recurring theme

There seems to be a recurring theme in my life lately revolving around getting in touch with my creative self, making space for what I need and who I need to be, etc. I feel like this theme has come up in  variety of sources I read and from a multitude of perspectives.

Here is just a short list:
Magpie Girl, in her email series Magpie Speak, discusses all sorts of aspects about bringing out one's creative side and dealing with the challenges that come with that and hinder one's creativity.

Lauren, over at Suburbalicious Living, talks about the book Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD. To quote her How-to Guide on what you need to know from the intro:

Clarissa writes this book so that women may regain their wild and knowing natures, which she argues have been crushed out of us by years of societal influence requiring women to be demure, clean, and safe. On page 10 (I have the tiny paperback version), she writes a very long list of the symptoms of having "partially severed or lost entirely the relationship with the deep instinctual psyche. Using women's language exclusively, these are: feeling extraordinarily dry, fatigued, frail depressed, confused, gagged, muzzled, unaroused. Feeling frightened, halt or weak, without inspiration, without animation, without soul-fulness, without meaning, shame-bearing, chronically fuming, volatile, stuck, uncreative, compressed, crazed." She goes on for several more paragraphs of symptoms.

I am at that point.



Lauren also wrote a post for A Practical Wedding, again mentioning Women Who Run with the Wolves, about The Road Not Taken. Here, she discusses making choices and how it's ok to mourn the decision you didn't make while still being confident, at-peace with, and happy about the decision you did make.

Finally, Tish Harren Warren wrote an article for The Well entitled At a Loss for Words: Finding Prayer Through Liturgy, Silence, and Embodiment, discussing what happens when you no longer have the words to pray.


I bought Women Who Run with the Wolves, and haven't made it much past the intro, but Estes talks about getting sucked into everyday life and losing your sense of what she calls the wild woman. I've been feeling a loss of creativity, loss of direction, loss of purpose for a while. I've run out of words to pray. It's been simmering, but lately has begun to come to a full boil. I feel that I am entering a period of exploration and learning - learning how to make a place for myself, learning how to listen to my heart and to God, learning how to express and pour out that which is in my heart. My goal for this weekend is to turn the storage room/ second bedroom (that doesn't have a bed yet) into my craft room. M brought me a folding table to use for my creative pursuits, and I am excited to paint, draw, write, knit, sew, create once again. I also want to turn it into a place of santuary, a place of rest, and of peace.

I will end with this quote by Stephen DeStaebler because I think it is very true, and especicially relevent.

"Artists don't get down to work until the pain of working is exceeded by the pain of not working."

Advice

When I told my Uncle that I got engaged, his advice was this:

My 2 biggest things in a relationship are being able to speak your truth and have it be heard, and being able to hear your partners truth. The rest is all icing on the cake.

I've been thinking about that a lot. It put to words something that had been floating around in my mind for a while. M. is very good at this. I am not. I have a tendency to be quite selfish. I tell him he needs to open up and tell me what he's feeling and what he wants, all the while figuring out how to convince him that what I want is best. I wasn't even aware of it for the longest time until he finally said something to me about it. Now, I'm trying really hard to just listen and to understand that his needs are valid even if I don't understand them. It's hard. I never really had to that before. It was always whatever I wanted or thought was best for me, and now it's what's best for both of us, and finding a compromise that is best for both of us. I'm learning to sacrifice some of myself so he can be in a better place, learning to find a balance, learning to live as part of something bigger than just me, learning how to form my own family.

Mondo Beyondo List

In an attempt to fight my feelings of becoming stagnant, I wrote down my Mondo Beyondo list the other day in hopes that writing it down will bring me one step closer to accomplishing something:

• Climb Mt. Kilimanjaro
• Build or renovate a house
• Become mostly fluent in another language
• Visit every continent
• Explore as many countries as possible
• Sell a piece of artwork
• Heal someone
• Become a mother

Sure enough, when talking to M. about how I felt like I was stagnating, and that we were becoming a boring couple, he suggested we learn a foreign language together. Of course, we both want to learn completely different languages, his all involving learning a language with a different alphabet (which, from past experience, I do not do well with...let's just say it involves throwing books across the room in frustration when attempting to learn Greek). So we've tentatively decided to learn French. (southern France for our honeymoon perhaps?!?)

So what's your list? If you could do anything with your life, no limitations, what would it be?

Goal

My goal is to start writing regularly. I think it will be good for me on all kinds of levels: personal, spiritual, creative. I've been feeling trapped and stagnant lately, as well as my depression returning, and I'm determined to not just sit here and let it happen anymore.