The Gratitude Project 2013

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.
Melody Beattie
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/gratitude.html#QYeI6RixTj3o20dW.99

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.
Melody Beattie
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/gratitude.html#QYeI6RixTj3o20dW.99

"Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend." - Melody Beattie

Fall is one of my favorite times of year - the colors, the change in weather, the abundance of gatherings with family and friends; what could be better?

With the seemingly overwhelming struggles and sadness we see everyday on the news, and in the lives around us, sometimes it's easy to take things for granted and forget just how beautiful life still is.

The Gratitude Project launches November 1st and invites us to notice, celebrate and honor the little things in life...we'll take photos of what we are grateful for for 30 days and share them on Facebook and label them "#thegratitudeproject2013."

I can't wait to see your pictures!

October Updates

Photo by Sarah

We are having one of the most beautiful autumns in Central Oregon this year! Warm 60 degree weather, blue skies and gorgeous colors! October feels like a blur - I got strep throat the end of September that lasted a good 10 days into the month, followed by a week of trying to catch up on things, before getting sick again for about 4 days. Needless to say, October kicked me on my butt which was a great reminder for self-care. There was lots of quiet reading and daydreaming this month...

Even with it being a month of only a few really "productive days" I hung a whimsical art show at Barnes & Noble for the month.

I made it to World Pulse's 10 year anniversary in Portland with my dear friend Padma.

I got to play in the leaves with Christina.

I taught a digital story portraits workshop at The Oregon Art Educators Conference in Sisters which was really fun!

And I was awarded a grant through World MUSE for a photography project I'm launching in 2014!

I just sent off the photos for my next photo exhibit that opens November 1st.

So for the 15 productive days of October around being sick, I'm realized that I actually got quite a bit of great stuff done! Whew!

Sometimes, just realizing that you got the big things done is enough to remind you that you don't have to push yourself to extremes to make some magic. :)

I hope October has been refreshing, creative and filled with soul-care for you too!

Contributing & Balancing Our Self

Photo by Sarah McMurray

It's 12:10 am and I'm awake. Words are spilling from my fingers tonight onto the keys and it's the first day I feel like a writer. I've always been a painter, except for the little 6th grader armed with a yellow legal pad that I wrote my first "novel" on. I wish I still had it. I remember the gist of it - about a heroine (there should always be a heroine) creating a magical life for herself and finding ways to contribute to the world around her.

This month I got the itch - the one that slowly creeps in after awhile of trying to go for a dream and whispered so quietly into your ear, "Who do you think you are? You're not like them...go back to ordinary. You are better off safe and protected by a regular job...," it hisses. "You could get your own place, travel, and be protected."

Today I turned in an article for E.J. and in thinking about it now, recognize my own shedding happened in that work. I wrote about how ordinary lives are actually a gift and that we must learn to embrace, honor and celebrate for the extraordinary gift that it is - a moment to learn, to grow, to be a part of something...

That's what we all want after all - to be a part of something, to contribute to someone or to the masses, isn't it?

The women's circle I'm part of is spending September looking at shedding, exploring "She who is awakening." I love that phrase (from Pixie Campbell) and it reminded me that the things we become fearful of are often projections of things we actually would like to change about ourselves. It's like when you suddenly notice a trait or habit in your lover, or friend that rubs you the wrong way - or you start to notice that you play small in someones presence; you are not fully yourself and you catch yourself in that smallness. You recognize that you have shrunk not necessarily, although sometimes it is the case,  from someone else's perspective, but more often it's actually our own fear about a trait within our self that we dislike.

I've caught myself thinking how others must perceive my life as boring - when the root fear is not actually what others think, but that I, myself, find my life boring in someway. I'm not the same vivacious, outgoing woman I used to be - I'm in a season of deep reflection and introspection which is great and all, but I miss the sassy girl. I want her back.

So how does one regain sass? One of the words used to explain "boring" is "unimaginative" and I would hate to be one of the unimaginative ones - because I think that it means a lack of courage more than anything else.

So here's my big, wild dose of courage and imagination for today: we don't have to push ourselves to the extremes. Rather we need to pulsate and undulate in the middle, creating room for retreat, rest, and deep community connections too. It's so simple and yet so bold. I'm a woman who has fought to produce perfect things, not to rest in the feminine place to gathering. In the past two months as I've journeyed hard with autoimmune disorders and adrenal fatigue I began to feel small for not having the energy currently to produce an epic final project. But the truth is, I let myself get small - out of fear of falling short as a productive, successful woman.

Fuck it. Being a workaholic isn't worth it. Burning the candle at both ends isn't worth it. Finding a beautiful feminine way to be and experience life and create something meaningful in relationship is worth it.

How can we create/give to many without burning out?  How do we honor our selves and protect our time for the things that truly matter without feeling small?

Being small simply isn't worth it anymore. Play into your bigness, your greatness and uncover the beauty that is who you truly are and share it. When we are fully, wholly and wildly ourselves there is nothing boring or unproductive about that.

Where are you playing small and will you allow yourself to grow bigger?

The August Slow Down

Self-care is a challenge. I'm a woman who likes to be busy; I suppose I place too much of my self worth on what I accomplish. But when my doctor told me I had to chill just over a month ago, I finally took it seriously. I've almost made it a month in my quest to relax, heal my adrenal fatigue and adjust from my old job to freelancing part time for now. Telling a overly productive woman to slow down, rest and chill out is worth laughing at, but I'm learning. August has been a month of fun, play and rest. I went to antique markets with my mama, sat in coffee shops and read creative blogs and wrote, started working part time for creative venues as a content writer/photographer/teacher...let me tell you, it's hard to go from work 50/60 hour weeks to 20ish.

I took myself on a solo-camping trip and discovered just how hard it was to just be and not feel like I should be working on a million writing projects I'm dreaming up. (I did have one published on Elephant Journal.)

It rained but I still enjoyed it.

Then a week later my family went to the Oregon coast where we spent summers all of my childhood playing on the beach, exploring the small towns and window shopping.

We strolled, laughed and spent time together, and although it was only a few days. I came home feeling refreshed despite a few mishaps with food allergy issues. I'm learning to admit my weaknesses, and that rest is okay and letting go is even better. But most importantly, I'm learning that life doesn't always look like the vision you had in your head - yes, absolutely I could work my butt off to have the job with the fancy title, the cute home, or the perfectly assembled outfit, but is it worth it for me? No. (My adrenals tell me no anyway...I'll get there too.) Joy, community, rest and play far outweigh a big paycheck.

Today I leave for one more self-care adventure for this month - a 3 day creative/yoga retreat in the mountains - and after that I'll have to think more seriously about how to maintain balance while adding in some more work hours. But for now, I'm enjoying rest.

I hope you all practice great adventurous self-care this weekend.

I Choose You, A Poem

I want to sit with you
and free write our thoughts across night skies
to share our memories until wee hours of the morning
and stay awake to watch the sun crest over the horizon
all dewy, like fresh melons dripping, juicy and lush on the mountains

I want to sail the ocean of your body until I know your tides,
your ebbs and flows
the way your body reacts to the first snow of winter
and the thawing of spring earth

I want to stand completely naked with you
our hands caressing each others skin,
tiny boundaries between souls
and laugh wild belly laughs that stir from the ground up
until they reach the heavens with joy

I want to hold your hand until we turn 92 years old (or more)
to race in our wheelchairs down hospital corridors
because we know that happiness and love are a choice
and I choose you

Lassoing Dreams....

A photo from a weekend drive up Paulina Peak with my dad...8,000 feet toward dream level.

We sat like smooth cups of coffee with Bailey's stirred in: creamy, comforting and reminiscent of holidays. Our conversations lapped at my soul like tides against creamy beach sand, the kind your toes sink into like velvet against skin, or dipping fingers into the jar of rice on my grandmother's kitchen counter. Something about it was comforting,  family and soul and hearth and home. We sat in the courtyard, a little band of artists carried away with possibilities and reality; an innate knowing that this was the season of leaping, of casting lines onto stars and swinging from open windows into the vast abyss where universe meets sky and landing on plush pillows of clouds where possibilities roam free like Oregon cattle.

We rested our backs against Ponderosa pines and sipped whiskey from flasks tucked in jacket pockets on riversides. Surely this was what summer nights were for. Artists, thinkers and vagabond sinking into blankets of this could work, making safe little harbors to launch from, and casting nets wide into ocean and dreams.

This is the place where dreams rumble up from the earth's core, hot and molteny with the decadence  of chocolate lava cakes, that taste so rich you look around to see if anyone notices you surrendering to a slice alone in candle light corners of cafes. Dreams have become luxuries, a fear many reluctantly let slide through open fingers like sand to be scattered in the wind.

Dreams were never meant to slip away like that, but to hold hope on the wings of sparrows, and cause us to pioneer like our great grandmothers across the Oregon trail with her grandmother's hollyhocks seeks tucked in the hem of her skirt. To plant in new soils, new places...a reminder of legacy and lineage and a tribute to the journey we can never know for certain will extend to the promised land.

I pick my dreams from amid thorns in the furthest recesses of my mind, guarded by doubts and nay-sayers who assure me: it can never be done. I cry a loud "fuck you" to the residual hauntings of "it can't be done" or "success must be traditional."

In brick-walled courtyards and tipis on the shores of deep lakes, I stretch and break the boundaries that have contained me thus far, pushing past walls and roots and wounds to expand beyond the stuck places toward freedom.

Crows caw their songs overhead swooping in to dive bomb my head in a reminder to skip playing safe for the wild adventures of chasing dreams, swirling them overhead like lassos until they catch and take hold.