I hope that you all got to have some good fun, good conversation, good company and/or some good food to celebrate this pretty amazing milestone of 250 years. There was a lot about this week that made me happy, so those things are at the top of my Happy List for today.

• Seeing videos of the elaborate fireworks and drone celebration put on by countries like Japan to celebrate our country just knocked my socks off. My parents were from the generation that fought in WWII. Just take a second to think about how far the relationship between both of our countries have come in 80 years.

• I love the Boston Pops, ever since the Arthur Fiedler days. I especially love their version of the War of 1812 Overture when they bust out the real cannons fired by US soldiers for their 4th of July concert. I’ve been watching the video shorts all day now. BOOOOOM!

• Seeing as it has been in the upper 90s with 50 bajillion percent humidity around here in East Texas, I found the “Europe Has No AC And They’re Melting” memes to be pretty hilarious, in a snarky kind of way, so I included my favorite in the gallery. I couldn’t help myself….

• I finished another page in my future zentangle art coloring book today. I’m up to page 10. Yay me!

• My dog is obsessed with June bugs. To eat. It seems that those damn bumbly doofus beetles have some sort of secret passageway into our house and a collective death wish. We’ve had to mount a fast snatch and grab rescue at least twice a night lately. It’s either that or listen to the ‘crunch’ that follows The Intrepid Huntress as she pounces. <ewwwwww>

  
  I wish Mother Nature would tell those silly things that it’s JULY now and they need to find something else to do. Tonight I had a front row seat for my 6’ 5 house mate to do a great home run slide across my wooden living room floor to get to one of those ridiculous roomba bugs before MayMay could. It was hilarious.

I’m still giggling. I think I’ll end on that note.

xoxo

After all, I have been happily cruising along ‘in my artistic lane’, so I thought. I had found a colorful and happy abstract style of acrylic mixed media to explore. One that was energetic, with lots of surprise and movement. A personal style with few rules, bright colors and a style that allowed me to use lots of intuition and imagination.

So why the big sudden 180 degree switcheroo to a more precise and detail oriented art process? Though with most of my studio goodies packed in boxes right now and I was enjoying the change, I was still a little confused by it.

I find the Zentangle process to be free and easy for me, very much living up to it’s name by bringing me to a place of no-thinking-about-unhappy-crap-allowed calm. And it is intuitive in it’s own way because my subconscious just seems to pick the patterns for me, not planning or drawing lines to follow. Just the easy flow of one shape into a different one.

I appreciated the peaceful feeling I was left with every time I capped my pen or put up my drawing pad, I just didn’t understand where this all was coming from… So I asked the question of the why it was happening.

The answer that I was given today during my meditation time was…”So you can show people how to plant their own peace garden.”

I will be honest, my first thought was a big ol’ question mark of HUH? Then I was shown a little mind’s eye image of my own hand last night, finishing the last tangle on a future coloring book page, and it hit me.

Flowers!

All I have been really interested in learning to draw lately were the floral and organic tangles, not focusing much on the repeatable patterns. It was the fun of drawing those flowey swoops for petals, the bajillion ways to make the same basic leaf or flower shape to look completely different from the last. The cute fat Bumblebees and tiddly little Ladybugs to hide inside the patterns that make me happy.

This last page that I just completed was a riotous jumble of imaginary flowers and foliage. A Make Believe English Garden on steroids. Every line just begging you to fill in the spaces with color to bring it to joyous life using watercolor, inks, colored pencils, markers or even a digital color wheel.

But that’s me. I’m an artist. The world of color, paint and paper is my Happy Place.

Spending time in that world is how I can remain in a state of peace.

THAT is the message I was given to try to put into words today, how I’m supposed to ‘show’ you how to grow your own kind of peace garden by sharing my own. No green thumb required.

Do you like to grow real things? Then go do some of that, even if it’s babying some potted herbs on your kitchen window sill. Or maybe look for a community garden space or start one with a neighbor and play in the dirt.

Do you like to build things? Fix things? Make things go vroom vroom vroom? Go find a way to indulge yourself in having that fun. Go volunteer to hammer something and play with power tools. Teach a kid how to check his own tire pressure and oil.

Organize your kids off their electronics to do a simple art project at home once a week and go with you to deliver it to the closest assisted living or nursing home you can find. Join a book club or start one. Open that 2000 piece jigsaw puzzle box and call your neighbors over to work on it with you.

Hell, start a ‘wine club’ and dance in your living room every Thursday with all your girl friends.

The basic point of living consciously is to pay attention to how you are spending your time and the physical and emotional effect it is having on you. Are you perhaps placing all your focus on the external world instead of nurturing your your Inner Self ?

For instance, if you spend your free time immersing yourself in the online world of crap that you can’t control, don’t be surprised if you feel unhappy, anxious, cranky and helpless. Every possible negative emotion lies waiting for you in that world. Too many have not learned the power of “observe, don’t absorb” when it comes to social media and wonder why they feel miserable and anxious about the future. Who really wants to live in a state of constant self perpetuating negativity?

Maybe you just hadn’t noticed until now. If that’s you, then here’s some good news…It really isn’t that hard to switch gears to focusing on all the positives and building back up a sense of peace and hope for the future.

Basically the ‘trick’ is simply leaning in to spending your energy doing things that bring you personal joy and satisfaction. So maybe it’s just time to consider which garden you’d like to see flourish.

ENERGY FLOWS WHERE YOUR ATTENTION GOES.

Well, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to play and leave you with this latest page from my personal Peace Garden, as encouragement for you to start your growing your own.

xoxo

Yay! That meant that I had lots more time to actually slow down, take a breath and calm the F down a little bit from all the frantic activity of recent weeks. Rumor has it, I’m not the most fun to be around when being pulled in multiple directions at once and it’s 80% humidity outside.

Ahem. But I digress.

Having a quiet few days in a row though seems to have flipped the GO MAKE ART switch back on in my brain. The problem is that all of my Big Art Stuff is packed away right now and my ‘studio’ is now limited to whatever pens, watercolors and Arches hot press watercolor paper pads I can fit in a little fabric box tote.

That’s why I was so excited when I literally woke up one morning thinking about Zentangles.

What the heck is a Zentangle, you say? It’s an art form that combines simple shapes into complex ones. You draw a ‘tangle’ by hand, using just a pen or pencil. Most tanglers keep it simple with only shading, but I like to use watercolors on mine.

Tangling works on your brain very much like it’s much simpler cousin, neurographic art. There’s something in the process of changing the focusing to the processes of repetition and pattern creation that has now been proven through testing to literally change the brain waves during an EEG.

I find both techniques are almost miraculous in the way that they calm anxiety and reduce stress, sometimes even putting me into a light meditative state, but Zentangling is just more… FUN.

The nagging feeling of ‘what am I forgetting to do’ that has historically been a big part of chaotic change or stressful times for me, has virtually melted away for this whole week. The only negative is that I seem to have also toggled on my crazy pants switch and I can’t seem to stop playing with these patterns!

In fact, I’m pretty sure that if you stand still long enough next to me, I’ll start to decorate you with my blue black 05 Micron PN.. So take that as an early warning…

Because most of my focus this week was on flourishes and embellishments, swirls and swoops, curved lines and spheres, I have temporarily changed the name of this week’s list to My Artsy Fartsy Happys:

• I made my first sale at the new gallery, AND got my first paid subscribers to both Substack and The Happy Snail, Mail Club. Feels like I’m legit at last!

• I discovered a wonderful YT channel featuring Kelli Blouin, CTZ. (Certified Zentangle Teacher) and have now learned over 50 zentangle patterns. My latest little sketchbook is full of fancy zentangle doodles to choose from when creating my own designs.

• Since this new obsession has been born, I had to figure out something TO DO with all these designs! So, I’ve made a nice start on My Next Project… a Zentangle adult coloring book with two pages finished so far.

• For My Next Project #2, I am planning to transform my smaller zentangle work into handmade journals, using some simple Japanese Book Binding techniques.

• I was invited to participate in a big church craft fair in Dallas next November. Haven’t done a fair in a long time so I’m really looking forward to dipping a toe back into the fall craft show circuit.

Amidst all the scribbly fun I’ve been having, I think that the biggest lesson I learned this week is that problems tend to look huge when you focus only on them. Put your energy into something Happy, no matter how small, and watch your problems shrink.

Energy flows where attention goes. Be wise and wary of the destination for your feelings.

If you find that you could use some emotional or focused course correction but don’t know where to begin, start small. Maybe with just a little swirly doodle of your pen. Trust me, it reeeeally works.

xoxo

• It made me very, very happy to discover that I’m not actually the only one enjoying the reactions of our European friends as they discover American culture in every way imaginable. This feeling of being part of a humungous family reunion plus Vegas plus a home town carnival plus Ferris Bueller‘s day off energy is just delightful.

• I rediscovered Zentangles. If you’re not familiar, it’s an art form, consisting of simple shapes that are put together to make what appears to be very intricate designs. As an abstract artist, being deliberate and repetitive is not my go to, but I’m fascinated with it.

• I’m so fascinated with it that I’m making it two of my Happys this week… I tried Tangling once and wasn’t very good but something has changed and I am now up to 30 different pattern that I’ve learned in the last three days. My sketchbook is full of these intricate doodles. Help me, I can’t staaaaaaap!

• And I made some sales from my new local gallery. I feel so fancy!

But by far, the Biggest Happy of the Week is this one:

• I have more than 35 envelopes full of art goodies shipping out tomorrow for the inaugural mailing of The Happy Snail, Mail Club. That’s the project that I’ve launched with my sister, Mary. We’ve been working hard on the launch and I’m really excited to hear what people think about it.

As always, thank you sincerely for reading what I write. It means a lot to be heard. But speaking of that, I would really love it if you would tell me some of your own Happys for the week in the comments. Let’s do this together.

Xoxo

PS- If you’d like to participate in The Happy Snail, Mail Club or gift it to someone else, follow the link below.

The Happy Snail, Mail Club

I do. Moreover, I want you to!

In The Land Before Email and DMs, there was this thing we did where we put words on paper, stuck ‘em in an envelope with a tiny and colorful sticky thing attached that allowed the envelope to travel to a different location with it’s precious cargo safely inside. Once you opened the envelope to retrieve that precious cargo, it had an immediate and powerful effect on your life.

It was a letter that informed me that five years of hard work had paid off and I could use the initials RN BSN at last as a licensed registered nurse. If it hadn’t been for The World’s Cheesiest Letter to that cute guy that was too chicken to ask me for my phone number after talking to me all night at a party, (yes, I’m that old) I wouldn’t have taken that first fateful step on the path to my life as a wife and been a mother to two individuals who share the best of both of us.

But letters serve an even deeper purpose…They connect you with the past, with memories, with people who are no longer here. They make you feel in ways that a text, an email or even this post will never be able to do.

It’s almost as if part of your DNA and your essence gets transferred through the ink, or is in the swirls, dips and scribbles of your handwriting that comes through the paper itself, in some kind of magical alchemy.

Suddenly you can almost see the person, feel them right there with you.

I experienced this so strongly as I was re-packing family stuff that had been languishing in boxes upstairs. I found a treasure trove of letters that I can’t believe I overlooked before. Those letters were an irresistible force this time, making the re-packing take at least twice as long. Not sorry.

I found letters to my Mom from my Dad, some started even before the train to Minneapolis had gotten out of sight. (I told you I was old. Pay attention.) Airplane passenger flights weren’t a thing yet, post WWII, and Mom and my older sister were apparently headed to spend time with The Yankee Side of the Family.

My Dad’s letters were sooooo full of affection and love. The way he started each letter with one of his nicknames for Mom reflecting how they met in post war Germany, (he alternated between Dearest Frau M and Madame) his wry recounting of his hangover after overserving himself and his bachelor buddy because “the wimmin” had abandoned him, and the inside jokes as a new father, congratulating himself for avoiding my oldest sister’s blowout diaper that undoubtedly occurred for my Mom to handle solo as soon as the train left the station.

Seeing his handwriting and hearing his voice in my head like he was reading these precious pages to me had me laughing out loud and fighting back tears at the same time, just like I am now. This was the Mom and Dad that I never knew. The young parents, not the seasoned and weary parents of 12 years later when Kid Number 4 (me) and 5 (Mary) arrived on the scene.

Those letters that my Mom had saved were a glimpse into the deep love that two flawed but wonderful people once shared, saved letters that peeled off the dark layers of family tragedy that came later in life, bringing the best feelings about my parents back to the forefront of my consciousness. God, how I miss my Mom and Dad sometimes, and it helped heal something for me to “see” them as they once were.

The same for when I unearthed a letter Holly had written to answer an Oh So Serious Query that I sent at age 15, full of umbrage at our father and looking for sisterly support. I wanted to know if she thought I was too young to go on dates until I was <gasp> 16, an outrageous parental stricture if I ever heard one!

She gave me kind but firm instructions that yes, I should listen to Daddy but start learning about my own body in preparation for taking responsibility for my own physical and dating life and health as a young woman.

Reading that letter again at 66, after my own experience as a mother with now grown children made me realize two things… That Holly was Progressive before Progressive was Cool and that the letter she sent was undoubtedly the result of several attempts to stop laughing.

Regardless, for a wonderful moment I could see her struggle to give me good advice without oversharing or overstepping and shaking her head laughing in a “How the hell did I end up answering this question?” kinda way. For that moment she was alive again and as real to me as she was when I was 15. The hole in me since she was taken from us disappeared for a bit and came back smaller.

THAT, my friends, is the power of a simple letter. Words on paper, sent with love and intention to connect and speak directly to someone else.

I had already approached my sister Mary and started along the path towards The Happy Snail, Mail Club but my visceral and emotional response to reading those family letters sealed the deal.

I want the jolt of happiness when you open your mailbox to be normalized and experienced all over the world again. I want people to rediscover the value of the written word again.

Not the texted word. Not the typed word. The handwritten alchemy of connection between life, experiences and the memories they keep in the physical safe harbor of an envelope.

So there you have it. The reason why it is so important for me to combine my passion for painting with this newfound passion for writing, into an amalgamated instrument of both to bring joy, real human connection and the building of memories that will survive the passing of years together.

Making a positive difference in the world, one stamp at a time.

xoxo

I had missed the little spurt of Happy that I got every time I found an envelope with my name actually written on it. Now I get to experience that particular joy again, even if it ends up hiding amongst the endless barrage of bills, advertising for life insurance, cremation services and AARP promoted businesses… all that kind of fun stuff that being in this Over 65 age group will get ya.

I think it was literally the day after I received my first mailing that I decided that I wanted to do this too. I just didn’t want to do it alone. I needed reinforcements…Soooooo, I called my younger sister, Mary, and we decided to do this thing together. Two Crazy Sisters.

We grew up as the last two outta five kids so were pretty close, with lots of time spent fighting over who got the bigger side of the shared room, learning to cheat each other at Monopoly, climbing trees, riding bikes like Evel Knievel and playing pirates.
(I’m still sworn to secrecy about the pirate thing so you’ll get no more details from me)

We were raised on Monty Python, Bugs Bunny cartoons, The Monkees and Scooby Do, so we freely admit that our largely unsupervised Generation Jones upbringing produced a couple of kids who were just this side of being feral children.

The older we’ve grown, the more we have embraced and allowed the influence of those undomesticated Inner Children to be in charge of our artistic lives.

Mary has been my greatest cheerleader as I spent the last twenty years meandering down the long way around on my artist’s path. For my part, I have always loved and been more than a little envious of her artistic talents.

Where I excel in the abstract, she brings such a fine hand and eye for detail to her drawings that it’s kinda ridiculous how good she is. Her style is ornate, detailed, whimsical and often funny as hell.

You want a drawing of a dragon in a waistcoat and top hat, holding a shillelagh and a cup of coffee? Mary is definitely your girl. Three guesses who designed our wonderful logo…

All in all, it was a pretty natural progression to make our ART the focus of connection for The Happy Snail, Mail Club. It’s our variation of the very simple snail mail club concept. We think the best way to bring us all back to a balanced world is to share envelopes full of love, Happy and maybe even a little magic, bringing positive change to the world, one stamp at a time.

Inside each Happy Snail mailing you’ll find a note from me, talking about all things related to finding the Happy in your own life, as well as two handmade original art offerings; a 2x3” ink drawing from Mary’s exuberant Inner Child and a 4x6 watercolor ink and wash card from mine.

It’s up to you whether you’d rather keep or share the cards, but there’s a fancy deckled edge watercolor paper envelope and mailing stickers included, just in case. You can write your own message on the back of either one and share the Happy with someone who could use a little human connection surprise in their mailbox.

The first mailing is free and will go out on June 21. It’s a gift, not an obligation. All we ask for is some honest feedback if you choose to get in on this inaugural mailing.

If you are interested in checking it out and getting some Happy Snail mail for yourself, simply email me at phrogg2@att.net with your mailing address by June 20th.

xoxo

True story… The listing has been live for less than a week and I’ve already gotten the day confused for a showing and been home when the prospective buyers showed up.

Sigh. I’m just not very good at this part, I guess. Good thing I appear as a Harmless Weird Lady of Generous Vintage to most so I can be forgiven for being a doofushead.

Anyway, the Showing-On-Sunday-Not-Saturday thing wasn’t the only thing that I got discombobulated about. I missed my window to set up this week’s Substack calendar.

Double sigh.

Sooooo, I’m starting over with a whole new vibe. Sunday Happys, Monday Studio News and Assorted Friday Nonsense articles interspersed with T-W-Th-Sat notes and restacks. Sound good? I hope so.

ONWARD TO THE HAPPYS!

While the list may appear to be a bit short this week, please factor in the above mentioned I-Packed-My-Brain-And-Can’t-Find-It scenario and

1- Took my best girl MayMay riding shotgun with me while the Friday showing was going on. She liked it so much that it will be our regular house showing activity. Fun Fact, I now keep the front seatbelt locked in place in the truck because a 65 lb dog triggers that sensor. ding ding DING

2- Enjoying the fantastic and joyous world of Gobsmacked European World Cup Fans Discovering The US soooo much that I have to physically set a phone alarm to limit my time in the social media black hole.

A Japanese fan going bonkers in a video because he got to pet a mounted police officer’s equine partner in Plano, Texas. A Danish girl all excited because she thought a yellow school bus was a Hollywood invention but she got to “see a real one”. The Algerian team finding a new ‘family’ in Lawrence, Kansas, being welcomed in their own language. Democratic Republic of Congo players wowing the fashionistas in their leopard accented ‘travel uniforms’ at the airport. A Mexican restaurant playing “Gangnam Style” on their video feed while a room full of South Korean fans dance. Netherlands fans singing Sweet Caroline (off key but very enthusiastically) in Boston. JJ Watts of the Houston Texans finding the online viral sensation Freddy, one of a trio of German soccer fans on a budget WC trip that has turned into a love fest for all things Americana, and comping him a fancy suite in a Houston hotel

Trips into Buc-ees, Walmart excursions, 1 am breakfast at Waffle House, bottomless chips and salsa, college football stadium flyovers, a longhorn cattle drive in the Fort Worth Stockyards, Texas BBQ ribs, country music songs, free refills and no charge public bathrooms have done more to bring the people of the world together in love and appreciation for the average American experience than anything else has in my lifetime.

I don’t care what you think about Elon, you are missing out on some of the BEST stories of human connection that you will EVER read if you are not on X. Trust me. Try it out for the next couple of weeks. It’s just beautiful.

3- This one has really tickled my Scots Heritage funny bone… Scotland’s “Tartan Army” invasion of Boston. From a horde of kilted Scot fans literally drinking ALL the beer on their flight over and then piping themselves off the plane through the airport to the cheerful prank of placing orange traffic cones on the head of every bit of statuary in Boston (its something they do in Glasgow to “honor” the Duke of Wellington since the 1980s)…

The Scots fans have managed two things long thought to be impossible… Made the World Cup finals for the first time in 28 years and made the standard proudly acerbic Bostonian facade melt into a smiling and jovial.. dare I say… Friendly Extrovert. Today the Scots Army and all their new family paraded into Fenway Park for their match behind a full regalia pipe and drum corp.

I could go on and on with the joy and Happys that have come just from watching other people experience what is a “normal” part of my American life. But I’m also conscious of the real message behind what I’m seeing.

We are all ONE. We are essentially and fundamentally the same.

With just two days in, this World Cup experience is shouting from the rooftops that we humans have more things in common than not. That something as universal as a game can be a catalyst and reason to reject the misconceptions and falsehoods we’ve been fed that focus on our differences.

If given half a chance, we can easily find things to appreciate and enjoy about each other. All we have to do is stop listening to those who would have us divided by our differences.

There’s LOTS of love flowing through this world. LOTS of opportunity for real human connection, even if we are from opposite ends of the world. LOTS of values and ideals that we share, regardless of language or culture. And I for one plan to share what I find with my fellow humans and ignore the rest.

xoxo

My best description of the last 3 weeks is that it has been like doing the hokey-pokey while herding cats, balancing the building of a new home to be transferred from one state and the clearing out and putting up a home for sale in this one. Getting people to give you the information that you need to move forward with your left foot and doing the emotional job of curating what were treasures to release your bonds to your old life on the other foot....and being out of rhythm most of the time.

There have been eleventy billion trips to storage and to donate goods, people in to pick up furniture to go to a new life elsewhere, umpty jillion boxes packed and labelled… all with a background symphony of a small horde of guys with power tools outside, beating my neglected flowerbeds into submission. But now it is time the really hard work. It’s time to have FAITH.

Yeeesh, that can feel like a hard one, can’t it? But I have learned that it doesn’t have to feel difficult or scary, or give you anxiety and make you question all your decisions up to this point. Not if you think of it like throwing a baseball.

Baseball??? Yes, hang in there with me….

The last ten years tested and refined my belief system, stretching it in all kinds of unexpected ways. One of the ways that has changed for me is the way I pray. I used to approach prayer in the standard Christian way that I was taught.

Humbly ask but be sure to include why I’m not worthy to have what I’m asking for and even feel vaguely guilty for asking in the first place. Wait for The Answer. Rinse and repeat but only louder if no action in a couple of days. Be stressed about it the whole time.

Talk about sending mixed messages! I have often visualized the Almighty banging His Head on a celestial wall in frustration at my clumsy attempts at prayer coherence.

But one unexpected positive outcome of being disenfranchised from a church family during The Ridiculous Lockdown Time is that I was free to explore more general spiritual concepts instead of being wrapped in a specific dogma. The result is that I leaned away from the negatively charged I-Am-Not-Worthy mindset and embraced the understanding that if there is the spark of the Divine in every one of us, that makes me actually a piece of the Universe itself, and worthy in every way possible to ask for things.

The catch is, I can only ask for whatever is to my highest good, not just what I want.

I will be the first to say that too many times to count, I have asked for what seemed like the right thing at the time, been disappointed and then realized later just how bad the outcome would’ve been if I had gotten exactly what I asked for.

So where does the Baseball part come in?

Have you noticed that the pitcher will stand on the mound, often turning the ball around and around in his hands, squeezing and gripping until it feels just right? That’s how I pray now.

I take my fear and concerns, my question of the moment, the choices I’m stuck between, my perceived wants and needs, what’s bothering me or where I’m hurting, and I smoosh it all together. I turn it around and around in my mind like that pitcher on the mound. I put it all out there, jumbled and coherent or not. I ask for clarity, for an answer, for a direction, for some help to get to where I think I want to go…but end it with “WHATEVER IS TO MY HIGHEST GOOD”.

And then I throw that ball out to the Universe as hard as I can. It has been asked for and answered and my job now is to let GO. I consider it pitched and caught. I consider it done with an outcome that is to my highest good.

I don’t reconsider and throw a different pitch with the same requests, problems and questions. I allow myself to rest in faith, that just like I was promised, I will be taken care of completely. Maybe it won’t look exactly like I pictured it, but I will know that even if it’s a seemingly convoluted pathway, I am still being led forward towards the answers, the clarity, the solutions and the blessings that I asked for.

So now I wait in faith for that next step on this new path to present itself. I know I’m worthy of whatever comes from all this that I’ve been doing. I know that I have never had to earn any of this, it is all gifts from a Creator that loves me.

Yes, even the hard stuff, the painful stuff, the unhappy stuff, the sad stuff that happened in my life… There has always been something to come from it that was to my highest good.

I’m not sure if this analogy of mine of faith as a baseball will resonate with everyone, but I hope the central takeaway for you is at least this. Ask for what is to your highest good and then let go. Let go and let the Universe take it from there.

xox

o

Sidebar: It is slightly embarrassing to realize just how much stuff I had accumulated in the last 10 years, enough for at least one other household, probably because I’ve had more than one household living under my roof off an on this whole time. Seems like whenever somebody moved out they always left stuff that I never noticed. Until now…. But I digress!

On to the Happys for this past week!

• The Big Happy for this week is that I finally finished separating all the stuff for donations from the stuff for storage and got all that out the door. Let me be the first to admit that it took an entire village to save this particular Village Idiot’s butt from herself through this whole process.

• I finished painting the 40th watercolor ink and wash card for my new project.

• I took a self care day and had a wonderful reiki session and divine spa pedicure on the same day. My toes are a lovely blueberry color now. Yay!

• Other than a couple of well earned bruises, my physical self held up remarkably well through all the box carrying, fetching and carrying and trips to the semi climate controlled storage room. Cussing a lot helped. Considering my wonky knee, non-bendy Barbie fingers and less than robust energy level in 80% humidity…all in all it was nothing short of miraculous.

• I took a cuddle nap with MayMay two days in a row. We both needed it to calm down after the frantic pace of the last week. She knows something big is happening and has been getting pretty anxious.

So onward I go towards the next phase, arguably the one I’m looking forward to the least, showing the house to potential buyers. Sigh. Nobody’s favorite part to have to keep your bed made…but when I feel grumpy about it, I try to switch my mindset to gratitude.

I’m grateful, so so grateful for so many things from this last week…The progress toward this new peaceful place in my future, the opportunity to bless others with the accumulated stuff that is no longer necessary for me and the memories that surfaced when I repackaged all the family mementos of generations past. It was lovely to spend time with ancestors and loved ones.

I’m grateful for the new muscle definition in my arms now, something I thought was out of reach for the last few years, definitely a byproduct of all the “forced physical therapy” (as my friend Jac calls it) of the last weeks.

Yup, I have guns again. (pea shooter size maybe but they are there)

And I’m also super grateful for whoever developed Advil…

But mostly I’m grateful for this opportunity to reassess what’s important enough to keep in my new life and what I need to let go of, physically and emotionally. My last move was not under ideal circumstances, to say the least. I was in too much turmoil and pain to bear to try to curate my life so I just threw everything in boxes. I’m very grateful for the spiritual and emotional growth of the last 10 years that made this new curation event a positive thing. A circle has closed and feels completed.

Now I have renewed confidence that I’m doing the right thing, that I’ve finally pared down my focus to what I really want to do to live the rest of my life as my real and authentic self at last, no longer burdened with expectations from other people. I feel a real freedom, a lightness in spirit, energized by the possibilities ahead.

In the words of a Very Wise Oracle who once proclaimed so long ago (1986) …
My future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades.

So here’s my Happys for the week:

• Watched two big size mover guys turn to mush and baby talk to my 65 pound dog, MayMay, this afternoon. She wiggled into pretzel shapes and hit ‘em with the full force of her MayMay Greeting Dance. Those big strapping dudes never had a chance.

• Had a two hour long catch up with my oldest friend that I haven’t seen in 6 months and it seemed like just yesterday for us both. Friends like these are rare. Cherish them.

• Met a pure white fuzzball of a Maltipoo named Lucy, quite possibly THE most ridiculously happy dog on the planet. That says a LOT coming from the mother of a ridiculously happy dog.

• Finalized a logo that made me laugh out loud…That’s all I can tell you for now.

• Sketched and painted flowers on cards-to-be every night this week. Yay!

Maybe these won’t seem that fantabulous to you but I think really that’s the point.

I look for my Happys these days in the little things, the mundane things, the interactions between people I meet and the renewal of old comfortable relationships.

These small things bring perspective to my everyday Big Picture and help keep me grounded in positivity, not reactive to all the fear porn being pumped at us all by the bucket..

Happys are small but mighty. When added together they are far more than the collective total of their weight as moments. Happys are not the shiny, shallow surface of my life, they are the building blocks of it.

I look forward to sharing more of my Happys every week along the way on my journey. I also hope you’ll fill the comments with your own Happys to share.

XOX

O

There’s a particular bias on the subject toward people of my age group, the Over 60 So You Must Be A Selfish Boomer demographic, but that’s a whole ‘nother unrelated conversation.

I stand firm on this main point. Like every other mom on the planet, I have spent my most of my adult life (since age 23) taking care of others before myself… In fact, (unpopular opinion alert) I am a firm believer that this is the why women are “built” the way they are. I believe that we females are biologically created to be the nurturing and primary caregiver part of the human equation. To be the source of the love that binds people together in society.

And yes, even if you were never the ‘bio mom’ of two legged children, that is still the case.

If I do say so myself, I think that I did a pretty great job with fulfilling that part of my biological contract and purpose. (I’m still rocking it, actually) And I don’t apologize for being proud of that. But now there’s nobody that needs me, except that long neglected person…

ME.

So no, I don’t believe for a hot second that it is selfish now to put myself first, to do what resonates with me and makes me happy for the rest of my life.

It’s also not selfish to spend my own money on myself. Not selfish to take care of my own spiritual and emotional needs, whether they resonate with someone else or not. It’s not selfish to say no, even if it makes someone else unhappy or uncomfortable. Not selfish to now focus on how best to maximize my enjoyment of a peaceful and harmonious life.

Self care = Self Love = More Joy of Self to Share with Others

That is a total win-win-win for my personal frequency and state of mind that will blend into everything I do in my little corner of the world. And that will translate into a bumper crop of the frequencies of love and joy that will show up in my paintings.

So onward, ever onward toward my goal of a more mindful and peaceful life, putting myself first so I can continue to fulfill one of my primary purposes as a woman, giving love.

PS- This quote comes from a wonderful new book that I highly recommend, “The Art of Intentional Living”. Available June 1 from Growth (TM) Although it’s now available in Kindle form, I’m on the waitlist for a physical copy.

Weeks ago, sometime in November, I was woken up with a loud word in my head. That word that was PEACE. As is now the usual with my intuitive painting process, I headed to my art room and wondered just how I was going to find anything associated with that word hidden on the not-very-peaceful-looking abstract background that I had waiting on my easel.

It took literally less than five minutes before the first figure just seemed to condense out of the chaos of color. Then two. Then three. Then I saw the dove. The painting was finished before the end of the day.

Sooo, why do I want to talk about this painting right now?

For one thing, because the absolute NEED for living inside a more peaceful life has now revealed itself to be the real driving force behind the decision to change everything about my life and move.

But also because it seems like the negative ticker tape in the media with their nonstop FEAR FEAR FEAR ANGER ANGER ANGER messaging is really ramping up. We as a Collective are under a literal bad news bombardment right now. An emotional shellacking. An energy ass whuppin’ of Nonstop Scary Crap.

And I see many people are reacting to this onslaught of negative messaging with rising anxiety, anger, verbal/video hysteria or a verbal deluge of Everything Awful I Can Think Of To Say Right Now on Social Media as an added bonus. They are walking, talking Cortisol Overload Zombies.

It hurts my heart and it doesn’t have to be this way. You don’t have to buy into the bullshit, people. Go within and ask you heart if you need to be scared or if maybe you just need to stop listening to those people and stop consuming the fear porn.

Look at this microscopically. Look at just YOUR life. Count your blessings. Give gratitude out loud to God, the Angels, the Universe, Mother Earth… whatever your spiritual belief system prefers. Make a new practice to write down three good/happy/positive/love filled things that happened to you today. Do this and feel the difference it makes in how your body reacts.

Find your own peace in the chaos.

Me? I’m going to keep painting.

To that end, I have decided to work the S Word out of my daily lexicon. Maybe it’s the hisssss at the end that gives me this mental picture of a cobra, but it’s there and I’m standing by it.

I think the S Word is a not-very-healthy word. It brings a heaviness and hopelessness, a kind of I’m already defeated feeling to it. So much so that I wonder if the emphasis on this word over the last 20 years has been an intentional emotional driver to keep people feeling overwhelmed and stuck in victimhood by whatever the subject is.

It sure seems to me that nobody says what’s really bothering them anymore. Saying “I really hate my job but I’m scared to leave because I have to have the insurance for my child.” or “I am working 45 hours a week to keep up with inflation and haven’t had a raise in two years.” is considered whining now. Weakness. Shameful. An admission of being somehow less than.

Instead we as a Collective Consciousness are bombarded with BS buzzword phrases like “there are political stressors on the financial markets” and “responsible high paying jobs are inherently high stress”….

And don’t even get me started on the overuse of “anxiety” in medical diagnosis (and the rampant over prescribing of treatments for) and in the self use of that word of almost every person under the age of 30 these days?

It rampant medical gaslighting. Again. It’s another form of taking the control of the emotional balance away from you and from me. Again.

Don’t agree with my hypothesis? Okay, ask yourself one little question then… What industry has benefitted most from throwing those two words into the public sphere like dynamite fishing in a lake, times a million?

If your answer is BIG PHARMA, then DING DING DING we have a winner!

Hearing these supremely and negatively charged words is bad enough but repeating them is even worse. When you repeat a word or phrase, you give it your power. You give it your consent to affect you in the way that you said it.

So I say this, let’s normalize naming your feelings again. Especially the bad ones.. Angry, scared, worried, unhappy, mad, pissed off, terrified, desperate, frustrated.

NAME THEM and deal with each one. Acknowledge it, release it, understand what is bringing that feeling to you and then do something about it.

Really. That’s all it takes for YOU to start to take back control over your feelings. You don’t have to suffer under the weighted blanket of dread and powerlessness that is the S Word, the sum total and burden of ALL the bad feelings at once.

No, it’s not a quick fix for “Regulating Your Nervous System” but it is a starting point to practice breaking those big feelings down into their more manageable parts. That’s what I’m consciously doing now.

I think I’m feeling overwhelmed by this move. Why? Because I’m still a little scared that there’s too much for me to handle alone. Okay, how can I fix that? I’ll accept my friend’s offer to come here to help me pack the house. I have missed her and this will be such a wonderful time to reconnect. We’ll go eat at that little Mexican food place on the square in town and I’ll show her where my new little house will be. She’ll feel better when she leaves, I will feel WONDERFUL when she leaves and I will have tangible proof that everything IS under control, just messy.

True story. By the time you read this, Tanya will be almost here for her three day visit, the longest stretch of time together in ten years. The intent is for her to help me pack (which is wildly appreciated and needed) but what we will really be doing is bringing calm to our overloaded and unregulated nervous systems for a few days. Giving ourselves time to talk about and release some of the complex feelings we each experienced when our close friendship was abruptly disconnected with my divorce and forced move ten years ago.

I can’t wait and that feeling of being overwhelmed is already shifting into something much less, just in my talking about it with you. Thank you for reading this.

.

“I just don’t think I can do this anymore.“

I acted like I knew what the hell I was talking about but I know better now. That was my Subconscious Self giving a conscious voice to what my brain just couldn’t seem to find in all the noise up in that colorful but chaotic noggin of mine. But the Universe didn’t stop there, they popped an article up in my Substack stream to make sure that I got the message they were sending.

This article was about how to re-regulate your nervous system. The nurse in me was immediately intrigued because I was taught all the what and the why of everything that the Sympathetic (FIGHT, FLIGHT OR FREEZE) and Parasympathetic (REST AND DIGEST) nervous systems, did but I had never heard of problems with either being addressed in that way. Re-regulating them. What did that actually mean?

What I found as I researched further was that I had both learned and been conditioned to believe that there wasn’t much one could do if one’s CNS got wonky. After all, that’s what mental illness and “stress related” issues like anxiety are, right? So there’s a limit to what medicine can do to “fix” a fault in your system, so to speak. Other than to throw a metric buttload of medications at the problem, of course.

Not only that, I found that the medical system’s approach of gaslighting us all (again) into thinking that things like chronic pain, caffeine addiction, autoimmune disease flare ups, hypertension and heart palpitations, brain fog, anxiety, insomnia, GI issues, mood swings are not reeeeeallly related at all.. That’s just us minions being emotional.

Well HELLOOOOOO plot twist, turns out they are. All of ‘em.

Yes, there’s hormone imbalances, that pesky thyroid and certain disease processes that also help gum up the Inner Nervous System Works, but for the most part you can trace the root causes of SO many things back to the simple fact that there is an imbalance between the Parasympathetic and the Sympathetic systems.

I looked at the list of ‘signs that you might be out of balance’ in the article and scored a 9 out of 10.

Why??? Well it’s not because I have some kind of intense job, live on the edge of disaster as some kind of extreme athlete, neither do I live in some hectic urban dystopian nightmare. I live in East Texas with green grass, big trees, happy people, donut shops, good ol’ boys and nice waitresses, easy parking, one toll road, ridiculously light traffic (six cars at a stop light is not heavy traffic, Denizens of Tyler, sorry) and Friday Night Football. We have our issues but I don’t live on Fury Road.

So why did I mentally check so many boxes? Insomnia. Trouble making decisions. Brain fog. Feeling fatigued. Bad reactions to loud noises. Snappier than needed response to triggers.

Yeeeesh. On paper, I looked like a mess.

What I’ve since learned is that LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE ON THE PLANET_, I’m so used to living with an unregulated nervous system that I thought all this crap was “normal”.

The more I researched this, the clearer it became that I had simply hit my limit of unresolved stuff that have been carrying pretty much my entire life, at least since I was 17, but that is a story for another time.

I have been putting all the stuff away, acknowledging it happened but not really letting go of any of it. Not because I didn’t want to, simply because I didn’t know that I was supposed to, much less how to.

Now, I’m no expert about to give you Seven Easy Ways To Have A Perfect Life. I’m just a 66 year old woman who has realized that her physical, emotional and spiritual health have all been affected by holding onto loads of Crappy Life Stuff and who has decided to take steps to reverse some of the damage going forward.

Step One is this move. I now realize that the reason that I was so surprised by that beautiful feeling of peace, standing on that lot the first time is because all that stuff that I was holding onto has been blocking my access to its presence for years. It had been so long that it was like a whole new feeling altogether. And I am look forward to years ahead, sitting and marinating in that peace.

Meanwhile, I’m working on figuring out what helps me get back into balance with my poor tired nervous system sisters. I haven’t been easy on them at all. So I sit, writing all this down, regardless if anyone ever reads it because it helps me. In fact, I highly recommend you do what feels right to you to name and acknowledging what is in your personal Crappy Life Stuff pile. We all have one, you know.

In my opinion, it is the single most important step to letting go of the toxic cocktail of pain, grief, anger, shame and whatever else is in there. Letting go leads to forgiveness of others. Forgiveness of self. Forgiveness for not realizing until now that you didn’t notice that you’ve been stuck in FIGHT, FLIGHT OR FREEZE all this time and maybe that was causing some of these other problems for you.

And when I’m not blathering on with my writing, I paint. I paint with happy colors and happy intentions. Every word and every brush stroke lightening the load of Crappy Life Stuff until one day it will all be gone.

Peace out, friends

.

The location of my move seems to have surprised a lot of people, myself included, to be honest. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I’m Eva Gabor moving out to Green Acres. I’m not a total City Girl. I’ve lived ‘country’ before and loved it. (ask me about my manure fork skills)

But that was a landlocked experience. Being the palest of the pale skinned in my family, I didn’t grow up a boater, sailing enthusiast, ever been into water skiing or tubing or any other of the Sunburn Is A Certainty weekend activities that one most associates with lake living. Ten minutes in or out on a body of water and I was crispy fried. Quite the teenage buzz kill for invitations of that sort, but I digress.

I never liked doing any of that boat-y stuff anyway ..other than floating around on a big ol’ pontoon boat (DUH, who wouldn’t?) tubing down the Comal river, or all my cherished childhood memories of going fishing with my dad in a flat bottom john boat.

So.. what did draw me to this little lake side-ish spot, armed with the stubborn certainty that I had to be able to see the water if I was going to do this?

There is something about the literal sight of water that brings something in me to a state of complete inner stillness. Whatever is going on internally just..stops. It allows me to catch up, catch my breath, catch on to what is really going on.

Bathtubs had always been the place that I would retreat to when I needed that stillness to short circuit all the chaos, internal and external, but I had to stop taking baths when the sudden advancement of my arthritic challenges made the getting in a lot safer than the getting out.

But in the last four months I’ve been led to explore the possible spiritual connections that have brought me to this decision to upend my life and start over because I can see a strip of blue water about a block away in the distance. Here are the ones that resonated with me:

A lake is a spiritual reflection of self, giving me the opportunity to take a look at what’s running beneath my surface. It invites me to notice my emotional patterns, the reactions that are shaping my responses and my life. Makes perfect sense since focusing on the rhythm of the waves in a lake or ocean has always been a form of meditation for me.

However, the lake also spiritually represents emotional depth and inner truths, the ones that maybe I didn’t want to acknowledge right away, that were hiding beneath the surface layers. Unlike the always moving ocean, the lake invites me to gently explore beneath those layers. A lake is not scary or intimidating or unsettling in shear size, like being in the ocean feels to me.

The lake also represents the spiritual concept of stillness. I call it a spiritual concept because it does not represent the physical, in this inner context. After all, it was Jesus who rebuked the wind itself when he said “Peace! Be still”.

It worked for Him, and seeing the calm surface of the lake works for me the same way.

Inner Stillness is what happened when I stopped chasing answers and feelings and allowed myself to just BE. The stillness came first, then the inner peace arrived as my resistance faded away. the last one to the party was the clarity that I welcomed with open arms. I needed him so I could finally make my decisions and restore my feeling of being in balance.

Subconsciously, I think my Inner Voice has always connected those dots for me but now I can see the process as it unfolds for me. Before I would always come out of water feeling calmer, reconnected to myself and disconnected from whatever was bothering or upsetting me.

Now I know that I don’t actually have to get wet to make this happen for me. Just being near enough to a lake that I can see the water brings me an almost instant snapping into focus. A focus that is my Inner Voice telling me that I can keep my sense of peace, my center, my tranquility intact here, no matter the storm outside.

Part of the journey of the last ten years has been my growing understanding and reliance on that Inner Voice. That, like everyone reading this, I do have an Inner Voice, an inner knowing if you want, that I can hear and talk to if I wish. That this Voice is wise, can be trusted and is not a fragment of a stressed or damaged mind.

I’m going to continue following along this path, documenting as best that I can along the way on this inner and the outer journey. With my Inner Voice as my principle guide and you here to talk to about it all, I am soooo damn happy and content. Feel so at peace. Almost as if I was sitting down within sight of the lake…

PS-The picture above was taken a trip to Orcas Island last October. This is one of Twin Lakes, found high up on the side of Mount Constitution in Moran State Park. It is a beautiful place that speaks to my soul even now

(BTW, I can now TED talk your a$$es off on any of the above subject matter. Just sayin’)

In fact, it was one of those videos that just showed up in my YT feed in December that sent me down the original ‘What if?” rabbit hole and started this massive life change underway. Until then I had a vague feeling of discontent and frustration with my life in general and my current house in particular, but hadn’t considered anything like actually moving again.

Maybe all this was wishful thinking, just a response to the end of the last five years with me in a caregiver role instead of being able to really care much for myself?

I was tired of stressing, tired of problem solving for everybody but myself, tired of not even remembering what my own post-divorce life goals had been before the poop hit the fan. Tired of being the one in charge of putting out all the small dumpster Life Fires that happen over and over again when you take care of someone with an awful illness.

Maybe I’m just… tired.

It took a couple of months of resting and feeling my own body start to shake off the negative effects of the constant turmoil, feel my body and soul start to come back into balance once my cortisol levels started to finally drop.

One day I realized that this What If… idea of finding a little place to put a little place and build a fresh little life and do my little artsy-fartsy paint-y stuff and be a happy little hippo was not an idea, it had become A Viable Plan without me even realizing it.

It was deciding to “just go drive by those two lots out by the lake” that was the final straw. I realized, standing midway on those lots, hearing birds sing and that I had somehow found my way home, in a way that I had never felt before.

I swear I heard the word “Mine.” whispered out there in the sun or maybe that was just me. I just know that the woman who drove away to follow her heart was not the same one who drove in following her GPS.

Somehow under the guise of harmless daydreaming about possibilities, the Universe had quietly shifted me into full blown Planning and Research Mode and my Inner Bulldog had been activated.

I was done like dinner. I was toast. I was done in. The corner was turned and I was headed on this New Adventure.

Fast forward about four months and this semi crazy leap of faith is underway. Choices analyzed, endless discussions finally finished and Big Girl Decisions made.

I hope you follow along on the journey and see how these changes will show up in my art.

What was my reaction to this pop up message? Complete and utter “Wait, WHAT? Hell no, I don’t want to do that!” But did my refusal dim the message or send it packing?

Oh no, it got LOUDER. It got INSISTENT. It gave me the “Wait, just hear me out” treatment… So, reluctantly I did.

Why? Because the last time I got this level of insistence and psychic push, it was to tell me to step soooo far beyond my comfort zone that I’ve never even seen that zone again since. That’s when I was pushed, prodded, nagged and driven to create and hand build a 9’ tall copper Angel Wing sculpture installation and put it in my front yard.

Yes, I really did that. Whole ‘nother story but that’s where I found my Soul Family Members and learned that God, The Universal Source of Everything, will not leave you alone when He/She wants you do do something. Even if it looks, sounds, seems and is perceived as Bat Sh*t Crazy by everyone you know.

This time the thought banging and clanging around in my noggin was saying “It’s time to move. Time for new things. Time to change everything again. I have new work for you to do.”

So, here I am, five months later. About to close on new house and put it out on a slice of land within sight distance of Lake Palestine. Moving away from my urban life with noise and bustle every day to something I didn’t realize I was craving… PEACE.

I didn’t realize until these past few months just how much I was missing peace in my life. My divorce was a sad and sudden whirlwind and wildfire that burned down 33 years of security and sense of self. Everything I knew about myself was suddenly shaken like your brother shook that Dr Pepper and innocently handed it to you, all those years ago. Yep, my life blew straight up my nose the same way.

I moved back home to where I felt less alone. I found a beautiful place to live, even though it was not the most practical idea ever. Basically, I grabbed the first New Life lifeline that I saw and decided that it would be enough, that I had time to ‘fix’ the things that were not ideal in my situation in general. I set to work, tirelessly trying to make some damn lemonade outta all the bushels of lemons that were suddenly mine and mine alone.

Then my brother got sick and my life became two. It was beautiful and horrible, stressful and loving. It was a blessed and an exhausting five years where any sense of peace was small and fleeting.

Fast forward to almost 10 years from the day I started over and I have a decent handle on things. I’ve grown and learned, recovered from my mistakes and re-learned that I’m a smart, capable, resilient and strong woman. I run on mostly inappropriate humor, creative force and good food. I have rediscovered my inner sense of self and redefined my outer one.

But was I at peace? Hell no.

As soon as I stood on that parcel of land for the first time, I felt IT. The Thing I Was Missing. And I started craving it and that Insistent Voice smugly stopped telling me what to do. It didn’t have to.

I went after it. I figured out a way. I asked the Universe for help in refining just exactly what was to my highest good and then told it politely (but firmly) to make that all worth my while for all the effort it was going to take to get me there. And it did.

So now I’m purging and packing. Sorting ,selling and rehoming what is no longer essential in my life. That includes ditching the chaotic daily frequency interference from cranky ass people swearing at the poorly timed traffic flow and all their own confusion and misplaced anger giving off a low hum feeling like I was always standing a little too close to a power line.

This new life will be smaller, in the size of house to keep up with, but it will also be richer in calm, in the quiet rustling of leaves overhead, the sound of that goofy rooster up the hill and the tinny buzz of a skidoo in the distance.

Peace. Tranquility. Room ot BE and a renewable source of positive energy to create art with of a sense of happiness and contentment.

The journey continues and I hope you’ll come along with me.

I’m 66. I’m old enough to know better, really. I’m old enough that I should be carefully watching my pennies while nervously watching for some health issue wolf to appear at my door. Old enough that I should be “thinking about my long term health and well being” and saving for some rehab or assisted living end game of the future.

Certainly old enough to understand by now that the world is crap, hell and hand baskets await and I’ll be eating cat food or living in my truck if I don’t make the prescribed Responsible Financial Decisions…

I SHOULD be living DEFENSIVELY against the Grim Reaper and not trying to have a life at this late stage. After all, that ship has sailed, right?? According to a distressingly large portion of the general population out there about people my age, I have missed my Window of Opportunity for A Life, and should go sit in my back room and wait to see where I land on the Shitty Medical News Wheel.

Sigh.

Too bad for them that I’m ALSO old enough to know that it is perfectly okay to reject that line of thinking altogether and tell that mindset to F off.

So, it begins. I found a beautiful little .3 acre piece of East Texas Heaven, near enough to Lake Palestine to actually SEE the water, so I count that as ‘Lakeside Living’. Fight me on it, I dare you.

When I stood there that first time and heard the birds singing and the actual SOUND of the breeze rustling leaves in the tree branch over my head, I felt a peace that’s been missing in my life for a long time. In fact, I believe that I’m actually feeling it now for the first time since moving back to the area of my birth, after my divorce 10 years ago.

What I do know is that I’m standing a little bit taller today. I feel a little bit lighter today. I feel a little bit more energized today. I feel a little bit calmer about MY world, which makes me feel a little bit more positive about the world in general today. My future seems full of possibilities again.

And in a tiny way, I have made room for the do-overs, the improvements and the cosmic realignments in what I didn’t have the emotional energy to do right the first time, moving here in the emotionally bruised and scrambled state of mind that I was in.

I have healed. I have grown. I have become My Truest Self To Date and I have earned this Sacred Space.

I invite you to stay tuned and follow along on the journey. This is gonna be AHHHMAZING!

PS: Divorce sucks, regardless of the circumstances that lead to it but you don’t have to stay mired and stuck in those energies. How you face each day is a choice.

In my mind I was watching a little flock of brightly colored birds fluttering about and singing their hearts out from a perch over water or flying around me, silhouetted against bright colored blooms in my imaginary garden.

Each of the paintings in the series is a mixed media collage painting on 300 gsm watercolor paper and available on my website. Each is shipped ready to frame, with mat board backing and securely wrapped in a resealable cellophane sleeve.

Welp, the dog ate my homework on that last post.. It has disappeared into the ether, never to be seen again. Too bad, I’m not sure if I can be that hilarious twice in a row but here goes nuthin’..

Soooooo, I discovered the World of Gelli Plate and I may never be the same. It’s so easy now to magically layer stencils, images, scribbles, sketching.. virtually whatever I want to do, ALL IN ONE FELL SWOOP.

Splat, wipe, scribble, slather, dribble. Apply, let it dry and repeat. Then the final ‘pull’ of all that goodness on one transparent collage paper. POOF! Apply directly to the watercolor paper and then start my process of negative painting to reveal the images hiding in the chaos.

It was like entering a fuge state. When I snapped out of it, I had yellow streaks in my hair, one blue eyebrow and purple fingerprints on the seat of my jeans. Lordy, but it was fun!

Before I knew it, I had four different size plates all going at once and now have eleventy bajillion papers looking for their time to shine. I decided to save the best ones for some 11x15 work but had a blast using up my stash of small 6 and 8” square watercolor pads. I’ve attached a little gallery to enjoy but stay tuned for the big stuff.

PS: If you never actually speak to me in person again, just know that I died happy.