Sharing my joy: visual journal spreads 001
creativity
Using Today As A Catch -Up Day
It’s what I do right. When I’ve been absent from the blogs, websites and zines, absent from the public realm, then I take a day out of my schedule to catch -up with them all. To post something, to let my readers know that I’m still here. Still alive and kicking. When I get my bum in the seat and force myself to write, something comes along to fill in the blank spaces. And today is no exception.
I’ve been dancing around cyberspace, updating my spaces with words and reflections and memories.
So for now I’d just like to point you in the direction of Studio Notes over on Substack where I’ve just posted about my nana Amber. For some reason, she’s been on my mind this week, and there at the smell of brown bread from the kitchen she comes back fully to life. Check it out and if you feel inclined, add a comment or even become a subscriber, free or paid.
All is welcome.
End of June Reflections
How do you practice self-care?
As we near the end of June, I near the end of my current visual journal. This beauty has seen me through some ups and downs these past two months, as I’ve navigated major life changes and shifts.
Being able to keep coming back to the page in order to work out my shit, my internal shit, before I meet all the external shit is a gift. Is a massive gift I take for myself in the name of self-care.
Before visual journaling came along, I did keep a journal but it was maybe a lined notebook sometimes plain paper and pen. Simple and effective and got me through a lot of life’s changes.
But when 2015 came along and my life changed forever, words on the plain page would never be enough again. Could never be enough to express all the turbulence and upheavals within my life. I needed more and I also needed to feel safe.
So paints and images and quotes and collage and photography and text came together, merged and played off of one another to provide the time and space and safety I needed to have an ongoing, developing and becoming conversation with myself.
I feel blessed now to know I get to do this / {BE} this daily. I give myself the opportunity to get off this merry-go-round of life and take deeper breaths, while being in communion with myself, checking in on myself, making sure I’m okay and if not what I need to do in order to get back to being okay. But all in good time and a few visual journal spreads later.
This is one of my self-care practices which I am truly grateful for.
I’ll be sharing some more spreads, images and reflections on this process over the summer as this practice is multifaceted in terms of all the goodness of offers me. I gain insight, clarity and love in the present moment of the practice. But I also gain a lot of joy in the looking back over pages, reliving the feelings within my body of the practice. I also gain pleasure from sharing this practice with others.
Check out further posts to come.
Summer Solstice Sea
Not quite wild yet
The heat has been on for the last week or so and then today a downpour that didn’t seem to want to stop. But it was needed. There needs to be some kind of release.
I’m in the thick of organising house moves and exhibitions and lectures and just writing them gives me a headache never mind completing it all. And complete it I will do as that’s what I do. But at what cost to my health and sanity?
Today I’m resting for some and then doing/ working for some. Breaking up the rests with work instead of the other way around. And it’s working. I feel better, lighter and more productive but never doing more than I can handle.
I have loose ends that need to be tied up which are sapping my energy but some things are just out of my control. So I’m sitting with these uncomfortable feelings trusting in the ancients that they will allow things to turn out for the best for me.
I have to believe it when I get lost in the mix or start to doubt the path I’m on. That the universe has my back. That these things happen for a reason. I just wish sometimes things where a bit easier for me.
Studio Notes @ Substack
I’ve just spent the last half hour or so crafting this month’s Studio Note over on Substack.
I’m still not to grips with it all over there. Still features I haven’t explored yet but I’m enjoying the ease of it all. Simple.
Go check it out and see what I’ve been musing about in the heat/ heart of summer, summer, summer.
Summer Wish List
Sheree may you offer yourself light
Sheree may you offer yourself grace
Sheree may you offer yourself rest
Sheree may you offer yourself love
Sheree may you offer yourself ease
Sheree may you offer yourself softness
Sheree may you offer yourself mistakes
Sheree may you offer yourself movement
Sheree may you offer yourself a deep clean
Sheree may you offer yourself hope
Sheree may you offer yourself deep breaths
Sheree may you offer yourself adventure
Sheree may you offer yourself surrender
Sheree may you offer yourself healing
I only saw his shine once it was too late to feel it
In the dream, he comes back to me, whole and young.
He was always young in my eyes. When I used to ask him at each birthday how old he was, Daddy would answer, 45.
He was always 45 in all the years I knew him. All the years I was living, he was dying.
In the replaying of images, I play it differently.
I keep my distance until he asks for me to bring his slippers or newspaper. I offer them with bowed head. I don’t throw them at him as I used to. Escaping his rage, escaping the beats.
I keep my distance, but I want to be close to him. To hold him. To feel his love for me. Then and now, still needed after so many years gone.
To serve, he brought me up, to serve. Instead of getting the vacuum clearer out, he had us on the floor picking up the bits of fluff and crumbs. To hear his pride at a job well done was enough.
When I enter the chapel of rest, it’s like I’m floating on air, light as the flowing curtains concealing a prize. I see him now, as then …
he‘a surrounded by gold satin, his mahogany black skin shines, relaxed and unlined, sea-black lips wave-curled and still.
He looks younger than 45. Even though the plaque on the coffin lid reads 1920 -1981 – he was 61. And the time he was dying. I was living.
Poem – An Act of Faith
Isn’t that what a poem is?
Elizabeth Acevedo
A lantern glowing in the dark.
Just as dusk is falling, I walk. Affected by the elements,
head in pain from the wind, I force myself out into the dim light,
believing moving my legs will strengthen my heart.
Motherly care, higher forces in radio silence. Walk
The moon pale blue and silent. But still there. Always.
Like the ancestors, guiding. Allowing me to find my own way. Tonight.
To falter, make mistakes and loop back. Remaining open.
Trusting these windows of silence as still inspiration.
Hope holds optimism. Optimism holds joy.
The touch of joy, fine-grained dark jasper, I search for along the path.
This spiritual path of putting pen to page, again and again.
Like one foot in front of another. An act of faith.
Living Wild Studios 