Reinventing Valentine
I thought my heart
was something
I’d have to stuff
through a straw.
With fists
clenched
to my lips,
my breath
projects this wad
past air like an arrow,
clean and deadly.
But my heart is
actually
in my hands:
a thousand paper
petals waiting
to be released
into the sun.
What a delicate,
dry trickle,
I think,
admiring
each
tiny
dance
how beautiful,
how alive
Nyssa Rhiannon Hanger, As Light Ascends, Beauty is Beauty Press, 2012
Found this on a card while cleaning out things recently. Nice reminder of cause and effect...
The Journey
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice-
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations, though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen branches and stones.
but little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do-
determined to save
the only life you could save.
Mary Oliver, Dream Work, Grove Atlantic Inc., 1986 & New and Selected Poems, Beacon Press, 1992.
Its always easy to begin something; its quite another to finish it.
I find that the space around me has a large effect on my productivity. So I've been doing some rearranging at the house. I'm just about ready to do some rearranging online as well.
I've been working hard on a new website to debut my new business venture, The Upward Spiral Center. Its building on the work I've already created with Upward Spiral Therapy, but I'm ready to grow and become all that I dreamed.
So that means really committing to an online presence. I tend to shy way from such things due to anxiety over my own persona and fear that it will all feed my ego. But I also believe I can approach it in a way that helps me learn about and from my ego.
Here we go!
Back in August, I started the second annual
. The idea is to post something that you are grateful for everyday. Last year, I did this to both create meaningful daily content on my
(the key to social media success, so I hear) and to force myself to work through my aversion to social media. It worked really well! I got more fans, even had a few people join in with me, and surprised myself on how fulfilling posting things online can be.
This year has been different
. I started this project with the intention to start to create a community around my ultimate dream of creating the Upward Spiral Center for Healing and Transformation. Earlier this year, this dream started to look like a reality and I have been working hard to make it happen.
But that's a lot to juggle. The creation of the center has brought some core issues of mine up to the surface and that's caused some breakdowns and needs to withdrawal. For the past month or so, I've taken a step back from major work on creating the center, because I realized"
If I'm going to create the Center, I need to first find my own.
There is this saying in Chinese Medicine that
"one can not inspire a virtue in someone else unless they first possess it themselves."
Since I came across this thought in my Daoism and Chinense Medicine class back in 2009, it has infused much of my thoughts about work and therapy.
One basic issue for me (and I know for a lot of my clients) is essentially that
I'm not enough
.
And the silent belief that follows is that
no one will love me
.
To create the center is to affirm the opposite:
I am working to create a space for all of US to explore what our healing journeys can become
. To do this, I will need lots of love and support from my community. It can not happen with out it.
In addition to really slacking on my own gratitude posting during this year's project, I publicly admitted the other day that I miscalculated 101 Days. The intention is to lead up to Thanksgiving, but I started a week early. So its 108 days instead. Thankfully, its a symbolic number!
I've still felt alot of 'gratitude guilt' (which essentially traces back to "I'm not good enough") about neglecting my gratitude and miscalculating.
I was overjoyed at the responses I got after posting about 108 Days. You can see some on our
.
I had a guy write me a personal message and say:
"
no embarrassment needed ... I just kept thinking how is my counting wrong !?! lol its an awesome idea and has brought joy to even more people than you'll ever know ... it's fabulous and I wouldn't change a thing"
I also had a friend of mine tag me in a post:
"I am grateful for
, a great friend, and someone who has the imagination, thoughtfulness, and work ethic to do something good for her community. Or better yet, to get us to do something good for ourselves!"
How can I not feel loved and enough reading things like this? I am bookmarking this page for the next time I feel bad : )
I don't know if I can really say "ENOUGH!" to "not enough," but I'm sure gonna try. This is what I hope to inspire in others eventually at the
, but for now I'm going to continue to work on me and inspire the community I already have.
Thanks ya'll, for all your love.
One of the cornerstones of the Artist's Way is morning pages. Every morning during the 12-week course you write 3 pages long-hand. It seems simple and maybe even like a waste of time, but it is actually the opposite - incredibly difficult but rewarding when you actually take the time to do it.
I don't know how this is for other people going through the Artist's Way, but for myself and many others I hear from, it is not something that happens everyday. Even when it does, I don't always get to 3 full pages.
I am both interested in that which is in the way of our flow but I also know there's another part of me that is happy to turn away and look at something pretty and distracting.
This is why I am writing about it. One thing I've learned from the pages is that they will uncover things. You start to learn about how you feel, what's preoccupying you, where your thoughts go. Instead of being in the thoughts, you can see the thoughts. That is two different experiences. It actually has quite a lot of parallels to meditation and is the reason why I incorporate both into my workshops.
So my observations: I can see how the block of writing my pages is the same block that keeps me from posting my gratitudes. I started 101 Days of Gratitude 2013 last August, and am just coming out of a recent bout of not posting.
Once I get past the negative self-talk about feeling bad I'm not keeping up with my own project, I start to look at what's keeping me from posting. Here's my list:
I don't like going on social media - I've written about this before, I feel an anxiety often when I go to post something online. It almost seems to increase the more personal my post is. Yet, I see this as a great tool for connection and want to celebrate it, which is what keeps me posting.
I forget - simple answer but its true. I'm juggling quite a bit at the moment and at the end of the day, when I usually spend a few minutes reflecting, I'm ready to let go of the whole day. I will think that I will "do it tomorrow" and that has turned into next week a few times now.
I can't think of what to write - Sounds unbelievable, but it goes with the first point. I start thinking about how others will perceive my post and over-think it all and then can't think of what I really want to post.
I posted these on my wall
above where I write my gratitude
so I will see them everyday and remember.
Now with my excuses out of the way and I can see how ridiculous they all are (the value in writing things down!), I want to make some resolutions. I work a lot with affirmations and believe they are a powerful way to change our thinking and lives. Here are mine for right now:
What I have to say has value, even if its simple, silly, or superficial.
There is enough time for all tasks to be done each day.
I am in the beautiful flow of life.
Maybe this will help : )
I am ready to start blogging again.
Last August, I accepted a job at the University of Tampa teaching a class on Creativity in for Communication, Journalism and Advertising/Public Relations students. Its a big challenge since I have never done anything like this before, but I am learning a lot about teaching, sharing, and uncovering my own creativity.
My intention is to share more about this on this blog.
It is difficult to read and teach about the creative process without doing it on my own. We are using The Artist's Way and Making is Connecting as our two texts books. One is about a spiritual path to creativity and provides a course framework for uncovering our creative selves including writing morning pages as well as various creative activities and assignments. The other is a cultural perspective on how making things connects us with ourselves and others with a particular focus on making in the digital world or "web 2.0."
So my attention is directed again to this blog project and how I feel I can use it to more effectively express and share my own creative journey, the journey I affectionately refer to as the "upward spiral."
We will see what happens...
So, tomorrow we are starting 101 Days of Gratitude again. I'm super stoked for this new project. I've got more help and others who've come on board to make this a true community project.
This year, instead of writing a blog post everyday, which was obviously too much to keep up with, I am going to post on social media (#101gratitude) and contribute to the gratitude walls. Not only are we going to have
one at my office like last year
, but we will also have them at
,
, and
. And they will be handmade mounted chalkboards. This is turning into such a beautiful project already.
When I look back I see how deeply transformed I was through the project last year. It really helped give rise to a ton of amazing things in my life and I can't wait to see what it does this year for my lives and others!
Read more on
and if you are on Facebook,
.
Around the time that the "bad news" began (mid-February), I had a simultaneous occurrence of good news.
I have always dreamed of opening my own healing center. At the beginning of this year, I decided to make the slow movement towards making this all possible, in time. I recognized that the first step would be to make some additional income through renting out my current treatment room. I decided that I was ready to find someone in preparation for creating the healing center of my dreams.
But the thing was, I didn't really want to put an add on craigslist and solicit to strangers. Ideally, I wanted to find someone that I possibly already know and could trust. Someone that had good energy and intentions and who's goals matched mine so we could work on building something together. I didn't really have anyone in mind, but I did desire for this person to appear sooner rather than later.
So I was driving to work one day in early February, thinking about these things, and I said to the universe, "Universe, I really want to make this happen but don't want to put an add on craigslist, and I would like it to happen soon. I'll give you a month. If no one appears within 30 days, then I will put out an add. But I will give you the chance to send someone first."
No kidding, two weeks later I received an email in my inbox with the subject "New LMT." The email was from Deran, the brother of a friend of mine who was recently licensed in massage and was asking if I was interested in taking a new therapist under my wing. Well, hot damn, I thought, my request totally worked! Deran and I had actually had a phone conversation about 6 months before when he was interviewing me for a project while he was still in massage school. I didn't know that I did already know this new therapist, but then I asked and there he was. Magic.
So as of a few months ago, Deran officially joined the Upward Spiral team. We are spiraling upward and onward and it turns out that this is just the beginning of a whole new project for Upward Spiral. More soon!
