Encouragement

I believe that in every moment, whether or not I’m aware of it, I am always choosing my identity, and my world is always a reflection of this choice. And when I find myself mired in doubt or floundering in worry, what works best for me is to remember that, as the Field Center puts it, there is no time off from my consciousness. These reactions come about because I’ve lost sight of who I want to be; I am out of alignment with the me that I truly am. And so it’s a matter of coming back into alignment.

Easy to say, but sometimes very challenging to do! So here’s what I turn to when I find myself seeking re-alignment:

Imagination. I make the time and take the moment to embrace my imagination, and allow myself to feel everything I feel as the identity I’m choosing. This goes beyond mere visualization; I never know what might come to me, but I open myself up to the vision. I need to have the willingness to do this, but when I do, it can be magical.

Friends. I’m fortunate to have two different groups of very special women friends who are always there for me, who listen without judgment and offer tremendous support for the me that I want to be. They inspire me with their lives, and who they are, and their words of wisdom and support often lift me right out of doubt into the magic of flow.

Play. This can be writing, reading, taking out some of my art supplies and just having fun with everything. It can be watching a movie, listening to music, plotting out a story. It can mean taking a walk, going shopping, going online in search of inspiration. And the key is to have fun; I never get into that wonderful feeling of play if I haven’t first let go of the idea of results. Often it’s that feeling of “where will this lead me?” that leads me out of the dreariness of fear, doubt and worry.

Sleep. My greatest challenges seem to arise when I’m tired, exhausted, fatigued – I feel like I can’t access the energy to do anything, to be anything, to feel anything. Problems appear where there were none before, and trite things magnify, gain in size and loom over me, filling me with emotions I don’t want. And when that happens, sleep is the revitalizing ingredient. My body is telling me to take it easy, to rest, and when I honour this intuition, and rest, the energy inevitably comes back.

These are the things I reach for most often when I find myself out of alignment with who I want to be. They work – often it’s just a matter of remembering that each of these things are there to help me out.

One Brave Step

This week, I intend to (finally!) start prewriting with collage – it’s something I wrote about a few weeks ago, and I have this very strong feeling that it’s something I’m meant to be doing, that it will open up my intuition in a way I’ve been desiring for a long time. I felt so motivated and excited when I discovered this – and then found myself stuck in a week filled with deadlines.

The deadlines, I know, were simply a reflection of the fear I was feeling, that smaller me that I was being, the one who was unable to reach out and embrace the creativity that leads to the fulfillment of my dreams.

But I have the supplies. I have the time. And I have the encouragement of being part of this group of creative women bloggers, and truly, as I visit each one of you, I feel your energy and it is such an amazing, wonderful feeling. So this week, let this be my one brave step – plunging into the joy of prewriting with collage.

On Honouring My Inspirations

I didn’t end up writing a post last week for Chapter 2’s look at honouring our inspirations – I thought about it a lot, though, and I was able to get around to reading a few of the groups’ posts. So I wanted to finish up this post with my thoughts on what inspires me.

For a long time, I stifled my femininity. I found myself in a world where being a woman wasn’t much admired, and I fought for survival by pushing away all the parts of me that were feminine. And it isn’t such a surprise for me to look back and see that my creativity faded during this period of my life.

Eleven years ago, I left that life, and since then I’ve been on a journey of rediscovery. Slowly, I began to become open to the feminine within me, and I’m happy to say that I have reclaimed that part of me now. It’s been an interesting journey, especially since it wasn’t something I clearly understood at the time.

And so today, I honour the beauty and the inspiration of the feminine.

This week we are discussing where we all are in our journeys to our creative selves.

I have always been creative. As a child, I was highly imaginative; I read a lot, and spent much of my time dreaming up stories and making up characters. As soon as I learned to write, I began writing down my stories. When I was about seven, I created an entire series of books about Candyland that I wrote and illustrated.

When I look back on my childhood, the one thing that strikes me is that I was so clearly a writer. Writing was something that I did, all the time. It was my priority. It was my play. If I wasn’t reading, I was writing. If I wasn’t writing, I was reading. Books and words played a huge part in my life.

When I became a teenager, I actually preferred staying home to write rather than going out with friends. My 13th birthday stands out for me because my parents bought me this extremely old, second-hand (18th-hand, more like it) Underwood typewriter – to this day, I love the sound of typewriter keys hitting the paper and am always searching for something that imitates that sound on my keyboard.

Most of the money I came across after that went towards buying paper. I would buy reams and reams of inexpensive newsprint, and every time I came home with a new stash of paper, I’d feel like I was carrying a treasure trove. If you’ve ever read the Emily of New Moon stories by LM Montgomery, you’ll know what I mean. While my old Mint and Candyland books were lost in the midst of all the moving around I did as a child, I still have a box of stories and poems written during my teen years.

In my last year of high school, I won a number of national fiction and essay writing awards aimed at teen writers. I was poised to continue on my journey as a writer. But then, life intervened. My mom and stepfather moved across the country (only to end up getting a divorce), I moved in with my then-boyfriend and started university – and suddenly, I was a grown-up. And a grown-up has to focus on making money.

I continued to write, mostly short stories which I sent out to various short story magazines. And then, at the point when I began receiving personal rejection letters (one memorable one from Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine: “Almost, but not quite. Try us again.”) … something happened. Something in me gave up. It was too hard to make a living as a writer. I was an adult now. I needed to do something that would bring in an adequate amount of income.

So I went to law school. I ended up getting married, having a baby, passing the Bar: suddenly, I was a practicing lawyer. A practicing lawyer with a little one, and another baby on the way.

It was a hectic time, and somewhere during that period, I stopped writing fiction. Time was at a premium, and there was no support for my writing, in either my professional life or my personal life. At one point, I let my then-husband read one of my short stories. It was a creepy little horror story that had a humorous ending; he thought I was trying to be “too smart”. That hit me hard, much harder than I let myself admit at the time.

That period of my life was a dark time in terms of my creativity. And it wasn’t until my divorce a few years later that I was able to find my creative self again. Even then, it started slowly.

I began my journey back to my creative self by getting to know my inner self. I started with a gratitude journal that brought light and hope into my life. And then I began writing morning pages, and for six years, I faithfully wrote three long-hand pages every single morning before doing anything else. I discovered a kind of magic in those pages; whenever I expressed a desire in these morning pages notebooks, more likely than not, the desire would be fulfilled, sometimes as quickly as that very same day. Cheques arrived in the mail, jobs showed up (by then I had my own business), synchronicities abounded.

Then, about six years ago, an astounding thing happened. It still amazes me to this day. I realized how much I longed to get that love of the process of creativity back, all those magic moments when I was a child and a teenager when I lost myself in the writing of my stories. I remembered how time seemed to stand still, and the joy that flowed through me as I wrote. I wanted that back. I wanted for my writing to be all about process, and not about the results (as in, making money).

My desire was granted, but not the way I had envisioned: one day, I picked up a pencil, and I drew a picture of my kids playing a video game. I had always thought I couldn’t draw, that I wasn’t artistic except with words. I can remember sitting outside my house when I was eleven or twelve, staring at a tree and trying hard to draw it. I couldn’t even draw a straight line – yet there I was, drawing my kids, and having a great time doing it.

For the next few years, I explored art-making, and discovered that what I loved most of all was creating portraits using charcoal. My skills improved slowly but most importantly, I had re-discovered the thrill of process.

Then life intervened again: I had a baby with my second husband. Dylan was a miracle baby, and my life took yet another turn. There was no time for art, no time for writing. I was busy, juggling my home-based business and a new baby.

When Dylan was two, tragedy struck. My baby sister, Joy, died at the age of 32. But in my grief, I realized the gift she had given me: physically she wasn’t here, but I knew she wasn’t gone. I knew this with a conviction I never had access to before. And from there, I began a spiritual journey that has changed my life in incredible ways. Shortly after, I met a group of amazing women online, all conscious creators, and I haven’t looked back since.

My writing has returned to me. During the times when I wasn’t writing, I had continued to get story ideas, lots of them. They’ve all stayed with me, and these days, I feel like I have another treasure trove in front me. Deciding which ones to work on is the most challenging thing. But the most important thing of all is that I’m starting to BE a writer again. I am deliberately making this choice, choosing this identity, resting in this identity fully. And the magic is happening, once again.