morethingsithink

a little moving notice

2011-12-04T08:49:00.001+13:00

i love this place

i love the connection it provides me to hearts that speak like mine

but i want to make a space where all of my heart's offerings are gathered together - where i can blog and show my art and have conversations with people who make my world a better place

will you come and see?

http://www.seedsofthenuminous.com/blog.html

Louises' musings on self care at this time of year

2011-11-25T10:18:00.001+13:00

The wonderful Karen from SquarePegReflections graciously invited me to write a post in a round robin blog thingy

(i have the technical jargon down pat now don't i?)

I agreed for three reasons -
one i think Karen is awesome - she is an openhearted thinker with a way of noticing and commenting on the world which is kind, funny and insightful
two - she is a fellow Louise
three - the holidays are hard

so here goes

holidays are hard from my perspective because they are piled high with shoulds

and when i looked in my personal luggage (not matching but immense) around the holidays, i found the following...we should be happy, we should have lots of family, the family should get along, there should be rosy faces around the table looking lovingly at each other, i should buy the perfect presents, cook the perfect meal (which is tastier and better than everyone elses), wear the perfect outfit, have the perfect weather...

you get the picture...

turns out, that instead of a time of celebration and joy my actual perspective of the holidays is more perfect and more shoulds than any other time of the year...

and who pushes my buttons and triggers my tender parts??? ... that's right, the delicious combination of my family of origin and my husband's family of origin... just who i get to spend time with then!

bad recipie

in fact as i write this i can feel that tightness rise in my stomach and my mouth and nether regions (by which i mean my bum hole) clench

but when i breathe a little and look inside myself with that magical headlamp of stillness

i see little me

that little Jane who really wants to be a good girl, which means, of course not being the best Jane she can be but pleasing everyone else...

it is little Jane who wants the validation from everyone else, that what she does is perfect, so that she can be content that she is on the right track, that she is worth something...

and so knowing that, instead of more presents and more salads and more happy

this holidays i will be listening to my clenchings (just be grateful i didn't call this post listening to my bumhole- i am sorely tempted)

and when i feel the tightenings i will take a breath and say (sometimes it needs to be out loud but i suggest going to the toilet to do this - there are mental health professionals in my family that might see the need to act....)

"Honey, it's ok. You are doing fine. We are going to look after each other ok? You are safe with me. You are doing great today. You are perfect just as you are honey. What are you grateful for right now?" (and i will probably be smart enough to say having some time out from that lot, but still)

I will be realigning with myself, with that scared little girl who lives inside my tender heart, who just wants to make everything alright (to a bunch of people that crone me knows are unpleasable)

I will be showing her the deepest kindness and reassurance, acknowledging her existence and welcoming her into my arms for a reassuring hug for a moment or two when she is scared and feeling under attack...

that is what self care looks like to me...

and i hope you make the gift to yourself this holidays of practising, as my dear mollie would say "Extreme Self Care".

The Red Robed Priestess

2011-11-17T11:47:00.001+13:00

THE RED ROBED PRIESTESS…

INTERVIEW WITH ELIZABETH CUNNINGHAM

Elizabeth, whom I refer to as LL LFC (long lost long found cousin) is resident at High Valley Farm in New York State. She is a writer, a poet, a counsellor and a singer. She is also a most gracious stalkee!

I happened on Elizabeth in a moment of vanity. “Oh an author named Cunningham? She is bound to be good”. That moment changed my life. The Maeve Chronicles are the only books which I have read more than twice (4th time and counting). I have become close to evangelical about recommending these books everywhere I go!

The books chronicle the life of the glorious Maeve, a feisty redhead Celt who is the Magdalen and twin soul to Jesus. In allowing Maeve a voice in these four books, Elizabeth has bought to life and archetype of he wild feminine so sorely missing in our 21st century world.

Maeve is feisty, sexy, irreverent, powerful and flawed. And for those of us hungry for another dimension to what it is to be woman, Maeve is deep nourishment for the soul.

As part of the celebration of the release of the Red Robed Priestess, the last book in the Maeve Chronicles, Elizabeth kindly offered me the chance to read and review it here.

In the Red Robed Priestess, Elizabeth brings Maeve back to Pretannia. Back to meet her long lost child. Back to face those who punished her. Back to her home.

Of course I leapt on the chance Elizabeth offered. But when this beautiful book arrived, I felt trepidation. Knowing this was the last book with Maeve meant saying goodbye and that was difficult to do.

To quote the Red Robed Priestess;

“It is strange to know when a goodbye is final. It is a gift.”

Here is my interview with Elizabeth

Thank you Elizabeth for offering me this chance – to read the Red Robed Priestess and review it here.

What is your favourite part of the book?

First, thank you dear LL LF cousin for embracing that moment of entirely sensible vanity and for being the sweetest, most supportive stalker an author could have. Every writer should be so lucky! And as I am sure everyone here knows, Jane is a brilliant artist, writer, and human being. So do stalk her!

Oddly enough I think one of my favourite parts in the final battle scene, which I so dreaded writing. I like it not because of the blood and guts but because of the between-the-worlds way Maeve experiences the battle, how she sees and feels it from every point of view.

I also enjoyed her time on Mona (Anglesey) the Druid Isle with friends she has not seen since they were teenagers. Those friends, once first formers, are now venerable druids, and yet still the same people. That is one of the gifts of writing from the perspective of someone older.

This might be a good place to say that though I wrote Maeve’s story chronologically, the novels can be read in any order. I worked hard to make sure that each novel can stand alone. The last can be first and the first last!

Maeve has taken part of my heart. In the Red Robed Priestess, as in all of the Maeve Chronicles, Maeve is a flawed but honest heroine. What do you think it is about Maeve that means people connect with her so deeply?

First, I have to tell you (with a smile) that when people refer to Maeve as a flawed heroine, as more than one person has, she says, “Flaws? What flaws!” Which may, in fact, be one of her flaws. She is self-confident to a fault. I suspect people connect with her because Maeve is not seeking perfection or enlightenment or some pure spiritual state. She is real; she is passionate. She loves hard and forgives easily. She does not expect perfection from others, either—which is why she can love someone like Paulina, the spoiled woman who enslaves her in The Passion of Mary Magdalen. She can also fight with people she adores, as she does with Jesus, and insist on the same emotional honesty she offers. For someone like me, who from childhood understood God to be demanding impossible moral perfection, Maeve is a breath of fresh air, a bracing, down-to-earth, liberating friend.

In this book Maeve returns to her home in Britain. You write as though the mountains of England are made of your bones. Was there a sense of home coming when you travelled there to research the book?

The British Isles have always seemed familiar and home-like to me. Most of my ancestors came from there, and the clergy line not so long ago. Also I was an English major and was raised on children’s stories by authors like the Anglo-Irish CS Lewis and English E Nesbit. Of course at one time I read all of Agatha Christie’s and Dorothy Sayer’s mystery novels. Onsite research has been important for all the novels. How else would I have known that there is mica in the rocks and soil surrounding the Virgin Mary’s house in Ephesus? For Magdalen Rising and Red-Robed Priestess, Dwynwyn’s Isle, a real place, was something I only could have discovered on foot.

In the preface you say “There were times when I sorely wished I had not entwined Maeve’s life with Boudica’s, for this story has demanded that I stretch my imagination and heart beyond where I thought I could” What were the challenges of writing about an historical figure like Boudica.

It was challenging to write about Boudica not because she is a historical figure but because her story is so tragic. It involves war and atrocity—atrocities committed not only by the Romans but by Boudica herself. More than Maeve, Boudica is a flawed and tragic heroine. I had to depict her courage and charisma as well as the unhealed wounds that drove her sometimes to near madness.

In the Red Robed Priestess, Maeve talks about the compression of time being dizzying. Maeve’s life is set in the time of Christ and this book is set in Roman Britain, can you talk about how you manage to take us there so convincingly?

Maeve speaks both from her own time and beyond time. We, her twenty-first century readers, are her long-awaited audience. She knows what would be familiar and what would be strange to us, when to explain something and when to evoke memories that live in our cells.

The above makes it sound as though the book is channelled, and it is not. My relationship with Maeve is a partnership, and I work hard at my craft. Throughout the writing, I was daunted by the idea of depicting the first century, including all sorts of things I have never experienced firsthand—like battle! I did a lot of research, scholarly and onsite. In the end, it is the power of the imagination that amazes me, that is a mystery. Because I am human and Maeve is human, I can enter into her perspective. What I don’t know she can tell me, my imagination can tell me. We all know more and less than we think we do.

Maeve is challenged, in the Red Robed Priestess, by the “truth”, a story being true if it is well told and the truth setting us free. What did these books teach you about the truth?

Questions about the nature of truth run through all The Maeve Chronicles. In Magdalen Rising, Maeve’s eight mothers, who originate the saying “a story is true if it’s well told,” spin wonderful tales about Maeve’s mythic paternity. It does not trouble them or Maeve that there is no one literal version. She has an innate grasp of poetic truth. As it turns out, Maeve’s mothers are also spin masters. There is a not-so-pretty truth about her father that they obscure. Later Maeve stumbles upon that truth, and it nearly destroys her and indeed sets in motion a chain of events that culminates in Red-Robed Priestess.

Of course Maeve falls in love with someone who mystifies her with his belief in one God, one Story, one Truth. Just before his death, Jesus proclaims: “I came into the world to bear witness to the truth, and all who are on the side of truth heed my voice.”

In Bright Dark Madonna, Maeve makes a deal with Peter, accepting that her own truth will be edited from Jesus’s story in exchange for keeping her child (whom the apostles are determined to take/save from her). When she later tells Jesus’s story and her own story to their daughter she edits out some of the harsher aspects, and later comes to grief for these omissions.

In Red-Robed Priestess, the now adult daughter of Maeve and Jesus challenges her mother just before her reunion with Boudica, “Are you going to tell her the truth or one of your stories?”

In terms of what I learned in the writing, I would have to say, I am on the side of truthfulness and equally on the side of truth expressed through story. Some fundamentalists once asked me if I felt guilty for writing fiction about what they considered to be Biblical truth. I answered, “There are four Gospels, each different from the others, one dramatically so, written with different intent to reach different communities. They are more like novels and histories.” Needless to say, that answer did not go over well, but I stand by it. Even when we are not writing fiction, when we are conveying what we consider to be fact, we are ordering those facts, shaping a narrative. It is inevitable. It is human. To be truthful, we need to be humble, to admit that we don’t know the truth is some abstract or absolute way. Our best check and balance is rigorous truthfulness with ourselves.

In the Red Robed Priestess, Maeve and her two daughters are explored as strong multilayered women. Do you feel their appearance in your imagination, and then into the book is linked the rise of feminine wisdom in the western world?

There have always been strong, complex female figures in literature as there have always been strong, multi-layered women. But only comparatively recently (in western literature) have women had the means to create and define those characters themselves, to write the story in their voice, from their point of view. In spite of the success of Jane Austen a generation or so earlier, the Bronte sisters published under male pseudonyms. That’s less than two hundred ago!

In our lifetime, we have witnessed the reawakening of longing for and celebration of the divine feminine. That longing woke in me before I knew there was any sort of a movement. I wrote about the spontaneous re-emergence of the goddess in my novel Return of the Goddess, a Divine Comedy. Writing that novel connected me with others on the same path. After a few years of exploration, I found I was missing an incarnate human goddess. I did not see why Jesus should be the only deity with beautiful bare (and sometimes quite dusty) feet. So Maeve came into my life, fleshy, sexy, multi-layered flawed heroine that she is. I believe we are all mediators of the divine and human, and so Maeve’s daughters and the other characters in the book are also complex and nuanced.

The Red Robed Priestess talks about completion of circles and the falling away of the old ways. Do you see that pattern being played out in our world today?

The Celts of Maeve’s time were gifted poets, artists, and warriors. They also participated in a trade system—though Roman writers of the time liked to depict them as noble (or bloodthirsty, depending) savages. Sound familiar? They had a tribal, de-centralized system, and a sophisticated legal system, but it was all in the oral tradition. Druids were the keepers of the culture, holding libraries of law, genealogy, history, and literature in their heads—as do people in some cultures today. But the Romans, whose system of law and whose penchant for empire is much more like the western powers of our time, indeed is one of the models for empire, saw the Celts and other tribal peoples as primitive. They wanted to access to the resources of the Celtic, Germanic and other tribal peoples and saw themselves as bestowing the benefits of Roman rule and civilization (plumbing and central government). They called it the Pax Romana. Today the United States prides itself on bringing democracy to countries we essentially occupy and whose cultures we undermine. It is essentially the same story. Before the United States became a “super power” it was the British and other European countries going around destroying native cultures, establishing colonies, controlling natural resources.

The poem you wrote in the back of the Red Robed Priestess speaks about Maeve not forsaking you. Your words struck a deep chord with me. I had to ready myself to read this book knowing I was going to have to say farewell Maeve. Do you have any advice for other readers in this boat.

I know it will be wrenching to come to the end of Maeve’s story. Have tissue ready. That said, Maeve will always be with you. (I know she gets irritated when Jesus says that to her, but it is true.) Not only can you re-read her stories as often as you like, but you can talk to her. People do. She talks back. Her voice is so distinctive, you will recognize it, and she has a refreshing way of cutting through platitudes and piety to get to the real, raw heart of the matter. She is your friend.

You have a unique relationship with Maeve – she inhabits your life as more than a fictional character. Can you talk a little about how she connects to you day to day?

Maeve is still there for me in just the way I describe above. I can and do talk to her, especially when I am wakeful in the middle of the night. I hear more than see her and sometimes she holds my hand or holds me.

What I miss terribly is the daily, yearly, decades long writing of the story. For more than a third of my life, whenever I’d be taking a shower or a walk or lying in bed before getting up, I would be thinking of the next scene, working out plot problems. Some solutions came to me in dreams. I lived inside the story, I had a complete other life, and I miss that life and partnership more than I can say. I am just beginning to emerge from a long time grieving, just beginning to lift up my head, look around and wonder what might be the next adventure. Whatever it is, I am so grateful for the adventure of writing Maeve’s story. And it means the world to me that she has become real to other people.

Thank you again to Jane for being such a good friend to Maeve and to me.

I am deeply honoured to bring you this interview and urge you to beg, borrow but preferably not steal, (Elizabeth deserves all the royalties she gets!) Maeve into your life. You will not regret it!

Please visit Elizabeth at http://passionofmarymagdalen.com/ and find out more about her, the Maeve Chronicles, her other work here or High Valley http://www.highvalley.org/ or the blog she and Maeve write http://elizabethandmaeve.blogspot.com/ or follow her on twitter @EliznMaeve. Elizabeth has an FB fan page created by her sister Ruth Cunningham (another cousin) http://www.facebook.com/pages/Elizabeth-Cunningham/137518912968862 And Maeve now has her own page as well http://www.facebook.com/people/Maeve-Rhuad/100002343434468 (I am a very thorough stalker as you can see).

the gift of the ordinary

2011-11-14T13:56:00.001+13:00

(see - even this mangroves next to a stream is beautiful - i can see the sky and the sea and land and living all in one tiny glimpse of a dirty creek...)

Hi lovely one,
sorry i have been away so long - it seems i am incubating and i am unable to leave the nest for long....

i wanted to write about the gift of the ordinary, because as i spend more and more time at home i realise how friggin amazing ordinary is

For most of my 46 years i have craved to be noticed, be extraordinary, be seen as special

better than

more than

i wanted to travel to exotic and interesting places, achieve amazing and extraordinary things...

i bought lock stock and two smoking barrels into that "dream big be more don't settle" that we are all exhorted with.

i could not be worth anything unless i achieved remarkable things

and as i hit midlife i felt ashamed of the fact that at that mid point of this life i had two children and an ordinary marriage and ordinary struggles and ordinary occupations

i was frumpy

i felt like i was missing this huge extraordinary life that i had imagined

i was resentful as all hell

i was unhappy

somehow i felt like i had let the world, the Universe, God and all the saints down...

Nothing to tell St Peter

nothing to eulogise

i felt bereft

and i wallowed there for some time...

then ploddingly i began to do the things that called me

then as the girls got older and my life became less of a round of cleaning and feeding i did more

and more

i started to record gratitude (and some days my lists were as mingey as being able to breathe and having spectacles so i could see, and the car starting)

but it helped me notice that actually these things were gifts

spectacular gifts - i didn't have to compare myself to an Ethopian orphan (because God knows when i go down that path i just end up with more self loathing i mean here i am in a clean house with a family and cupboards full of food...)

i have worked with some people with disabilities in situations that make the Ethopian orphans look fortunate... one man, Henry, was his happiest when we was outside, he was deaf and had no commmunication but when you took him outside and he turned his face gently this way and that, recieving the gentle touch of the wind on his skin with such grace, well it just made my heart explode...

but that i could see was a bloody gift, that i had a car and that meant i could go to the big trees and just sit for a while that was a bloody gift

and soon i began to see that the washing basket and the way it is woven is an amazing art work,

the way she slips her hand into mine as we walk to the supermarket is a benediction

the way the kitten calls to me with her chirrup to find where i am is grace...

Brene Brown spoke about research that asked bereved people what they most missed - it wasn't graduation day pride, or marriage ceremony elation - it was the kid fighting with his brother in the next room, or the towels left on the floor...

oh make no mistake - i still hate cleaning the fridge or the floor or....

but i don't feel like my life is wasted because i allow the green out my window and the fact i can poo everyday and the food in my cupboard and that i can touch my toes count for something...

i think it makes me count the moments i am living rather than regret the ideas i once had of bbeing the only worth ones...

the most remarkable people i have known are those who are kind and loving and generous - not the captains of industry or the heroic adventurers but the other ones... ordinary ones who were ALIVE ......

learning to trust

2011-10-10T16:25:00.000+13:00

if there is a force that is magical enough to make cinerarias then what the hell can it do with me!

I have been thinking about trust since i unleashed Reframing Your Story onto the world

It has been graciously recieved

and then my first call was looming

and i really wanted to say to the world that it was all a big mistake and that everyone could go home because nothing was happening here...

i was totally out of trust

then i went to my friends at the amazing SARK Forum (seriously if you are not there it is a garden of goodness)

and my friends trusted me for long enough that i began to remember what that felt like

and the speed wobbles went away

you see i had all this pressure on myself that i would have to produce this magic

that i would have to be on

that i would have to be perfect at it

and i realise that is not what it is at all

i just have to be clear

and i just have to trust that it will come

a very bill durham thing to say (the feild of dreams - a movie well worth watching!)

that i just have to turn up with my eyes and my ears and my heart wide open

and i did

and magic happened

today i got another client (my third WOOO HOOO!!!) and this woman is a bonafide miracle worker and i got all intimidated by reading her website

but i just have to sit back in the place of trust

because the more i stand aside - get out of my own bloody way - the more magic is free to come

and the more i get to enjoy the ride

2011-10-07T08:38:00.002+13:00

Well, i unleashed my dream onto an unsuspecting planet

and it was so well recieved

- thank you, my friends!

And now i have MY FIRST PAYING CLIENT!!!!!

AND A COMMISSION!!!!!

AND I AM SHITTING MYSELF!

Truely all the gremlins, the inner demons, the Resistance, the inner complexes, the negativity...

they have all banded together and they are doing the haka at the door to my heart...

it is the Rugby world cup of mean here

will the magic come?

will i be guided?

who am i to do this, to take someone's precious and often wounded story and make it into something beautiful enough to sustain them?

who do i think i am?

Well i am Jane.

I am a 46 year old who is on the right track

and i have been whispered this far down the path

i am trusting the whispers will keep coming...

so my heart does a pukana

and it readies itself for saturday morning when i make my first call

aue aue aue ha!

the girl effect

2011-10-05T07:58:00.000+13:00

i am joining in the blog-o-sphere's campaign to raise awareness about the girl effect

if girls are supported to make a difference in their world they can change the world

Girls like Sunchita can help their families. This means a change in a girl's life helps a boy, like Sunchita is helping her brother. It helps her parents, they don't have to commit to such labour intensive work in their aging years.

Girls like Sunchita lift their communities out of poverty and the break the cycle of disadvantage.

Girls like Sunchita could be the ones to shift paradigms, to provoke change, to allieviate suffering.

If Girls like Sunchita go on to have families they will empower their children to live under different thought patterns, they will change the world their children grow up in. They will change the world.

Our family sponsor a girl, Lipi,who like Sunchita, lives in Bangladesh.

We chose her as a child to sponsor because she was the same age as our eldest child, Eila. Eila is now in year 6, her final year at primary school and will be going to Intermediate next year. She is acheiving in all areas of her schooling above her age group. She is a strong healthy girl.

Lipi on the other hand is in year 3 at her school... She has to collect water and help with the stock and this gets in the way of her schooling. She is small and thin.

As Eila is advantaged by growing up where she has the priviledges she does, Lipi is disadvantaged purely by where she was born

Interestingly after i had written the bulk of this blog post i recieved a progress letter from Lipi. She is connected by World Vision to us... but she is connected by being a young woman, growing into a world of uncertainty and change, just as my girls are. But with the gift of knowledge and mastery of the written word and mathematics Eila's possibilities are so much wider.

Is this fair?
Is this right?
Is this appropriate?

No.
No
No

But it is what it is..

If Sunchita can be a role model, girls like Lipi may see another way and be able to reach for that path.

Please support the girl effect by blogging about it follow this link to make that happen or

STEPPING INTO MY DREAM... THE BIG REVEAL

2011-10-03T08:05:00.000+13:00

Earlier this year i did an amazing course with Andrea of ABCCreativity called "THE CREATIVE DREAM INCUBATOR"

Andrea lead a group of us on an adventure into dreaming past our boundaries and i found that i had a dream i did not even know i had

And i am proud to announce it here to you my friends

It is called Reframing your Story.

Reframing is a technique used to help people reimagine their story.

I am a deep believer in the power of story - the power of story to harm, to heal, to light the way through the darkness.

To see another possibility in the story we tell ourselves over and over, until we believe it is true.

Some of those stories are invented by other people.

Some of those stories no longer serve us.

Reframing your Story is my offering to the world.

It combines art, faery tale and story. 3 of my great loves...

I have created this website where all who are tired of the story they tell themselves can come.

The way it works is we make contact, you tell me the story you want to change and depending on the option you choose...

i will make up a new story for you and produce an artwork on the theme of your new story ...

SO TO CELEBRATE PLEASE GO TO THE GIVEAWAYS AND OTHER MAGIC part of the website (It is under more... but please have a look around - it is a faerietale inspired playground !!!!) , tell me why you would like to reframe your story and leave a contact email and i will choose a winner on the 25th of October -

please tell your friends and increase your good karma!

and thank you for supporting me to be brave enough to do this....

having you come here and see me through has made a huge difference!

with love and lots of jiggling

jane

the more

2011-10-02T08:08:00.000+13:00

the more i surrender

the more i become part of something way more powerful

than i could ever be on my own....

JUST REMINDING YOU

2011-09-30T16:09:00.001+13:00

i am very excited to remind you

that Monday next week i am announcing my big new exciting amazing marvellous and rather wonderful venture

(funnily enough i spelt that ventrue... it is a very true part of me)

Please join me here next week Monday to participate in the launchy launch (bottles of virtual champagne are chilling)

and be in to win something pretty marvellous

MONDAY PEOPLE

MONDAY

XXX

but also i see

2011-09-29T11:13:00.001+13:00

that when i am surrendered i have space to notice rather than fight

when i stop struggling against the shoulds and the outtas and the wounds

i can see what makes them

i can see the cause

i can see whether i am wounding myself using the ropes tied by others...

and this morning i realised that often i am...

i was at drop off at school struggling against a percieved slight when i remembered surrender

and in my mind i just stepped off the mouse wheel

and my footsteps slowed

and my body softened

and i realised i had no idea what was going on for that other person

and how i appear to them is none of my business

do i approve of myself?

(a whispered yes)

am i acting from a good place?

a yes

am i worthy of kindness

a stronger yes (the fact that this is my current affirmation may help)

and i felt that tension and harshness leave my body

and i felt love pour in

and it really is as simple as that

so here is my checklist

1. be aware
2. surrender
3. soften
4. check in with yourself
5. let the love come in

it really feels as easy as that... and i think the reason is that the secret nature of the Universe is love. God/Goddess/All that Is is truely Love broader and deeper and stronger than anything we can imagine and so when we soften and we truely allow that to come in we see that is all there really is... Love

Sometimes it is damaged and has prickly edges. Sometimes we don't open to it enough.

But really it is all Love.

so that means

2011-09-28T12:14:00.001+13:00

i should probably have known

the Universe takes me at my word

i have to surrender also to:

not being liked
feeling uncomfortable
being forced to look at uglinesses in myself
face a few home truths
uncertainty

surrender sure bites deep

surrender

2011-09-26T07:42:00.000+13:00

surrendering the need to be right
surrendering the need to examine all wounds and slights and injuries
surrendering the need to be good
surrendering the need to be more
surrendering the need to be wanting
surrendering the need to be needful
surrendering the need to compete
surrendering the need to conform
surrendering the need to be liked
surrendering to the will of God/Goddess/All that Is and just floating on this river which knows where it is going...

trusting that the eddies will be there when i need to rest
and the rapids will bounce me out on the other side
and the sun will shine on me and the stars will guide me

oh i know...

2011-09-25T09:03:00.001+13:00

art work by Colin McCahon

.. that it's not very good to be grumpy

and i know that is not the right thought patten to be making

and i know it means that i am attracting negative energy

and i know that there are starving children dying as i write this

and i know i am incredibly self indulgent

and i know i am lucky to live in such abundance

and i know that my life is very easy

and i know that i could change my attitude

and i know that i should

but right now

i am grumpy and i just need to be it instead of shoulding and badgering and being all tut-tutty with myself

i will just be grumpy and let that be enough

and then move on

where the wild woman lives part 3

2011-09-24T08:18:00.000+12:00

in the prisms in the dew on the grass

where the wild woman lives part 2

2011-09-23T12:53:00.002+12:00

in the burgeoning bud (this one will be a peacherine)

where the wildwoman lives

2011-09-22T13:14:00.000+12:00

she lives in the curve of the land

ripening

2011-09-21T11:22:00.000+12:00

i did a course with the amazing Andrea of ABCcreativity... the course i did was the creative dream incubator

i wanted to work on my whispered dream of making creativity exploration workshops for women and threshold women...

but i came out of there with another dream altogether...

something i didn't even know i wanted to do

and it is almost ripe for the picking

i sent off the fruit from a trial run with my friend Helen

and she was moved in the way i had hoped she was

i wanted to make something that was loving and healing and creative and intuitive and alive with it's own energy and it seems i have picked up each of those seeds with my work ...

may they grow into something wonderful...

so send sunshine and a little bit of warm rain to help me in the final stages of the ripening

and then please come back in two weeks when i will do a giveaway to launch my new creative venture

(i feel like such a grown up!)

Terri St Cloud

2011-09-17T20:46:00.000+12:00

this woman, this woman called Terri St Cloud blows me away

and i wanted to share a quote with you from a blog post she wrote

"Maybe when you just don't know what else to do .... maybbe holding light is enough.

Maybe it's everything"

the wild woman

2011-09-15T13:05:00.001+12:00

i don't talk much here about my painting...

which i have no excuse for really apart from the fact that the things i usually write about here seem blindingly important and i rush to come here...

but i am going to try to explain this wonderful awful woman who arrived

there is a back story

of course

i am (as you may know if you have read here before) and inveterate people pleaser

i try to be a nice girl. i try to be polite. i try to be thoughtful. i try to be good.

But the secret is i have a tail that as Clarissa Pincola Estes so rightly points out, often twitches below the hem of my skirt. Of course this makes me ashamed. It fits none of the categories above.

i have a nose that smells danger but no training as to what to do with the knowledge. To run from danger might be considered rude.

I have eyes that see in the darkest of places but because they often see what no one else sees i stitch my lips together in a sweet smile so that the ugly things i see don't spill out and aren't offensive to others...

These things have made me feel other all my life

lonely

troubled

odd

i have limped around the world looking for the place i knew i belonged - somewhere surely, there were others who smelled like me, howled like me, saw like me...

I found my family once or twice - my beloved Daryl who gave me the gift of Clarissa Pincola Estes and women who run with the wolves... but i felt so bouyed up by this connection, this homecoming that i thought i was strong enough to go back to the world of the others without protection

it almost sunk me

and so it was by sheer fate that i happened on the SARK forum, kindreds, kindness and clarity all in one pick and mix bag.... seeing other women struggle and follow their hearts was so enriching, so enlivening that i began to do the same

from there i found online art courses...especially the ones with Connie Hozvicka i began to invest in my dreams

i found, by the blessings of all that is holy and the faeries who live in the Whangarei Library shelves Elizabeth Cunningham and Maeve, they are my heart's friends and i live daily heart filling contact with them..

i have done a course with Pixie Campbell on the medicine of plants and stone people and travelling around the points, teaching me to trust my intuition, my deepest knowings....

and i found my way back to Clarissa and that old yellowed underlined book

and the wild woman howled at me from the pages... a howl of welcome and feirceness and blood

i found this video on line

and so i took to my canvas with the gesso for texture and orange red and vermillion because i knew that she was calling herself out...

calling out the wild woman

calling out the parts of me that hear to much see too much feel too much are too much for all the buttoned down goodwoman bullshit i have been expecting myself to be constrained by for all these long lonely years

and out she came, in scratches with brushes and leaves and nails, with swoopy strokes of thick globbed paints and tiny dabs of gentle colour

here she comes

she scares me and challenges me and dares me and taunts me

and really she is me

and as Elizabeth Cunningham says "It's not all pretty pretty pretty, beauty never is"

BUSY VS STILL

2011-09-10T07:52:00.000+12:00

I have been struggling for balance for the last few months....... withdrawing from the world as i know it...... the PTA, the committees, the responsibilities, the doings, the appointments, the cramming in of MORE and MORE AND MORE...... I have moved away from a warm friendship because the need for busy-ness in my friend's life made me feel too close to the maelstrom and too battered just going around for a cup of tea left me picking bits of debris out of my hair for hours afterwards.......
Yesterday on Inner breath, yet another course with Connie we were discu
ssing the need to slow down in painting - the possibility of painting as meditative practise and how many of us on the course are feeling pushed away from the busy.... how difficult we find this in a world of goal-driven-achievement-focused-doing-stuff-freneticness ......

It has been bought home to me hugely by the wonderful workshop i am doing with Pixie Campbell .... we are working with the medicine of the North at the moment... the place of the elder... the place of sitting with our own wisdom..... and even typing those words evokes a stillness i can't describe (i have been in the midst of a raging virus too - my body REALLY wanted me to sit still this week!) .... In the discussion thread the beautiful and ever wise Lis said

all the striving and pushing is about that - about wanting to make myself more lovable, more acceptable ... when the truth is, as we are we are enough, we are deserving of all the love of the universe and we just need to accept it rather than grab at it.

so we can be co-sponsors for each other in Over-strivers Anonymous! And being still is hard because then we are left to face what we are moving through - the feelings, the fears, the shame or sadness - what i am learning through this challenge with my mother is that by bowing down to all that arises, acknowledging its presence, somehow space opens up for me to hold more ... and often that something more is gratitude, joy, magic, beauty, ...

.................

isn't that profound?......All that striving, all that filling every stinking second with sound and movement and ever more dizzying circles of stuff, the bleeps and the rings that constantly call us away from any prolonged concentration, the tiredness that we wear like a badge of honour and courage... ALL OF IT IS THERE TO STOP US FEELING AND SEEING OUR DEEPEST WOUNDS AND TO STUFF ANOTHER SOCK IN THE MOUTH OF OUR PAIN.....

i also had the thought on Inner breath yesterday that we are drawn to the stillness, to the stopping when we are more and more open to the divine.... to the ancient, timeless, stillness of the Divine.... the more the Divine lives in and is expressed in us the more we slow.... the more we feel the rhythm of the breath of life in us.... in.... and out..... the more our hearts are at ease where they lie rather than being distracted from their business of beating out the sound of the magic of life every second we are alive.... HERE IS TO SLOW. HERE IS TO STILL. HERE IS TO SITTING WITH THE REAL STUFF OF LIFE, THE HOLDING OUR CHILDREN, THE FOCUS ON THE BREATH, THE REALLY SEEING THE GREEN IN THE GRASS AND THE BLUE IN THE SKY AND BEING PRESENT TO THE MIRACLE OF THAT AND OF OUR HEARTS BEATING AND OUR BLOOD FLOWING

stepping past potential

2011-09-09T10:55:00.000+12:00

Eila in The Hat Helen made - she loves it but she can only use it sometimes! it is so beautiful i could pop. i had a discussion with my friend Helen yesterday which has been circulating around my heart ... we are both stepping up and making something happen with our dreams.... we are both making a visible and measurable thing to show the world our dream.... we are both scared shitless about that.... and i said to her yesterday that i felt like it was easier to hold on to the potential and not actually step into the dream because it was easier and safer to have the cache of potential and talent and not having to be measured about the actual doing of it.... how that fear of being measured as not reaching our potential (on the very first try) was enough to put me off doing something that my soul was calling me to do was sobering.... how could i be so scared of being measured that i risked not living even a part of the life of my dreams.... that i could let fear take that away from me and call it being safe seems so ludicrous i can barely credit how many years i have spent telling myself that my potential was enough... so today i posted the culmination of the work that has gone into my creative dream to get it to a working reveal to the world stage... and when i hear back from Helen (who graciously agreed to be my guinea pig) i will come here and tell you about my creative dream and give fear the cold shoulder as i turn to grab, with both greedy hands, the life of my dreams

small comforts

2011-09-07T08:59:00.001+12:00

i think the small comforts are the ones that lift my undercarriage off the ground
i think the littlest things make being a human being worthwhile i think that things like these can save lives...

the smile of a stranger
the true warmth in a hello
the sun warming your back
my pounamu soft-curved and warming in my hand
the kind word from a friend who knows
the comfort of a good bed the edges of a book's cut pages
the trust of an animal that has learnt you are worthy
sand under your feet
the tickle of earrings on your neck
the way colours mix to make new colours

i am so grateful to be finding a habit of noticing these small, exquisite things and being sustained by them...

decisions

2011-09-04T09:43:00.002+12:00

This morning i was setting up the washing machine.
Should i wash it on a long cycle?
Warm?
Cold?
that much detergent or less?
Spin at 600 or 800?
and then i got to thinking about how every day we make a mind numbing number of decisions... some of them like the washing machine ones, trivial, unseen

some of them like the ones to turn into that gap between the oncoming cars on the road that turns out to be too small ...
or not listen to that little voice inside that says "NO"...
or the one that says "YES"....
or the decision to say those words or not....

those ones are big and lifechanging and often irrevocable.

And is there somewhere where the weight of these decisions, the constant scouring out of our decision making cup, that leaves us scraped and wounded?....

And is there a place in us desiring a sheild from the barrage of those decisions? A place where we just wish to rest and be and allow?

is there a place in us that is made to wake up knowing that the feilds need to be plowed today and the fruit gathered and the jars boiled for jam making and that is all we have to do?

is part of our twenty first century heart fatigue just the being worn away by the constant decision making? i can't decide.

2011-09-03T12:15:00.000+12:00

life/death/life

2011-09-02T10:50:00.001+12:00

well fuck
and i use that expletive advisedly... it is the descriptor of the ultimate regeneration, and at the same time, the little death as the French say...

i have been rereading Women Who Run With the Wolves.... and have been pondering how the presence of death in our society is such a feared and maligned thing...

and yet of course we all die
some of us a little each day
and we all grow new life
some of us a little each day

it is about getting the balance right

but our fear and revulsion of death and the lengths we go to to avoid it have been running around inside my heart lately

I often count my blessings about having a garden and the lessons it teaches me... the death and decay of one plant leads to the life of another and the presence of this death in the midst of all this life is a lesson for me about respecting the balance...

As a woman i see that i have been gifted the possibility of being the vessel of a miracle - being able to produce a living human...

And i read Clarissa's words about how the Goddess and the matriarchal societies didn't hide from Life/Death/Life Death was part of life...

and so it is mirrored in our house... our lovely sheep are such a part of living here and we woke up 2 mornings ago to Jerry Collins being dead... such a sad surprise... the other sheep were aware that something was wrong and stood at a respectful distance looking at her.... we buried her in the paddock and now that the sheep are in that paddock i found them all standing in a wee circle around her... they knew i am sure... this photo is me disturbing them in their noticing her

and then after 2 tumultuous days and 2 trips to the vet Eila's lamb Flora died last night... She was devestated when she realised she might die and was quite distraught but when she finally died she had a wee cry but was not frightened

Living here has blessed my children with an understanding of death and loss that i never had as a child and makes them more able, i hope, to see the things in their lives that need to die, to let things go that need to go, to be alive to the new life that follows....

i have been scared in my own life to let things that need to die die.

I have seen death as cruel... but now i am finding more and more that i need to see life as requiring death in order to live... that the great cycle is what i need to honour and respect.. to meet the ugly hag of death with the respect she deserves in order to fully embrace the gifts of life...

shit life is big some days

the more myself i get...

2011-08-30T20:15:00.000+12:00

the more i seem to irritate others

i guess then energy i spend in trying to please others is now going into pleasing myself
but this is difficult for a well trained people pleaser like me to feel easy about ...

i know i don't always manage my new self in the most considerate way

(i should have trainer wheels really)

all this trying out new ways of managing things - new priorities, new thought patterns, new strategies means that so many of my rules have changed that i am almost an entirely different shape

i am often surprised when i look in the mirror that i look so much the same

the things that draw me in are things i cannot easily talk with the others in my life about

like this Jar - i made a concoction with Pixie's help and i have used it in baths in chakra massages i have drunk it i have used it in a painting...

all of which would be so difficult to explain to 99% of the people i see each day

it seems the more i get to know myself the more of a stranger i become to the world around me...

august break

2011-08-29T09:54:00.002+12:00

willow at the memory prom

august break 2011

2011-08-28T11:19:00.003+12:00

meet Honeysuckle!

august break

2011-08-27T08:14:00.000+12:00

my dolphin - she sits on the base of my spine...

i got her when i left a job that required me to be the ultimate martyr and nearly corroded my heart irrevocably...

she symbolises freedom, play, lightness, compassion and motion...

although she is faded now and so inconspicuous -apart from the peaks into the world she gets with low rider jeans (didn't invisage them when i got her)

and her light follows me...

i haven't always chosen the path of freedom and play, but more and more she splashes in my life.

stirring my vital energy

moving me on

august break

2011-08-26T10:00:00.000+12:00

soulodge

2011-08-24T15:02:00.001+12:00

i am doing soulodge with Pixie Campbell and a whole gathering of wild and sacred women...

this week we are doing work with the plant people

and in my journey this is what i found:

Well my brain had all kinds of ideas about the plant i wanted to use for this... but my intuition and plant people had a whole other idea!

i ended up using Manuka and here is her message to me...

Manuka showed me how she is the one to step in and heal the destruction around her... she has long been undervalued and seen as "scrub" and a sign of poor land management. She was only good for firewood. She grows where little else grows. She is hardy and tenacious (that word again)... She is also the nursery plant for grander trees, kauri, totara, taraire...

Manuka is fodder for sister bee. Recently it has been discovered that Manuka honey has a unique healing property and is clinically tested (that o so important thing in land outside the intuition) to have measurable wound healing properties.
People are suddenly seeing that manuka is a way to make $$$. She is suddenly seen as valuable and no longer summararily chopped down. (i feel a little teary writing this i yearn for that valuing to happen for me)

Manuka helped me see that i am growing on scorched earth - i am repatriating ground - (i see that i am doing that by reclaiming my sacred woman/goddess self, healing generational patterns) the land i stand in is tough and these things have been hard but i am bloody well doing it!

Manuka also spreads many seeds, some come to fruition others die but enough take to make a difference. that helps me to sit with all the creative ideas that whirl through me and be comfortable with the fact that some fall away.. not all need to be successful.

She is prickly if held the wrong way- her sharp little leaves are tough - it is good that she protects herself she has a job to do and it is not to be food for others! AMEN!

She is home to many creatures, weta, ants, birds. By living into my dreams and my truth i nourish others around me... not by sacrificing myself....

I see her showing me that i too must be tenacious, and release the need to be recognised by others. She tells me that my growth is vital to healing, my self and my earth and that protecting myself is valid and right. She said "Your beauty will be seen by those who need to see it. Know that you are worthy of being cherished and of growing. You hold magic".

i will take a photo of the twig of manuka i held to show you but she is so precious to me now... ps i have just realised that manuka surrounded my grandparents bach (beach shack) a place of huge safety and wonderful memories for me...

august break my altar

2011-08-24T11:20:00.001+12:00

my altar i am spending more and more time here

August break 2011

2011-08-23T07:23:00.001+12:00

sewing up the hems on kapa haka uniforms

at my house today...

2011-08-21T09:02:00.000+12:00

cabbage tree bark

Manuka

coprosma leaf

the girls

my wise owl who watches my door

SOMETIMES I

2011-08-20T13:49:00.000+12:00

sometimes i feel invincible, bullet proof, made of divinity
and sometimes i feel tiny and crushed and invisible like a shell that has been tumbled against the rocks and all that is left is fragments of me amoungst the sand... unnoticable undifferentiated unknowable.

sometimes i feel joyful and skip in the supermarket and smile full beam at strangers who look grey
and sometimes i see myself as a grey stranger in the mirror

sometimes i feel capable, confident and full of the wisdom that is older than me
and sometimes i just don't know what to do next.

sometimes i make things that flow through me, beauty reveals itself on the paper, the canvas the surface that makes me suck my breath in
and sometimes i make things that are shallow and empty.

sometimes i can find great depths of kindness and connection, love unfettered comes through me and to another's heart - i can feel it hit its' mark
and sometimes i just shut off like a wall.

sometimes the path is clear and i can stride on with my light shining
and sometimes it is so dark and i stumble around banging into the walls and falling on my face.

sometimes i feel the beauty of the world all around me flowing into me and the intricacy of a blade of grass fills me like a breath of light and i feel so blessed
and sometimes the world and its' meannesses are so abrasive that my bleeding spirit looks so ugly to me that i hide

and sometimes i just am.

august break 18th

2011-08-19T14:04:00.000+12:00

frost on the fence

Eila and Percy, the neighbours' lamb

august break 12th

2011-08-12T15:52:00.000+12:00

silver and copper on my fingers

the peice the lovely Dharma commissioned me to make for Julie who has been through shit... it says Still Julie but stronger - those words are amazing and it has been a pleasure to make

8 august august break

2011-08-08T16:26:00.000+12:00

would you every have thought this.....

could do this??

a sneak peek at my dinosaur jacket that a kind woman made a point of stopping me in the supermarket to comment on - made my day!

this just tickled me

willows for planting tomorrow

2011-08-06T16:26:00.000+12:00

the 3 kinds of poles - for weaving and for structure

how they were bundled up - this made me gasp

catkins

watering

2011-08-04T17:17:00.000+12:00

hoses

plum tree just watered

"I will neither confirm nor deny the presence of sheep poo in my mouth"

august break

2011-08-03T10:57:00.000+12:00

this is a fun way of blogging with images...

faith in the future

2011-08-02T10:03:00.000+12:00

the orchard

plum

name tags i made

gratitious sheep shot because i can!

this weekend we planted an orchard

mostly stone fruit (i love stone fruit and toy with the idea of being a fruitarian every summer until stone fruit season ends)

we bought heirloom trees from Koanga - i beleive that there is a powerful energy in the old fruit - not bred to look good in a supermarket but to taste good and be good producers in the soil where they have flourished for over 100 years....

as i was watering the trees this morning, in the last of the orange sunrise i felt this surge of hope

planting trees like this

trees that we will need to tend, and prune and nourish - herbal ley coming in spring, comfrey tea brewing....

trees that link me back to the ancestors who came here with hopes and dreams

i see that i have planted them with hopes and dreams

i was seeing the girls and i eating them straight off the tree

imagining making jam

imagining maybe ducks living there

i see that planting something in this way is an act of faith in the future

that i will be around to see the fruition (literally!) of my labour

that i will be doing something that creates a legacy

that by this simple act of digging a hole and planting this peice of magic (what a peice of alchemic magic it is - taking some roots, joining it with budstock, healing that wound and planting it in the soil ... all leading to deep nourishment and joy of the juiciness, in which the seed of the future life of the tree is contained again...

in taking part in this magical cycle i am honouring my life, death, life cycle

and making a gesture of faith in the future

in these times of horror and sorrow (Norway's tragic massacre, earthquakes, tsunami's) this is the most courageous thing i can think of to do...

blessings to my body

2011-07-29T10:09:00.000+12:00

blessings to this body that walks me up the hills

blessings to this body that sees the sunrise

blessings to this body that magically forms these words by dancing over these plastic squares

blessings to this body that gets rid of waste

blessings to this body that takes in nourishment

blessings to this body that lets me sleep and wanders in its' sleeping through places unknown

blessings to this body that replaces itself and knows how

blessings to this body that circulates, replicates, ennervates, salivates.

blessings to this body that creates life and celebrates the passing of the possiblity of life so redly.

blessings to the pleasures of this body.

blessings to the pain of this body.

she has loved me well.

stories

2011-07-25T10:02:00.000+12:00

"Knowing that we are made up, not of atoms, but of love and stories is also vital. When we die what is left is love in the form of stories"

Love can be such a tangled up thing, the unsaid, the over talked, the misconstrued.

Love can be so trusting, so open, so closed, so fleeting.

Love can just be a part of our cells, a knowing that is so deeply a part of us that we never have to question, sometimes take for granted, treat badly and then when the truth of it is blindingly obvious, we scrabble for its repair.

But all love has a story.

Some of those stories are sad.
Some of them are simple.
Some of them are only revealed after they have passed.
Some of them are so blindingly beautiful that even if they are short they nourish us beyond our days - into the days of our children, and their children...

We all carry stories about love. About how love shaped us, built us up, or carved us out...

It is the way we treat those stories - the compassion with which we recount the stories in our heart, with which we allow our versions of the actions of ourselves and others to change over time - it is this compassion that shapes our lives...

Do we see ourselves as deserving of the kind of love we got?

Do we see ourselves as requiring more? Less?

Because as the wonderful Patty Digh says at the end of it all we are just stories...

while i am thinking about measuring...

2011-07-18T08:27:00.000+12:00

i realise that while i am measuring i miss out on what is actually happening

for example

while i was reading the girls' reports i realised i was measuring in my head how many other children in the class would have similar results

how much better L would have done

whether L got the same result for that ...

on and on the measuring went in my head until i realised that what i was doing was cheating my girls out of the authentic pride i had in what they achieved

i was cheating myself out of honouring their efforts

and their growth

and their achievements

all this sodding measuring was robbing me of the very things i want to achieve in life

connection

tenderness

love

acceptance

belonging

joy

i feel ashamed to admit these ugly measurings here... but they bubble up from some deep place in me (the hungry hominid wanting their share of the mammoth at the fireside???)

but they are part of me so i will love them and see them

and talk with them next time "I see you measuring, i hear your need but i choose love instead"

Let's see how they like that....

PS I HAVE BEEN UNABLE TO COMMENT HERE FOR THE LONGEST TIME
PLEASE KNOW I REALLY LOVE AND APPRECIATE YOUR COMMENTS AND HAVE ASKED BLOGGER FOR HELP.....

measuring

2011-07-14T16:42:00.000+12:00

today my girls recieved their school reports.

today i spent some time with a friend.

my girls and i went through each section of the report talking about what the teacher was getting at, whether they felt it was fair, what had contributed to that mark....

my friend and i spoke about her anguish about how her life is working out, how she feels she has worked hard, done as much as she could to make things happen the way she wants them to.

and her utter dismay about how that is not working.

all our lives we are taught to measure up.

Measure up is a term that makes me stand straighter and suck in my stomach, like i am about to undergo room inspection in the army or hanky inspection at kindergarten.

A bar is set and we strive for it.

If things don't work we work harder.

If things aren't measuring up we push ourselves more.

If I don't measure up to expectations - my own and other's I am more and more hard on myself.

I am all for the reward in having to reach past our percieved boundaries.

But this constant measuring,

this constant need to gain more,

achieve more,

is killing us.

The only way i really "measure up" is when i take time to soften,

to listen to the tiny whisper inside me that tells me what i truely want.

And there is no measuring in this - only allowing and opening...

I am making a concious effort to get away from all yard sticks and listen instead, to whispers

will you join me?

the hard stuff

2011-07-11T09:30:00.000+12:00

the hard stuff is the stuff that makes us squeeze tighter

the stuff that makes us tighten our jaw,

or our gut

or our sphincters.

The hard stuff is the stuff that makes us run into the dark corner of our minds and recite the mean stuff we have learned to say to ourselves,

the not enoughnesses,

the uselesses,

the uglinesses.

The hard stuff is the stuff that makes us deliver a little peice of our succulent soul on a plate to those who deserve it the least

makes us craven,

makes us self sabotage,

makes us resolveless.

The hard stuff makes us take our dreams and push them far out to sea in the worst weather,

without a captain

without an anchor

and without a bilgepump.

The hard stuff is where our treasure lies.

tools of my trade

2011-07-07T13:19:00.001+12:00

my eyes - what they see, what they shift away from

my hands - what comes through them, what they feel

my big, ancient cracked heart which i hold out into the world in all it's wonky glory.

the green all around me- the natural world filling me up, sustaining me

and the courage to know when to pounce and when to lay in the sun and the strength to carry them through into the world

international gremlin treaty part 2

2011-06-27T16:55:00.000+12:00

i thought you might like to see the document...

it is as follows:

INTERNATIONAL GREMLIN TREATY 2011.
Between Jane Louise Cunningham and her Gremlin.

We the undersigned hereby agree to:

1. At the onset of fear:
a. Check in together BEFORE acting.
b. If Jane says it is OK, said Gremlin goes off attack mode and onto support mode.
c. Support mode involves, but is not limited to the following: kind words, comforting activities, encouragement etc.
d. There are pompoms available whilst in support mode that said Gremlin is able to avail himself of at anytime.
e. If Jane says fear is valid Gremlin to use kindness as his major weapon.
2. At Cessation of fear:
a. Jane and Gremlin are to be kind to each other.

Signed

janeC x

Jane Louise Cunningham Gremlin

please feel free to copy and make peace with your own gremlin - it is doing wonders for Homeland security in my life!

questions

2011-06-24T15:14:00.000+12:00

does honey ask if it is golden enough? sweet enough? nourishing enough?

does grass ask if it is green enough? soft enough? tender enough?

does a sparrow ask if it is flying beautifully? hopping enough?

does the sky ask if it is blue enough? wide enough?

why do i ask if i am good enough? kind enough? smart enough?

Jaynie

2011-06-21T11:09:00.001+12:00

On Sunday i had the great priviledge of meeting Jaynie - here is her blog

please read her story and join me in the web of all those holding her and her beautiful family up...

Friday is the day she has her mastectomies and she will need all the women of grace and courage we can muster standing behind her....

The international gremlin treaty 2011

2011-06-17T10:59:00.000+12:00

i am in the amazing position of being blessed with the perfect teaching at the perfect time.

or maybe i should say that i am blessed with the awareness that i always have the perfect teaching at the perfect time but often i am too stubborn/scared/in denial to see it.

I am in the process of incubating a very exciting creative dream and am working through this with the help of the amazing Andrea

i have been having all kinds of fears and worries and nebulous bad feelings scratching on my door and that is a bad thing for me.... makes me feel like i should step away from my dream. Makes me think there is danger ahead.

but the work that Andrea has made us do at the very start of the creative journalling course sets us up to look into that and what i have found is the little fulla up the top there....

my inner saboteur is a little muscley feirce looking green dude, horns, long arms, feirce.

Enough to put a good woman into reverse.

But i have found out all he wants to do is protect me. When he smells fear he rushes in to take me away - save me from the scary thing AT ALL COSTS!

Even when the fear is based on good things like;
"i have never done this before."
or
"I am about to step into my dream - this is big and new."
or
"i am going to give up the stuff i have learned about myself and take on something new."

He just wants to help.

But in making me back away from the situation that makes me a bit scared he hurts me.

If i back away from the things that challenge me i never grow, i never let good new things in. I turn away from new possibilities because they are different from what i already know (some of which makes me desperately unhappy but i know it so i understand it so it doesn't scare me).

so i chatted with my inner saboteur and we have established a treaty, there has been a document created and everything -

i now solemnly promise to reassure the gremlin each time i am scared and ok, so that he will rest at ease and i can get on with changing my life for the better.

He can still step in when i am scared for good reason (katipo in the toilet, being offered my mother's shepards pie etc)

But he is to stand down when the ok signal is recieved. It makes him a bit sad because he felt so important, but i will let him see how much better things are without him diving in with the selfesteemwhackingstick everytime i experience fear.

and then he and i can get on with creating a better life.

fear

2011-06-13T08:51:00.001+12:00

"fear is trapped power"

This quote is bouncing off the sides of my brain.

I am often caught in fear.

Often feeling the prickles of sweat in my right armpit (only one, yes i know it is weird.)

Often feeling my thoughts speed up.

Often hearing the not-good-enough chorus (kind of like the welsh boys choir only a lot less sweet and melodic) burst into their caustic song.

I fear a lot of things, not being enough and not being worthy are usually at the bottom of those fears...

worthiness and enoughness are the foundation of that haunte house of my heart, the cornerstones of the bad feelings that well up.

what if i saw them as the underpinnings of something else.

What if unworthiness and not-enoughness were the signals from my wisest self that i was giving away my power, that i was cheating myself from a chance to be fully and truely present and able to be in my true gifts

what if the sweaty righty, the racing thoughts, the song of the choir of inner meanness were actually all signposts, neon lights, sirens that i needed to stop.

That i needed to step back into myself.

that i needed to check whether the power was leaking/pouring out of me, or offered with true love (self love and love for another)

what if all my fears were about checking in with myself and being true

what if all my fears were just signals to be kind to myself

what if i could open the trapdoor in my heart and instead of fear, power would come out, in all her glorious, splendid, benenevolent wonder.

what if fear was my call to love?

my manifesto

2011-06-09T10:30:00.000+12:00

I have been doing an amazing course with Queen Dani- yes she is real royalty, yes she has been sent to me by the benificent Universe as a sign that magic is alive and breathing, yes she fills me up and nourishes me in a way that i feel like i have been hungry for for a long, long time...

i can't recommend the course highly enough - just go here and see for yourself

the part i worked on yesterday was my personal manifesto - kind of like the rulebook for life that i wished i had had right from the beginning... but here it is, guidelines for a good life as designed and decided by me...

MY PERSONAL MANIFESTO

Be kind to yourself and then to others. Know you are a spark of the divine. ENJOY your time on this planet. Gasp at beauty and then speak it. Don’t puff up or belittle, just be. Be in integrity. Create from your heart – messily, imperfectly, wildly, often, magically. Hear those whispers and act on them. Trust that the world needs what you have to offer. Refill often. Laugh from your belly. Seek solace. Check in with yourself. Listen to the little one, she knows. Don’t deny yourself. Listen to your angels, they are right there. Keep your heart open. Be mindful of what you do with your precious gems. Speak what you know to be true. Drink in the things that nurture you. Just try. Cry when you need to. Don’t dumb it down. Listen with your heart. Make beauty. Trust your gut. Gather things that fill you up. See yourself. Do your work. Listen to your body – it knows stuff. Take those chances, they are there for a reason. Change is your friend. So is licorice. Eat what you love. Wear what you love. Be what you love. You are allowed wonderful. You deserve great things. Acknowledge the sacred in all that you encounter. Affirm what you want. Tell your story. Honour your truth. Take the counsel of those you trust, including stones and trees. Hug your self each day, that body, that heart, that spirit, they are bloody good. Say Fuck when you need to, Yay when you need to, sing when you need to, say yes when you need to and no when you need to. Remember to breathe.
Remember your MAGNIFICENCE.

Want to share yours???

the tug on my skirt

2011-06-03T11:19:00.000+12:00

i am becoming more adept at listening to the tug on my skirt

the one that comes from deep inside me, from the darkness

from the little girl in there with the tears and the snot and the grazes on her knees,

the little one who says,

"that hurt"

or

"i'm scared"

i am becoming more adept at stopping what i am doing,

stopping all the busy-ness and the chatter and the urge to pull the carpet over her

and i am turning my face to her,

kneeling down and saying

"It is ok sweetheart. I am here."

It requires me to not be in the world so much. It requires me to not be busy making plans or having coffee, it requires me to be attentive to the smallest sounds from my heart.

But it also allows me to be heard and held and comforted in just the way i need

And that is good.

Julia's Fehrenbacher's words

2011-06-02T09:17:00.001+12:00

Here are Julia's beautiful words - you can find her here

What if, starting in this right now moment, you didn't have to listen anymore
to old worn out voices that tell you that something needs to change before you can drop into your truest, most authentically precious and unique self?

What if you could drop it all, every single limiting thought and belief, every single should and shouldn’t that keeps you small and paralyzed with fear?

What if you could sink deeper into that sacred inside space, to the space that knows nothing of bounds and sees only possibility and openness--where the pulse quickens, the heart opens, and the view is expansive and full of possibility?

What if you trusted with absolute certainty that you are cherished and beautiful and whole exactly as you are, if you embraced every single bit of your beautiful self?

What if you stopped judging what might appear as faults and found the gifts instead?

What if you knew that all that you’ve been looking for, all you’ve ever wanted is resting patiently inside of you?

What if the only question you ever needed to ask is what would love do now? And you listened, with your deepest parts, for the answer.

What if you didn't have to know how but simply followed every sacred whispering of inspiration, one moment at a time. Just one. And that you trusted, absolutely, that this baby step would lead you to the next and the next and the next

What if you knew that nothing is by accident, that it’s all happening for you not to you
What if you knew that love is the only power you need to listen to, ever, and that you said yes to It again and again and again

***We wholeheartedly invite you on this journey of losing our little minds, of allowing the light in and out, of trusting your courageous hearts to lead the way. Starting today. Starting right now. It’s time.

something beautiful

2011-06-01T06:59:00.000+12:00

this is a beautiful work by julia with whom i am remembering my soveriegnty.... it felt like a whisper from my angels

there are days

2011-05-29T09:30:00.000+12:00

my beloved pounamu.

there are days when i feel bruised,
an injury i have forgotten leaves me wincing.

there are days when i am a tender shoot,
and the world feels frosty.

there are days when i require softness and quiet all around me,
the caress of a stone in my hand.

there are days when i need to be held by a yielding couch
swept away from the scratchyplace by words and silence

there are days when i want to go home

martyrdom and womanhood

2011-05-26T07:09:00.000+12:00

Giving selflessly is a huge theme in my life

The two pivotal women in my family of origin, my Paternal Grandma and my Mother both did a lot of giving.

No-one would leave Grandma's house without something from her garden and a full tummy. She was warm and attentive. She raised 4 boys by catering to their every need. She maintained a rich and loving relationship with her "true-blue" husband, holding hands as they watched the evening TV, for decades, by being all giving, anticipating his needs, playing his straightman.

My mother is forever baking for people in need, reaching out into people's lives and offering an ear and words.

So growing up with this i assumed that giving = being a woman.

Our culture fully supports this.

An ideal woman is first a good daughter, docile, compliant, sweet.

Then she grows into this creature who is at once beautiful but not too beautiful, kind, giving, pliant.

Then fecund, infinitely patient, always thinking of others, selflessly feeding, clothing, wiping tears, supporting the man out there in the world achieving, striving while she is at home maintaining and nourishing.

Then she disappears as a physical presence but she continues to give, charity work, being there for others, anticipating needs, the right thing to say until she disappears into the ether.

But as much as i willingly took on this mantle it felt itchy.

I asked Grandma "what happens when you get mad?" i had never seen her lose her temper ("by the hokey pokey" were the worst words that ever came out of her mouth - put me off that icecream altogether!)

She told me she went and dug in the garden.

I watched my mother work tirelessly in the kitchen but squirmed at the way she spoke about and fed off the misery of others. How she resented us and the time we took, how she rolled her eyes at Dad...

How all this giving was at a cost.

I tried the giving role - nursing (the modernday martyr and sweet/sexual tied up in one prim package) and watched it eat the good ones away... i tried to be selfless but i was aware that as much as i was giving away i was asking for a return-

often with interest.

If it wasn't forthcoming i felt resentment, bitterness.

I understood that the equation went like this

Giving all you had = Getting all you ever wanted.

I am realising that for me what that equation really looks like is

Giving all you have = Temporary satisfaction for others - deep resentment and bitterness.

I think that is sold to women because it gets men what they want. Don't get me wrong there are men who want a more equitable relationship, they are the strong ones, the ones who can cope with a real partner.

I think that when a woman steps out of the martyr role,

the all giving saccharine sweet and starts to take back for herself,

Feeds her dreams,

gives voice to her heart,

asks life for what she wants instead of expecting it to arrive by some back-room deal in which she sacrifices her heart for less than it is worth.

Then she is free to give from her deepest self, while being sustained by her soul, no winners and losers, an honest trade made in love. She moves into her truest power.

She says yes with all her heart

and she say no with grace.

no words

2011-05-25T14:21:00.000+12:00

all that seems to be coming out of me at the moment is like this

RESISTANCE AND WORK AND WISE WORDS

2011-05-21T16:25:00.001+12:00

Thank you all for echoing the heartfelt whimpers i put out in my last blog post....

feeling shame around persuing my creative dreams sends me into a tailspin of martyrdom that is so familiar and yet so damned toxic i should be glowing in the dark right now

truely words like the ones you left help to point my compass again..

you are my iron filings

i wanted to come back and offer you the salve that the universe gave me in the guise of the words of Steven Pressfeild's The War of Art.

"When a writer begins to overcome her Resitance- in other words, when she actually starts to write- she may find that those close to her begin acting strange. They may become moody or sullen, they may get sick; they may accuse the awakening writer of "changiing", of "not being the person she was." The closer these people are to the awakening writer, the more bizarrely they will act and the more emotion they will put behind their actions.
They are trying to sabotage her.
The reason is that they are struggling, conciously or unconsciously, against their own Resistance. The awakening writer's success becomes a reproach to them. If she can beat these demons, why can't they? "

thank you Mr Pressfeild.

Now to be able to hold onto that thought when my shame at not being all things to all people washes over me and throws me deep into the ocean of martyrdom....

ok so...

2011-05-20T06:52:00.000+12:00

i said my word for 2011 was courage

i said that i claim my goddess self

i said that i am stepping into my truth

but right now i am feeling like those things leave me vulnerable...

i feel like my acts of courage push the buttons of others...

i would love it if my reclamation of my own power, my quiet revolution, stepping into the creative river and seeing where it leads me, my joy flowing out and washing past the pain in people's lives and making them feel like there is another way...

but it seems like that is not the case

it seems that my increasingly quiet life, my time taken in my workroom, my boundaries protecting this time are ones that prompt other people to feel irritated

i am less busy doing things in the outside world
i am less busy making other people happy
i know in my heart that this is the path for me, in these quiet spaces i can celebrate it but in the wider community where business/busyness is next to godliness i feel shame over my withdrawal from offering myself and my energy to everyone who comes along...

and the people that i see the most are not liking this either - my soul friends and i get together seldom and i can feel the jealousy from some of them about how easy i have it not working and being able to persue my creative heart (they didn't know the years of struggle and the sacrifice i had to get there...)

i am feeling like i am this heart in the river, sitting near the flow, exposed, not able to fully immerse myself because i am feeling the gravity hold me down...

and to leap into the river means i also leap into the unknown, that i drift away from the solidity of what is around me...

why does it all require so much?

where i put my heart

2011-05-19T12:24:00.001+12:00

listening to those rancorous harsh shouts of not enough, not deserving, not worthy,
i put my heart in places where she is going to get flattened sometimes
i put my heart out there in the path of the train,
i put my heart in places that are cold and hard and exposed to the light
i put my heart on straight hard lines when it is all curved and soft

but,
when i listen to the quiet whispers of the divine, ushered in as sunlight or creative sparks or the head of my daughter resting on my chest,
i put my heart in places where she being held with tenderness
i put my heart on the soft velvet pillow held by those who love me
i put my heart where she can shine away the darkness
i am sure i must be home

dressing up and my intuition

2011-05-17T12:12:00.000+12:00

I am a Pippi Longstocking wannabe

Independant,strong, good friends, parents are strangely invisible, she even has a monkey for heaven's sake!

So when i got the chance to dress up as Pippi at the local library's character hunt i jumped at it...

the morning of the big event i drew a Goddess card - Sulis - the celtic Goddess related to bodies of water - i have drawn her repeatedly over the last few weeks...

so with my plaits wired and red spray in my hair i went down to the library - i was 10 minutes early and sat in the car listening to the radio and rearranging Mr Nelson around my neck...

then i thought of Sulis and so i decided to go behind the library and look at the river - this thought did not come lightly - it was cold - i was a little daunted by the fact that i am a grown woman dressed like the ultimate girl out of the context of a library it seemed ... well... weird

but over i went and stood on the bridge, having deep thoughts about never stepping in the same river twice, about being washed clean, about what we are doing to our rivers mirroring the degradation we are subjecting our souls to...

and then along came a woman - looking in her early 50s with a scruffy dog... i smiled and said hello as i customarily do

and i got greeted by her life story... rich and sad, full of loss and joy...

she told me of the years she wasted being unhappy with her husband and how deeply happy she is now - i can still see her holding her hands at an equal height in front of her saying "we are moving along at the same pace now"

her description of herself as "a community worker" - she is giving uup on saying "unemployed" because she recognises she is not - she bakes for the family that don't have time, she takes care of elderly friends...

her tender love for her 17 year old leonine dog...

all of it over in about 8 minutes, but like a gift from a benevolent universe, showing me that in unexpected places, and when i listen to my intuition there will be rich stories, connection and joy....

i could have stayed in my car then gone in and had a most excellent time pretending i was a rich pirates' daughter (and by God i did have a good time)

but i listened to Sulis and she bought me a mirror of the power of reaching out, reframing, flowing and growing... i don't know what that woman's name was but she gave me a real gift in her story and story is all that we are.

Goddesses in the Making

2011-05-15T07:10:00.000+12:00

i am doing a course with the amazing Queen Dani - the changes are so immense, the love so deep it is hard for me to gather them in words here

i just wanted to touch on a realisation i had this morning which relates to my last post (bloody blogger lost 15 comments in their little melt down yesterday which i need to have a mourning period for - i do treasure comments and i feel their loss)

Goddess Pam the Paradoxical from the heART and soul course run by Queen Dani talked about her grand-daughter as a GIM - a Goddess In the Making.

and something clicked inside me

i said in my last post that i wanted to be like the Goddess for my girls

well now i have realised that i have to acknowledge the Goddess in them...

i also see that my frustrations, particularly with the daughter who is prickly and stroppy and at times downright mean are connected to me trying to poke her into the nice box

to take those loose strands of the Goddess that are part of her being and make them fit into the box of nice...

The Goddess is stroppy when she needs to be. She knows how to protect her soveriegnty, she knows when to call out the shit, she knows that nice is just not worthy of her strength and her love.... Nice, being nice, being sweet unnaturally is not the behaviour of the Goddess - that is the behaviour of someone under the thrall of the Bishop....

I have felt this swirling of dismay and anger whenever i have felt challenged by her behaviour, whenever i have seen other people reel back from her fury...

To be able to go a place where i can see this as Kali in action in her, and i can teach her to temper it to the situation, but honour the Goddess in her at the same time feels so deeply right....

My girls and I are Goddesses in the Making...

dismissing, reclaiming and calcification

2011-05-12T13:17:00.000+12:00

I spent this morning in the breast clinic getting a repeat mamogram, after they found calcifications there... so i went to the hospital prepared - taking the Dance of the Dissident Daughter by Sue Monk Kidd with me. I read and cried and wrote as i waited with the needle of damocles hanging over my boob...

This book has mainlined it's words right into my bloodstream - i have experienced anger, a welling up, deep sadness i cannot name, powerful feelings of longing and wisdom and connection....

and this is what i wrote in my book in the waiting room (while they were playing Knocking on Heaven's door over the speakers - in a room where women are worried about hearing they have cancer - give me strength!)

I do not want to propogate the myth of the patriarchy for me or my girls.

I want that to stop right here right now.

I want my girls to think they are embraced by he Divine Mother when they think of me. I would like to embody her - a part of her- for them.

I want to dismiss my bishop (Sue Monk Kidd writes about her rule making tyrant in her head as the bishop) and his messages of NOTENOUGHNESS.

I reclaim my feminine path
my intuition
my connection to nature
my deep feeling heart
my interior eyes
my ebbs and my flows
my cycling watery life.

And i Honour that in this world of maleness = rightness I am reclaiming my womanness = rightness

and i gift this to my girls

as i sat thinking about how powerful a change this would work in my life - if i could put my intuition in the driving seat, show the girls how to find solace in stones, trusting the tears and the quiet and the raucous joy... instead of being constantly chastised by my inner PTA Mother "Oh don't do that, that is not normal, you cant think that, that is just weird......."

then as my eyes wandered down the page i found this phrase "calcified bitterness"

what?

"CALCIFIED BITTERNESS"

What am i sitting in an ill fitting gown for? To have calcifications in my left breast examined....

i read again

"Rage or untransfigured anger can become calcified bitterness"

i had the beginnings of calcified bitterness in my breast - my seat of womanhood... ENOUGH - THIS ENDS NOW

Thank you body... that is all the hint i need.... and with that i get the call - ALL IS CLEAR YOU CAN GO...

There is lots of jigggly titty dancing going on in this house tonight!

my own little standing up for myself revolution

2011-05-09T09:21:00.000+12:00

sometimes standing up for myself means:
STEP 1: ACKNOWLEDGMENT.
acknowledging that i feel hurt
acknowledging that i feel fear

STEP 2:DISSECTION
thinking about what i truely want from the situation -
do i want this for myself?
do i want to be seen to be good?

STEP 3: COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS
what is the benefit to me?
what is the cost to me and those i love?
do i want to persue this no matter what?

STEP 4:WEIGHT TO LIGHT RATIO
weighing ALL the factors up.
finding out which option brings more light

After much analysis and heart examination (and chickens in my head) i have done the above step wise process and i now am walking away.

This is revolutionary
i used to think standing up for myself meant fighting
sword and breastplate and speaking my truth as the fire licked my JoanofArcish ankles

but now i see that walking away with integrity is a loving and valid way to stand up for myself.

my own revolution

Another poem

2011-05-05T11:39:00.000+12:00

The middle of the night

She comes in to my head,
flapping her apron.
Herding a bunch of malevolent chickens.
Whish, skudder,
in through the open door.
Skwarking,
flapping,
they peck away at my integrity,
while she scatters fear pellets far and wide in my brain
so they shambol further in
further out
and she cackles at the havoc she is reeking.

self compassion inventory

2011-05-01T11:25:00.003+12:00

Finding out how kind you are to yourself can prove to be enlightening in more ways than one...

i recently filled out this inventory and it turns out i am mean to myself like Miss Trunchbull is mean to Matilda

but secretly as i was filling out the scores i found myself gloating just a little - feeling like i was self righteous because i was so damn self abnegating

the moral of the story is martyrdom runs so damned deep in my veins

and my first instinct is to wage war on it

but because it is so deep within me i would just be waging war on my self

so i am choosing the self loving option

i am noticing

and i am making a different habit grow....

one kind step at a time

want to fill out the test too??

http://www.self-compassion.org/ then look on the list down the side to find self compassion inventory

a gift to my 46year old self

2011-04-28T08:36:00.000+12:00

(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)

2011-04-26T08:06:00.000+12:00

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

2011-04-20T17:01:00.000+12:00

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

2011-04-18T14:40:00.000+12:00

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

2011-04-12T03:21:00.000+12:00

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

2011-04-09T16:52:00.000+12:00

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

2011-04-06T13:57:00.000+12:00

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

2011-04-04T06:06:00.001+12:00

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

2011-04-01T15:52:00.000+13:00

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.

magic shoes

2011-03-30T14:06:00.001+13:00

we ran a competition at our local school fundraiser to repurpose unwanted shoes

Eila had some old hideous boots she had bought from the previous garage sale (they were surely from a prostitutes' collective throw out) and she decided to refashion them into a horse scene (what else)

the judge (she won btw!!!) said she expected to see Eila as a shoe designer on Sex and the City one day...

she is so proud of them!

i love the idea of making something beautiful out of unwanted goods....and these are certainly magical

she claimed it for me

2011-03-24T16:52:00.000+13:00

this is the proclaimer

This happened about 10 minutes ago....

Scene: Mother painting in workshop, room next door Ms 8 and her friend from next door are beginning to prepare sushi (cunning plan of mother's to get said daughter to eat veges)

boy8 "why don't you get your Mum to chop that?"

(cue alarmed look on mother's face as she imagines all hellish kind of accidents with a knife, collects self and, trying to remain calm, she recommences painting)

girl8 "Because she is working"

boy8 "What, painting?"

girl8 "Yes that is her work. She is an artist"

(cue Mother's eyes filling with tears and whatever kind of string music and choir you care to insert)

and scene

A quote by Anais Nin

2011-03-24T02:52:00.000+13:00

From 'A Spy in the House of Love'

"The feelings which flow through her and which carry her along are of love, protection, devotion. These feelings create a powerful current on which she floats. Because of their strength they have engulfed all her doubts...."

And sometimes in my case the strengtH of the feelings disintergrate....

haiku for hard stuff

2011-03-22T14:17:00.000+13:00

finding the right words
like catching snow in a hot pan
see them melt away

trying out a poem on you

2011-03-20T09:42:00.000+13:00

This is a poem i have been playing with for anzac day - for my north american friends, Anzac day is the day we commemorate the New Zealand and Australian troops who died in the wars we have participated in - Anzac biscuits were chewy oaty peices of goodness made for their longevity in World War 1.

The first part of the poem (before the letter) is supposed to be crossed out but i can't make that work here so please see lines through it all...

The Anzac biscuits.

The day they arrived was the day the cracks in my feet began to weep.
The smell of rot broke through the smell of the mud
And the munitions,
And the blood.

Holding the package in my hand
was like unwrapping a treasure from ancient Egypt.
They were from a time and place so far from me.
A time hard to believe in.

I wanted to be careful,
To savour the moment,
To listen to the whispers of your hands
that had held this paper.
Tied this string.
Written the address.
The hands I long to be touched by,
Soothed by,
Magically healed of all this horror
and desperation
and misery by.

But I was hungry
So very very hungry.
With the eyes of all the blokes on me,
shouting silently “Get a bloody move on.”
I tore it open.
Carelessly.
Angrily.

And they were gone.
Those golden, chewy pieces of home.
In a shower of crumbs and desperation,
They were gone.

And now I realise, they smelt like paddocks of fresians,
Like pipis on a beach fire,
Like fantail flicking in the tea tree,
Like fresh warm cream on porridge,
Like the inside of the Four Square,
Like coming in at 5 and smelling dinner on the table as I walk up the path, past the freesias and the roses.

But they are gone.
Like so many of us from God’s own country in this Godforsaken place,
Shared,
gone.

Gone.

SEND MOREDon’t send them.

My Bunk
Ypres
France
1910.
Dear Glor,

All quiet at the moment so I can write you a quick note.

Oh love the biscuits were beaut. The boys and I loved them. Glad to see your cooking is still up to scratch. We will be so fit when we come back that you will be baking lots next rugby season.

Give the kids a kiss from me and tell the girls to stop growing so fast.

Lots of love
Dave
e

PARENTING

2011-03-18T15:27:00.000+13:00

Making all the choice
making hard choices
being able to make no choices

Doing everything for them
doing hard things for them
being able to do nothing for them

Feeling everything for them
Feeling everything for them
feeling everything for them

advice from my Japanese friend

2011-03-17T08:22:00.000+13:00

This is from my beloved friend Reisae a Japanese American woman, gifted healer, exquisite cook, lover of life... Please feel free to share Reisae's generous gift of information - her Mom came to the US as a bride to a US serviceman involved in the cleanup after the nuclear bombs were dropped.

Hope all is well. Just wanted to share some info. I have known about this information for several years and in light of the nuclear challenge in Japan I want to spread the info. Please share this with everyone you know. I am not an alarmist, however I wanted to encourage all of you to have a bowl of Miso Soup with sea veggies (Wakame, Hijiki, Kombu, Dulse, ) EVERY day. Personally, I prefer Wakame. Given the catastrophic nuclear situation in Japan currently, an ounce of prevention is worth . . .

After the Atomic Bomb was dropped in Hiroshimi/Nagasaki on August 9, 1945 the radioactive fall-out killed and devastated the health of thousands of Japanese. However, it was discovered by
Dr. Shinichiro Akizuki working at ground zero in Nagasaki, that a daily serving of Miso Soup and Sea Veggies prevented radiation sickness, poisoning, and the potential of cancers presenting. Miso protects the body from radiation by binding and discharging radioactive elements. The natural iodines in seaweeds can reduce by almost 80% the radioactive elements of exposure.

There is a ton of info. on the internet to validate this info. Encourage you to research for yourself and then go make yourself a wonderful bowl of Miso Soup and Wakame!

Miso Soup & Wakame Recipe
1 Serving

16 oz. Water
1 Heaping TBSP Dried Wakame
3 Heaping TBSP Miso (the more aged the better)

Place water in small pan and add Wakame. Let set for 10 minutes to allow Wakame to hydrate. Bring water to slight simmer. Remove from heat and add Miso. DO NOT boil Miso, it kills the fermentation/enzymes. Garnish with scallions and enjoy the healing!

With love,
Reisae

P.S. My Mom was finally able to speak with her brother in Japan and he indicated that he and his family are surviving. As reported food, water, shelter, and the nuclear power plants are of grave concern. He and his family are not in an evacuation area but as the nuclear situation evolves they may need to leave their village. He endured the war with my mother as children and he says that this event is as equally traumatic and frightening. Please pray for all of our brothers and sisters in Japan.

devastation

2011-03-15T14:25:00.000+13:00

if nothing else i can see how important it is to not be distracted by pointless shit

if nothing else i can see how important it is to live the life you want now

if nothing else i can see how important it is to say i love you, to stop the woman in the supermarket who has good hair and tell her, to smile at a stranger, to wear the clothes that you love

if nothing else i can see how you need to listen to the whispers of your heart - not put them off or pretend they are not there

because without warning you may not be there at all

learning my compass

2011-03-09T05:01:00.000+13:00

i have been having a busy time lately

immersed in a course of action i committed to some time ago

some buoyant, self assured, courageous time ago - a time when being so full of creative fire meant i thought i could step back out into the world of people and their politics - small scale, manageable, able to be injected with some of that creative fire and grow...

as i mentioned in my last post i then made an enemy during my work and i have allowed that to unravel all of that adjectives above

i see, from some far off part of me that i am responsible for my feelings - i can choose whether i respond with fear and self loathing, or whether i examine the criticism and feelings i have aroused in another and find our where the truth lies for myself and remain loving towards all concerned.

I wish i was closer to Buddha-hood than i am because even writing the last part of the sentence made me feel more grounded

but here i am at waking again with bad thoughts at 4:15 am

feeling uptight
lacking confidence
dithery

i have been doing my best to check my compass,reorient myself to the love and often failing but i need lots of practise at that ....

i have been aware when learning the way my own true north is, that this is a clear signal not to lay myself onto the path of that particular locomotive again

the world of busy-ness and personal politics is not where my soul lives

it is in creating and listening to the whispers of the divine - i know that now...

i was reflecting on that and using it as a marker - a way to find myself out of this morose patch when i read this in the daily love

"I know it is hard to accept, but an upset in your life is beneficial, in that it tells you that you are off course in some way and you need to find your way back to your particular path of clarity once again."

- Susan Jeffers, best-selling author.

roll on sunday (most of the work will be over then)
roll on clarity

making enemies and the warfare of love

2011-03-03T06:46:00.001+13:00

i have inadvertantly made an enemy.

i do try, in my people pleasing way, to make people like me.

i like to be a good person.

i see good in situations.

when i am filled up, by my creativity and my spiritual connection and the beauty of simple things i am strong enough to see my faults and my foibles and be generous with myself and others about these things... generally, all of them wounds.

and recognise that love is the way to meet them.

but i stuck my head above the parapet
i am getting the hot oil treatment

and to continue the medieval warfare metaphor
i am tempted to grab my trebuchet and hurl big rocks back

i am scared
i am hurting

but the bigger part of me - the God/Goddess part of me - quietly reminds me that love is the way to meet them

it is harder to hear these whispers right now - i am in a period of business - trying to do good (and the process is how i got my self into the fightyfight in the first place)

i am not making time to create
or to listen to the voice of God

so it is easier to hear the voice of the combative,defensive,scared little girl inside me

but i am reminded to soothe her with loving words, make her feel safe

get her to put the trebuchet down

to walk away from the war and towards the life that makes my heart sing

to walk away from the feelings that make me crabby and a bitchy Mum (how can i take out my frustration on the people who love me??)

i am reminded to create, to not be out in the world in a way that is motivated by wanting to be see to be good, enough...

and to be authentically in the space that says "this is what you are here for"

and to once again, choose love - self love,love for my family, love for the beauty in the world, love for the injuries others have recieved.

not to be tangled and sodden with the bitterness and fear

but to constantly refocus on the love

and i will be where i need to be.

Enough.
Loving.
Free.

it's the little things

2011-02-28T17:15:00.000+13:00

like seeing the beauty in a flower

having my daughter climb into bed with me

playing the yellow car game

the cat calling out to find me

our comfortable bed

being able to see green out my window

fresh food in the fridge

veges in the garden

an unexpected cuddle

a text message from a friend being cheeky

it's the little things that make the world seem magical to me
particularly after the earthquake when i know there are many people who had time to consider what they would miss... and never got the chance to see them again....

and i intend to suck every bit of juice out of those little things that i can...

she is safe

2011-02-27T18:58:00.000+13:00

i just heard from Sue

she and her family have left Christchurch for Auckland

her partner and their foster child were in the centre of the city and only made it home that night

she said she compulsively rubbed the heart necklace i made her while she was waiting to hear from her man

she is safe

I am so so so grateful

2011-02-25T15:39:00.000+13:00

this is my friends' business
thriving deli/cafe/cooking school

it has to be demolished

they can't even go in to rescue stock

right now they are grateful that everyone made it out unhurt

but not unscathed

this will be a scar that everyone carries on their heart

everyone in this tiny community knows the guy who was crushed by a rock fall walking home over the hills to get to his young family

everyone is aware of the army patrolling the streets to stop looting

everyone will feel that frisson of fear when a large truck drives past rattling the ground

and as a bystander i feel this deep sense of unease, constantly close to tears, obsessively checking my emails to see if Sue has been in touch (not yet)... i feel useless and frivilous when i find myself laughing

but then Graeme and Jenny, who own Ground, are so filled with gratitude that they all made it out in one peice, that they have life and each other and their friends, that cherishing laughter and the joy of seeing an inch worm waving around on a flower and being covered in paint seem to be keeping the faith with the things that truely count

so inspite of the horror i will honour the joy in life, because i can and because what you focus on expands

and i so want for people to be reimmersed in love and not fear

Green

2011-02-20T08:22:00.000+13:00

the colour of healing

the colour of deep breaths

the colour of dissolving into the magic of the planet

the colour of transformation

seeing the green flash

2011-02-14T11:49:00.000+13:00

sorry i didn't get a picture

but this night, this sunset, on a beach at Punakaiki we saw the green flash

just as the sun hits the sea on a clear night

there is a green flash

and whoever sees it can never disbeleive magic again

an absolute high

2011-02-12T22:28:00.000+13:00

3 hours in the saddle

riding a horse described as a bit green

through some of the most beautiful country in the world - clean roundstone rivers, bird laden bush

reassuring my horsemad daughter who was riding in an unfenced area for the first time in her life ... and got scared

and then found her courage

with a canter home along the beach

i was ecstatic - can you tell?

and i felt a part of me fill up that had been empty for a long, long while....

pathways

2011-02-09T19:12:00.000+13:00

sometimes it would be nice to know where you are going

to know exactly what was waiting for you at the end

pipe, slippers, faithful dog with the paper....

but i am kind of glad that each step i take is a step into a partially unknown future

i trust that i am loved, that i am safe, that i am capable

and that no matter where i am i am at home inside myself

making a face

2011-02-08T07:24:00.000+13:00

i made this on the beach in Greymouth

art is flowing through me like a river

i see images that capture my heart everywhere

most days i go out with paint on my arms and hands

i manipulate dishes and utensils into patterns

and the natural world fills me up

on this beach with wild wilfull sea

and rocks and stones, shaken from their underground wombs by earthquakes and landslides, smoothed by glaciers and rivers and finally the tumbling of the sea, felt like they greeted my hands,

driftwood, long ago living and breathing, adrift from its' anchored in the earth beginnings transformed into tree bones drying in the sun

i could feel some of them holding their breath waiting to be placed

others saying NO in a very definite fashion

and this wild woman appeared under my hands

and stared back at me

asking where she was in my heart...

do i know the answer?

vessels

2011-02-02T18:27:00.000+13:00

these are the vessels that were used in gold production

the are relics of a time past

they have withstood heat and constant use

they would have been eagerly watched as they held the precious gold safe

and as they sit gathering dust in the tiny town of Blackpoint i see them as beautiful simple and still full of life

and you know what...

I THINK WE ARE VESSELS MADE TO GO THROUGH THE FIRE, TO GET A LITTLE CHIPPED AND WORN.. BUT TO CARRY GOLD INSIDE US, TO BE PART OF THE PROCESS OF REFINING THAT GOLD AND OFFERING IT UP TO THE WORLD.

(i had to edit this post to add that thought... it came to me during my muesli this morning!)

making magic happen

2011-02-01T10:19:00.000+13:00

today i am consumed with the idea of making magic happen

i think the world's true nature is magical

i think that underlying every living and inanimate thing is magic

and i love it when people make that visible

this letterbox was in a tiny place called Blackpoint. The first place in New Zealand to have electricity - because it generated it itself because it was a goldmining town

now only about 12 people live there

but we stopped there because Willow wanted a toilet stop. Then i saw this letter box and took a photo, then we noticed a sign to a museum and gold battery and we left 5 hours later filled with stories and gifts of ideas of things to do and my girls had a glimpse into the lives of my grandparents...

this beautiful quirky handmade with love and magic letterbox lead us on that journey - totally unexpected into the past and the future

so to whomever made it thank you

you have inspired me to make magic happen wherever i can because i can trust it to open doors that won't have otherwise been there

being filled up

2011-01-28T07:54:00.000+13:00

this trip filled me up

it was so amazing to be present to the beauty of Aotearoa, to feel like i was in another country because it is so different to my home... and yet it is still part of the same nation....

this photo is in a beach south of where i live, where i had never been before - the Auckland regional council cleverly made these ornate frames to frame the beauty of our land....

our girls are part of the picture of the beauty of our country!

i will post a photo with why it now claims part of my heart as often as i can....

with love
jane