Tag: writing

Categories
letting go Slow down

Letting Go

First published on Thursday 22nd February 2024 on Godspace Light – Letting Go

Christine’s post Relinquish, Let Go  and Lily’s post on Jesus going into the wilderness, I think, sit hand in hand. Letting go of things is like going into the wilderness. We’ve got used to what we do and we do it well, so why let go? Some of the reason can be that, like with Christine, new projects call us and there are only so many hours in the day. Some of the reasons are that even though we might have the time and the energy they are not what God has for us. Now that can be a hard one. It’s one I’m going through so I can speak from experience. I was doing a few writing workshops and projects and working with children, which I am also good at and love. In fact I wasn’t doing as much as I used to do in my 40s and I still had the energy to do it, but something was niggling in the back of my head/heart. 

You know that feeling when God’s still small voice is pulling on you. Those things you love are not giving you the joy they used to. You put it down to needing more zinc, hormones being out of sync, partner/children not pulling their weight, seasonal light deficiency. So you change your diet, get a SAD lamp, sort out a chores list for the family, but still something isn’t quite right. 

For me God got fed up of me not listening and it was my 84 year old mother’s health scare that brought things to a grinding halt. No worries she is fine now she’s slowed down a bit and decided she isn’t 30 any more. But the worry of her not being around and me being so busy that I didn’t have time to drive down country for 6 hours to see her. So it caused me to have to rethink things and hold things lightly.

But isn’t it a shame that I didn’t hear that still small voice in my heart that was trying so hard to tell me not necessarily to slow down but that there are things that I was doing that I am not meant to be doing. Interestingly in everything I do now those I work with know that if there is another health scare I will drop everything and just go. And of course, because I’m only doing the things God wants me to everyone I work with is content with that. 

Not just in the “big wide world” but in Church circles there is so often that push to be busy. The question “what have you been up to this week/today?” comes up when you meet. “Where have you been worshipping/serving God?” And if one hasn’t got a full schedule one feels like one could be missing out on some form of service/ministry/doing! Added to that the inner jealousies that other people have “ministries” and you’re just bumbling about drinking tea!

Jesus going into the wilderness just after he’d been baptised and God had affirmed him as his son was not a good PR move. In our fast paced world his “team” would have told him to grab the opportunity immediately because if he didn’t someone else might. But Jesus was secure in not just who he was but in what he was meant to do. 

Did you know that if you acted out the gospels and all the things Jesus did and said in them it would not last that long at all? Jesus had lots of down time, lots of time that was not worth recording in any of the gospels, lots of time just being, not just with God but with his disciples, his friends and even, I think, his family. 

Hanging out not just for the sake of “friendship evangelism” or as a “teaching opportunity” but, I think, he was hanging out to enjoy other people’s company. We can learn so much from hanging out with other people and also find out more about ourselves. We also need quiet time not just for praying, not studying, not reading but just being and letting the world flow past. 

So perhaps we all need some time over this Lenten season to stop, to think about whether the things, whether many or few, are what God really wants us to be doing. And then be brave enough to have gaps in our lives where there is nothing to do!

And I’ll finish with Christine’s poem from Monday’s meditation

Stay close to your inner world,
Travel slowly through the hidden corridors
Of your heart.

Listen quietly not for answers,
But for the questions
Hiding beneath the stress,
Of your uncertainty.
Do not be afraid,
Of what you will uncover,
Of what you might relinquish,
If you become honest
With yourself.

Categories
seeing True freedom

Being True to Ourselves

https://www.sidetracked.com/a-delicate-line/

Exhausted but content. As she realises that the complete journey is almost at an end, that she has done it – and on her own terms, at peace with the choices she has made – she feels the bond with this mountain of spirit growing strong.

https://www.sidetracked.com/a-delicate-line/

This article on Sidetracked is amazing. Not just that Anna Tybor climbs the 8th highest mountain in the world without oxygen and then skis back down again collecting all their equipment from the three camps her and her three companions made between base camp and the summit, but it is that she did it on her own terms. She made choices, like not using the oxygen and collecting their detritus which other climbers would not have done, and it is this that give her peace. It would seem that because of this she feels a bond with the mountain. Read the article because this mountain doesn’t work with her on the trip.

Not all of us are called to climb mountains, even little ones, but all of use are much more at peace when we do things on our own terms.

The more I find my true self the more I know what my terms are and the more I can let those things happen not with force but with gentleness because I know it is what I want deep in my heart. Sometimes that might make things harder for me – like with Anna’s thing of clearing up the mountain behind them – but when I go the way I know my heart feels is right then I connect with something higher/greater than me – whether that is God, The Universe, the environment I’m in or the people around me.

I think when we don’t do what we know to be right for us – and again this comes down to seeing ourselves truly and not seeing ourselves as we think others want us to be – we feel a hurt. Often we dismiss this hurt and move on but it stays with us building into something bigger. Then we scream at someone for pulling out in front of us, leaving the top off the toothpaste, etc etc. Often it is that we’ve let those things that aren’t right for us build.

I’ve been running writing workshops for the last 7 1/2 years. Over that time I’ve learned that the ones that work best for the participants are the ones where I am true to myself in them. I run the writing groups that work for me. I do them on my own terms and that gives me peace and causes harmony within the group. When I try to run a group to please someone else then I feel the tension in me and those groups fold.

So practically how can we be true to ourselves and be at peace with our decisions and choices? I will always say that the first way is to get some healing and see what the blocks are that stop us from being true to ourselves, and sometimes that can be not knowing ourselves. Think back to those times when you felt totally at peace and see what you did/didn’t do.

I also think we need to slow down and not just into things. Emails and text messages and phone calls shout at us to do something now but it is ok to wait, to say to the caller “I’ll get back to you” or just leave the text or phone call. I find even if my heart says “yes” I will still wait in case actually I’m going back to people pleasing rather than my own terms.

As a Christian I would say that my final thing with making a decision is that I allow “the peace of God that transcends all understanding to guard my heart and mind” and from there I can go with my peace.

Important note – what I believe to be the right decision is the right decision, the right choice for me, and the more healed I become, the more at peace with myself I become, I can let other people find their own peace and make their own choices on their own terms.

Categories
restoration trust

Busy!

For those who know my dog he does sleep as well as he does busy. Though for him busy is sniffing on a walk, having a shorter and shorter zoomy with his doggie friends as he gets older, and rushing to find a treat. He then does rest and recover very well. So why can’t we as human beings desire more and more to do this.

I am sooooo fed of reading things that will make me more efficient with my time, will make me more productive and thus will give me more money to do more things with. But this seems to be what too many human beings think they want. Rest and recuperation, are things that get timetabled in rather than a priority that we work around.

I read somewhere that to be truly creative, not just in one’s writing, painting, etc but in coming up with solutions on how to live your life, how to find out how to stop climate change, how to change the world, one needs to sit about doing nothing. Not as in a “planning to think about” exercise but in a “letting ones mind drift and see what the universe drops into it.” Apparently all the great inventors spent time just staring into space, getting into those alpha ways, getting tuned into what might just be floating around.

But we encourage each other and our children from an early age to be busy, to look busy, to be productive, to not waste time, to be doing something. So we all grow up with a fear of staring out the window, of wasting time.

I’ve a couple of friends how actually do just that. When the weather is like it is now [pouring with rain] if they have no work they don’t get dressed, they don’t see anyone, they don’t do anything. I would like to say that they then achieve great things but they don’t. But they do enjoy their sitting around being time. Interestingly both of them get led to pray for things that surprise them because they hadn’t planned to. So really then one can they that they are following God’s lead on what God wants prayed about.

But busyness gets rewarded. I was at a meeting the other day in which it got down to people boasting about how busy they were, how they gave their time for free for the good of whatever, how they had so little time. And then they got “rewarded” by being given more to do. And they all looked so pleased with it.

Interestingly I didn’t get given anything. And what little it looked like I might be doing got taken away from me. I suspect it is because I am now sending out those vibes, that energy, to say “I only want to do what I’m meant to do”. Also I no longer need other people’s affirmation that what I do with my day is worthwhile. I know it is whether it is staring out the window, cooking tea, keeping house, running a writing workshop, finishing a story and bravely sending it out for a competition, reading a book or watching TV. All those things are my worthwhile day.

Why? Because they kept me healthy – because I’m not needing someone else to affirm me. But also because what I do I can do to my full energy and give it my all because I’m not planning on the next thing.

In this meeting some had leave early because they were off to other meetings, some were doing other work during the meeting, and like I say many of them were saying how they had just rushed from something and had more to do.

So I want to live out the rest of my life to the full but I do not want “the full” to be busy busy busy, but to have time to chill in front of the TV, read books I like, chat with friends, be flexible when the weather halts things, be free to stare out the window and watch those raindrops falling and to see they joy in them because ….. just because

Categories
house Inner Healing

I Am Not An Onion

Photo from October 2023. These were the last locally cut flowers of the year

The reason for the photo is because it shows the inside wall of my house which is in need of redecorating. We’ve been in this house for eight years now and the hall is one of the rooms I’ve not yet started on.

I have just booked another session of QEC counseling/healing for next week and was free writing around it. As I did that more and more things came up and I started to feel a bit fed up with it. I have been doing this “inner healing” stuff for soooooo long now. Not just QEC but other forms. And yet still there is more.

Someone once compared inner healing to taking off the layers of an onion; that just because you had taken off one layer there were still more to come. I’ve never settled well with that analogy because if one kept on with the healing and taking off the layers soon there would be nothing left.

I know that can be a Christian way of looking at things – to get rid of “me” and just be Jesus. But don’t think there would be verses in the Bible like

“Come to me, all who labour and are heavily laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Matthew 11:29-30

if we were meant to be in the picture at all. I think Jesus is saying that the whole healed me is walk in tandem with the whole Jesus and it won’t be a big deal.

So I am not an onion where eventually there will be nothing left of me.

Whilst free writing this morning what came to me when we do QEC or similar types of healing is we are stripping off the wallpaper that we have used to cover up the walls of who we are. Often whether in the Bible, in dreams, etc “house” or “home” represents ourselves. So what we often do, or let others do, is paper over things in our lives to make us seem more acceptable, to fit in better, to keep us safe. But to be wholly me I have to strip those walls right back to the original plaster and see what cracks are there. Then not paper over the cracks but heal those cracks.

Have you ever stripped wallpaper from an old house where previous occupants haven’t done it? That old wallpaper paste was more like superglue than modern wallpaper paste is. That stuff is rock solid. Sometimes too you come across old newspapers which for some reason were used as lining before putting the wallpaper on. That is then like trying to remove papier mache. It was meant to stay.

Sometimes some of the things we’ve put in to keep us safe after childhood traumas, or even grown up traumas, we’ve put on to last. We don’t want to revisit that. But it makes a bulge in the walls.

So I go back again and again for more healing not because the first lot didn’t work, not because I am an onion, but because I am an grand house that is being renovated room by room.

Categories
positioning Trust God

Happy To Be Second

No matter what this looks like it is definitely my cat saying she comes first.

I was reading 24-7’s Lectio this morning. Josh Luke Smith is looking at John the Baptist especially John 1:6-8

There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.

Sometimes with known Bible passages we can switch off or tune into a familiar sermon about them but it was reading Josh’s comment ….

I’m a musician and I’ve been on many tours as ‘the support act’. People haven’t primarily bought tickets to see me, but to see the artist or band that’s headlining the show. My role on stage is to warm up the crowd and set up the headline act for success.

What struck me is how often many of us have wanted to be the headline act but that is not our job. But we get caught up in the shove and grind of pushing to the top. So we trample over others. We elbow our way through. Some do make it to the top whether they are meant to be there or not but because they can push harder, shove better, are louder.

As Josh goes on to to say

God wants me to be fully, creatively myself, without shame or passivity. There is no higher calling, or expression of who I am, than to point towards Christ

But I also think an equally high calling to to encourage others to get to where they are meant to be – whether that is leading a church, leading a group, being a great musician, writer, etc. And it is to say “look at them. Haven’t they done great” instead of feeling that quiet stab of jealousy and wanting to say “you should have known them when ….”

Am I willing to come second? I know I can be ok about point towards Jesus but am I happy about seeing someone in a similar field to myself doing well. Or what is often a biggie – seeing someone’s children “making it” [whatever that really means] when your own are bumbling along just being!

When I first had this amazing encounter with God and realised that, even though I was a mess in the world’s eyes, God thought I was awesome and loved me as I was, I was given a bookmark with “Be Still and KNOW I am God” Ps 46:10. Then when I was with YWAM Scotland one of those on my team drew me a picture of me lying with a cuppa watching the sun rise or set. But still I kept busy, kept elbowing, kept wanting to be more than God intended.

That picture from Mrs Kim on my study wall

After a turbulent year that I made more stressful by getting a part time job to fill a gap God has shown me that I am at my fullest for them when I am calm, resting, there for others.

Yes much as I would love to be a leader, run a ministry, work hard, my calling, my ‘fully creative self’ is being able to have time for others, to drink coffee with them, to listen to them, to be a safe space for them, to encourage them, as well as my writing. So 30+ years from that encounter with God in all their gentle acceptance I think I am finally coming to accept and realise that verse of being still and just knowing God. It follows on then with “and I will be exalted in the nations.”

God is going to be more exalted if I stop putting to be first, stopping pushing for the noticeable ‘ministry position’, that ‘accepted place in a church setting’. So hopefully I am going to enter 2024 being more still, more able to point towards Jesus, more able to be fully, creatively who I am, and just letting God rise into my nation, into those they have placed around me without me having to go looking.

So are you willing to come second?

Categories
autumn season

Autumn Tide

Photos from my walk this morning at Betws-y-Coed, a lovely town on the edge of Snowdonia, about 20 miles from my house. Dog and I were walking there at 8am watching the mist lift off the river. Was about 3 degrees with that lovely fresh autumnal/winter feel to it. Not quite a nip but almost. The sort of weather that makes dog walkers smile.

Today looked like it could be the first dry morning of the week so, even though I have quite a few other things to do today I thought I’d drive the 40 minutes to Betws-y-Coed, do the 40 mins walk around the golf course and see the two rivers meet, then go to the Alpine Cafe for breakfast and write some poetry. Renly likes both this walk and this cafe [there is a sausage involved so he gallops around the walk 🙂 ] I felt now that I had stopped working in the nursery/after school club, and Mum is doing ok for now, I thought I’d get back to at least once a week taking myself off to write poetry.

It is very much free writing from what I’ve seen and the photos I feel led to take so there is never a plan.

What came from today’s was all about autumn, understandably. But more about my autumn. Not that “oh I’m in the autumn of my life and the end and winter are coming“. Much more a “this is an autumn season where I need to shed my leaves”

I’ve just googled what goes on with leaves in the winter. [Here’s my take on it so all your biologists and amateur biologists hush!!] As light fades the tree sucks in as much goodness as it can from the leaves because they are no longer photosynthesizing and so they turn all those amazing colours.

So I’ve reached a place where I have been taking a lot of goodness from the projects and work stuff that I’ve been doing over the last few years but that means I need to be looking inside of my “tree-self” a bit more. I need to let those dead leaves go, let those projects and things fall.

But what I noticed as I pondered about walking in mulch and compost was that most of the leaves don’t fall that far from the tree so really the leaves are going full circle and being the compost to help the tree keep going.

I feel I have been fighting this process for a while. Trying to keep going under my own steam instead of letting go. I think I’ve been afraid that if I let everything go then there will be nothing. But in fact all that I’ve done will fall at the “base of my trunk” and so give me sustenance for whatever comes next.

Via QEC, God, and a book called Don’t Believe Everything You Think, I’m doing my best to give all my dreams to God/The Universe and let them bring them to fruition. I know there will be things I have to do but I must only do the things I feel deep in my heart and know to be from God/The Universe. It all comes without striving.

These trees don’t strive. They are just the best trees they can be. They don’t plan the seasons, the winds, the droughts, the floods. They just get on and do their thing.

The walk I did today is one I do every couple of months and today I noticed things I hadn’t seen before, but that was because there were very few leaves on the trees. I was looking through the bare branches and seeing the road, seeing houses, seeing sheep and things. If I am wise, as my leaves fall for this season, I can see other things and who knows what might come from my quietly just being, just really seeing and waiting?

Oh and I took this last photograph because the plant in the foreground has brown and green leaves and red berries too!

Categories
being real magic

We Can Do Magic

Magic of a river in full flow after a storm. Abergywngregan August 2023 Photographed by myself

Did you know you could do magic? In fact you do it every day by the things you think and how you hold on to your feelings.

I tried to write this without mentioning the people concerned but realised it didn’t make sense otherwise so I’ve had to name the relationships. Bit of tough vulnerability here!!!

This revelation came to me whilst I was having negative jealous insecure thoughts around my daughter-in-law. As I was journaling and pondering and, I suppose, justifying my feelings, I got a picture in my head of the Snow White’s wicked stepmother. From that picture this came.

Snow White’s stepmother would have been a kind and beautiful woman when the Snow White’s father pick her as his second wife. He didn’t have to marry to have someone to look after his daughter after he was widowed as some men do. He could have had servants to do that for him. He chose her, I am sure, for her beauty and beautiful nature. But she had been wounded in childhood by someone so as Snow White grew into a young woman she got jealous. Then I am sure there were times when Snow White went off and did things just with her father. This would have exasperated the stepmother’s wound. I wonder too if she also pondered whether the father looked at his daughter and remembered his love for his first wife. All this added to the stepmother’s insecurities making her feel angry dark thought inside. She then chose to act on those thoughts and, if she had been successful, instead of helping her step daughter through teenagehood and out into the wider world, she as good as killed her.

It made me realise that we can choose what magic we use and how we act on our feelings. I had a choice – 1. to be jealous and angry with this person and to send out negative vibes. Ok not a poisoned apple but something close to that which would have killed our relationship and killed my relationship with my son 2. I could accept that this was how I felt but then let those feelings slide from me, know that my relationship with my son was not based on who they were with now but on some “deeper magic”.

I could trust in the depth of the relationship with my son and no longer be jealous of his wife then give life to our time, or I could spoil everything with my jealousy.

[I was going to say petty jealous but actually it was very real and I had to accept it before I could let it go. I think too often we dismiss our feelings and so they fester about because they haven’t been truly banished.]

The stepmother did not accept her jealous feelings, instead she acted on them and went into destroy mode. I decided to accept my feelings, let them go, go to my safe place of deep gratitude, and allow a better magic to flow.

And of course as you know the answer to the Snow White story so you can guess the answer to this story. Yes we all had a great time together. There was no negative animosity. I grew in love for my daughter-in-law and got some great times on my own with my son.

The magic I made was my choice, but it comes through the healing I’ve gone, my relationship with myself, my trust in God/The Universe to have my back and love me unconditionally. Without all that I would still have that wound and be wanting to hold too tight, to poison what was, not be able to enjoy what is going on around me.

Though sometimes I think we don’t realise we can do magic so we say things about a situation or person that are not uplifting or positive, we work towards a worst case scenario, and we are not disappointed. Snow White’s stepmother “knew” that eventually Snow White would be more popular and more beautiful than her so she had a plan on what to do with her then. If I had planned in a “I know this time will be hard work” I am sure it would have been. But instead, once I’d free wrote/journaled around it, accepted what I was feeling and accepted that this was not a good place to be, ANSed myself, etc then I could believe this was going to be a lovely magical time with my son and his wife.

Because it was deep magic from being healed and knowing I am an amazing person then it wasn’t a “trying hard” but was from a place deep in my heart.

We need to all remember we are all making magic every day by what we think, feel, do and believe.

Categories
success writing

Coal Penguin

Today is a bit of a change to my usual blogging.

I was reading a piece and in it it said how we should share our achievements, which is something I think, especially as Brits, we are reluctant to do.

Most of have been brought up not to boast, to be careful we aren’t too proud [“too” like “enough” is one of those non-quantifiable words], “pride comes before a fall”, “no one will like you if they think you’re a smart arse”, add in your own phrases that have held you back in sharing your own achievements.

I don’t think writers are plagued by the imposter monster any more than many people and professions out there. We just write about it more 🙂

Generally I slide my writing on to my “My Writing” page on this site, hoping or fearing, that someone will come across them. But, today in the spirit of “sharing my successes” I have decided to share it here.

Arabel, an art student, sent out a group email to various writers asking if they would like to write something about one of the pieces of carved coal she was using in her degree show. I think she was very brave because even without knowing what she was getting, once each of us writers said we wanted to do a piece about a certain piece of coal she marked it as “taken” without even knowing what would be written. All the pieces are at a high standard but it was still a brave move I felt. She also offered payment.

I think this piece inspired by a penguin carved from coal entitled The Parent We All With For But Often Fail To Be could be the first time I’ve been paid to actually write a piece. Yes I have won competitions and just received complimentary book/booklets for the win, and of course have published my own books – “The Little Yellow Boat” and, my self-published poetry book, “Inspirations From Walking In North Wales“, but to be paid for a 200 word piece is something I feel should not go unnoticed.

Although to be honest, I have found this post very hard to write and it has taken a few days to get it together. Sharing one’s successes is not the easiest thing to do.

Categories
being me space

My Space

Newborough beach, Anglesey, One of my special spaces with Renly, one of my special companions

Boundaries, another theme I keep returning to, but my ideas about it keep changing.

I felt I had to share what came to me the other day, almost a follow on from my post back in February 2022, No More Boundaries where I was sort of exploring what I meant by not having boundaries and of being in alignment. Now I think I’ve moved to a deeper place.

I was in the car the other day contemplating a conversation with a friend. I’d had some really busy people filled days and felt thI needed a long walk on a deserted beach. It was wild and windy and I just wanted to reconnect. I also planned to take myself for a coffee after. Just me and my dog. Then this friend, who I hadn’t seen for a while, messaged and ask if I was free to come to the park with her in about 10 mins. I calmly replied that I was going to the beach on my own to recover from my frantic day the day previous.

What struck me on the way home in the car, hair windswept and feeling more myself, was that it isn’t about boundaries or about being aligned to the universe but it is about knowing and honouring my space. With all the healing that has gone on I am in a place to know my space, know my needs, feel comfortable within my own space. I know at one time I would have cancelled my plans and gone with my friend because I wanted to please her but also because my space would not have been important enough for me.

In church there is often talk about “doing what Jesus would do” which always seems to be busy doing something – praying for others, feeding others, being there for others, etc. All of which are good things and yes Jesus did all those things. But another thing that Jesus did was to go away on his own, to be comfortable in his own space, to honour his own space.

Often we are told that he was praying that whole time, with prayer made out to be a doing thing. I do wonder if what those early gospel writers meant was that Jesus just hung out with God, that they were just being together – no asking what he should do, no being reassure about anything, but just being together as I suppose I was with God alone on that windswept beach.

I don’t think we do enough of being in our own space. We have the TV on, our phones close at hand, on Facetime to friends, etc. Even things like having good devotionals books, educational books, etc, things that are good for our brains, though great in keeping us forward thinking and challenged, can stop us being in our own space. We are all, or at least most of us, the ones stopping ourselves from being alone with ourselves, our thoughts, our God, and just allowing our own space to revive and restore us.

I know I’m not that good at it so I book in times for me to be on my own [maybe Jesus scheduled these in too?] and I walk. I have my phone turned off. Yes I do take it with me because I do like taking photographs but make sure I check nothing else other than maybe the time. I find if I walk it takes away that distraction of things that are good – answering emails, journaling, reading, playing solitaire, writing, playing word games, messaging my children. All of which [well maybe not solitaire and the word games] are good things, but all of which stop me being alone with my own thoughts. Stop me being alone with the God of the Universe.

The more I get content with my own space the more I will say no to things and I suspect the more I’ll know where I’m going in my one wild and precious life.

Categories
inner journey My voice

More Than A Painting

Painting by rossiehb.art*

I’ve never been one for a bucket list. Much as my family teases me about writing lists, and how on my death bed I will be leaving them all lists of what to do, I am not great at doing that listing of things I’d like to do. My lists are things to do during today. But if I had had a bucket list of things I would like to do before I die one of those things I’ve realised I would have put on would be to have a painting commissioned for myself. Not just to buy a good piece of art but to have one that is total mine and mine alone.

The other thing I would have put on my bucket list if I’d done one years ago would be to have a room of my own. A room that is totally mine. I’ve lived in rented accommodation on my own and when a single mum, or I’d lived with parents or with a partner. And even though I do take charge of the decorating in this house the rooms are still “ours” not “mine”, whereas now I have this study; a room that is s totally my room.

Anyway my friend, Rossie, started getting properly back into her art a while ago as her family’s time running Ywam Bristol was nearing an end. It is funny in wondering why her family moved to Bristol with this wonderful vision then things went awry, I do wonder if they were there so that Rossie could connect with some from the art scene there but also to be strategically placed to rekindle her art.

Anyway in May she wished me a happy birthday and something pinged within me and I asked her if she would paint me a picture because I felt it would fit perfectly with the new colours in my study. She asked me what I wanted and I just said for her to do as she felt.

Well as we all know I’ve been doing a lot of “work” on myself via QEC etc and I think the biggest thing to emerge is that I am being able to more clearly say what I want, when I want and how I want. I am being released from people pleasing, needing to be loved, from needing to complying, from my guilt of my past, etc, etc. Well guess what Rossie felt to call the painting??? “Finding Your Voice”

Finding Your Voice is often used in writing as in finding your writing style. But as I gaze at this painting I know it is more than just that. It is being able to know that the still small voice of your heart is clear, is you, is safe, can be trusted. It is knowing that the voice you hear is clear and true. It is hearing it within the clutter of shoulds and oughts and conditioning.

Over the past few years I have been finding that true heart voice, that voice that is truly me, that voice that can cope with the difference facets of myself without fear or criticism. Interestingly too as I’ve found my own voice I have been able to decorate my study as I like it, put in bits and pieces that I like, turn my desk so I’m looking out at the world rather than at a wall, added a comfy chair, a floor cushion, coverings, etc that I would not put in a shared room in the house. As I have found my voice so I have also found my space. I think too I’ve found my space within the wider world too without having to push myself to fit in with a clique.

So this painting is not just a something from a bucket list I didn’t have but it is something that says something about my journey. It has also come just as I was ready for it.

Unfortunately the photos do not do it justice. I messaged Rossie and told her that it is like trying to photograph a feeling. It doesn’t quite work, doesn’t convey what it says to me.

Please do check out more of my lovely friend’s painting as www.rossiehb.art and on social media on @rossiehb.art

And even the dog’s floor cushion matches the decor. The cushion is from Gill’s cushions, who is also someone I know. I’m slowly filling my space with personal things!