Radical Self-Care

Posted on August 12, 2017 by Heloise Jones

“Something inside you is always telling a story. I believe every single thing you see and hear is talking to you. The bottom line with all of this. . .is Love. We want to show ourselves and have that be accepted. I love being alive, and the art is the evidence of that.”
~ Jim Carrey, actor & artist, in a wonderfully magical video

I start each blog by asking What’s it about today? Self-care came thru loud & clear. In the shower, my thinking mind jumped to radical self-care.

I logged onto emails. Webinar-podcast whiz Amy Porterfield’s message was self-care. On Facebook Anne Lamotte spoke to radical self-love, which includes self-care.

Sitting at the computer, what I felt is how little space I feel inside. I write and teach about the importance of space inside us for the creative process. How expansion is what the creative process is about. That engaging with creativity is a dance. What we want is to focus on possibilities that come with a Yes inside, and expand the dance floor.

Then I glanced at my tea mug beside my computer. Felt the big No in my chest from breaking a promise to myself months ago I’d enjoy my fine tea. Taste it vs. have it be a beginning ritual for work. I don’t want the computer today, I thought. I rescheduled this blog to Saturday morning. Radical. I’m committed to you here.

At a friend’s later, I said I have to go after we’d talked 2-12 hours, the time feeling like minutes. Just two more things, she said. After that I said ‘just one more.’ We kept on as I signed a book she bought for an author friend of hers. An entire hour passed before I got in my car, glad I let the connection continue. I decided to do ‘nothing’ the rest of the day.

I lingered in the market. At home, I turned off the computer, leisurely thumbed through a fav weekly. It’d been ages since I did this with leisure, or on the day it came out. I cooked food, ate it at the small high top counter of a table in the kitchen while listening to the rain. Not at my desk where I usually eat. I watched episodes of ‘The Crown’ on Netflix before exhaustion stole my mind. I saw two episodes before I fell asleep. Simple, little things that may not sound radical, and for me, they’re Big. Because it’s the little things that trip us up. The day-to-day that slides into habit.

I’ve shared my desire & efforts to get back to the joy of writing fiction and poetry. I’ve tried to do it like I used to, writing with others to prompts, and confess it hasn’t worked. Now I believe it’s because I didn’t fully surrender to the creative process, allowed space inside me. Because it’s clear the challenge is not the time allocated. + I’ve done this before, with heavy trials. And I heard characters and stories and the full breath of a poem then. I edit my Facebook posts like tiny poems. I can expand the dance floor.

The other day I stepped away from the computer, went outside. I couldn’t believe how glorious the day was. The air, the sky, the birds on a wire. So like Heaven I felt myself breathing deeply. And I was missing it! Still, I pulled myself away, returned to work. What would have happened had I stayed ten minutes more?

Travel has always given me space inside. Put me in a state of awe & wonder. I return a different person. One with expanded boundaries of thought and Being. I haven’t been able to travel in a few years. Today I decide I’ll travel another way until I can board an airplaine.

I’ll follow awe and wonder in nature and thru art. Researchers at UC Berkeley say it’s a very good thing to do. In a study they found awe, wonder and beauty signal the immune system to work harder and may lower inflammation & extend our lives! I’ll buy that. Their suggestions for getting this direct influence on health and life expectancy are where awe and wonder reside for me–walks in nature, losing oneself in music, beholding art. I can travel this way. This is not new to me.

I look up often at my desk, gaze out a window across the room at trees. Behind me, above my desk, is the eastern sky framed in two small windows. I’m going to turn, look out at the sky more often. Perhaps the next rainbow I catch won’t be fading.

Step away, even for ten minutes, from people and things that constrict your insides. Look at the sky, or peer at the minute details in a leaf or blade of grass.
Consider what radical self-care is for you. Make a list. Do one thing this week. Schedule one thing next week. Note how you feel inside after you do.
Collect some stickers:

Sticker by Jeremy Nguyen

Looking for help with your writing or writing life? Want an ally? Click Here.
Like to Listen? Check out The Creative Life for People Living in the Real World.
Wanna know what’s up next? Events page has all the News.

How Life Sings Like Poetry

Posted on August 4, 2017 by Heloise Jones

“In an ideal world, our poets would sing our stories back to us, connecting us through language that’s memorable, moving, often disturbing: our poets would through their poems urge us to awaken and look around us, fall in love again and again with the things of this world.”
~ Kathryn Stripling Byer, poet

I’m a sky watcher. I’m constantly gazing up, marveling at the light & color. Noting when the clouds shift. Marvel when they look like shredded cloth or as if they’re painted on up there. With said, it’s been a while since I spent time with the night sky. This week, 4:45am, opening the blinds without my glasses on, I thought iI saw a reflection of a lightbulb in the window. But I had no lights on inside. I like my day to gently lighten with the dawn. I stepped outside, stood in the cool air, gazed at Venus, big as a streetlight. A comet bright as a low flying jet streaked past. And then, brief and high, another. I thought how I’ll fill my life with more of this sort of love and wonder. Relearn to do it.

Someone said recently I should work with children, that I have a gift with them. I don’t know how she got that except perhaps from blogs I’ve written, such as here & here. It’s true I like talking to kids. Love the art they make. I’ll talk to any kid around me.

My 7-yr. old grandson lives in Taiwan. We see each other every two years. In late 2015, he started sending me postcards. We now write each other. I have his cards stacked close to my desk where I see them. It’s quite magical how his printing’s changed. The last one so perfect, I thought his mother wrote it. A small way to see him grow, and real.

Recently we started Friday night conversations. There’s a 12-hr. difference, so he rises before his parents, signs into Skype. If he can’t get thru, he’ll call on his dad’s cell. ‘Skype is weird,’ he’ll say. We can only do this on weekends, he says, and we’ll do it all summer he’s out of school.

Here’s the thing. I think this little guy’s in my life so I can have something I never had growing up. We were born the same hour & minute, 5:47 am for me, 5:47 pm for him. What’s the chances of that! + A year ago, the last time they were here, he wanted to spend every night with me long before they arrived. Cried when he thought he couldn’t. He brought me so much joy, I cried when he didn’t.

The magic is simple. It’s not about being a grandmother. It’s about being in awe with him. He’s like me in so many ways. An artist, high achiever, dreamer. Full of wonder about the world and loves learning. We give to each other.

My favorite postcard. Look at that happy goat facing the sun. And that happy bluebird & turtle.

I met 24 yr. old Alex weeks ago when I knocked to ask if she was my new neighbor, could she please not leave her lights (plural) on all night. I’d covered a bedroom window with black plastic, which blocked the fresh air. The walls in my whole house stayed lit. I waited 5 nights to ask. It was already 10:30. She was so sweet. She asked what I’d do when new neighbors arrived, which she wasn’t. Same thing, I told her, and invited her outside to look up the street. All but one of the houses were dark. One dim streetlight for every 2 blocks.

When she looked up, saw the stars, she was amazed to see them so close to town. We talked a very long time, there in the dark late at night.

I learned she had a very bad past, had gotten in trouble. And she turned it around. She listens to podcasts of inspirational speakers, is studying Buddhism, adores her fiancee. She has aspirations to study forensic medicine, be a doctor. She supports herself with her business of rental properties.

She was there to clean and fix her grandmother’s house to sell. Her grandmother having passed at 98, right before I moved in. She invited me to pick the pink roses from her grandmother’s bush any time I want.

Another day I stopped by to tell her about the Buddhist center in the neighborhood. She’d just googled the closest meditation center too, too far away. She showed me what she’d done in the house on a small $500 budget. Her grandmother didn’t believe in traditional medicine, she said, and showed me the back room where her grandmother grew plants in pots for medicinal purposes. The yard had them, too, along with veggies, and greenbeans draped on the front chain-linked fence. A woman I would’ve liked.

Days later, asleep on the sofa with a movie playing away, I woke to my name called thru the screened door. It was Alex with a vase of roses.

She was leaving the next morning, and wanted to thank me for being so kind (her words). She said she felt lucky to meet me. I loved her by then, and wished she wasn’t leaving.

I talk about how writing can sing when it comes together just right. As a writer, there’s no greater feeling for me. I talk about how poetry sings. I realize this feeling of connection with my grandson and Alex is the same song. A song of life that’s brought alive, so I sing inside. It’s called Love.

In Santa Fe, Sikhs held a 4 hr event on the plaza. Dressed all in white & turbans, singing and chants with beautiful melodies. Accompanied by tabla drums, viola, guitars, keyboard, mandolin. Incredible musicians. Yoga, East Indian dancing. Free iced Yogi brand tea, and organic popcorn with the fixin’s. They’re all about feeding people. Even walked around, offered bottles of water. Tables with info on living healthy, their guru on a banner. Love, Peace, Kindness their message. No conversion, just Gratitude expressed for being here, thriving since 1971.

Love, giving, gratitude, sharing. Like my grandson and Alex and me together. All of us so different, and yet so alike. Hearts opening. Imagine that.

Another Small Journey. Getting to Wise.
A Writer’s Life.

Tell me. . .what sparks wonder and love in you?

(I dried the roses Alex gave me. They’re in the picture at the top.)

*
Like what you read? Subscribe for updates in your inbox.

Looking for help with your writing or writing life? Click Here.
Like to Listen? Check out The Creative Life for People Living in the Real World.
Wanna know what’s up next? Events page has all the News.

Faultlines & Cracks

Posted on July 28, 2017 by Heloise Jones

“I don’t know why it is, but everything enters me more deeply
and doesn’t stop where it once used to.”
~ Rainer Maria Rilke

We’re all cheering the monsoons here in the desert. This is the kind of place where people walk outside and look up when it starts to rain. The kind of place where green blushes the golden-red brown landscape overnight, and any weedy sprig may bloom with a little water. Last night the rain fell gently for hours after the thunderstorm. It felt different, slightly strange, to a friend and I as we stepped out, walked down the block. Later in the evening at home, I forgot that feeling. I was comforted by the sound.

This morning I started for my walk after 6am. Late. Immediately it turned different. I came across a large garden snail in the middle of the road 1/2 block up. Just as I thought wow, a snail, I heard the eggshell crack of another I stepped on. Which (after apologizing profusely to the crushed creature. . .yes, I do that) I noticed 10 to 12 others across that section of road. Nowhere else up or down.

Then, 2/3 of my way up before I start back down, along the block where I enjoy bunnies and ravens, no bunnies or birds. Not one. First time since I started these walks 6 wks. ago. I wondered if the bunnies got flooded out. Why do we humans go to catastrophe first? I heard a hawk call as I crossed the street to the park.

I walked the sidewalk toward the rose garden rather than go thru the middle of the park like I usually do. A rare move, as the path thru the lawn offers some relief from the rush & roar of early morning vehicles. A ways before the paved entrance to the rose garden, the little voice said turn onto the lawn here. I followed. 15 ft. in, I came upon a semi-circle of white mushrooms. I stood in the middle of their arc, looked at them a short while. There were 8 buttons. I’d seen the phenomena before in the woods. As I walked away, I glanced back. Darker grasses formed a perfect waxing crescent moon, tips and all. The buttons ran thru the middle of it.

Past the bushes cut as hedges, around the ideally shaped blue spruce standing 25′, I stood at the top of the rose garden, surprised by suds on every level of the fountain at the bottom of the walk.

I thought as I walked home how one detail – rain for hours in the desert – changed the entire trajectory of this story of my morning walk. How things that are hidden came out. Did those location centric snails wash from a yard? Or did they crawl out onto the wet hard surface to get here to there like they do in FL, covering sidewalks like tiny booby traps for inhumanity. There are no sidewalks on that stretch of the snail covered road.

I talk a lot about following the story, letting characters lead, getting out of our way so to expand and deepen the possibilities in ourselves and our work. Even in nonfiction, what would emerge if we followed threads of thought.

Author Richard Bausch says, “If you’re struggling <with your writing>, it’s because your talent is acting on it, seeing into its fault lines, and you have to learn to trust the difficulty.” What if we just wrote & created to see where it led us. To see what questions and challenges might come up. What if we shifted to openness-adventure-surprise vs. expectation & assumption. And let our talent act.

I believe we would feel more space inside. Our work would grow bigger. I know what I’m talking about.

I didn’t start out to write a novel. I followed a little boy who showed up in the very first story I wrote at my very first writing retreat. I wrote to see what would happen to him. To see if I could write long enough in a bigger story.

I never intended to write “The Writer’s Block Myth.” In fact, I got a message like a charge from the Universe, along with the message I’d be telling the world about myself, 3 full years before I wrote it. I said No, I’m going to the hot springs today when I got that message. Those exact words. And I did. But the book dogged me.

I started a blog for no particular reason except it seemed time to start. I shared what was up each week, never realizing it would develop into what it is now. The title for the book flew thru my mind as I wrote a scene for my second novel. I noted it in the top margin of the page. Months later, a list came like another magical download that turned into a blog. That list is the over-arching structure of Part One of the book. There’s more, but you get the picture.

Author and songwriter Leonard Cohen wrote the cracks are how the light gets in. I say let’s face the cracks and fault lines. Be explorers thru the challenges. Follow the unexpected. It’s quite a glorious feeling when it sings just right. I can tell you that for sure, too.

Look around the room, choose a prompt. Write for one minute to see where it leads. Keep writing if you want to follow.
Take something you’re working on, believe you know where it’s going, and throw something new in. The morning after a rare all night rain in the desert. The woman across the room walks over, trips, falls into him. A total eclipse of the sun.

Can you see how huge that thunderhead is? Can you see the light inside it?

Like what you read? Sign up for updates in your inbox.

Coming Aug. 7, a new group in Santa Fe. KEYS TO YOUR WRITING SUCCESS.

A New Frontier

Posted on July 21, 2017 by Heloise Jones

“Pink is my new frontier.”
~ participant in an intuitive painting workshop led by Chris Zydel

I remember when Pink became my new frontier. I was in my early 40s. I’d disliked and avoided the color my entire life. No pink kid dresses. Only one doll with a pink dress. She was not a fav. I could enjoy a pink rose, and I turned toward red or peachey toned flowers. I appreciated soft washes of the color when mixed with greens, ate off the china with pink flowers my mother gave me , but pink wasn’t a choice, ever.

Understand, COLOR is important to me. I see it like I smell aromas and taste foods with a thousand taste buds. Grasses are never simply brown or green. I can tell the color of an M&M in my mouth. I will change clothes if the color doesn’t feel right on my skin. So, pink was not simply something to like or dislike.

My relationship with it changed dramatically at a Monet exhibition. I stood immersed in Monet’s signature blues/greens/aquas on a round canvas. The colors were deep, intense. As my gaze drifted to the top right of the painting, I wasn’t prepared for the vibrant burst of pinks shaped loosely like a human heart. It physically & viscerally knocked me back a few steps. As if by electrical shock, or a shove by a sudden gust of wind. I staggered, stood in a daze, unsure what had happened. On my way out, I bought a snack at the small museum deli, entranced by the pink netting it was wrapped in. I hung the netting on my rear view mirror for the long drive home, where it stayed for months.

I was in a new frontier, uncharted terriroty with pink.

Frontier: a line or border separating two countries; the extreme limit of settled land beyond which lies wilderness; the extreme limit of understanding or achievement in a particular area.

We often enter new frontiers, tho we don’t think of them that way. We move to a new city or neighborhood. We start a new job or line of work. We change our style of dress, the sorts of earrings we wear, the sorts of ties and jackets we buy. We downsize or upsize our homes. We travel. Life delivers a blow, such as illness and we’re in new frontiers of pain, or loss and we’re in new frontiers of grief, or like me when my husband was run down by a car, new frontier of insurance and medical worlds. For artists and writers, when we follow the work, allow the dance floor of creativity to expand, every painting, story-poem-essay, creation is a new frontier. Heck, what’s happening across the globe, our knowledge and relationship to this changed world is a new frontier.

In every frontier, we can choose to explore, learn and adjust, expand who we are. Or stay same-same. Whether in comfort, resistance, or futile control. Even pull the horizons of the frontier to the boundary lines of what we know.

For me, why this, why now is because that painter’s statement about pink, and my remembering my own experience, made me realize I’m in a new frontier. And it lifted me from (confession) doubt. Back then I let pink show up in all its intense glory, didn’t water it down as a wash when it called. I experimented, bought a pink scarf, discovered I look really good in pink. Not coral, the color I typically went to when pink tapped me. I let myself live with it and decide, not react, what my relationship and interaction with it would be. I even let pink Beings show up in my paintings.

This may seem simple. And simple & safe are our best teachers for the bigger stuff.

I’ll tell you a story. Last week the little voice said ‘take your camera’ as I stepped out for my early morning walk. 3 blocks up is a 12 ft. rough carving of St. Francis out of a dead tree trunk. The style common here in Santa Fe. I stopped to take pictures. A raven lit on the edge of the branches closest to me in a tree to my right. Bent his head low, cawed. I told him he’s beautiful, and he gurgled, clicked, chattered. I’ve never heard them gurgle before, I thought. Then he flew to the tree on my left, did the same. I felt satisfied with myself. This bird wanted to talk to me. Ravens remember faces. I wondered if he was the bird I’d seen another time that flew from the tip-top of a very tall tree to the middle branches so he could observe me better.

He then flew to a tree 20 ft up the road. As I caught up, he flew to a tree 30 ft. further on, landed on a sawed off limb with no cover of leaves. He sat silently for minutes, me standing below in the road, before he flew to a pole where I could see him. Too far for me to catch up.

Not until a friend exclaimed there’s a message in that last landing did I see it. My new frontier is not the work I’m doing. I’ve done it for decades. Nor is it simply showing up as All of me, adding the words deep intuition to my job description on my website. (it’s one of my greatest Super Powers, for Jiminy’s sake) Nor is it expanding what I do to thousands of people. Or exploring new ways of recovering things that matter to me, like writing fiction in longhand, because this busy-ness of my current life requires it. My new frontier is going out on a limb like I’ve never done before. Choosing the broad open field of the sky as my arena and horizons, and staking my place in it. Having faith I’m here for a reason, and I can meet it. Faith is my new frontier. What a new way of thinking that is.

Another small journey. Getting to Wise.
A Writer’s Life.

Tell me. . .what frontiers have you entered? How did it feel?
I’ll tell you a secret. . .I’d be lying if I didn’t say this new frontier is both exciting and scary.

Like what you read? Sign up for updates in your inbox.

Coming Aug. 7, a new group in Santa Fe. KEYS TO YOUR WRITING SUCCESS.

Focus, the Sorcerer

Posted on July 13, 2017 by Heloise Jones

I’m taking a class at the community college, Movie Going as Memoir. As with most things I start that don’t seem to make sense, intuition got me there. Our first assignment – think about a movie that was meaningful to us as a child or adolescent that we haven’t seen since, and free associate on the experience seeing the film. Having engaged in personal inquiry for 35 years, I’ve re-watched nearly all of the films that stuck with me, either for story or images. The same reason I reread childhood books. . for a glimpse inside myself or my life at that age.

I didn’t jump on the assignment. The week turned intense. Long satisfying meetings and new connections. Tech snaffus. Creating and launching really cool projects. Two hours before class I got to it. I free associated, but the juice that emerged clearly wasn’t in the assignment.

I explored my history with movies and film, starting at age 3. Heidi, the little girl so like myself who lived in a different world. ‘Fantasia’s’ sorcerer’s apprentice. The unstoppable brooms, the waves, and magical night all coming alive with agency of their own. I moved to those Saturday mornings at age 6 I was dropped off at the big, dark theatre for double features. Then the Saturday mornings as an adolescent. My diet of movies never regulated, or even considered.

I saw how character, moments & freeze frame images, the cinematographer’s palette & tone were what stayed with me. The whole vs. specifics of the story what I remember. As Maya Angelou says, “. . .people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” My take-away is the very things I noticed and remembered as a child are the very things that inform my relationship and being as a person in the world.

I understood that the very fact I was left at such a young age to whatever showed up on the big screen, left to make sense of the world on my own, is most likely the start of my interest in sociology, psychology, and life on earth. A fine toolbox for a writer. My piece was not so fine for the class, however.

While others shared vivid descriptions and stories of their experience with their chosen movie, I shared a too-full account of my relationship with the genre without specifics. And a too-long list of images relevant to me but not specific enough to engage them. I was talking about how I learned to assess life thru film, and it wasn’t fleshed out so they understood. I hadn’t edited. The piece wasn’t focused. I didn’t connect with the listener. . .one of the main tenets of writing. I felt chastened.

Focus is a huge gift of editing, and I got my reminder.

One could say Focus has been a theme the past two weeks, it’s popped up so often.

Three authors contacted me about it. One who’s writing a memoir, wants to know how to focus her large story. Another has boxes of files of her writing, wants to know how to approach them and organize. Another has a chapter he isn’t sure hits the marks of either his editor’s or his own intentions.

And two weeks ago, I envisioned and launched a Focus Group – Keys to Writing Success. Am calling people to it now. A group where members gain fresh perspectives, insights, tips, & tools. Connect fully to their writing & creative life. Feel supported, motivated, and confident. In short, write more and write freer. What I’m all about.

Focus. It seems I hit a mark.

Ask yourself as you edit, what is the thread in this work. What’s the spine of the story that the bones of scenes, exposition, and narrative hang from. This helps discern your focus.
Ask what your intent is for the piece you’re writing (book, essay, story, poem, article). This informs the narrative.

Here’s the sorcerer’s apprentice. I’m still enthralled. Animation starts at 20 sec.

Like what you read? Sign up for updates in your inbox.
And Share. Easy buttons at the bottom.