A Year in Review

It's that time again when we pause and look backwards to see how we've fared. As this blog is now given over to writing and associated musings I wont go back over things of a personal nature - though I'm finding it hard sometimes to decide where a certain blog post would go (which was the beauty of having one combined blog where everything could go).

Rather than choose to have a list of resolutions or goals in 2008, I decided to pick and theme and to live my life by that instead. The theme I chose was AUTHENTICITY. Almost twelve months on it seems to be both a foreign idea and a familiar concept. In terms of writing, authenticity meant being true to my calling as a writer. Firstly to call myself a writer and establish with friends, family and strangers alike that it is my vocation. It still feels weird when I am introduced by others as a writer or when people ask 'what do I do' and I reply 'I'm a writer - and a Mum.' Neither are more important than the other so I make a point of mentioning both. Without becoming a mother I would never have realised (or perhaps it would have just taken a hell of a lot longer) my dream of being a writer and without writing I probably wouldn't deal with the rigours of motherhood.

Secondly it meant turning up to the page. For most of the year I've written morning pages every day - though this habit sadly went by the way during November and I haven't yet managed to reclaim it, even though I miss it sorely. I wanted to committ something to the page each week for [Fiction] Friday but I felt keenly the drain of writing short stories, of coming up with new characters and scenarios. I tried numerous tricks, books, prompts but midway through the year my creativity seemed to dry up. My creativity is back and I am also spending time rewriting and working old stories ready for publication somewhere?

Which is a beautiful segue into - thirdly, authenticity meant getting published. Sitting around on my hard drive or reaching a limited audience through this blog isn't enough. I sold my first ever piece of work with relative ease in March with the publishing of my first short story 'Demon Lover' through the Getting Hitched website. I ended the year with a rejection of my short story 'Deck the Balls'! I embarked on a self publishing endeavour with Annie to create Reclaiming Sex After Birth: the survival guide. It is probably the most difficult, demanding and ultimately rewarding project that I have ever been part of. And the journey will continue into the new year.

Authenticity as a writer has almost meant this year recognising that I will never truly be happy just as a writer. There is an innate pull towards publishing for me. There was an offer this year to do editorial work for a fleghling magazine which after lots of consideration I turned down - not wanting to be consumed and working for someone else's dream.In giving up Down to Birth, space opened to conceive new publishing projects - two of which are simmering impatiently on the back burner waiting for their birth in 2009. Replacing my passion to support the homebirth community (which will in essence never totally die) has been a committment to support up and coming writers, which these two projects do. Undoubtedly you will hear more about them very soon.

It's also meant investing in myself as a writer. This year I bit the bullet and became a member of the Queensland Writers Centre and attended The World Building short course run by Sonny Whitelaw in preparation for the National Novel Writing Month. There were others courses I would have liked to have participated in - such as the short story critiquing course but holidays and others piece of life got in the way. I spent a wonderful three days in Byron Bay during the Writers Festival which is most definitely one of the high lights of my professional year.

Authenticity for me has finally meant letting go of preconceived ideas of what it means to be a writer - namedly that writing is a solo activity. I've had the honour of collaborating with Annie Evett on two projects and Paul Anderson on one - with Captain Juan being the highlight of my writing year. The crazy pirate story was my creative life blood during my drought mid year and I look forward to spending more time aboard the La Gongoozler in 2009 side by side with Annie, Paul and the motley cast of many.

Aside from the theme of authenticity I did have some concrete goals. Firstly I wanted to have two fiction and two non fiction pieces published - which was almost achieved within the first few months of the year. Writing my final editorial for Down to Birth in late January was not my final contribution this year - with two more articles published there and another article published in the GAIA newsletter. I didn't make up the second fiction publication as a magazine I submitted to didn't end up going to print. I have a couple of short stories in the wings that I will pursue publication for in the new year.

Secondly I wanted to learn to build a website. It's something that I've always wanted to learn and I got to learn by default through the Reclaim Project. I see writing and web design going hand in hand and it puts me in good stead for the projects that are waiting to see the light of day in the new year.

Lastly I wanted to participate in NaNo again this year and am thrilled with the outcome, almost 52,000 words and completed in 24 days. Most importantly though the fact that I want to continue to write the manuscript that I started. Blue Melissae will hopefully be my first completed manuscript in 2009.

All in all - it's been a bit of a biazarre and very definitely a '1' year where I've oscillated between feeling as though I've achieved nothing and done more than I could have ever anticipated. I'm not even sure if I feel as though I'm out of my cocoon that I went into at the beginning of the year, but do get the feeling that I am nibbling my way out ready to emerge into something bigger and better.

So what for 2009? More on that tomorrrow.

Image is the authenticity mandala from Beth Budesheim and can be found at Painted Journeys

Creative Experience

As a writer every moment, each chance meeting, all conversations, life in general becomes creative potential … possibilities just waiting to be realised on paper and shared with others. Then there are ideas that spring from nowhere, gifts from the Universe? These stories, scenarios and characters that materialise out of the ether can push our authenticity to the limits …and sometimes we need to go out and recreate an experience that we’ve written about to get the realism that may be missing from our writing.

Comedian and author Nury Vittachi spoke at the Byron Bay Writers Festival about a book that he wrote about a middle aged Asian man being hand cuffed to a young Caucasian women in the creation of one of his Feng Shui Detective novels (I’m so intrigued by the concept that I can’t wait to get my hands on one of his books). When he presented the manuscript to his publishing house, his editor read it and then told him to go out and hand cuff himself to a young woman for 24 hours (just like the characters in his story). His editor said there was something missing – that it would be found in the recreation of the experience. Nury wasn’t sure how his wife was going to feel about it. His editor suggested that he get his wife to find the woman for him. And his wife did. Nury spent 24 hours hand cuffed to a 20 something, blonde Jazz singer (it later transpired after this day together that she was gay – his wife wasn’t stupid!) Then Nury went back to his novel and redrafted it, to the adulation of his publishing house and editor.

A writer wants his or her words to be believed, for there to be an authenticity and sincerity about their work. Readers don’t want to be lied to, or treated like they are imbeciles. Even far fetched adventures such as Captain Juan’s or my favourite Dirk Pitt’s, from Clive Cussler’s novels, have to resonate with an element of truth (though Cussler did push the boundaries leaving Pitt and Giordino in the Sahara for six days without water and allowed them to come across the remains of a historic plane crash that they used to windsurf their way out of the sands – but I could still enjoy it!) I’m not sure what it is that the reader picks up on that makes them balk; perhaps there is a two dimensionalism about the whole concept or the writing runs contrary to the parameters of the genre or pushes beyond acceptable limits. Maybe it misses a sparkle, a connection - we have no empathy or love for the characters - I’m not really sure.

In acting there is a style called ‘method acting’ … and I believe that writing follows lots the method acting philosophies (but then again I write from a ‘doing’ foundation). When writing the scene from Captain Juan where Ruby murders her uncle I was struck with – well how does she do it? How do I make it authentic? I’ve never murdered someone (strange but true!) I’m not a deft hand with knives, a blade or anything like that. I know no martial arts and the physical exertion of an evening walk leaves me shattered. Luckily I was at Annie’s house while I was writing and deliberating.

I looked up to her and asked how the hell Ruby was going to kill her Uncle. Compounding my dilemma of not actually knowing the mechanics of how a trained person effectively stabs another, Ruby is left handed. Annie has done martial arts for years. She grabbed a knife from the rack in the kitchen and showed me how Ruby could literally pull and cut her Uncles throat open in one swinging arc movement. I was impressed. It also gave me a clear visual for my writing.

A clear visual is often what I need when I’m creating descriptive narrative or ambience in the story. Earlier on in the week I wrote Andrew Said, set in a cemetery. I struggled with parts of the descriptive narrative and the ambience, because I’ve never been in an actual working cemetery (I was going to say ‘live’ but that just seemed wrong!) I went to a historic cemetery once before Dylan was born as part of a camping trip out west to Mount Mulligan in Far North Queensland. So I realise to be at peace with the authenticity of this story, I need to go and have a wander through a cemetery. There is cemetery about five minutes from our house that I can go for a wander through and set my story in. I might even take my camera. Charlotte Wood mentioned on the same panel as Nury that she often takes photos of places she is setting her story in and creates montages of the pictures on her wall.

And there’s also the doing, the being. This is where I’m really being pushed most at the moment. In creating and doing a little poking around for my Adam and Eve concept, I found out that Brisbane is actually interlaced beneath the city with convict built tunnels. I had some photos sent to me. Now I’m thinking that to really get a sense of the feeling in them, the terror of being stuck in them without light … I’m going to see if I can find someone who will agree to take me down into them. It’s frightening – actually it’s terrifying for me who is both afraid of the dark, of being underground, in closed spaces and always tried hard to abide by the law – it’s actually illegal to go down into them, but that doesn’t seem to stop a small group of people!

Lived experience can be there without the writer even realising it. I’m currently reading Max Barry’s “Company: a novel”. The first half of the book fell a bit cold on me – I was a little disappointed. I heard Max speak twice at the writers festival, and had a short personal conversation with him and was intrigued and entertained by him. He had read a short passage from Company while on panel and he’d come across as a cross between Ben Elton and Nick Earles. As I was reading through the first 70 odd pages, I was wondering when something was ‘going to happen.’ I wasn’t connecting, I wasn’t getting the humour. I began to wonder if I was dumb because I seemed to be missing the point.

Annie came to visit Monday and as I was firing up the espresso machine she picked up the book, and began to flick through. I could hear her chuckling. “This is so true,” she commented when I brought the coffees over and launched into telling me all about luncheon etiquette and how you never take more than two sandwiches, regardless of how much food it leftover at the end. She was identifying with the missing donut that drives the character of Roger. Annie spent a good chunk of her working life working in large companies and the landscape, the characters and the philosophy is common ground. I’m enjoying it now, I have about 80 pages left to go and I’m intrigued to see how the drama plays out. I’m resigned to the fact that most of the humour is lost on me.

Writing is always an adventure. An infinite array of possibilities, creative exploration and a chance to live beyond the square – both on paper and in real life .. and the smudgy blurring that occurs when the two meet. And would we want it any other way?

Does realism matter- is it necessary … to you …to the reader? It is important to make your realism accessible to others, or do you risk loosing realism in the pursuit of making it accessible and enjoyable to the majority?

Abundance meets authenticity

"Once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always."
Margery Williams
The Velveteen Rabbit

This year I decided rather than set myself goals or resolutions, I'd choose a theme in which to live my life. The theme I chose was authenticity. This morning's essay in Simple Abundance was about being real, about being authentic. Sarah Ban Breathnach reflects on the lessons and themes explored in The Velveteen Rabbit. I don't initimately remember the story. They read it to us in our home room period when I was in my first year at high school. Our homeroom teacher, Mrs Smith, was one of the PE staff and was the least warm and fuzzy person I'd come across at the school. She was often late to home room and more often, completely absent, leaving the older girls in our homeroom group to take the roll for her. So anything that may have been grokked from the story, was completely lost on me as a teenager.

Having said that ... hopefully tomorrow Dylan and I will be able to go to the library and borrow out The Velveteen Rabbit. I can reaccquaint myself with the story and share another classic children's book with my son.

On the subject of authenticity, Breathnach outlines a very simple and common sense way in which to work towards a life of authenticity (if only I had found this at the beginning of the year!)

• learn to acknowledge, accept and appreciate what it is that makes you different from others


• learn to trust the wisdom of your heart and make creative choices based on what you know is right for you


• endow even the smallest moment of each day with love

I have definitely decided over the past six months that the first two are essential to a life of authenticity. To me it's meant:

• working with and not against the rhythms of my body


• living up to the expectations I have in life, and not those of others ... to put myself first and do what I need to do for me. This has included not feeding energy into the melodramas of others


• treating myself as important and precious, and making time to nurture myself and enjoy small luxuries


• knowing that I need to have a balance between mind and body


• working daily with my creativity


• understanding my beliefs and the constructs around them, and how they inform my world view, my self view, my thoughts, emotions and reactions

• understanding that imperfection is the only kind of perfection to aspire to
  

I had never stopped to think about endowing every small moment with love. I guess that's what being totally present in each moment is about - loving it, regardless of what it is.

Recently Dylan has been coming up to me and asking me if I 'still love him' - especially after we've had a blow up or an episode of challenging behaviour. I keep telling him that I love him always - I love him when he's happy, when he's sad and even when he's angry. A mother's love is unconditional and this is what makes the bond real and authentic. So it makes perfect sense to apply this same law of unconditional and constant love to every moment in life.

Breathnach comments that, "When you do these things, you become real to those who know and love you, but Real to everyone. You become authentic. " And real to everyone - includes bcoming real to yourself. What a fantastic journey to be on!

Good-bye .... hello!

"You say good-bye ... and I say hello"

Beatles

I love the way holidays act like mini life endings. When you come back even though the furniture may still be where you left it, the curtains still sitting on your bureau waiting to be hemmed and hung, and there's green slime lining the pool - just as you left it, nothing ever really is exactly the same. You've changed inside.

Before I became a parent, I never really took holidays. In 1995 I went to Sydney for a week with a friend of mine. It wasn't a complete disaster, but the whole experience left a pretty bad taste in my mouth. Then in 2001, after I quit my job I took an extended holiday to Victoria and then into New South Wales. It gave me a new perspective on life and I came back refreshed and ready to launch into a new career as a university student.

Now each time we take a break (and this was our first ever big family holiday, exploring somewhere other than the known terrains of where our families live) we seem to come back charged, better connected to each other. I know for sure that I have more patience and this time I'm seeking out ways to keep it. I hope that I have the tenacity, patience and ingenuity to keep this reconnection to famiy alive and evolving in the months to come.

My new boots, written about in my final post before going away, and now broken in and looking well worn. It was an interesting way for me to reflect both forwards and backwards on life. The very first day I wore them - you guess it, blisters!! Well to be brutally honest - one had gone beyond the phase of blistering and it was a lovely weeping open sore. I didn't take another pair of shoes with me, so I had to find ways of getting around in them. Whilst not freezing, it wasn't appropriate to get around without shoes on.

The first full day in Tassie, I relented and bought strapping tape, my save old remedy for blistering/sore feet. This reminded me of my months working on a cruise boat, with a pair of shoes that just never broke in and softened, and the lovely mess of tattered strapping tape that would adorn my heels for the week or more that I was aboard. This time, with the tape over the bandaids - my feet were in agony. The second day we were there, I noticed that Dave didn't always do up his hiking boots ... and thus we went into slipper-boot mode. For days I wandered around with bandaids on my heels and my boots undone. It went from being bareable to being comfortable and my feet slowly healed.

Then my heels were healed enough - just as the bandaids ran out, to put the strapping tape on them. Next I could do my boots up. Finally 8 days into our trip, I took the two hours hike around Dove Lake, at the foot of Cradle Mountain, with my boots done up and no pain.

It got me thinking about what its like to adopt new beliefs, or to let go of old beliefs. It's damn painful. You build a little blister like cocoon around yourself to allow the assimilation/metamorphosis to take place - somewhere to feel safe, warm, wet and womblike. I know that the cocoon that I built around myself in pregnancy was a pretty tough one - my decision to birth my baby at home, put me on the defensive with family and friends. I realise now that I probably did become a bit of a zealot as well. The next cocoon that came was the one that was built for me by the early motherhood and this is where I am at.

Now I'm shedding this skin and trying to work through what I want to keep and what I want to let go of. Even after this holiday I am still in my cocoon and keen to be here a little longer - perhaps a whole while longer. It seems I've been here all year.

Going back to be in the town that I spent my teenage years in, including a night where we spent our holidays, bought lots of ghosts up, lots of untouched and unexamined feelings. More feelings and deep senses of shame that were long buried .. but there were also lots of good memories brought up.

I'm trying to get the best of the old me, and the new me, to create the next evolution of myself.I know that you can't help take the worst of you along also - but I'm hoping that for once it will be tempered somewhat ... which brings me to glance up at the card of Temperance that I have had on my wall for almost a year now ..'balance, harmony, truth'. These are what I want to believe in now, strive for, to bring to each breathe of my life. The next step on the path of my year of authenticity.

These Shoes ....

The script that I am writing (developing?) for Script Frenzy has foundations in the fairy tale of 'The Red Shoes'. In her deconstruction of the story Dr Clarissa Pinkola Estes (in Women Who Run With Wolves) talks about the symbolism of shoes.

She suggests that shoes are a way of recognising one type of person from another - that shoes tell something of who we are as a person, and who we are aspiring to me. I find this really interesting, because I am a proclamed 'non shoe-ist' ... that is I love to go barefoot. Shoes, apparently were what separated (at one level) master and slave - the master had money, position, status and shoes! Puts a whole new spin on the term 'barefoot and pregnant'. Whilst not exactly 'pregnant' for the past four years, my love affair with barefeet has reached a peak during these seminal years of mothering. Is this a symoblic?

Dr Estes goes on to say that symbolically shoes protect and defend our feet - that is our mobility and freedom. Which makes me muse, as to whether I've needed to protect my mobility or freedom, or whether all these years I've been trying to fashion my own version of mobility and freedom (walking my own walk so to speak?) ... as both these concepts/themes have been, and continue to be, very important in my life, though motherhood has brought a whole new plethora of challenges to ideas or desire concerning them.

So a new pair of shoes? A new conviction for my beliefs and the energy to act on them?

I finally got myself a pair of hiking boots yesterday. A lovely shiny black pair that I am sure will be very well used in a week's time. Until recently I always wore boots. I'm a practical woman and boots are practical footwear - I am sure that no one would argue that. Not necessarily convenient - buyt practical. My last pair of 'practical boots' fell to bits around the same time that I met my partner - I remember the slap of the left sole on the wooden boards of the verandah out the front of his office at uni. So this feels like a returning to my self.

It seems to be symbolic in a way of trying to merge the best of the 'old' (that's before child) with the 'new' (afer child) to create the me that sits in the here and the now. The woman who is a writer, a mother, a partner ... a new pair of boots to negotiate both the inner and outer terrains?

I'm sure that there are many adventures awaiting in the Tasmania - and I'm sure that it will be another turning point (just as our trip to the mountains was last August). I'm ready to begin negotiating the last steps of metamorphosis, to step into my authenticity.

Acceptance

Today's quote, pulled from my trusty Guide for the Advanced Soul earlier on today - seems to speak to me on numerous levels now .. I guess that true acceptance in one of the practices of authenticity - if you can just be in the moment and not be yearning for the past or the future, then you are being true to yourself. You are accepting, being in the moment is without demands or expectations.

I not only need to accept those around me, forsaking demands and expectations, but I need to practise the same with myself - to allow for less demands, less expectations and more opportunities to just be me - whoever I am in that moment - whether it be good, bad or indifferent.

Having experienced tonight, the true breaking down to the primal me, it was incredibly nurturing to have Dave and Dylan to just accept me as the howling (and oh yes it was primal and raw) mess I was on the kitchen floor, as the welled up rage, frustration and sorrow came spewing out - both literally and metaphorically. I knew it was coming, but I have bee fighting to hold back the flood tides of negative emotions and experiences. I dont think that I have ever cried so hard that I couldn't breathe any longer , like I did tonight on my kitchen floor as dinner popped and bubbled above me. The constriction in my chest was so tight it felt as though my airway was blocked. The anger was so desperate to leave I actually vomitted it up.

Neither Dave nor Dylan tried to fix me, nor tell me to get up and stop being silly - they just sat or stood next to me and allowed me to (finally!) let it all out. There were no offers of tissues, not consoling words - just there presence and witness of me in my terrible glory. Dylan wanted to know later, as I was resting in bed, why I was sad and what was wrong with me - Dave told him simply that I was tired ... and that was probably the whole truth of it. Not just tired physically - tired emotionally and spiritually ... and probably intellectually and psychologically as well. Dylan laid down next to me a little later and told me that he was sure I would be better tomorrow. He's not used to seeing tears from me - but at least he's seen part of the authentic me.

I've been reminded in the most awful of ways what will happen to me if I dont take the time to rest when I bleed - when I don't for one day tell the world to stop so I can get off, and allow myself some time to rest and regenerate. I need to accept it and so does my family and friends. I have learnt that its not rhetoric - its wisdom and its meant to be walked, not just talked.

So I've been to a dark dark place tonight - somewhere I dont go often, but somewhere I obviously have to go from time to time to purge, because I'm not good at allowing the anger and frustration out as it occurs. And, I'm feeling vulnerable, washed out, raw and in a way empty ... it seems there was a lot of anger and bitterness being carried around. They seem to be quite hefty in weight - but I guess anything that is carried in your heart space is.

And I've just been reminded to honour this space that I'm currently in - I rarely allow myself to feel vulnerable or raw. So with grace I shall accept my vulnerability and my rawness, because there is beauty here.

Peace of mind

comes from not wanting

to change others

but by simply accepting them

as they are,

True acceptance

is always without demands

and expectations

- Gerald G Jampolsky -

Love is Letting Fear Go

Image by Alan M Sherwood

Thursday Thirteen: Things I love [2]

In this, my year of authenticity, its timely to remind myself of the things that I do truly love ... so here is my list of 13 things that I love ... and I will endeavour at the end of the next thirteen lunar months to have done each of them, at least once a month...

I love ....

1. Writing
2. Cooking/baking
3. Taking unplanned and spontaneous adventures
4. Dancing
5. Learning
6. Taking photos
7. Sewing in all its forms
8. Yoga
9. Walking
10. Music
11. Reading
12. Theatre
13. Being creative

What are the things that you love, that because of the busyness of life, may have been forgotten or rescheduled to a date, somewhere in the ephemeral future when there will be more time, more energy, less committments ..... you get my drift?

Wishes for a New Moon: Capricorn

• I want to consciously and easily use time to my best advantage


• I want to easily find myself demonstrating my competency in fiction and non fiction writing


• I want to be filled with confidence and self discipline, successfully reaching my goal of being a published writer.


• I want total clarity in setting appropriate goals that lead to success in the area I desire.


• I want to easily find myself recognising and utilising opportunities when they arise


• I want to easily find myself filled with the right ideas leading to success in the area of writing


• I want to easily find myself seeing life in a way that bringsjoy.


• I want to easily find myself managing my time in a way that allows plenty of time for work, play and family.


• I want to easily find myself filled with optimism and faith, pursuing directions that make me feel free.

Themes for the current Capricorn new moon:

future security

handling responsibility

reaching goals

success and recognition

management skills

authority figures

releasing controlling tendencies

Jan Spiller, author of New Moon Astrology (where this information and the above wishes is derived) suggests casting or making your wishes within eight hours of the new moon, for best affect, but at any time during the 48 hours past the new moon (unless the moon goes void of course). She also suggests making more than one wish, but no more than ten. The last two points she suggests are that they wishes must always be handwritten (I have a special diary that they are written n) and that you go with your gut feeling on the wishes - I guess without the aid of the book it opens you to go with your intuition for what you want to wish for based on the above themes.

I've been doing this since May last year, and find that it helps to chart my course, by best harnessing the energy present at the beginning of each month. It's not surprising I guess that a lot of my wishes are focused on writing - seeings this is the major aspect of my life that I want to nurture and develop in the coming year. It also seems to bring together what is going on in my life at the time, and synthesizing it into a positive format with which to work with.

At the end of my little writing ritual I always go to my Goddess pack and draw two cards - the top and the bottom cards to see the energy that I have to work with to allow the wishes to materialise ... and as always there is a definite synergy between the cards at the wishes. I got a new pack of Goddess cards for Christmas, so this was their first trip out for the lunar wishes.

This month I drew on the top (which I refer to as the conscious, or what is definitely 'on top' for me in my life at the moment) Nu Kua, who is a Chinese goddess who embodies "Order". With all the reordering that has been going on - this was no surprise. Her wisdom to me:

"Now is the time to nurture yourself with order that assists rather than chockes your life force ... when life is ordered in a natural way, you nurture your path to wholeness."

The bottom card (which I refer to as the unconscious, what is rising to the surface to be understood or acknowledged or is passing and becoming incorporated into life ... and the two cards always seem to work together - often what is on the top one month, is on the bottom the next month) Gyhldeptis is a North American Goddess who embodies 'Synthesis". Her wisdom to me:

"This is the time to find the common thread that will serve your needs in the best way ... wholeness is created when all the parts are honoured and listened to."

More musings on this beautiful Goddess wisdom later. And a Happy New Moon and astrological/lunar year to everyone.

Artwork: "To Be Born" by Remedios Varo, Sagittarian Surrealist ... painting came through with my AstroRave this morning and seemed quite fitting, not to mention beautiful.

Dark Moon Cleansing

In the dying hours of the dark moon (and the astrological year), in the space that I had lovingly cleared of all 'stuff', wiped down and mopped with soapy water infused with frankinsence (transformation) and geranium ( balance) essential oils ... I got out my first smudge stick and got down to the business of clearing the energy from the space. The following is the incantation that accompanied the swirls of smoke:

Be gone embodiments of self defeat, self consciousness and self doubt.
Be gone the habits of excusemaking, of procrastination or martyrdom.
Be gone the feelings of worthliness, of inadequacy and of feeling incapable.
Be gone the energy of self stymying criticism, of perfection and creative blocks
Be gone the fears of not being good enough, of not being smart enough, of not writing well enough.

Good-bye to all the residual energy in this space and place, that was once a workstation. May it be cleansed, renewed and recreated as a space of creative pleasure and adventure.

This was my first effort of cleansing a space in this fashion - in the past we've blessed rooms, which I should probably do today now that I asked all of this stuff to leave (least it return to the space that is now vacant with pregnant potential.

It also reminded me of the fact that the spaces in our home needed to be reguarly cleansed - not just the tidy, sweep, mop, dust, decluttered etc - but the psychic or energetic clearing. So I make the committment to this new space of mine, to keep it not just clean and tidy on the physical level, but on the energetic level as well. In this way I keep to my pledge to be authentic in all aspects of my life.

Sunday Pamper Session

For the longest time I've have been hankering after a mud mask and a hair/scalp mask ... and today was the day. It played into my idea of drawing out and getting rid of unwanted stuff - such as I've been doing with my desk and the general decluttering of the house (the Christmas Tree went back into its bag and into the storage space in the garage)

With my hair doused in my favourite honey, vinegar and rosemary mask (very sticky and drippy) and then forty minutes later with a green clay mask, I looked a treat. Dylan was concerned about my head (I had it wrapped in plastic) and wanted to know if I had hurt myself - bless him! It took a lot of explaining - and I'm not sure if he got it in the end anyway. And then there was the mud mask - thankfully he doesn't cry when he sees it now that he's older.

All lovely bits of nurturing to help me remain authentic to my need to be pampered on a regular basis.

For those interested in some homemade and completely toxic free pampering ... here are my recipes ...

Honey and Vinegar Scalp and Hair Mask
I make it up in bulk and store it in an empty Body Shop plastic bottle in the fridge. This recipe is enough for one person - especially those with long hair.

2 tablespoon honey (organic if possible)
4 teaspoons of cider vinegar
a couple of drops of either rosemary of lavendar essential oil
(alternative to this is a couple of fresh sprigs of rosemary infused into the mixture)

Put honey into a bowl and heat over a saucepan of boiling water. Slowly stir in vinegar once the honey has melted. If adding fresh rosemary do it now, otherwise let it cool slightly and add the essential oil.

Liberally cover the scalp and hair with the mixture while it is warm. For total decadence heat a towel in the oven or the microwave and wrap around your head once you've got the mask on (helps stop all the drips!) If a towel isn't your scene plastic wrap can be used (though it does tend to be a little messier)

Leave on for up to an hour and the shampoo out. It makes your hair feel soft, clean and divine - and it also for great for getting rid of nasty dandruff!

Green Clay and Yoghurt Deep Cleansing Face Mask

2 tablespoons dry powdered green clay (for a less intense mask use white clay)
2-3 tablespoons organic natural yoghurt
3 drops of frankinsence essential oil (or juniper berry if you have oily skin)

Mix clay and yoghurt together and then add essential oil.

Smother your face and neck with it - and then lie back and relax for about 15 minutes. Best washed off in the shower with a warm face washer/flannel.

Beware the green clay has a tendency to really draw the crap our of your face. The first time I did this my face glowed bright red for about an hour afterwards.

Happy pampering!!

The Age of Authenticity

Authenticity: (Noun) The quality or condition of being authentic, trustworthy, or genuine

While New Years Resolutions are a good guide or map as to the direction in which you want to travel in the following year, they are often so discrete that they don't give much room to move. You're either 'doing it' or you're 'not doing it' ... in which case often before the end of January the gym membership is already gathering cobwebs in your wallet/purse, the fridge is full of chocolate again, or in a weak moment you've had a cigarette/fought with your sibling ... you get the gist.

I've always liked to set resolutions that could be built on over time, some that were achieveable in the immediate term, some in the short term, others in the long term. After all - you dont just build a house ... foundations need to be laid, a structure erected so and so forth. Small victories lead in to larger ones further down the track.

This year rather than scribe a massive list of things that I want to do, achieve, give up etc ... I've picked a theme - authenticity. It's a term that seems to be appearing more and more often in my thoughts and my personal writing. I want to be authentic to myself this year - to my character, to my family, to my idiosyncracies, to my ethics and morals, to my dreams and ambitions, to my mind and body, to my feelings and emotions ... and more importantly to my soul.

To begin walking a path of authenticity, I've realised that there is much that I need to shed from the past few years. This wont be a process that will be totally complete by Chinese New Year (7th February) but while the moon is waning* its time for me to consider what needs to be let go of ... and not just in terms of responsiblities, work committments, but in terms of ego ... what I need to relinquish or at least identify within me that no longer works.

Anger keeps bubbling up ... which reminds me that part of being authentic is acknowledging and working with my shadow self. This is a challenge as its socially sanctioned to keep these negative sides of ourselves underwraps. But I think that I am ready and willing to rise to this challenge.

If you could bless your coming year with a one word theme, what would it be?

*the waning moon phase is a time of decay, and a returning to the earth. It's a good time to dispose, shed or bid farewell to anything that is not currently working in your life. It's what helps to lay fertile ground (think of a compost!) for the coming month. It's also a great time to weed your garden, give your pets a flea treatment, etc.