Kindred Spirits

I have been thinking a lot about my friendships this week: the dwindling, the solid stayers as well as sparkling new ones. The more I have thought about them, the more I have come to consider whether I am cut out to be a friendship type of person or whether I am becoming a hermit! I know they sound like two extremes and the answer is most certainly in the in between, but the journey of this question has been most interesting.

"A bosom friend--an intimate friend, you know--a really kindred spirit to whom I can confide my inmost soul. I've dreamed of meeting her all my life. I never really supposed I would, but so many of my loveliest dreams have come true all at once that perhaps this one will, too. Do you think it's possible?"

L.M. Montgomery

When I was a little girl I was lost in the world of Anne of Green Gables and cherished the concept of having that one special friend, that magical kindred spirit, who completely understands you from top to bottom, and who in return, you would give your own life for. I was in such need of that understanding, that security, that inspiration, that connection (there is that word again!). This quest has stayed with me every since. I have always had a small but very close circle of friends instead of realms of friends and acquaintances. Sometimes I feel comfortable with that, but then when those close friendships threaten to fade, it shakes my world and then I admire those people with an address book full of familiarity. Sometimes I feel down that I don’t find making friendships easy; I feel it is expected of me to reach out, to connect, yet that introvert that is me quite frankly often feels scared witless at the thought of connecting. On the few occasions I have shared this view with someone, they are astonished that I feel this way, for the outer me that I show must act very convincingly. But at the heart is a frightened girl, who true friendship means the world to, that treasures it so much that she has such fear in case she is rejected.

And at the moment there are times when I am feeling rejected, not on purpose I am sure, not because people set out to hurt my feelings, but still it makes me question myself- see how I automatically take on the blame- I am good at this.

This week my Omi ( grandmother) sent me a lovely letter containing a poem I had written as a teenager. When I read it there were tears just because it incapsulates that raw need for friendship and that loyalty that I still feel. Isn’t it funny how the universe sends you nudges? I would like to share a small part of it with you:

Friendship ( by Milena aged 14)

The promises to stay friends forever and ever,

The thoughts that occur to us both at once,

The late nights were many secrets are told,

The trust and understanding we possess,

The fact  we hardly ever argue and always care,

The days we spend dreaming of what we will do when we’re old...

I know that friends come into your life for a reason and that friendships have cycles, ebbing and flowing as we grow, that people naturally grow apart as life takes them onto different paths. But I am in a place that makes me want to cling on regardless, even though I am no longer sure that I can do so with some  friendships. I want to feel like that poem but it has to be right. 

At this point I must  write ( before I become too glum)  that in contrast to these dilemmas, I am part of those solid staying friendships - you know who you are- they inspire and save me just by existing and for those I am incredibly grateful. It is in fact good to remind myself at this point how much I have much to celebrate.  I am also excited that I have some amazing, sparkling friendships forming, which are reaching out to that inner girl and making her think of kindred spirits all over again. I’ve just read a fantastic description of these wonderful women in  Women Who Runs With The Wolves. Pinkola Estes writes:

“They are like a fairy godmother, a mentor.... These little wild mothers guide you, burst with pride over your accomplishments. They are critical of blockages and mistaken notions in and around your creative, sensual, spiritual and intellectual life. Their purpose is to help you, to care about your art, and to reattach you to the wildish instincts, and to elicit your original best. They guide the restoration of the intuitive life.”

Thank so much my creative lovelies, it is such an honour to be part of such an awe inspiring tribe.

After all of that, on the flip side of the coin, I am discovering that I do quite like to be a hermit every now and again also. Dare I say it, I am learning to like my own company; although I am spending time alone I don’t seem to feeling lonely. On such days I don’t feel a pull to connect with others, I am happy enough to connect with myself. Such days are growing in number. I like that I am not defining myself by the number of friendships I can form and hold onto on those days, they give me a fresh balance.

Please do tell me how you breathe life into your friendships, I would love to know.

Soul garden

On days like today I have such a deep need to ground myself. I need to be outside: dreaming, designing, pruning, digging the soil, planting. Even inside I want only to prepare my vegetable and herb seeds, to nurture them in growth. I know I can remove myself from the noise of the outside world when I am connecting with my garden, magic happens there.  

For me it has been  a week of extremes - of not being able to see the wood for the trees and then not being able to see the trees, only a vast, dense forest. However, as I sit here today and continue reading Women Who Run with Wolves, these words speaking of the connection with the ancient wild woman,  dance out at me vividly:

“I’m always taken by how deeply women like to dig in the earth. They plant bulbs for the spring. They poke blackened fingers into mucky soil, transplanting sharp smelling tomato plants. I think they are digging down into the two million year old woman. They are looking for her toes and paws. They want her for a present to themselves, for with her they feel of a piece and at peace.... You could even say there is a religion of garden...”

Clarissa Pinkola Estes

In connection with this theme my good friend Lis, of Dandelion Seeds and Dreams, recently wrote about developing her life as a rich English garden; each bed with its individual unique beauty, its own appeal, with its own cycles and rhythms, each with an element of  wildness within a subtle structured layout.  At the heart of her garden she writes, are her core values and priorities. What a beautiful analogy, don’t you think? Please take a look at the whole post here, it is delicious. I have thought about these words often over the last week,whilst stealing a few quiet minutes at the end of a hectic day, and have caught myself smiling. The power of beautiful words :)

Sparkling!

Oh my goodness, for the first time in my life I have won something, and something very special at that! Leah of Creative Every Day, whose artwork is so deeply beautiful, picked me as her give away winner for the new e course Sparkles, created by Jamie Ridler and full to the brim with contributions from the most inspiring artists, teachers and thinkers I have come across. Thank you Leah, you are such a star.  It is a self paced course, giving you the opportunity to take 5 minutes each day to find a creative outlet, and it is just what I need at the moment when things feel hectic and I am tempted to put creativity on the back burner. Click here to find out more. Here is my piece for yesterday’s prompt; I do love the soothing qualities of using Instagram for the iphone, those pretty filters create magic :)

Yaga Dreams

So, I am still very much hooked on the whole intuition thing, which I began to write about last week. The story of Vasilisa the Wise, her doll of intuition and her fundamentally life changing visit to the house of the wild woman Baba Yaga, just won’t leave me alone.  One of the ideas that seems to have struck such a chord is the dreaming aspect of the story. Basically V is given certain tasks to perform for Yaga, in return for which she will be granted the fire she needs for her (horrid) stepfamily. Really, the fire that V will be given, is the fire to tap into her wild woman self, but that is another story. Anyway, some of these tasks seem impossible at first sight, such as separating an intimidating pile of dirt and poppy seeds, but instead of only seeing the impossibility, only seeing the one negative line of reasoning, the doll tells V to go to sleep and all will be well. When she awakes the seeds are sorted. Pinkola Estes explains this part of the story as taking time to listen to your intuition and that answers will often appear in dreams. In fact she says that the wild Yaga might herself appear to guide you if you are receptive enough, if you dare to listen. 

As I read this I had one of those A HA moments for I have been having the most incredibly strong (and very weird) dreams of late. I struggle to sleep but in those small hours I do sleep, these strangely magnificent story boards are appearing and I am still remembering them when I wake up. This has been going on for several weeks now; they have made me listen. Interpreting them is a whole different kettle of fish - abstract is an understatement! But just thinking about the elements involved is supplying me with an incredible amount of insight into what I am holding back, what I am not digesting in my waking hours and, indeed on a positive note, what I want to happen in my life. I love the idea of having an intuition doll ( although of course I think mine would have to be a feline), whispering to take a step back and listen, followed by the wild and wacky Yaga zooming through the night sky, sprinkling those riddled images on her way, daring me to begin the puzzles. 

The illustration is from Jan Pienkowski's The Fairy Tales

I would love to delve into the whole dream magic a lot more. If you know of any resources exploring the connection with dreams please do share them with me :)

Telling Stories

I had forgotten how much fun it is to tell stories, to read them aloud, creating voices. Of course I am an avid reader, always surrounded by stories of one kind or another, yet it is the power of the words being released into the air, be it to share them with children or to just to share with myself, that creates the sparkling kind of magic.

As I mentioned in my last post, I am currently reading the glorious Women Who Run with Wolves. Yesterday it was the turn of the story of Vasilisa the Wise, who embarks on the intense journey of claiming her intuitive powers aided by listening to the intuition present in a tiny doll passed on by the previous female generation. 

I could write a whole new post on the lessons that this story contained, and perhaps I will next time. I don’t know what possessed me but I decided to read the story out loud to myself, and it was as if the connection with the tale grew and grew. It became personal. Maybe it took me back to those treasured childhood times when my grandmother would spend hours telling me stories of her past or reading the most beautiful books out loud to me whilst I fell asleep. That need to hear stories has stayed with me ever since. Something is released when I read stories out loud myself - and it has to be a myth, or an age old story, or even a fairy tale ( of the not too sugary kind),  for then the best magic happens as well as such deep lessons appearing in the air. Pinkola Estes, the author of the book, speaks of story connecting you to that  wild woman essence present in us, surrounding us. This I understand with all my being. 

Such stories have been weaving themselves into my life recently.  Do take a look at the sacred feminine stories of Creating Wings, I am so excited by her project. Jen Lee’s Fortunes is another collection that must be read aloud for the beauty and the soul of the words to wash over you with depth and nourishment and thought. It is the kind of collection that wraps itself around your heart (thank you Lis of Dandelion Seeds and Dreams for such an amazing gift). The life lesson stories  of Patti Digh's  Life is a Verb are also full to the brim of inspiration. Her life stories just have to be read out loud, each paragraph full of words so alive, showing that our stories can carry much light even when life is bleak.  I believe that as well as vital lessons to be learned there is magic and connection and hope in telling our stories.

At school I am currently teaching a narrative project, working with a group of year 2 children, who struggle to tell their own stories, to order their thoughts and to write their own tales. Through a series of physical footprint shapes with prompts written upon them to stand on, these children are learning to talk, to sequence and explore their ideas. By looking at age old stories, retelling those stories themselves, listening to me telling them, their imagination is on fire. That is the power of story, it makes us alive.

I wrote a poem a while ago with the line:

“I am a collector of stories.”

Now I want to be a storyteller too.

Sweeping away the cobwebs

I’ve had a couple of weeks where the stress monsters have been circling, threatening to take charge and make me feel totally rubbish about myself.  You know the kind of thing, comparing my work skills, my social skills, my artwork, my home life, all to others much greater than I, wondering how on earth they manage so well and with such sparkle. That then leads onto ‘Is anything I do actually good enough?’, which is  snugly followed by ‘Is it worth trying in the first place?’. Whilst I accept that life is one grand old rollercoaster I came to the point at the weekend when I felt enough was enough. Time to stop the unnecessary worrying and stressing, to stop allowing my mind being taken over day and night. Also no more overanalysing until the cows come home ( I am extremely good at that one). Instead of this:  time to mindfully go with the flow and trust that what will be will be. The crunch which made me realise how bad I was feeling was  that even my creativity was becoming another path I didn’t feel I was fulfilling, I mean what is that about? Surely making my art is where the value lies, engaging with my creative soul for the sheer love of it. Not because I have committed myself to a multitude daunting projects; some begun, some waiting impatiently on my desk, some neglected for some time and that feeling that I should be completing them all perfectly piece after piece, all in a neat order and according to a controlled schedule. And so I gave myself a stern talking to along the lines of:

Dear Milena,

It is exciting that there is so much to explore. You are so lucky to  be on such an amazing creative adventure. You fought so hard to reclaim that creative goddess inside, don’t you dare silence her again. DO what you love and LOVE what you do. Simply be happy.

Love Me.

I also needed to grab a bit of that thing they call perspective, because actually my needs are a walk in the park compared with the destruction and sadness that are raging the globe currently. I have been humbled in many ways this week: by a friend whose family is facing the nightmares in Libya, by the horrendous tsunami in Japan causing such devastation beyond what my mind could possibly comprehend, and by a programme by the BBC for the powerful Comic Relief Appeal documenting the absolute poverty and awe inspiring resilience of the people living in a Kiberan slum in Africa. I will certainly be donating. Time to see the bigger picture, to be a little more thankful for the goodness in my own life and to think of ways I can offer support to others in these awful times of need.

And you know what, it is hard work actively going against the natural grain of worry, and I have been chanting my ‘go with the flow’ mantra over and over again. It is working though, I am seeing the signs like a faint rainbow beckoning. For example, having just begun reading the definitive ‘Women Who Run With Wolves’ by Clarissa Pinkola Estes I came across this passage, which describes so passionately the solid foundations I wish for women everywhere and reminding me  of my chosen word  for 2011, Connection:

“...to establish territory, to find one’s pack, to be in one’s body with certainty and pride regardless of the body’s gifts and limitations, to speak and act on one’s behalf, to be aware, alert, to draw on the innate feminine powers of intuition and sensing, to come into one’s cycles, to find what one belongs to, to rise with dignity, to retain as much consciousness as possible.”

Tingling Fingers

Spring is establishing itself in her delicate  details, and I am amazed yet again how nature manages to come through harsh winter time and time again, so beautifully, with such vigour and hope. I love the way my attention is drawn to the smallest bud, the slightest hint of colour holding a wealth of promise. With all my senses I realise that I too am waking up again, stretching, breathing more deeply ( she types smiling). 

With sheer glee I opened my gardening magazine this morning and lost myself in the magic. Making wish lists, creating dream designs; a really happy moment to treasure.

My fingers are itching to get started, ready to take such pleasure in the preparation of my garden after its long winter sleep. To be honest I cannot believe exactly how much meaning that little piece of land holds for me, it is  fundamental nourishment for my body and soul, it is  sanctuary, and I am immensely grateful to the great Goddess out there for making this heart of mine sing.