I am participating in Seth Apter’s Buried Treasure Post: The premise is simple. On Wednesday, June 12th all participating bloggers will re-post one (or more) of their favorite posts that ever appeared on their blog.

I believe in synchronicity, which is why I chose these two post from just overt 5 years ago. I seem to be mirroring the same thoughts and feelings about my art now that were exactly in my heart then, when my blog was called My Art Heart. Perhaps that is a sign to again turn to and listen to my art heart. I’ve been blogging since December 2005, which seems like a lifetime ago.

MORE ART ALREADY! May 28, 2008

The general consensus has been that you all want to see more art. I agree, I want to see more too. I want to see it pouring out of my hands, paint and fabric flying, colors lighting up the sky, work that makes my own heart swoon. But alas, it’s the art of mothering, or actually grandmothering that I’m wrapped up in right now. But I am counting down the days…just 4 more weeks! One thing I am able to do in short spurts or while entertaining Riley at my side (she LOVES attention, like any almost 4 month old does), is clean, sort, file, organize and when she sleeps, read.

One of the things I came upon this week was a file of color copies of the pages I created in everyone else’s Alphabetica journals. Do you have the book? It is a true visual feast but it contains only a small fraction of the over 200 works of art created by the 14 participating artists. This is the page I did for Karen Michel’s book. Simple, classy lines, texture, color, image. It was one of my favorites. It was done for my first collaboration. I was petrified! It was with the True Colors artists, would I measure up? And look at it, I love that page!

Diving even deeper into the stacks, the layers and layers of papers, folders, notebooks, flotsam & jetsam, that piled up so quickly while I was off gallivanting all over the country spreading the word, the art word that is, was another rare collection of images. I found a fat folder of copies of my first Fragments. What struck me were their freshness, the looseness of them. They looked so very joyful – the creation of someone who had finally found a source of expression.

I am reading Thomas Moore’s wonderful new book, A Life at Work. I get shivers every time two things coincide in my life, a divine intervention, a colliding of seemingly unrelated activities that combine to bring that sweet taste of wisdom. “A calling is the sense that you are on this earth for a reason, that you have a destiny, no matter how great or small…A calling is the sensation or intuition that life wants something from you.”

Here is what I had read the night before, “Up until now, I felt I was waiting harder. I have always had this feeling that there was something I was supposed to be doing, something significant, my creative purpose. I read, took classes, I thought deep thoughts. And it was hard waiting, because I wanted to know. But life reveals itself on its own schedule. It wasn’t my time yet. But now all my preparation has paid off. My impatient waiting time is over. My creativity is spilling over. The time is now.”

The first quote was by Thomas Moore, the second, my own words. What only a handful of people know (if they even remember), is that when I originally started making Fragments, each one came with a short narrative, a verbal Fragment. I really wanted people to read the words more than see the art, but I figured no one would be interested in my words unless I first caught their attention some other way, with pretty colors, textures and images.

Those were the words on the back of the large green Fragment you see here. The quote on the Fragment reads “It’s just that it’s not quite time to write them…What shall I do while I’m waiting?…Wait harder, it said.” written by James Hillman, author of  The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling . The Fragment and quote are circa 1999. Now, almost 10 years later, after finding and living my calling, I am back examining my calling. But according to Thomas Moore, that is exactly what I should be doing, and that’s great news.

Back in 1999 I never dreamed that my words would be as popular as my art. This whole blog phenomenon has enabled women to share their voices, their words. It has connected us as never before. And we are listening. But just as I suspected back in 1999, people want to see the artwork too.

The story continues in this post from May 29, 2008

In a continuing effort to bring you more art, here again is another 1999 Fragment. On the back I have written: OK, I’ve been working (playing) at writing down these thoughts about each Fragment and I’ve just had a really moving revelation. I still can’t put it into words yet, but something important is happening during this process. Strangely enough, this physical feeling occurred inside right before I laid eyes on this piece and when I saw it, it really expressed visually what I was feeling at that moment. I may need to keep this one. It may have more to say.

Now, almost 10 years later, I know what that feeling was. I know what this Fragment was trying to tell me. I had found my voice. I had found what I had been searching for for over 40 years and it was staring me in the face. I had created what was in my soul.

Now, after 10 years, this voice wearies, has grown hoarse and weak. I still love what it says but I am ready for more. I know that it will not take another 40 years for my voice to emerge again, but it does take time. I think I am doing exactly what needs to be done ~ even the cleaning. The process of finding and going through and sorting the accumulations of the past 10 years, the notes, ideas, journals, art and materials that have accompanied me on my journey is for sure a step on the way to my next revelation. These revelations don’t come to you if you just sit and wait for them. As I have known all along, you must keep moving, taking the next step, even though you do not know why or where it leads.

I am making some major changes in my life. Actually the changes are exactly what I wrote down as goals to achieve, changes that I wanted to occur. But the changes will occur in a completely different manor than I thought. Rule #1, be very, very specific in saying/visualizing what you want.

What I find amazing is how much the 1999 Fragments echo the journey I am on now. Looking them over is like reading a guidebook, a trusted guidebook. “Will you choose Door #1, Door #2 or Door #3? It’s a scary decision. Choosing the wrong door could limit your future options, take you down a path you don’t really want to go. But what if you could open every door? Unlimited options, unending possibilities. Unless you really are a game show contestant, there is no one stopping you from opening every door you come to. And you have every right to explore what you find behind each and every door.

Do you? Do you open every door? Leave a comment and let me know. Have you stopped opening doors, looking for new experiences? I have always opened every door. Most of the time I can look right inside and tell I don’t need to go there. But I have to open them all to know. I’ve always been open to new experiences, new ideas. I love coming across new doors to open. I will always seek them out.

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Hello #23. You are the winner of Gina Armfield’s No Excuses Approach to Mixed Media Collage DVD.

What? You don’t know who you are?

So, sorry. I shall call you by name -

Congratulations, MARVA of Purple Paint’s Muse.

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My dear friend, Gina Rossi Armfield, has a wonderful, helpful book coming out tin December. I must admit I am biased. I am one of the contributors to the book. Funny thing, because before I started following Gina’s approach, I was full of excuses for not journaling.

No time.

Not good enough.

Couldn’t find the “right” journal.

I thought I had to journal every day.

I thought it had to be involved and complex.

No place to set up a work space.

Excuses – all of them. With no basis in fact. Gina converted me. She took the pressure off and made it something I now look forward to. Gina is an excellent teacher and so calm. (She’s teaching a No Excuses Journaling class in Portland at Art & Soul this fall, too.) No need to take my word for it though, you can get to know Gina through this interview:

The book is available now for pre-order on Amazon, but guess what….the DVDs that accompany and supplement the book are available right now!

This is the last stop on the blog hop with a GIVEAWAY of one of Gina’s new DVDs.

Click the image to watch a preview of the GIVEAWAY video,  No Excuses Approach to Mixed Media Collage

How would you like to own Gina’s DVD? Just leave a comment here on the blog by midnight (EST) Friday, June 7th telling me what your excuse is (or was) for not keeping a journal. I’ll pick a number from Random.org on Saturday and announce the winner here on my blog.

Check out these amazing artists who are also participating in the Blog Hop:

Jessica Herman Goodson

Dion Dior

Serena Barton

Chris Kalina

Kelly Kilmer

Pam Garrison

Tracie Huskamp

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The Grandmother Power Blogging Campaign is a collaborative effort of hundreds of bloggers writing about Grandmother Power from May 7th to 14th, 2013

When I read Tara Mohr’s April 24th blog post about seeing older women at her Sunday morning dance class, I was a bit insulted. Tara wrote, “One of the most remarkable things about this particular gathering is that there are a lot of older women there – women in their sixties, seventies, even a few in their eighties.” Really? She thought it was remarkable that older women would be in her class. Where do you think we are, Tara, home in our rocking chairs? Knowing Tara through her blog, I didn’t really think she meant it in a derogatory way, but to me, an “older” woman of sixty and a grandmother seven times over, I still felt a little sad. Did she really see us as “the others”?

I continued reading to see where this was going.

“I realized, dancing with them, how deprived I was of seeing older women’s faces. After all, in the many images I enounter everday on TV, billboards, magazines, web ads, pinterest pics, you rarely see a real older woman’s face. Wrinkled, radiant, and healing to behold. Beautiful in the way we forgot was beauty.”

Tara, where do you live? We are everywhere. We are the baby boomer generation after all. I had always heard that older women become invisible. Maybe we really are. But as I said, I know Tara. I know she didn’t intend to sound this way. She was celebrating us, promoting us. “Moving with them, looking into their eyes, beholding them was profoundly healing for me.”

I write my  Grandmother Power post today in support of Tara’s initiative to get women talking about Grandmother Power. I’ve  spent the last two weeks thinking about what I wanted to say. It came to me last night -

you are not yet us, but we are still you.

I want to talk to all the younger women who see us as “old.” What you are actually seeing is an old or more appropriately, older, body. Inside every older body is a woman just like you. Our bodies may age, but we don’t age.

I walk around town, teach at major art/craft events, speak on stages around the world. Unless I catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror, in my mind’s eye, I am still the teenager that married my high-school sweetheart, the young mother giving birth to six children, the 40-something who finally found her voice and found the time to get it out into the world.

My hair turned white when I was in my 40s. At the time I thought it was cool. I still do. I know I still turn heads. My hair may be white and I may have seven granddaughters, but my mind, my spirit is still around 30-something.

I have four daughters ages 18-34 and (almost) two daughters-in law. Some of my best friends are in their 30s and 40s. They do not see me as old because they know my spirit is young. But I know that is not always the case.

Last month I taught a class at Art & Soul, a national art retreat. There was a 42 year old woman in my class. At the end of class she said that all of her friends had teased her for signing up for my class because it was going to be “a bunch of old women sitting around talking about their stories.” She couldn’t wait to tell them how wrong they were. She got exactly what she needed and wanted from the class and learned that we all share the same worries, fears, dream and passion. Age is NOT a factor.

I know many younger women see older women as “less than” or no longer vital.  Yet we are actually just like you. We are you. We have lived out our 20s, our 30s, our 40s and 50s. We did not pass through them,  they are a part of us.  These years of life experience made us who we are today. We are still you, but you, not having lived all these years, are not yet us.

And therein lies our power. It is this maturity and wisdom that is the source of our grandmother power.  We are still you, but you, not having lived all these years, are not yet us. Older women are no longer trying to be. We just are (and a lot happier because of it). The gift of age, the power, and the magic even, lies in this earned wisdom. It is this wisdom that leads us to do for others. We not only have the time and energy, but we have the passion and dedication to making this world a better place. Grandmother power can be as intimate as one grandmother encouraging her  granddaughter who, “can’t stop arting,” to a tribe of grandmothers  like these women creating large scale initiatives and change around the world.

Writing this, I was unsure if I was getting my point across. I ran it by my 24 year old daughter and got a nod of approval. If you are not yet an older woman and still don’t quite understand what I am trying to say let me sum it up with this request. Get to know an older woman, a grandmother. Don’t think of us as other. Get to know her so well  that  you see that she is you.  Age is just a state of mind. Our bodies may show signs of age, but inside every one of us lies an ageless soul. Gertrude Stein said it best, “We are always the same age inside.”

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Be Here Now: a quilt I made around 2000

Bob Schieffer, host of Face the Nation, the show I don’t watch that follows the one I do,  Sunday Morning, called this the ‘week from hell and back’ for out nation. “Yes,” I thought, “another reminder that the universe is so much bigger, so much more complex, than my own little world here on the farm. The week before I was thinking I was in hell, my own private little hell. It seemed overwhelming at the time.

I realize now that I was in a self-imposed bubble, closing my eyes, my ears and my soul to the world beyond. All it takes is something to put life in perspective to pop that self-centered bubble. Maybe it wasn’t a bubble at all, but an insulating, protective layer I created to shield myself from the stress and repeated setbacks of the week. Yes, I think that’s what happened.

The problem is that creating that layer adds weight. It constricts your heart and soul. You think you’re protecting but you are actually closing down. I don’t want that. I want to be open. Being present in the moment is being open. The secret is to let the bad moments wash over you. – to let them go. Holding on to them is what creates the stress and unhappiness. Hold on to enough of them and you’re squashed by the weight.

This morning, while I was watch/listening to Sunday Morning, I was showering, dressing, curling my hair. I caught myself thinking, “I have to hurry, to get on with the important stuff of the day..(and then quickly)…Ha, I’m not in present time am I?” This stuff IS my day, and this IS just as important to me or I wouldn’t be doing it. I must learn not to dismiss the caretaking of my body, the simple daily tasks and routines that I (we all) go through. These mundane doings ARE our lives.

If I have learned anything this month, it is that the important gets done, not necessarily on my planned schedule, but in it’s own good time. I have learned that the everyday  stuff is as important as the big stuff. What seems to be trivial is what keeps the machine of me going. The daily routine of family that often goes unnoticed is, in reality, what I live for. What else could possibly be important if they are not here to turn to in good times and in bad? Knowing they are there, they are safe, healthy and happy is the most important stuff of my day.

The beauty is that knowing this allows me to turn my attention to the other things that fuel me: my art, my writing, my teaching and coaching. I now realize that without the presence of first important stuff, I cannot create the other things that are also important to me.

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Some of you may have been following my progress to be in the present moment for the last few weeks.

Knowing that it takes at least a month to create a new habit, I wanted to hold myself accountable by blogging about my efforts.Things went really well for 24 days and then the Universe/God decided to test my commitment.

It wasn’t any one thing that derailed me. Even now when I list them they seem trivial. It was the constant barrage of tests that kept thwarting my plans.

I tried. Oh I tried mightily to keep it together. I can easliy handle a roadblock or two But they came fast and furious this past week. (Has it really only been a week?)

• IRS tax audit
• The request to return next month with paper receipts for 2 years for all business expenses for both  businesses (bank statements won’t suffice)
• not being able to find the power cord for my old printer in order to print out said receipts from my old computer
• my daughter moving back home
• cleaning out my art storage room to make a room for her
• cleaning my studio of all the stuff we moved from that room
• babysitting two wonderful granddaughters for two days while their parents finished the move to NJ – a great experience but bad timing with so much to do
• getting ever more behind on submitting my TAP class to CraftArtEdu
• running into repeated issues around sending out a reminder for Compose+Yourself – 3 hrs to send a simple reminder email
• deciding to call it a day early to ease my stress and flipped on the TV to the tragedy in Boston
• what am I forgetting?

Then and there I decided to be happy. To let life’s events wash over me. Not just be present, but be happy. Let each moment, no matter how difficult, dissolve into the next rather than hold on to it. I choose happiness.

“Stress only happens when you resist life’s events. If you’re neither pushing life away, nor pulling it toward you, then you are not creating any resistance. You are simply present.”

It’s working. Do you want to know how I know?

I’m writing this newsletter right now using my computer and the internet. Just like when I sat down yesterday and it didn’t work, I sat down this morning and IT DID WORK. No explanation. I did nothing. It just works. I am in awe of the power of intention and divine intervention.

If that’s not a sign and acknowledgement that I survived the tests, I don’t know what is. 

PS. Quote on above Fragment “sketch” reads:

We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey. Stephen Covey (after Pierre Teilhard de Chardin)

Thanks for listening. xox

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Very hard time of it today. Too focused on the past and future:

“Did I do anything wrong on my 2009 and 2011 taxes?” (I hope I have all the proof & receipts they ask for.)

“How will the audit go tomorrow?” (Why pick on the self-employed little people?)

“How am I going to get everything done in time this month?” (Overwhelmed…sigh)

Slogging through the day. (Is slogging even a word?)

Today I have discovered there are two ways of being in present time:

1. Confused about what to do, stops and starts, going around in circles, questioning, over-thinking or being too flustered to think straight. (That was my morning)

2. Taking action, one step at a time; moving forward; completing one cycle and then starting another. (That was my afternoon)

One is calm, one is random. While both appear to be happening in present time, my guess is that it’s the being fully PRESENT part that is missing. (This is now.)

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Constant Discovery

I was led to this beautiful term by a sequence of web-based occurrences today that began with a Facebook notification of an old friend’s birthday. FB → a website → Amazon → another book → another website → this quote:

This unknowable life is a mirror that allows us to discover
the truth — not by beliefs, or concepts, or dogma,
but by constant discovery.
Jon Bernie

You cannot discover unless you are in the present moment.

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Today the present moment dragged on and on and on…

I’ve been in Kansas City since Wednesday. I woke this morning at 3:45 AM to get to the airport for my 6 AM flight. I never take early morning flights, but this time it seemed like a good idea. The 6 AM flight got me home at 9:30 AM which gifted me with a whole day.

It didn’t turn out quite like I planned. To sum it up, there were 3 trips through security, 2 trips back to the main ticketing counter, 2 planes boarded, 2 mechanical failures, no bathrooms near the gate (downstairs), no decent food gateside, a 4 hour delay and a total of 5 hours in the KC airport.

By the time I got home, all I could do was take a bath, don my PJs and crawl into bed – 12.5 hours, bed to bed. I’m watch bad TV now just to stay awake so I don’t fall asleep too soon and wake at 4 AM again tomorrow.

I was calm and in the present moment the whole time. And I wasn’t even conscious of trying to be. No angst or worry. Everyone on the flight stayed cool calm and collected even though most of us had gotten up at the same pre, pre-dawn hour.  The airline staff was very helpful and understanding . The flight crew brought us drinks and snacks while we waited at the gate for the back-up plane to come from the hanger.

The bonus was meeting a wonderful art-minded woman. We had SO much in common, right down to our penchant for diet coke with lots of ice in lieu of morning coffee. If you’re reading this, Cynthia, thanks for helping me stay in present time with a smile and plenty of laughter.

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