"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." Anais Nin

I was looking for encouragement in the pages of Dance of the Dissident Daughter today and began reading about the moment Sue Monk Kidd realized her heart was calling her to write fiction.  She didn’t feel she could leave the comfort of her career as a Christian writer to venture off into unknown territory, but felt palpably the desire to create something new from her soul.

When she told her analyst she wasn’t sure that she was going to be able to leave all the security behind, her analyst said…”Do you have anything to say to your generation of women or not?”

Do you have something to say?? Is your heart longing to speak it?

I met many soulful women at the writer’s workshop who are following that longing. They have amazing stories of their own, or of someone who has touched their lives. They feel compelled to share, but are struggling in the “how” of it. I was not the only one who felt an urge to write out of personal experience. Understanding I am not alone is an enormous boost to my resolve. Even more powerful than the example of the other women was seeing Sue’s passion and knowing that if she had found the right tools to contain and channel her madness, I could too.  I don’t know where it will lead me, but here I am. Writing.

Sue mentioned that her writing often begins not with words, but an image. An image that carries a wealth of emotions and ideas. It started me thinking about how my words and images play together. Often words are easier to cobble together to match the tuning fork in my heart. Sometimes the feeling is beyond words, but appears perfectly and delicately in the petals of a flower. Somehow they will work together.  So I follow my heart wherever it leads.

Posted by: brutallycurious at September 21, 2006 15:22 | link | comments (1)

Madness and Measure, part 1

At first glance, Sue Monk Kidd looks just like a well-groomed Southern pastor's wife.  She even has the poise, grace and kindness to go with it.  But listen to her talk, and her eyes shine with excitement when she talks about her "craft" and the more you listen,  the more you feel the fire of a creative spirit burn within her. She is an artist.  An artist who embraces mythology, ancient goddesses, black madonnas, dreamwork and communion with nature and anything else that speaks to her soul.

When asked how she prays, she said "I write".  I fell in love with her. She embraces her "madness"...that upwelliing of her soul that leads her into what Jung called the dark old country to retrieve the gems that shine through her writing. Writing is her soul's work, its healing, its gift of healing to others. Her workshop is titled "writing, creativity and soul". It's a massive undertaking she readily admits is foolhardy to tackle in one workshop. But she managed very well to give us encouragement and guidance to plumbing our own depths.

She spent Friday evening  describing  the madness and how to nurture it. Saturday was devoted to measure, namely the process she has found works for her to contain and channel  the inspiration.  The two are essential to creating art and require balance.

The element of the soul's work she mentioned that resonated most with me was chaos. .The idea of chaos has been coming to me a lot lately.  Singing Arrow, the methodical minimalist,  is learning to embrace chaos and allow form to flow from it. I have been comfortable with chaos, but didn't realize I nevertheless ran from it at times when the tension got to be too much. But her point was to have the courage to stay with the tension until the form took shape. Allow the images, ideas, words, feelings of the soul to come and swirl before you without judging or interpreting them prematurely. Let them be. They will take form if you surrender to the process.

It reminded me of a quote from Dance of the Dissident Daughter.

"The only way I have understood, broken free, emerged, healed, forgiven, flourished, and grown powerful is by asking the hardest questions and then living into the answers through opening up to my own terror and transmuting it into creativity.

I have gotten nowhere by retreating into hand-me-down sureties or resisting the tensions that Truth ignited"

Posted by: brutallycurious at September 19, 2006 22:23 | link | comments
writing, singing arrow, sue monk kidd

I desire most of all to gush about the work with Sue Monk KIdd. Maybe this afternoon. For now, I am working through the emotions from the time spent with my mother.  There are several things going on. Her life, my life, and our relationship. She is probably happier than ever before in her life, having fashioned a life of her own choosing. I could say the same for myself.

My personal journey has taken me far outside the realms of what my family understands. I have come to terms with that, or so I thought. This weekend was a real test. I was comfortable being myself, calm in my own self-ness as my mother and I danced our old dances of religion, spirituality, and my father. If I could wave a magic wand, I would wish for never discussing the man again. Her pain is so very deep, and rightly so. She has her wounds. I have mine.  But as catharsis, she chooses to continue to relive the pain when she is with me. It tears me apart. I feel her pain, I feel my own from childhood and it reminds me of my own broken marriage

My heart has healed in ways she cannot understand. I have forgiven. She understands that, but for me forgiveness has become a deep compassion for the souls of all the members of my family. I will not excuse my father's behaviour. My mother calls him evil, and I won't contradict her. But somehow I am able to hold both.  I am no longer holding the pain...I release it. I believe forgiveness doesn't erase the history, but it does release me from continuing to experience the pain and allows me to have compassion on a person whose soul has chosen a destructive path. It is his choice. Let him live it.  We remove ourselves from it (or more correctly removed him from our family's life) and heal.  It's like cutting out a cancer.

Maybe I should have used that analogy with her...cutting out a cancer.  I love her and her wounds. They define her healing. That is where "the light enters".  What hurt more than anything is that she wouldn't hear me.

And that is my own childhood wound. She was in so much emotional pain my entire childhood, I felt abandoned emotionally. There was always this thick curtain between us of her pain. She had little to give. She sacrificed her own life to raise us in a stable home. But the emotional price on me was great as well.  Her own depression cut her off from me.

I feel that so acutely when she goes into her wounds. It pierces the heart of my little girl. The difference now is that tender spot inside me is protected, held, healed by the woman I am. I definitely felt that. It hurt, but did not consume me.

That is definite and amazing growth. I felt the strength of my own soul holding me through that. I was able to feel the pain and then let it go. I read somewhere that growth is circular. You experience the same wound again and again, but each time it hurts a little less, heals a little more quickly.

As I see that again, I have renewed compassion for her as well. She made the best decision she knew how to make. I am grateful. My wounds are where the light enters me. I bless them. They are the path of healing for me.

Posted by: brutallycurious at September 18, 2006 09:37 | link | comments
emotions, mom , family, growing up

The last 3 days have been a lifetime. I marvel at life when that happens. Ordinary-looking days full of meaning, movement and emotion. 

The biggest, most-recent first...our friend Coyote has returned from Iraq. He arrived in the states today, we were told. He will be back home in about a week. He left last August when he youngest daughter was 3 weeks old.   His wife called tonight just as I was having a glass of wine poured for me at a local wine bar. I forced the bartender to clink glasses with me...he didn't seem appropriately cheered when i told him why.

I spent an hour after that in the company of a longstanding friend. She and I have better intentions, but only seem to get together yearly.  She is a very cool woman. We agreed to work up to quarterly glasses of wine.

Singing Arrow and I have set into motion many changes to support our respective business, and are slowly realizing we are probably going to be one corporate entity. It makes sense. We can use one umbrella entity for our creative services and we may add a couple of friends as contractors to make a well-rounded agency of talent.  We ordered mac laptops for each of us yesterday, he finally got his ipod and we got a few peripherals for the Mac-daddy...my G4.

We have both adjusted to flowing in and out of each other's day without interfereing with work. What I struggle with is the lack of any time to create for myself. I just don't have as much as I'd like right now. But things are changing at work too. I may have some extra time off after this stint of daily work..time that Singing Arrow would not take also, so I would be on my own.

The sense of freedom and responsibility grows now that we are both working on our own. People do it every day..but it still blows my mind to feel the lack of structure and the excitement of being able to create whatever we can dream. Choice is the highest form of creation (Carolyn Meiss said that).

Tomorrow I choose to attend a Sue Monk Kidd writing workshop with my 17 yr old daughter.  It will be an amazing transformative weekend. I can feel it.

Posted by: brutallycurious at September 14, 2006 21:39 | link | comments (1)
writing, sue monk kidd

Fragile

"Fragile"



If blood will flow when flesh and steel are one

Drying in the colour of the evening sun

Tomorrow's rain will wash the stains away

But something in our minds will always stay

Perhaps this final act was meant

To clinch a lifetime's argument

That nothing comes from violence and nothing ever could

For all those born beneath an angry star

Lest we forget how fragile we are



On and on the rain will fall

Like tears from a star like tears from a star

On and on the rain will say

How fragile we are how fragile we are



On and on the rain will fall

Like tears from a star like tears from a star

On and on the rain will say

How fragile we are how fragile we are

How fragile we are how fragile we are





-Sting

Posted by: brutallycurious at September 12, 2006 08:57 | link | comments