Beginning The Dream Again

The years of 2001-2005 were the greatest challenge of my life where I've faced the hardest situations and redefined myself from the inside out. It started with being unable to shake off the flu which turned out to be sepsis (blood poisoning) and required surgery, an extended hospital stay, and intensive antibiotics to restore my life. I was left with reduced mobility, causing me to move to a one-story home. I'm grateful to report that I've regained nearly 100% of my mobility at this time. I learned a great deal about myself during this well-being crisis, but in summary, it allowed me to rethink everything I had believed about being alive and pick out the old ideas that had stuck around but no longer fit me. Sort of like cleaning out the cobwebs.

A few months after I moved into my house in the spring of 2003, my father (who was almost never sick in his life) went in for bypass surgery and ended up having a stroke and other complications. For the next year and a half, I shuttled back and forth between Phoenix and Ohio to help my family deal with his situation, including his last six months spent at home bed-ridden with my 70-year-old mom as his primary care giver. Facing his death and my own, I came away from this with a greater sense of priorities in my life, and the awareness that I'm now leading my life from my heart more than ever before.

The grief I felt at that time was immense, and I found myself in the role of being a caretaker for my mom and my other family members in varying degrees. I lived with mom for the first 6 months of her new life, helping her to sort out the house and begin to see the possibilities of what she could create with her life. It built a new bridge of understanding between us, it gave us a new common ground for understanding each other. But there was no time for me to deal with the inner costs of this caretaking or my new family role.

I hadn't really had time to grieve the issues around my illness, compounded with the issues around my father's death and my family's strained relationships, and the challenges of rebuilding my business after walking away from my clients for nearly two years. I had a heavy heart. I'm not one to give into self-pity, and did my best to remind myself of how good my life has been, and to remind myself that I know next to nothing about the kinds of suffering that appear around me in the world.

Even so, I would wake up in the middle of the night and sob uncontrollably until I was too tired to cry and my eyes were swollen shut. There was no spark in my eyes and no lightness in my heart in spite of my best efforts to be cheerful. It was like standing at the edge of a clearing, the place where the woods and the meadow meet, and being unable to step away from the shadows into the full light.

Late in the spring of 2005, I took a contract assignment to work in an office an hour drive away form my home out of necessity. I filled my drive time listening to books on CD, which was one of the greatest surprises and delights during that time. But there were a few afternoons where I was either out of books or just wanted a change of pace. On one those afternoons, I popped in C'mon C'mon by Sheryl Crow. When I got to the song Diamond Road, something amazing happened. I felt like I had fallen into a gulch or a ravine of sadness in my own heart, like the flesh had been torn and I was in the middle of the tear, deep inside it. The sadness was overwhelming, and I recognized that this place was the source of middle of the night sobbing.

Feeling underwater and at the same time intrigued by what I observed was happening to me, I replayed the song a couple of times and found that I was unable to utter more than a few words of singing between sobs. I must have been a sight, driving down Shea Boulevard in Scottsdale, Arizona in the afternoon drive time, radio blaring, singing and sobbing at the top of my lungs. But something amazing was happening. I felt like I was really feeling the core of my grief in a way that I had not done before. After a few times through the song, I was exhausted and put on something else to distract me.

During the next weeks, I found that I was still waking up sobbing, and some afternoons, I would experiment to see if I could get through Diamond Road without crying. I could not. Every time I played it, I sobbed, if not at the start, definitely by the time I reached the second verse. I would feel my eyes burn hot and huge tears flow out of them until my clothes were damp. I would do my best to sing, and would play the song a few times until I felt I was done for now.

For the next couple of months, I would test the healing of my heart with this song. Sometimes, I would sob from the beginning to the end. A few times, I found that I only cracked a couple of times, eyes hot and heart torn open, but no real tears or sobs. There was no pattern to this, my reactions seemed almost random. But there was no doubt that my reaction to this song was strong.

And then one day, a miracle happened. I sang the song all of the way though without crying. I was actually able to sing this song to my own soul as a song of my truth instead of a song of my sadness. When I reached the end, I actually let out a wooooo-hoooooo!! while I restarted the song. I must have sang it that day for most of an hour, celebrating the healing of my own heart.

I have always felt that my voice has a strong power in my own life. I learned many years ago to be careful about what I said out loud about myself (and of course what I said silently, too). I am a person who loves chanting, to be around chanting, and to do chanting. I learned a sacred chant from an eastern religion that gives me peace each time I say it. I can feel the power of the sound of my voice after many repetitions in my meditations. I absolutely believe that music, like all spoken words, is powerful.

This song, this wonderful song, allowed me to speak tenderly to my broken heart, but the second verse is about the inner journey of healing for me. "Little bird" [that's my heart] "what's troubling you? You know what you have to do." [emphasis on know-my heart always knows what is best for me] "What is yours you'll never lose" [I'm spirit in a body, having a human experience, but nothing human can take away my core, who I really am] "and what's ahead may shine. Underneath the promise of blue skies, with broken wings I'll learn to fly" [brighter days are ahead, I will learn again what I need to know] "Pull yourself out of the tide" [keep raising your face to the sun and continue to do what you know to do] "and begin the dream again."

It's the last line that hit the deepest when I admitted to myself that I had stopped dreaming about my life. I was afraid to dream, I had started to believe that this sadness was always going to be with me. I had lost my vision for the future.

I still play this song in the truck, and I still sing it at the top of my lungs, but now as a personal anthem, the song of my heart. It did "take a little time" but I find that I've made "it to the other side" of my grief. I'm flying again, and best of all, I'm dreaming the dream of my life again.

If you don't know the song, here are all of the lyrics.

Facing the Unknown

A recent theme in my life is about facing the unknown. It's everywhere in my life right now, shaking me out of the road hypnosis of purring along smoothly and driving in my comfort zone. It's the new media at work in the studio. It's the client situation for my day job. It's embracing social media (Twitter, etc.) in my work life.

For the most part, I am really embracing this change and very happy to see it. I would be less than honest if I didn't say that from time to time, I get a bit scared about all of the changes. After those moments pass, I realize that feeling comes from the places where I've built my sense of security on something outside of myself. If my security is from having money in the bank, and my bank balance starts to drop, my security is shaken. If my security comes from having client work contracted out a few years in advance, and those dates come and go, my security is shaken. If my security comes from doing things the way I already know how to do them, and I have to switch to new tools and new strategies, my security is shaken.

For the most part, I feel I've done a great job in the last decade to really place my security where it belongs and not in these external things. I've been living a really peaceful and serene life, in spite of the normal rough times we all encounter in life. I've been through a serious illness, the extended illness of a family member, the deaths of several family members and close friends, the end of a relationship, and the purchase of my first home. With each of these, I went through a natural grieving process, letting go of the old, embracing the unknown of the future, and then finding my way into the new world. I've also discovered that it is easy to settle back into a comfortable routine after some major shakeups, too. But I'm really pleased at how well I've done in all aspects of managing my own security.

I'm at an interesting crossroad. I am in the processing of deciding what I want to be next (not what I want to be when I grow up... that will never happen!). I'm making choices now that will determine who I become next. That includes what kind of work I will do next. The opportunity for me is this: to take what I've learned so far, to see what I might want to do next, and figure out a vision for how I can reuse my skills to make that vision my new reality. It's a fun time, with a few scary moments. But it's a fun time.

I am Intransigent

I have two reactions to my new art journal and the art journaling process.

First, at the highest level, I realize that I've taken a step into a larger world and started a huge journey by taking just this one little baby step.

Second, I'm a bit shocked each time I turn the page and stare at all of that whiteness. I've learned to overcome the snow blindness of the page when I write, so I'm confident that I'll also overcome it here. I also realize this is the work, every day, to face the whiteness and take yet another baby step.


I'm totally in an experimenting stage with everything in my studio. I'm learning how the tools work. I'm learning how they interact. I'm learning how to use them and not use them. I'm trying things that I like and I don't like. I feel like a total beginner stepping fully into this realm. In every other enterprise in my life, I've reached some level of mastery from years of work and practice. Everything is fresh with the studio. Yes, I feel the advantage of the years of art in my life. I have ideas and my eye looks for things it likes, things that feel right. I'm just learning how to express these ideas, and learning how to put things together so I like the result. There's something freeing about being a beginner again in my life. It's a bit like walking in the woods after a snowfall and leaving the first footprints. (There is that snow blindness image again.)

Today, I made two entries, two very different experiments. I laid out the start of the background by using one of my new fabric stamps from India that I picked up at the Tesuque Flea Market. I just wanted to see how it would stamp using acrylic paint. The first impression went well, so I decided to lay out a background of them. After it dried, I watered down another color and painted it over the images. While that was drying, I grabbed a dictionary I keep in the studio and randomly opened it to the entry for "intransigent." It means unwilling to compromise. I love that idea, it completely resonates with me and my art journal. I added additional words that express my reaction to this word and my commitment to keeping this journal.

Many years ago, I learned how to make and keep a promise to myself. That may not seem like a life milestone to many people, but it was huge in my life, and changed so much of my inner dialog. I promised myself to start this journal, and I did it.

Something else I've learned in my life: baby steps are important. No matter how small the act, taking action in a direction changes everything. It sets you in motion, it starts building momentum. It signals the universe that you are serious, that you have your eyes open and you choose deliberately to move in a new direction. In my life, it always seems that the angels come rushing in at this point. If feels like every guide and every keeper and every fairy along the road come running out like the Munchkins in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy steps on the yellow brick road. They laugh with glee and cheer me on because they know that the greatest part of this life is the journey, and that each step taken consciously, with open eyes and heart, and with aligned intentions is a moment of heaven on earth. Who wouldn't cheer for that?!

Reflections on Joy

I'm in such a great space in my life these days, and it feels like a happy accident that I'm here and I'm so happy. And yet, when I really think about what has been happening, I can see that my own work and intentions have brought me to this happy place.

I found myself with a project delay that meant I had a couple of unexpected weeks off in October 2006. Facing a blank schedule, I made a decision to spend the time investing in something purely for myself. Ever since I moved into this house, I have had a few boxes marked "important papers" that I hadn't touched that had become a cloud following me, nagging me, reminding me of things undone. It was quite a chore to sort, file and shred these papers, but I didn't stop until I was done. I developed a new paperwork system for my personal finances, product manuals, warranties, and personal documents. A system that really works! I knew the undone work was weighing on me, but I didn't realize how much until it was gone. I felt like I was walking on air for some time.

That got me rolling. That winter, I made a decision to focus every night before I went to bed on the things I want in my life. The list ranged from objects (like a new truck) to experiences (like doing more art) to character qualities. The results were extraordinary. Things that I didn't even have on my list showed up in my house, people invited me to come along to do some really fun things, and I took many steps towards acting and thinking like the person I really want to be.

In January, my client shifted my project schedule and I again had time on my hands. This time, I took apart my junk room and created my studio. I pulled every tub and box of art supplies into the garage and sorted them. I bought a bookcase to house them, rebuilt the closet, and painted the room. I gave myself a space where I can express myself easily. No more taking over the kitchen table and island to do projects and then struggling to make meals and living with the art mess all of the time. I had a huge garage sale, and gave away the remaining stuff. Again, I felt I was walking on air.

These things have stripped away the crusty layer of living and have set me free to live more of the life I have imagined. I can't wait to see what happens next.

Bottled Appreciation

Mom got her Mother's Day present yesterday. She called me when the box arrived and I was on the phone with her when she openned it. She loves it. It's on her kitchen counter where she sits to drink her coffee throughout the day.

She said something very interesting. She thought it would be hard for me to give it away. In truth, I couldn't wait for her to get it, but at the same time, I do miss being able to look through it. When it was here, I couldn't keep my hands off it. I looked at it a lot. I told her I could always see it when I visit her.

It was so nice to have a moment where someone was showering me with appreciation. I made a consious effort to soak it all in and save that feeling for myself. There are plenty of places and times in my daily living where I know I'm doing good or doing the right thing, but I don't get that kind of feedback. By capturing that feeling when it was fresh, I can replay that feeling for myself any time I want it.

Recently, I've starting incorporating into my personal growth work the idea that rather than tell my story the way it is, I need to be telling my story the way I want it to be. It's a way to keep the vision of what I want next in my sights and on my mind in the small moments of life, the times when I have the most power to create. The big moments are when choices are made, and the little moments are when progress is made towards goals.

This isn't about living in a fantasy, it's about framing the events in my life so they support the direction I want to go. It's about saying things like: I'm figuring this out as I go, instead of saying: I'm not sure what I'm doing, or I'm confused about what to do next. By making a positive statement, I help myself to figure it out (in this example), and I give myself credit for wanting to do the best thing, even if I'm not sure what the best thing is right now.

By openning the bottle of appreciation, not only can I feel happy (which is the true goal of my personal growth efforts), but I open myself up to actually being appreciated more often by others. I want to be the kind of woman who has the grace to do all things with joy, in spite of my surroundings and the reactions of the people around me. I want to tune into my own source of joy within so my happiness doesn't depend on the circumstances of my world or the reactions of the people in my world. It's a big goal, but I believe I am becoming that woman more every day. In fact, I'm sure it is happening.