In 2017 I bought a book titled “How to be everything” by Emilie Wapnick. As it frequently does, the Universe put Emilie in my path at a time when I really was trying to be everything…wife, mother, artist, teacher, student, volunteer, homemaker, adventurer, explorer and friend. I put it excitedly by my bedside. hoping it would give meaning to my chaos, procrastination, inefficiency, fatigue and brain fog. But it remained there unopened because soon after that my life completely imploded. 

5 years later and I’m thinking about the book again, sitting on top of the dresser in my bedroom, among a row of eagerly purchased books all waiting to be read. After navigating a painful divorce, selling our beautiful family home, buying my first home (of my own), completing a huge renovation, falling in love again, the Covid19 pandemic, and supporting my boyfriend through a tough 10 months, I find myself back here again…still trying to be everything!

This time, however, it feels more positive. There has been a noticeable change in my energy this week. It is still chaotic, but rather than floundering and directionless, it’s more like a guided missile that keeps changing its target. The forward momentum is there, I just need to recalibrate the navigation system? My journal pages this week reflect this.

They are lighter and brighter than they’ve been for a while now, acknowledging what is, yet with an upbeat air of positivity. It’s creative energy, as opposed to nervous, neurotic and destructive energy.

It’s got me thinking about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and the ultimate goal of self-actualisation, the desire to reach one’s full potential. When my mind is not leading me astray, self-actualisation is where I’m at, it’s where I love to be…learning, growing and becoming. Until life knocks me off balance again anyway!

So it’s time to read that book, and start enjoying my sometimes frantic, but mostly positively energised creative inner and outer worlds that I’m lucky enough to inhabit. And to remember to let JOY be my compass…

Steady is my word for this new year. Steady as in constant and purposeful, with balance, clarity and a lightness of being. According to the Nine Star Ki system of ancient astrology, in 2020 I am entering the yearly cycle of late winter, and it’s a time of planning. Energy is stagnant but there is steady, slow growth. A time of clearing out past excesses or obstructions, of feeling cautious and reserved.

At first I was a little disappointed about the prospect of going steady! A new year is usually a time went we want to feel energised and full of fresh ideas to make our next 12 months amazing. But when I thought about it quietly, it actually makes a lot of sense. 2019 was a unusual  and complex year. I was finishing the renovation on my new home, settling into my new town and my new relationship, and getting used to my now empty nest. This was the deepest winter cycle, a time of hibernation and healing…and after the turbulence of 2018, this certainly made sense too. So the fact that  I still need to rest a while longer, and let seeds begin to germinate quietly as I prepare for this next chapter of my life sounds sensible and quite appealing. There is still work to be done on the house and in the garden too, so staying steady seems like a good plan to get me where I want to be.

I shall be like the tortoise in its shell, cosy and safe in my new home but getting ready to venture out into the world again, feeling restored and refreshed. Here’s to steady progress and a simpler, happy life in 2020…

When we shine brightly the effects of joyful loving energy ripple out through everything and everyone around us until they reach the far corners of the universe…

Falling in love is something that has to be co-created with the universe. It’s a contract with your soul to be open to the possibility of sharing an intimate connection with another soul, and the rewards and sacrifices that come with that. It requires deliberate intention, but as an unconditionally open and honest offering, rather than a desperate longing.   

It means accepting a certain level of vulnerability, while at the same time maintaining healthy personal boundaries that keep everyone safe and secure. It is something to be navigated, like exploring unknown territory…marvelling at new discoveries, learning about yourself and the other. Trying new things, seeing what fits and constantly course-correcting.

Dipping toes in and then deeply immersing oneself without fear of drowning is a delicate progress of pushing and pulling, revealing and then withdrawing to check you are still ok, still whole and still you?

Being ready to fall in love means embracing uncertainty and not expecting a certain outcome. For sure you can set your limits and tolerances, but always be ready to adjust and change your mind if you decide the things you thought were really important turned out to be barriers to happiness, or just not that meaningful after all?

We grow up believing love should be effortless, but maintaining loving relationships is a seriously important undertaking which requires time and dedication. The greater the effort, the greater the reward.

Giving unconditional love is such an amazing feeling, with so many positive benefits to ourselves and others. Even if a certain love doesn’t last forever it will not have been in vain and your soul will be braver, stronger and wiser when it feels ready to sign up again :).

When I bought my house, nearly two years ago now, it was a rather strange old building. The living space was at the front, overlooking the street, and several outbuildings were attached to the rear in a long line. Behind those was the Victorian walled garden. It was a lovely secluded space, well established and tranquil. But you had to enter from a small gate on the side, and there was no view of it at all from inside the house. Once the old stables at the rear had become the kitchen/diner with big glass French doors, it just didn’t make sense to be looking at a wall!

So a couple of weeks ago my very handy boyfriend enlisted the help of a mate and took a sledgehammer to a section of the old wall. Before long there was another pile of rubble and an opening appearing into the garden…

The reveal was exciting but at the same time I also felt a small pang of anxiety that I couldn’t really explain? The opening continued to expand and eventually we had a lovely view from the kitchen to the end of the garden, so we could see the ducks browsing in the flower beds – perfect.

But when I came downstairs the next morning and looked through the doors into the garden I felt oddly exposed. No one can see in but I was used to the wall, and this was different. Walls are a symbol of protection and security, and breaking down a wall often means penetration or defeat. It got me thinking about my own personal story and how, at times, I had constructed a metaphorical wall around myself for protection from hurt. I work hard at keeping my walls down these days but that comes with some vulnerability, and I think this is what I was reminded of when confronted with my missing piece of wall that morning. A new side wall and gate will provide the added shelter and protection required to make the space feel good. Right now there are no boundaries, and healthy boundaries are very necessary :).

One of the things I really missed about my last house was the vast view of the large garden and being able to see the sunrise everyday. The very convenient in town location I enjoy now means I have a smaller garden without the countryside views, but at least I can see more of the sky and my green space…

It’s February 2019 and I am not yet properly settled into my new house, even though I have been living here for 2 months now :(. I am still without windows and doors in my new kitchen, which by now should be flooded with natural daylight, but sadly I’m still looking at large expanses of chipboard! But I’m keeping my chin up the best I can and looking forward to how amazing the space will be when it’s done.

In the meantime I have been slowly unpacking my things which has given me some quiet headspace to reflect on the past twelve months. I’ve also had a couple of opportunities to teach and interact with my kindred spirits which has also provided some positive soul nourishment. The result of this stimulation was a growing pile of paper scraps with various random thoughts and quotes scribbled down, and so I decided I needed to get them into the art journal while they still made sense and the inner wisdom they contained was not lost.

In the process of unearthing my journals and getting creative, I also found myself looking back at pages from the past few months and engaging in some self reflection. It’s great getting messy on the page and enjoying the rush of making personally inspired and meaningful art, but just as important to go back later and harvest all the wisdom contained on the page. I often see much more in a journal spread than I realised was there when I first created it. And it’s great to reflect on how you’ve moved forward since that moment.

I’m sharing a few recently created pages here, but I feel sure they will continue to give me food for thought and wisdom to fall back on in the months and years to come…

The above quote was in a magazine, and it reminded me of how often I catch myself holding my breath and suddenly needing to take a big gulp of air? It’s pretty common that if your childhood was disrupted and there was a lot of uncertainty, then we carry that fear of the unknown into adulthood, and along with it an inability to relax completely, regardless of the apparent lack of danger in our lives. This spread reminds me to breathe mindfully and check in with myself that I’m not feeling constrained by something that doesn’t really exist?

This was another magazine quote that struck a chord and yet it’s quite hard to get your head around? To me it’s about being willing to be vulnerable in order to truly experience everything life has to offer. If you want to really experience joy, happiness, love and bliss, then you also have to open yourself up to some pain and suffering too. That’s the whole human experience…otherwise your cutting yourself off from half of life and never fully knowing the good stuff.

This is a photograph my Dad took of me at a friend’s barbecue party, kissing passionately with my first real boyfriend when I was 16! I think it’s really funny that my Dad took this photo but I’m also very glad to have it as a reminder of the unbridled passion that comes with falling in love. Having been lucky enough to be experiencing this giddy feeling again these past few months, I was discussing with a friend how to try and keep the passion alive once the initial excitement calms down. She mentioned a recent article in The Times newspaper about the lost art of ‘Simmering’ (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/simmering-how-to-improve-your-sex-life-in-a-long-term-relationship-ggkxvjvvc) and I wanted to create a page that reflected that feeling…

I can always rely on Alanis Morissette to provide inspiration and this lyric reminded me not to give myself a hard time when I don’t behave quite as well as I should, or fall short of my own self imposed high standards! Luckily I am with someone at the moment who is very accepting of me when I am not my best self, and that feels really good.

This last page came from a discussion I had during my recent mission board workshop. We talked about what a waste of valuable time it is to hold on to old baggage in the hope that someone will apologise or make amends for past hurts and disappointments. They have probably moved on, and the only one losing out by staying stuck is the person carrying the load? Let it go and be free…

It’s been over four months now since I moved out of my beautiful fairytale home and what a roller coaster ride that has been. It almost seems a distant memory now, although really it’s a very short space of time? I thought I had prepared mentally, having known it was happening for almost two years and doing lots of journaling and talking about it. But when it actually happened I think I went into a kind of shock. It was so frenetic that I had to go on auto-pilot, it was the only way to cope. I was totally on my own, as my ex-husband had by this point taken his things and left for South Africa, although my boys did their best to be as supportive as possible. It took the movers 4 days to pack and empty the house, most of which is in storage now. I wasn’t as prepared as I could have been and it was totally frantic in the final stages. Once the house was empty and cleaned I tried to say goodbye the best I could and went back to my small rented cottage and collapsed in a heap.

I walked around in a bit of a daze for a couple of weeks, I felt so tired and was at a bit of a loss as to what I should be doing. I had agreed to help my brother out by looking after his cats while he relocated from Switzerland, and my Mum was also staying with me in order to help out. But it was all a bit too much in a small space while trying to settle my own 3 pets into their new temporary home too. After a month of cohabiting in confined quarters with all the stresses and no real outlet, tension was building and I was feeling sad, miserable and lonely. I decided if nothing else I needed a reason to wash my hair, put some make-up on and get out of the house. It was now the summer holidays and my mostly married friends were busy with family and holidays so I made the brave and scary decision to put myself online.

During the breakdown of my marriage I thought I wouldn’t care if I was by myself going forward, so long as I was free from the constant tension and discomfort I was experiencing daily. But once it was gone I realised that it might be nice to date again, have a special someone in my life once more, and so I knew I needed to learn how to interact with men again in a way I hadn’t done for 23 years! I decided to approach the whole thing with a sense of light-hearted curiosity and see if I could reawaken my fun and flirtatious side which had long since abandoned ship. 

I decided to use two free apps, Bumble and Tinder, that were quick and easy to set up and get going. The initial process wasn’t dissimilar to using eBay or marketplace really…take a couple of nice photos of what’s on offer, say something about it, and set some parameters, in this case, age range and distance. Shouldn’t be that hard? But oh boy, that was just the first hurdle! There were so many out of focus or just unappealing profile photos to sift through! Why go to all the trouble of putting yourself out there and have a profile photo that is out of focus…there is really no excuse in the smartphone age? And if you are trying to attract a female then why put a photo of yourself holding a beer, in your bathroom, or lying on your bed? Pictures of participating in triathlon or at the gym are fine I guess to show you are sporty and fit, but also indicate you are busy in your free time and weekends doing stuff I’m not interested in? All I really wanted was a clear headshot to see their face (and eyes), a full length shot for physique and maybe one smiling to see if they looked after their teeth? I had some flashbacks to when I read ‘Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus’ – I was visiting a new planet and had to quickly make some adjustments to survive in this space! 

Another bug bear was the actual profile. There is space to write a few sentences about yourself to give a sense of you as a person, but it amazed me how few men took the opportunity to do so. Ok, it’s not easy to sell yourself, but just a few lines about what kind of person you are and what interests you is not really difficult? Unless someone really appealed visually and I was prepared to give them a chance I mostly swiped left if there was no profile. It just showed lack of effort and serious intention. Oh yes…and spelling! If you’ve gone to the effort of writing a profile, at least make sure the spelling is correct!

Once you have navigated the initial search phase you are then waiting for to match with someone and it’s out of your hands. But now your mind takes over with all kinds of doubts about your desirability and self-worth. What if I get no matches? Am I no longer attractive? Should I change my profile pictures or re-write my profile? I soon realised I would need to put on a tough skin to survive here, but decided to stay true to myself and be authentic, and remember that I could be happy by myself anyway and if this didn’t work out then it wasn’t where I should be right now.

Next stage…you’ve matched – yikes! It amazed me how much adrenaline this produced, reducing a sensible grown up woman to a pubescent teenager 😬. On Bumble it’s the woman who has to make the first move, which felt safe initially but now puts the ball in my court and a fresh opportunity for rejection if your attempt to reach out is ignored? I researched the best opening lines, but after finding they didn’t really fit with me (too young and flirtatious) just went with polite, friendly and hopefully being able to ask about something from their profile, if there was one. Most of the time I was successful, but I think if a man has put himself on Bumble he is serious and ready to make an effort?

With Tinder you can receive messages as soon you’ve matched, but as the average opener is ‘Hi, how you doing?’ or ‘How’s your day going?’ I realised it would be down to me to make the initial effort to see if there was any possibility of meaningful conversation, which I accepted and went into creative mode. Making conversation by chat was harder than I’d anticipated. Being a creative type, and with an enjoyment of the written word, I was surprised by the lack of effort  and imagination in the opening conversations. Isn’t it obvious that if you want to get a conversation going you need to ask questions, show interest in the person and not just answer with short replies that lead nowhere? Evidently not! 

The process was also very disjointed, replying to someone only to get a response several hours later or even the next day made it difficult to get any flow going, as well as playing havoc again with ones self esteem. So I gently let go of those heading nowhere fast and focused on guys who were at least showing some genuine interest and making a good effort. I tried to remember that there was always another human being at the other end of the chat, probably just a bit lost and lonely like myself and always signed off courteously and with good wishes where possible. I did engage in a couple of playful dalliances with cheeky chaps that resulted in a conversation about French kissing and receiving a photo of a rather impressive penis! But it was good humoured and as they had nothing to go on except a first name and a photo I wasn’t unduly worried. I soon said thanks for the fun and goodbye.

After about a week of sustained effort I had four decent conversations ongoing, three of which had moved onto WhatsApp. I must admit the one was quite hard work to keep going but the guy was cute so I stuck with it, and another one was slightly over intense, sending me small essays to read and expecting equally voluminous responses, but I was enjoying the challenge. It was all very time consuming though and I was getting impatient to end uncertainty so decided to be brave and offer to meet up. After all, the only way you could really know if you wanted to date this person was to be in a physical space with them? So first I offered to meet the man who was in the same town as me because that was easy to arrange and convenient. I was soooo nervous, I haven’t experienced butterflies like that since I sat exams at school! I suggested a local coffee shop on a Sunday morning and we both had things to do later so it put a nice time constraint on the meet up. We text each other on the day to make sure we were still on, and I asked what he would be wearing as in his profile picture he was wearing sunglasses so I really wasn’t sure what he looked like! Come to think of it he was lucky he had put some effort into his profile and his conversation or I probably wouldn’t have bothered 😃. I chose an outfit I felt comfortable in which expressed my personality and set off with a positive attitude…at least I would get to practice making small talk with a man I didn’t know. 

As it was relatively early on a Sunday morning he was the only person there when I arrived. He was shorter than I was expecting, and looked older than his profile photo without his sunglasses on, but he wasn’t unattractive and was dressed nicely. He seemed as nervous as I was which was kind of cute and we sat and made small talk for an hour. We parted to get on with our days and I undertook to give him some feedback later I think? I can’t say I fancied him straight away but I was pleased it hadn’t been a disaster and couldn’t really think of a reason not to meet him a second time and see if he was someone I could spend some more time with. I let him know at would be happy to meet again and he said he would like to see me again too.

In the meantime I was still conversing with the other three matches and was now keen to have something to compare my first experience with. So I offered to meet up with all of them, two of which agreed and one explained he wasn’t actually available to meet at the moment!! After making the arrangements the one guy cancelled due to a family emergency (he later tried to reschedule but I had moved on by then) and the other changed the date twice after which I withdrew my offer. I had already had a second and third date with number one by then and had started to think about him quite a bit.

I have to say that I felt I was the one driving the process, suggesting the dates and deciding what we should do. It was taking energy and effort but in a way it felt safe for me to be controlling the arrangements. I always took my own car and insisted on splitting expenses so there was no sense of feeling indebted in any way. It also meant I could choose things I would enjoy and would take the pressure off being sat opposite each other making more small talk over a meal. For my second date I suggested ten pin bowling which put less pressure on conversation and gave me some insight into my dates’ competitive nature.

I guess we women often still harbour that fantasy of being romanced by our Prince Charming, but this is an unrealistic expectation in an age where we want equality in all other things. If you are lucky enough to find a chivalrous guy and you like that, then enjoy it, otherwise be prepared to be specific about what you’d enjoy and be clear about your deal breakers? Having good healthy boundaries is essential to navigating the online dating world safely and hugely reduces the chance of hurt and disappointment. 

Fast forward 12 weeks and I am very happy in my new relationship. It’s been thrilling and scary at the same time but at least I feel alive again. I’m loving getting dressed up and feeling good about myself as a partner and a lover. We are quite different and I am having to find new ways of being me with this man but it’s good for me and I am learning new things about myself. As is my nature I threw myself headfirst into this relationship once I had made up my mind to give it a go, and as a result I have felt vulnerable at times having put my heart on the line again. But as anyone in investments knows, the greater the risk, the greater the potential rewards! Having said that, if you’re not sure how strong you are yet then by all means take things slower and with a little more caution until you feel certain of your resilience.

I did worry at first that I should have tried a few more dates just to make sure I was making a good choice. But I’m the kind of shopper that feels perfectly happy when the first dress I try on fits well and I like it a lot. I don’t go home and wish I spent hours trying on other dresses only to go back and get the one I liked at first…so I decided it was probably fine to have this philosophy with online dating too 🤔. What I had found was good enough to start with and is actually turning out to be a great fit! 

What will happen only time will tell, but right now I enjoying the companionship and affection and the feeling that I am no longer alone on my journey. But at least I know that if I find I am by myself again in the future I will survive, and I will always be in control of the choices ahead of me. I am the curator of my own life. X

If you follow my Instagram, or belong to one of the various art journaling Facebook groups in which I participate regularly, you will know that I have not had an easy year. In fact it’s been over 5 years now since my world got turned upside down and I began the long hard process of restoring my soul.
It began with a huge loss, followed by an enormous amount of sadness and then loneliness. I hadn’t realised until this happened that my soul was in such a state of disrepair. I wasn’t deliriously happy, but I was bumbling along and life was ok, good in most parts actually. I had no inclination that it should have been any different, that I should have been different? Only when I was plunged into a place so dark did I realise how dimmed my inner light had become.

I spent many months lost in that place and feeling pretty hopeless about ever being happy again. That was until I heard Melody Ross describing her own personal Soul Restoration journey, and I instantly knew this was what I needed to do.
For those of you that are not familiar with Soul Restoration, it is the most amazing course created by Melody, co founder of Brave Living. It is designed to help reignite lost sparkle and get you shining once again on full beam! You learn how to dissect the parts of your life that are not working properly and begin to understand why you feel suffocated, see where you gave up control of your life and learn how to take your power back. There are tools at your disposal that you can use to co-create with the universe the bright and positive future your soul desires and deserves.
My personal Soul Restoration journey has been quite radical in many ways. Firstly, I carefully unpicked my life up to this point. I learned so much about the things that have shaped me into the fearful, resentful, isolated adult who was lurking beneath the cardboard cutout self she showed to the world. I was no longer the real me, the authentic beautiful soul that had arrived on planet earth over 45 years ago. I was no longer joyful. I needed to restore back to that happy, fearless, adventurous and loving soul.
The hardest part of this journey back to me was to make the sad and difficult decision to divorce my husband of 23 years. We have two wonderful sons, both young adults now, and I was trying desperately to find a way to keep our family together. But for many reasons which I would come to discover and understand, our relationship had become toxic and I no longer had the energy and fortitude required to hold us together.
This decision brought with it a wide range of new feelings, worries and challenges. For a start, I now had to be financially responsible. I had to learn how to plan, and budget, and save and think twice about things instead of being my naturally impulsive self. This felt both scary and exciting at the same time. Armed with my best Brave Girl attitude, and feeling free and empowered, I set forth on my new adventure with gusto!

I had a lot to learn, and the lessons started coming thick and fast. Reigning in my impulsiveness was proving more difficult than anticipated, and in my rush to shed the skin that had previously constricted my growth, I began looking for my next home before our family home was on the market. It took a few months of endless viewings searching for that ‘perfect’ home in which to start over. Feeling tired, I was on the verge of taking a break from my thus far fruitless house hunting when I found ‘the one’. The funny thing was that it hardly ticked any of my boxes, yet I immediately felt a connection with it. A Victorian property almost 130 years old it was in need of serious updating and remodelling to become a suitable home. But while friends and family looked puzzled as I described my ideas, I was already inhabiting my future space through my vivid imagination. I enlisted a builder who seemed to ‘get’ my vision and instructed him to get on without delay so that my new home might be ready before I had to move out of my current one. Practical and financial considerations were not as interesting as choosing window styles and other design details, but six months later very little had been achieved and the budget was spiralling out of control. I felt let down and betrayed, as well a hugely disappointed in myself. I had literally created my very own dilapidated and uninhabitable ruin…a physical manifestation of my souls state of disrepair! My ‘crack’ house.
I threw myself a huge pity party and the worrying resulted in sleepless nights and the inability to focus on anything much besides my impending doom. This was when I realised that I had lost control of this project and there was no one else to fix it but me. My ‘go to’ rescuer (my now ex husband) was no longer at my disposal but I knew I needed to ask for help.

One of the most valuable things I learned taking Soul Restoration the first time was that I don’t have to do everything myself and I can reach out to others who are stronger in areas where I am lacking. So I tentatively reached out to friends and family in the hope of redeeming some goodwill vouchers I wasn’t even sure I had earned. To my great surprise, as well as relief, everyone was very supportive and encouraging. It seemed that although the shame of this first solo failure had heightened my sense of unworthiness, I must have somehow earned some kindness credits. Perhaps I was after all a valuable human being. So with my friends and family, and to my surprise my ex husband, at my back, I regrouped and started again. I stopped my building project and have set about finding somewhere to rent while I pack up my old life and rethink my vision. I still love the old house I have bought and remain excited about the wonderful potential it possesses.

As I traverse the voids that the lifted floorboards have exposed and look up through the gaps in the ceilings I do wonder at the irony of the situation. Obviously my healing journey was not as complete as I thought it was. I had not done enough excavating, unearthing and revealing in order to fully restore. Well now I can literally see the dirt beneath the foundations and there is no other choice than to start rebuilding from the ground up. And I will be an active participant and guardian of this restoration and I will show myself and my life the respect it deserves. Bring it on!

2017 has been a big year! In fact if I had to look at it objectively some time down the line I would probably say it would rank among the most significant years of my life. I got divorced, saying goodbye to a marriage of 23 years, and I bought a house, the first I’ve owned by myself. And of course, being me, it’s a fixer upper, and I’m now in the early stages of a huge renovation project! New me, new house, big renovation projects both inside and out?
At the beginning of this year I completed the Brave Girls Club course Soul Restoration, which signified the start of an inward journey to clean out and restore my Soul House – ‘me’. It’s not been easy to go through my life with a fine tooth comb and sort through all the stuff that has caused blockages to happiness, wellbeing and authenticity. I have had to own some painful stuff and admit a lot of things about myself that it’s been easier to cover up over the years and just keep going. But I understand now that if something is not real then it’s fake, and there is no satisfaction in living a fake life. So here I am moving into 2018 with a new agenda…to live authentically and accept everything about myself and others, looking for the good, and accepting the not so great. It’s a constant daily challenge to take notice of repeated behaviour patterns I get stuck in, to be mindful of the emotions that trigger them and channel my energies in more positive directions. As this year ends I can say for sure that I am tired. It’s been an emotionally draining twelve months.
But despite this, the year has been punctuated by really positive things too. I attended a wonderful retreat in Italy with a very special friend, creating a travel journal with Lisa Sonora, a teacher I’ve been following for a few years now and wanting very much to meet in person. Of course the journal turned out to be as much about my own inner journey as much as the lovely town or Orvieto, but hey – ‘wherever you go…there you are?’. It was intense, but cleansing and healing too. Art journaling is now my ‘go to’ therapy of choice when it comes to working though difficult stuff.
I was also finally accepted to train as an Instructor with Brave Girls Club and am now officially certified to teach Soul Restoration to others. I went to Star, Idaho, and spent an incredible 5 days in The Art Barn under the tuition of the wonderful and inspirational Melody Ross. This has been exciting and terrifying in equal measure! Initially I doubted I had the capability to teach this work. I have no qualifications in this area, just my own life experience. But the calling to share all that I had learned and experienced was too strong and I kept going forward regardless. I had much encouragement from both new and old friends for which I am most grateful. And so a couple of weeks ago I held my first 4 day retreat, and it seems from the responses I received that it was a worthwhile success. It felt wonderful to share with other women some tools they can use to help them live their best lives too.

Helping others is definitely the best antidote to a spot of the blues or a dose of self pity. My weekly sessions volunteering at the mental health recovery centre have been testament to that for me. I have witnessed real transformation in struggling souls though inspirational creative projects. It takes a chunk out of my week to put the time aside but it feels good. The same goes for the evening journaling classes I held during the second half of this year. The energy required to stay alert until 9.30pm was a challenge, but the reward was to see people come alive doing creative soul work and leave the sessions glowing.
So I think I can say that the negatives were at least matched by the positives this year. There was a lot that was difficult but I stayed brave and survived it. I have so much to be grateful for, my gorgeous sons, family and friends who have been supportive and encouraging, my adoring pugs and even the vocal and somewhat annoying Siamese cat! I have good health and a lovely home. My ex husband and I are still trying to be apart in the best way possible. I feel very blessed for my beautiful messy life!
Happy New Year and wishing you a perfectly imperfect 2018!
Debbie x

For the past couple of years I have taken part in the #30dayjournal projects offered by Lisa Sonora. They are a wonderful free gift that Lisa gives to the online community and she puts a lot of effort into providing the daily inspirational quotes and writing prompts that land in my inbox for 30 days in a row. I have found them to be a great kick-start to the New Year, or a way of unblocking when I feel stuck.

Each time I participate the journey gets easier and flows more freely, and this time I have really been feeling on ‘fire’ with ideas and creativity. ‘Fire’, coincidentally, also happens to be the title of this 30-day project. My writing around the prompts and the pages I have produced has been posted on the group Facebook page, but I thought it would be good to document some of the more thought provoking pieces here in my blog. So this is a selection of pages and the accompanying writing that went along with them…

Day 6 – I suffer terribly from shyness and when meeting new people or attending workshops I am the classic wallflower, keeping to myself and keeping my head down. But I know I miss a lot of opportunities to connect with like-minded folks this way. I have started to mention that a I am shy in scary circumstances and it definitely helps release some of the tension and opens the door for kind people to give me the opportunity to participate more?

Days 11 and 12 – Wow, I was definitely feeling the FIRE this morning! I got up bright and early and dived headfirst into the journal, where I stayed for 2 hours, and drank 3 cups of tea! I found the prompts for Days 11 and 12 very powerful, and especially loved the quotes from May Sarton’s ‘Journal of Solitude’. Whilst thinking about daring to be myself I felt compelled to seek out the pile of old childhood photos my mother gifted to me some time ago. They sit in a plastic bag in my dining room – ‘waiting’? I love how serendipity just presents us with the perfect thing when we need it.

And when Day 12’s prompt mentioned a lantern, I knew there was a reason I had felt the need to order a rubber stamp of an old street lamp some time ago, but had yet to find a use for it!! I am really pleased with my pages today, but the trouble is I now feel completely exhausted from all the ‘soul work’ and now have to motivate myself to do some (real) money earning activities :). Also I feel very bad about the fact that it is 9.40am and I am still in my dressing gown – but hey ho, I have to listen to my whispers and they said ‘do your journal, girl’! Have a great day x

Day 13 – I was intrigued by the idea of today’s quote and wanted to see if I could express with paint how it would be to have the light of the moon glowing through my skin. It was a really powerful exercise actually and as I was slowly moving the paint around on the page, trying to capture the essence of the idea, I could absolutely feel the creative energy coursing through me, but with a serene vitality if that makes sense?

Day 14 – ‘I love these ordinary things…’ The thing I love about participating in these 30 day journal projects is that 30 days is not too long a time to commit to doing something daily, but yet the pace and intensity of having to show up in the journal each day and produce (or write) something can be truly revealing. Because there is no time to ponder and worry and pontificate, I just hand over the task to my higher self and trust the guidance I am given as to what should go on my page. Sometimes I sift through my collection of ready cutout images, or go to the computer and print an image that comes to mind, or feel the need to move paint around on the page. This morning I just started typing a list of all the simple things I treasure during my day. I probably could have kept on going but decided to stop at the things that came straight to mind with ease. I set them against a backdrop of pots on a shelf because I had this idea of how pottery is an ordinary everyday item that most of us have in our homes, and yet in the form of a vase it becomes somehow precious, often a container for sacred items.  Pottery also offers us a timeline though history, particularly to date civilizations. And yet thousands of years later we still have the humble clay pot in common with those ancient people, who probably enjoyed the same simple daily pleasures that I do – I love that!

I slept through my alarm this morning and it really threw me off balance! I woke in a room bathed in a glowing yellow light, well really a luminous chartreuse if I was to be specific, and it felt ‘other worldly’? All through the summer I have just about managed to keep up the practice of waking naturally at daybreak and getting up to witness the sunrise. I have watched the sky slowly change through a more or less routine set of colours until the sun was above the horizon, and it gave me a very satisfying feeling of rhythm and stability as well as inspiration. But this morning I missed that process and was catapulted into a world of warm green pea soup!

I got up and made my first cup of tea, the best one of the day, and went out into the garden as usual to smell the fresh morning air and observe the increments of seasonal change that happen daily if you have a mind to take notice. There was ‘greenness’ everywhere and heavy moisture in the air that almost felt tropical. As I was wandering through the vegetable patch, my love of which has also been a revelation to me this year, soft warm rain began to fall on me and it was beautiful. The cat meowed his objection and Sookie the pug looked up as if to say ‘can we go in now?’ – but I just stood for a while and felt my hair begin to curl into its natural state of wildness. It felt good.

Last year I remember feeling almost depressed about the end of summer, the speed of the slide from autumn to winter and the long dark nights. But I was determined this year to accept and embrace the changing seasons and really try to appreciate and engage with each stage as it happened. It feels easier because I threw myself into the challenge of enjoying every moment of summer, rising as early as 04.46 mid June and enjoying over 16 hours of daylight. Now I want to sync with the rhythm of nature as she slows everything down and harvests the produce of summers busy production. I want to enjoy my achievements and reflect on the lessons I have learned and the progress I have made. Mindful of my tendency towards frantic activity and burnout I want to rest and replenish both my energy and my creative well. First step = get back in my journal and let my mind gently unravel…