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brooklyn . august 2011
last night, i returned home from a quick, soul.full trip to brooklyn. i tucked so much inside the pocket of my heart while i was there, and i am sifting through the beauty and realness a bit at a time in between the moments of living that being home brings.
more soon...
until then, i would really love to know how things are in your corner of the world.
This October, come along to the woods along Puget Sound for Create Magic, the last Be Present Retreat in 2011.
From the evening of October 5 to the morning of October 9, we will gather at Frog Creek Lodge, on the Key Peninsula (a little over an hour south of Seattle), to experience community, create alongside like-minded souls, and give ourselves permission to be present while in a nurturing environment.
Mindy Lacefield, Vivienne McMaster, and I will be your guides on this journey inspired by the joy that can be found when we realize we can find magic and hope in our lives even when it rains. Throughout the three days of workshops, Mindy, Vivienne, and I will share a few of the creative practices we use in our daily lives, including how each of us tries to seek beauty and joy in the midst of whatever life hands us.
photo credits: 1) Vivienne McMaster, 2) and 4) Mindy Lacefield, and 3) Liz Lamoreux
Throughout this retreat, there will be time to play with paint + paper + color, photography excursions, time to sit in the quiet and listen, opportunities to ask questions, writing and journaling prompts, an invitation to find the poet within you, moments to share pieces of your story, and a whole lot of fun. There will be a designated "art & play" room within Frog Creek Lodge where participants will have 24-hour access to art supplies and other goodies.
Here is some more information about the workshop I will be teaching this fall:
I close my eyes and see an image of a nine-year-old little girl with brown pigtails who gathers up a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, her current Trixie Belden book, a thermos of apple juice, and her newest diary and favorite blue pen and tucks them inside a backpack. She tiptoes out the back, carefully closing the squeaky screen door and jumps down the two steps to the brick patio. She looks out toward the forest seemingly unaware that she has less than a quarter of an acre to explore as she finds the path toward her favorite log beside the chain-link fence. I often think about this little girl when I gather up my camera and journal and head out to the woods to breathe and notice and find myself again in the midst of all that must get done.
When we gather at Frog Creek Lodge, we will spend time remembering the creative journeys of our childhoods (real and imagined) as we spend time with our senses and play and write and breathe. We will discover ways to quiet our minds through guided meditation exercises and look at how focusing on our breath can connect us to our day-to-day journeys. We will examine how getting out into nature can be another tool to add to our personal and creative practices as we take in the beauty of our surroundings. We will also spend some time with our inner poet as we curl up with tea by the fireplace.
*****
This is one of the more intimate retreats this year with only 14 participant spots. We have recently had a few cancellations, so additional spots have opened up. I hope you will decide to come along. Feel free to email me any questions.
Head over to the Be Present Retreats website to read more about the details of this retreat.
when the rain rain rain drips steadily upon us this fall, i want to remember that you turned down egg and i road instead of driving by like always.
i want to remember that you stopped the car in the middle of this quiet road so i could take photos of pink and sky and the miles leading up to mountains.
i want to remember how we talked about my big dream and how we need to explore more roads like this in case it is just waiting for us around the corner.
i want to remember all those flowers quietly growing together along the road as so many birds called to one another while paul simon sang about graceland through the car window.
i want to remember that you really always do give me the space to be me.
*****
"Scenes from This Day" is a prompt in my book Inner Excavation. It's about taking your camera with you on your day-to-day moments and capturing what it is to be in your corner of the world. It's about letting go of the need for the perfect photo from the perfect day and instead using the camera to document the small moments that make up your life. It's about telling the story, your story, in the way that will help you remember the textures and rhythms and sacredness.
New earrings, including the pairs pictured above and a few others, are now in the shop. Thanks so much for the requests for simple earrings to pair with your soul mantra necklaces, which pushed me to create these. I have been wearing the simple circles daily and love how light they are.
Use the code "happysummer" for free shipping on all your orders in the shop for the rest of August.
I am also enjoying working on custom orders this summer. It is such an honor to create a special talisman to be worn on life's journey. If you have been thinking about a personal mantra phrase you would like to have in a locket or a design in the shop you would like me to modify a bit for you, feel free to contact me via Etsy convo or email.
Hope the sun in shining in your corner of the world...
let go of the running ahead, the wishing, the assuming it might. let go of the tumbling, twisting, turning thoughts that distract you from what is real. let go of how you thought it was supposed to be. let go of the lists, the shoulds, the whys, the please don't let it. try to let it go dear one.
take a breath. then another.
just be right here, and soak up all that is before you.
as evening pulled on the afternoon sun, we shared a small bowl of blueberries tucked under the cherry tree in the backyard. you kept trying to give me a few of your blueberries and would laugh each time i said, "thank you. now here is one for you."
i always want to remember the moment when i noticed you were waving at the fence, and i looked up to see a house finch hopping from post to post. you were waving to that finch! and you had the biggest smile on your face as though you were greeting an old friend. i am in awe of the way you seem to intuitively understand that joy is the way.
*****
the series, "joy seeker," is one way that i plan to document the "joy" superhero power that ellie jane has. i hope to gather these glimpses here on the blog throughout the next year, and then around her second birthday, i will put them all together and have them printed in a small book.
sunset self-portrait . gearhart, oregon . august 20, 2010
I come from quiet, storming stardust
I come from skipping stones on seven rivers
I come from reflected, reaching purple mountains
I come from the unafraid, soaring shadow of the heron's wing
I come from the moaning, oming whales
Shadow, bring me exploding courage
Bring me stretching, inward roots
Shadow, bring me sun-centered source
Come back to me stardust, fill me with delight
Come back to me skipping, plopping stones, bring me the stories
Come back to me
Shadow
Come back to me
*****
This evening, I spent time with a group of incredible women at a local doula meeting. I was the guest speaker, and they gave me the gift of letting me share some of my stories and then indulging me when I asked if we could write some poetry. My body is still vibrating a bit with the beauty that reveals itself when women share their stories and unearth the poems that live inside them.
As I drove home, I felt called to find a legal pad that sits under the pile of many things beside my bed. This paper houses the poems I have written at several workshops and the words that pushed me to begin this blog. As I read the poem above that I wrote in a 2008 workshop with (the goddess of life who is) Susan Wooldridge, I am struck by the truths it holds and deeply wish that someone had whispered my own words to me a year ago. There is beauty to be found in revisiting our writing and seeing ourselves reflected. In this moment, I am grateful to my younger self for her wisdom and bravery that would hold her through all that was to come.
