how much time i had spent there... butting up against the glass of not being alive to my own need... seeing it on the other side of that glass, just there... if only it was given to me.

And what i was told by the deeper truth that arrived in my heart this morning was 

"If you want milk don't go looking in the hen house."

If the milk of life is what i want i have been looking for it in the wrong place.   The Hen house.   Where the hens who want to scratch up grubs live.  Nothing wrong with grubs or living in a hen house but if you want milk the hen-house is the wrong place to go.  In this metaphoric hen house, other people get to choose what it is that lights up my life.  

Deciding what you want can be hard enough in the world when you have learnt about being undeserving and unworthy.
But if you get as far as deciding you want milk and you keep yourself in the hen-house then you are always going to be disappointed.

I needed boundaries to ensure i could hone the use of my time.  I needed to say a clear yes and a clear no.  I needed to turn my attention to that which helped me get to where the milk is.

I want more than that.  I want to gather up the truth of my heart and keep it safe, not keep trotting it to the hen house for approval.  

I want that milk and I am hot on its trail.

"shadow is a bitch" a dear heart said

my response was "shadow is my best friend"

Shadow holds all of the things we wish to disown.  The ugly the unsightly the mean the rejected the magnificent.

All that hides in the shadow is overflowing with energy - vigorous, alive.

Reaching into that knowing full well that the things that lurk there will take us out of our shiny self image and into a guts and blood and shit realm is scary.  Scary that we may be faced with the fact that we are not all good all nice all sweet as we are so rigidly required to be by the society we live in.

it is not for the faint of heart

or maybe it is

because what lurks in the shadow is heart strengthening.  Claiming shadow makes us strong and whole.  It helps us repatriate the parts of ourselves and our lineage that have been orphaned and that weaken us by scratching at our door in the middle of the night.  Groaning to come in.

I am working on a self study course with phone calls for people who are ready, really ready, to meet with shadow and learn about the wholeness of you.  This is the culmination of a couple of years learning and wrestling with and dancing with shadow.  Being scared.  Being sick of running.  Learning to turn up.  It is beautiful and whole making and i am really proud of the gift of this.
  
If you are interested in this then email me here.  It has been one of the best learnings of my life