Time for a change

Today on the way back from a speaking engagement at Ipswich I saw on a billboard:

"as one door closes, another opens"

Today Pluto tip toes into Capricorn, where it will spend the next 12 or so years, and the door closes on my dance with Pluto over the past 12 years, including an intense period of having a Pluto transit of my sun. It truly is the beginning of a new era, after a false start earlier on this year.

For months, well if I was being totally honest, since I began blogging and writing seriously, I have resisted the idea of carving my blog up into subject specific blogs I. To me it was buying too much into the idea that you have to market yourself aspect of yourself in a certain way to get an audience. The Ezine site and supporting newsletters goes as far to suggest that you alter your name to put to different articles on different subject matters. Goddess forbid that one person actually know quite a lot about a number of subjects – to be a well rounded, educated and informed individual. Marketing – bah!

I’ve clung to the idea that, what you see is what you get with me and here. It reflects the fact that I am many different people and pursue a number of different roles in life – I am a mother, a writer and a lover of books, I am an observer of life, a tippler in the weird, the wonderful and the fascinating, I’m a feminist who’s spiritual beliefs are firmly rooted in Goddess lore and the wisdom of The Artist’s Way - oh and a sucker for a blog meme. I write articles on menstruation, birth, sex, health/illness, mothering and probably half a dozen other subjects that don’t readily jump to mind right now..

But today - I guess I’ve finally given in to having to segment up this original blog - to fracture myself into separate blogs? Or am I giving each facet of my personality a chance to catch the line and shine? To allow like minded people to find me, to resonate with me work? Perhaps that's what drew me to the painting - first one to jump out at me when I typed in "change painting" into Google Images. Maybe it's telling me its ok to expose individual parts of me?

Sigh! Only the Universe knows.


As a consequence I'll begin stripping the personal content from this website and shifting some of it over onto the next website. Perhaps the rest just needs to be archived out of view? Anything that has shifted, I will provide links to.

Well I shall give it a go. After all that’s all really one can do. And since, for me, this is the path less trod … it’s probably time to go exploring here a little.

Where to go from here:

You can now find my personal musings at Shine A Little Light, which will also include my photography.


This blog here will remain my writing blog, for fiction, non fiction and other articles related to writing.


I also have Blue Melissae which is my (winning) NaNo 08 project which will have more chapter posted up over time.


And the Reclaim Sex After Birth website and associated blog.

Painting: Unknown Artist - but found at this wonderful Urban Butterfly blog

Change

Change

is never a loss -

It is change only

-Vernon Howard -

The Mysic Path to Cosmic Power

I'm currently in a state of transition between the old and the new. As I wrote here between The New Year and the Chinese New Year I am taking stock, reviewing, assessing, clearing, finishing and letting go.

In this image from Remedios Varo the woman is leaving her psychoanalyst and dumping baggage into a well as she moves on. For me its difficult at the moment to actually dump the baggage, because I am still working on my final edition of Down to Birth. In essence I'm still carting the baggage.

While I am still caught in the HMA machine its easy for me to become bitter and angry - because I desperately want to move out and move on, but my personal integrity (thanks Annie for pointing this out to me this afternoon) wont allow me to just dump my stuff down the well and move on - however much I truly desire to do so. I need to finish this last edition, I need to honour the work and effort that others have put in, and I need to end this chapter of my life without regret or the haunting of my conscience. I want to leave being remember for all the right reasons. This is the legacy I deserve to bequeath myself.

But the problem is I keep getting caught - like a persnicketty crumb in the back of the throat. I try and cough to move it, I take a long slow drink, I stick my tongue down the back in some weird and completely wong movement ... but it remains stuck. I think of all the things that are difficult at the moment in relation to finishing the magazine, but without the energy nor the passion, I keep get stuck. Rather than resolving to find a new and creative solution to a problem layout, an article that requires rewriting, photos that need to be resent or artists that dont return my emails, I just turn the computer off, walk away and pretend that it doesn't exist. Sigh ... I need to swallow my pride and accept the challenge head on ... reminding myself all the time that I can do this ... that the time for dropping the bundle down the well is nigh.

The other aspect that I continue to struggle with is to not demonise what (which also includes who) I am moving from. I need to remind myself that I made the choices to do what I did in the past three and a bit years, I choose to be the martyr and it was not anyone else's doing. While there are things about the last three years that are difficult to accept (there is that word again) there have been many wonderful and positive aspects to everything I have done in the past three years. While I may have been a shadow artist during my time as Editor and Layout Designer for Down to Birth - it helped me to keep in touch with the artist within me, until it was strong and confident to emerge from the shadows.

It seems that while I'm transiting its easier to see things with a negative pall cast on it. Perhaps its a survival mechanism that I have created to help me move on from things. I wrote the other day that I am not a bridge burner but I think I lied - while I dont tend to burn bridges with people, I tend to burn bridges in other domains - even if its only within my head. It's something to be mindful of and to give myself permission for these thoughts and feelings to pass through me, rather morphing them into a cord in which to bind myself with. So my challenge is to just accept this change that is occuring both within and around me, to understand and honour the truth as it is, was and will be, and finally, to allow myself to move forward with grace and conviction - the grace bit being the hardest of course!

What have you recently changed in your life? What presented the greatest challenge for you in accepting and being a positive part of this change?