HAWKS AND DOVES

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.