The Magic Balm
Bringing Things into the World With My Own Hands
Sometimes the balm or salve that can soothe and heal is right in front of us. Sometimes it requires a prayer, and that prayer is answered in mysterious ways. And sometimes we’re left to exploring, trying new things, living new experiences and walking the road alone to do the work we need to do to move us in the direction we feel is right, the one that is restorative, healing, guiding us to that new place, providing perhaps resolution, a sense of completion and personal growth. I am on that path and welcome to this blog that hopefully will provide glimpses of my process that I’ll be sharing.
I’ve been listening to an incredible audio book called Theater of Imagination by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes. So much of who she is, what her work is about and how she teaches through story speaks to me. Her words are stitched together with symbology and metaphor which has the ability to stir and knock on the interior door of the psyche. The passage below seemed as if it were written for this particular time in my life and it is fitting for the ending of one year and the beginning of another.
“There’s a time for everything. There’s a time for things to live and there’s a time for things to die. When You listen with your inner hearing and when you look with your inner seeing, and when you also debate with your rational mind you will be able to determine which is which time for what….
Ideas, ideals all have their cycle, and the cycle goes like this. It begins someplace on this circle, not always at the same place but if you were to follow the way that we understand life, it starts with incubation. Imagine down at the bottom a darkness in which, even though you can’t see it, great life is going on. It’s dividing and fissioning, and growing and developing even though it’s in the dark and it seems that everything is quiescent, and nothing is happening… When you think nothing is happening, something is happening. And so you move through that into quickening, you begin to feel flutters of energy that are now manifest in some way that you can actually feel and see and soon, there is a labor and a birth of an idea, and ideal; a voyage, a journey and that gains energy, more and more and more and more” ~Clarissa Pinkola Estes
For me, it is time to allow a new project to begin and an old one to die. I was a holistic practitioner for a number of years but could never get it off the ground in the way I wanted. It has caused a stirring of feelings that have come and gone across the last couple of years. It was a career I was trying to force and I tried so hard to make a go of it with trainings and building the practice and clients. Once I let the practice go, I then switched back, full steam ahead, to another project-finishing a book. The book, Out of This World: The Story of Zolar X, is the memoirs of my husband’s band told from he and the lead singer’s memories and perspective. It took 10 years to write and 9 months to ready it for DIY publication as we had added photos and there was extensive proofing, and we created a limited edition to go along with it. It was quite the project. My role in this project was being the architect, navigator, interviewer and sometimes director, sometimes producer. It may come as no surprise that I am feeling a bit exhausted as I also hold down a full-time job which left the weekends and some evenings to work on the book project.
Fast forward to now, the book is launched and there is a bit of an “Ahhhhh”, “long sigh” and an emptiness has made herself known. It took so much energy to get the book out there and into the world that I lost sight of me. I am now replenishing with self-care and renewal. I have started this blog to connect with my inner world and the world around me, exploring rooms of past, rooms of neglected curiosities, and revisiting roots or who I am and where I came from – creativity, healing and art in its many faceted forms and manifestations.
My loosely held plans are that this blog will be an oasis and a place a refuge where I share my thoughts, ideas, and adventures as I embark upon this voyage.