Shine On

Yeah we all shine on, like the moon and the stars and the sun.

I don't feel so much like I'm shining, more like I'm being shined upon and letting myself be revealed. Not hiding from myself in the shadows and not hiding my true self from others. We all do shine but sometimes I think we block our light from shining. We think our light isn't as bright, isn't as special. This of course is not true.

Tonight I plan on letting the full moon shine brightly on me. 

I'll soak it in and walk on.

Life has been tough lately but somehow I feel strengthened and I know I'll be able to get through it. I know these hard times bear fruit and I pray I am open to receiving the fruits of my labor and learning from my life experiences. I strive to always keep learning and to keep growing. I want these long days of summer to bring to light my strengths and weaknesses and help me to celebrate what I have and work toward what I'd like to have. 

Sometimes you open a book and flip to a random page and what you find written in front of you is just what you needed to read. That happened to me yesterday when I picked up Women Who Run With Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Chapter 10 titled Clear Water: Nourishing the Creative Life. Estes writes-

Creativity is a shapechanger. One moment it takes this form, the next that. It is a dazzling spirit who appears to us all, yet is hard to describe for no one agrees on what they saw in that brilliant flash. Are the wielding of pigments and canvas or paint chips and wallpaper, evidence of its existence? How about pen and paper, flower borders on the garden path, building a university? Yes, yes. Ironing a collar well, cooking up a revolution? Yes. Touching with love the leaves of a plant, pulling down "the big deal," tying off the loom, finding one's voice, loving someone well? Yes. Catching the hot body of a newborn, raising a child to adulthood, helping raise a nation from its knees? Yes. Tending to a marriage like the orchard it is, digging for psychic gold, finding the shapely word, sewing a blue curtain? All are of the creative life. All these things are from The Wild Woman, the Rio Abajo Rio, the river beneath the river, which flows and flows into our lives.

I love how she points out that we all are creative. Every single woman. Some may think they are not but perhaps they have made too many barriers for themselves or their rivers are just too polluted and they need to dig through the sludge to pull the ideas and creativeness out of the waters. We also go through periods of self doubt which she writes about so well:

Gifted women, even as they reclaim their creative lives, even as beautiful things flow from their hands, from their pens, from their bodies, still question whether they are writers, painters, artists, people, real ones. And of course they are real ones even though they might like to bedevil themselves with what constitutes "real." A farmer is a real farmer when she looks out over the land plans the spring crops. A runner is real when she takes the first step, a flower is real when it is yet in its mother stem, a tree is real when it is still a seed in the pine cone. An old tree is a real living being. Real is what has life.

I experience a lot of self doubt. All the poisonous words and phrases echo through my head regularly. "This is not good enough, not original enough, is done better by others..." but I continue onwards anyway. I remind myself that I create mainly for myself. For my sanity. I think it can be easy to be doubtful about our lives, art, parenting... all of it in today's day. Sometimes I feel like there is too much inspiration out there, online. Too much to compare ourselves to. When I'm feeling more vulnerable in that way I usually take a break from the internet and Instagram and all the "inspiration". I feel that all these things have the capability to pollute our rivers if we let them.

The waters of my river definitely feel muddy right now. I want to clear them up and make some of my dreams a reality. I don't want to let fear of failure, fear to begin again stop me. I want to move forward like a strong river and not be deterred by boulders or barriers of any sort. The new moon is approaching and I plan on setting fresh intentions to get the ball moving on my creative endeavors. 

I'll be finishing this incredible chapter today and hope to gather all my thoughts and ideas together to get a clearer idea of what direction I want to head in. If you have WWRWW I encourage to revisit this chapter because it is chock full of wisdom and insight. It actually blows my mind. As someone who has trouble getting her thoughts into words, I can't believe that people like Estes exist. Thank goodness there are gifted women writers out there! I'm thankful to know personally many women who possess these talents and am continually in awe of them.  

I'll leave you with one last quote-

So what is the point of this reclamation and focus, this calling back of what has been lost, this running with the wolves? It is to go for the jugular, to get right down to the seed and to the bones of everything anything in your life, because that's where your pleasure is, that's where your joy is, that's where a woman's Eden lies, that place where there is time and freedom to be, wander, wonder, write, sing, create, and not be afraid... If you've lost focus, just sit down and be still. Take the idea and rock it to and fro. Keep some of it and throw some of it away, and it will renew itself. You need do no more.

And that's exactly what I plan on doing.

New Beginnings

A new space for fresh start. I remember when I first started blogging I'd come across established blogs that would suddenly up and move to whole new space and I always wondered why they'd do that, especially if they had readers. After six years of blogging, I now understand. I feel I can't be completely me over at my other blog, which is pretty silly considering it's mine and in reality I can post whatever I like. Somehow I've managed to make myself feel restrained. Perhaps it's knowing that family members and neighbors occasionally read and for some reason that has left me feeling a little too vulnerable. Maybe that's the wrong word, I don't know but I figured I'd try out a new space where I can be more honest and where I feel free to talk about a wide range of topics and things that are more personal.

I think people might assume that someone who shares so much online would be an open and outgoing person but I feel I'm pretty private in my regular everyday life. I think for people like me it's easier to open up in this way because you, the reader, have no opinion of me (yet) therefore you have no previous thoughts, ideas or perceptions of me. Once someone sees you a particular way it can be very hard to change that, especially if they see in a negative light. I'm not implying that my family and neighbors see me negatively but there are many parts of my life that I don't feel they need to know about. For example, I would be really uncomfortable talking about money struggles, a very real part of my life, on my other blog. I'd be getting concerned phone calls and that's not what I'm after. If I talk about something like that it's not because I want financial help, it'd be because I know other people could relate and writing about it helps process all the stress.  I also think that it's hard to change your blog once you've set its course. For these reasons I have started Hawks And Doves.

We'll see where I take this but just having a new space is refreshing and exciting! Thank you for reading and I look forward to starting interesting conversations and going a little deeper with you all.