I M Perfect lady

Category: Art & Quilts

  • A wooden Lady

    It came to me while writing today, that I used to be a rock.  A solid unmoving sturdy chunk of ‘being okay’ no matter what Rock; that you couldn’t shake my good nature.

     

    I withstood false promises and never showed my disappointment, I relied on the unreliable to come through and never once stood up and walked away.  I lived for years and years being the rudder in lives that seemed to be adrift and in need of my steadiness, getting splashed upon and caught in the undertow, yet remained standing with them.

     

    I somehow felt so needed and secure to be their rock.

     

    A rock. That was my role.

     

    Not partner, friend, mutual exchanging, but a rock.

    Something to stand upon, sit upon reliable always being there, for them…my needs, thoughts, feelings hidden under the solid hard cover.

     

    Looking back at my rock days, being a rock star perhaps in a sick and twisted way, I see that I had no sense to move out of the way, that I didn’t have legs to move me, like a rock I waited for some one to come along and pick me up and throw me out of the relationship I was in.

     

    It literally never occurred to me to move.

     

    Six and a half years later I am good at moving, I am fluid like a stream, I show my emotions and voice my feelings, I am no longer stuck in the hailstorm of others peoples lives, I respond in kind to what comes my way, I move, I bend and turn…free.

     

    I watch now other rock ladies and witness the sickening way they try to control things that are out of their control, like an alcoholics wife the promises never take root.

     

    It is weird that the rock changes color depending upon who they are with, like a huge living breathing mood ring…they fill in the weak spot, overlook the negative and bring in the balance of what is missing.  It never crosses their minds to leave, to turn and get out.

     

    What I felt was a solid rock of good nature, was actually a solid rock victim.

     

    The difference of how you feel inside filling up the low spots in a relationship, like you are helping, adding, growing, when if fact you are helping them remain less.

     

    At first glance it seems like a good deed, that you are being so accommodating, but in actuality you are enabling them to treat you poorly.

     

    It is like you are helping them slap your face again and again, while you sit as a rock.

     

    I was proud of how much I could withstand, see it as my strength, and all it showed was how little I thought of myself.

     

    I was a rock…I was an island….isn’t that a line in a song?

     

    What continues to shock me is how backwards I had everything…sitting as a rock never moving, being so loyal…like a wooden lady.

     

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  • Wanting me to disappear.

    I found it interesting that my mother’s voice still echoes in my head, that it rings out loud and clear each and every time I veer off her well-beaten path, my fear of disappointing her screams louder than the thrill of doing what I love to do.

     

    These echoes have traveled with me a long long time, and they are laced with fear that freezes me in my tracks if I even begin to ponder doing things differently.

     

    This underlying system was created when I was very small, and the definition of self was built upon this very odd system, where my ‘goodness’ was mirrored when she was happy and my ‘badness’ when she wasn’t.

     

    It had nothing to do with what I wanted to do, but had everything to do with her.

     

    This track was laid down within me by how my mother reacted to life, and making her happy was my only goal, for her happiness meant her loving me. 

     

    It had nothing to do with the actual things I was doing, but the withdrawing of love dare I venture into a place that made her frown.

     

    I wonder if this is how all children learn about life, that we simply follow the smiles and steer away from all the frowns, that we never learn to steer by our own smiles, we learn to navigate through life by others happiness.

     

    Living in this backward system for 46 years, the last 6 have been spent learning how to live from my inner smiles and standing strong against their frowns.

     

    Learning that I am not responsible for other people’s faces, that it is not my job, has been a full time job, undoing the tracks from childhood, taking them down one piece at a time.

     

    I can see how people lose themselves while living with themselves, how they get pulled into the lives of others simply for happiness and love.

     

    What is so debilitating is that your life disappears while theirs seems to thrive.  And how is that love if you disappear?

     

    In order to be loved by my parents, I had to disappear.

     

    My needs had to disappear, my wants, my desires, my happiness, my joy, my love and my life.  I learned to disappear for love.

     

    As I walk forward learning how to love myself, her echoes come back to remind me of where else I let my self go, where I lost a part of me, where I buried myself and now where I can reclaim that piece.

     

    I didn’t know I buried her in so much responsibility. 

     

    I find now, when I feel so stuck, so angry without a choice, I am tugging on a piece of the old track, and it has nothing to do with what is going on today, but instead what I have learned a long time ago. 

     

    A voice from the past wanting me to disappear.

    1Shared Wisdom closeup 
    This quilt represents my inner wisdom and the young artist…. I am so happy that this one didn't sell!

     

  • Enter In

    Julia Cameron writes in The Artist’s Way, “I like to think of the mind as a room.  In that room, we keep all our usual ideas about life, God, what’s possible and what’s not.  The room has a door.  That door is ever so slightly ajar, and outside we can see a great deal of dazzling light.  Out there in the dazzling light are a lot of new ideas that we consider too far-out for us, and so we keep them out there. The ideas we are comfortable with are in the room with us. The other ideas are out, and we keep them out.”

     

    “In our ordinary, prerecovery life, when we would hear something weird or threatening, we’d just grab the doorknob and pull the door shut.  Fast.”

     

    “Inner work triggering outer change?  Ridiculous! (Slam the door.) God bother to help my own creative recovery? (Slam.)  Synchronicity supporting my artist with serendipitous coincidences? (Slam, slam, slam.)

     

    “Now that we are in creative recovery, there is another approach we need to try. To do this, we gently set aside our skepticism – for later us, if we need it – and when a weird idea or coincidence whizzes by, we gently nudge the door a little further open.”

     

    “Setting skepticism aside, even briefly, can make for very interesting explorations.  In creative recovery, it is not necessary that we change any of our beliefs.  It is necessary that we examine them.”

     

    “More than anything else, creative recovery is an exercise in open-mindedness.  Again, picture your mind as that room with the door slightly ajar. Nudging the door open a bit more is what makes for open-mindedness. Begin, this week, to consciously practice opening your mind.”      Julia

     

     

    Yesterday I was panicked due to my one-day weekend, and I was not open to letting the chores go and just using it as my play day as I had threatened to do.  I slammed the door on playing, staying with old habits of getting my jobs done first.

     

    I was crabby but doing the work.  Resenting that I couldn’t play.

     

    It is like being locked in a room to which you have the key, yet unable to actually use it to turn yourself free.

     

    There is an exchange I can’t see to agree with, messy house in exchange for playing!

     

    I want both.  And if I stay that course, I will continue exchanging playtime for work time, for as we all know there is always another job to be done.

     

    She is suggesting that we ‘use’ this excuse in order to keep our Artist from going to explore the wide-open world, that we have become comfortable in the cramped workspace.

     

    My grumpiness spread like a virus, or tried to, but most left me alone in my unhappiness. 

     

    My daughter took her playtime first, and later on in the fading daylight mowed the grass.  My resentment at her is that she has mastered the art of play over work time…and is doing what I can’t allow me to do. 

     

    I blame her for me being unable to exchange playing for a clean house. 

     

    As I sit with this thought, I used to get appreciation and attention for keeping my mother’s house in order…and the opposite may be true, wrath if I didn’t help.

     

    I recall many siblings not caring where I cared too much.

     

    When I thought I cared about a clean house, in fact I cared what my mother thought of me.

     

    Perhaps, this is the issue that needs to be examined. 
    ”I am better if I have a clean house, even if I am grumpy.”

     

    Who do I like better or who feels better inside?

     

    It seems my self-identity is wrapped up in what I do and how external things look. 

     

    How brave to let it all go and play…That is the challenge this week…being a child doing what she feels like, letting go of responsibilites that can wait.  The 'mother' in my head may want me to slam the door to fun, but I have to be strong enough to nudge it open and enter in.

     

  • Mine.

    As I was reading Chapter Two of The Artist’s Way book by Julia Cameron, I found similarities between finding your artist self and leaving toxic relationships.

     

    She is leading you forward suggesting ideas and things that will focus on self and in doing so you discover where you are standing and how you have been living and who has had their hands on the reigns of you.

     

    Unblocking the Artist is like opening the eyes of those in denial.

     

    Julia speaks of poisonous playmates and crazymakers and I see them as the dysfunctional family I was lost among where there was no space for my self.

     

    She makes reference between giving up toxic thinking as giving up drinking.  And those still enjoying the toxic beverages and the toxic mindset, will not be your cheerleaders and in fact will weaken your resolve.

     

    The Artist Self is the self that is untouched by other’s influences, but whose sense of being comes from within and is connected to the Universe. 

     

    She is looking at this process from the self outward, where I was looking at leaving the mess of dysfunction.

     

    I wasn’t trying to find an authentic artful self, but rather fleeing from the abusive family that I felt had stolen my self.

     

    And it had, a pattern maker or follower had replaced my own artistic creative self, I had no personal connection to the Universe, I was plugged into an extension cord. 

     

    My sense of self flowed not from the Universe; it came from my mother/father/brother/sister/friend/anyone but the Universe and me.

     

    When everything that was holding the definitions of me was shown to be very dysfunctional, I then seen my own dysfunctional self. 

     

    I saw what the extension cord was plugged into, and I unplugged them all.

     

    It was the unplugging them that freed me to be available to hear the Universe, to pay attention to my body, my feelings, my emotions, to connect me back to me.

     

    The definition of Universe is one song.

     

    I am now singing one song… mine.

     

     

     

  • Art

    The contrasts in life are incredible and their depths unimaginable, the reach between them are so they do not touch nor do they brush up against each other, two drastically different worlds, yet on the same planet living and breathing in the same time frame.

     

    I had a short Artist Date followed by a conversation reporting more abuse in the FALC’s congregation; more horror of insidious acts perpetrated against children by highly regarded church members.  Tales whose reflection echoes my parents…and a friend’s suicide explained 25 years after it happened.  Swinging from Art to Horror within minutes.

     

    The Artist within me, just moments before had feasted upon colors and fabulously soft textures, from the curly silken softness of alpaca wool to real silk spun by a worm and then dyed by Artist’s hands…my spirit was alive and alert to new things dreaming of how they can be used in an upcoming project…visions of color and me.  I then was plunged into the harsh stark reality of abuse and its long term affects, my Artist disappears and my abused self arises, listening to the details of evil.

     

    The contrast of embracing and working with my Artist self while healing from sexual abuse as well as unhinging myself from a brainwashed mind is equally on the far ends of the spectrum, yet closely related.

     

    It almost seems like my artist self was hijacked by abuse and that religion; so in order to become my most artful self, I have to fully understand from whence I came.

     

    The horror stories of childhood abuse, and how it affected the life afterwards is horrific, but equally is the ‘normal’ presentation of the perpetrators and their warm reception by the folks of the church, it seems more profound.

     

    I told my brother I had more respect for the Klu Klux Klan folks for their agenda was front and center.

     

    Whereas the hierarchy of the church sells an agenda of high morals and values, setting limits on the evils of the world and how their congregations are made to adhere to rules forbidding pretty harmless sins.

     

    Watching of Television, to watching a movie, to nail polish, hair coloring, yet while the circles of abuse grow ever widening, while more and more children are born into the centers of crime, this seems violently insane.

     

    Sexual predators sit on the board and behind the pulpit, and false evils are handed out, while behind the scenes, children face the repressed darkness, alone.

     

    The singing in the pews can never be loud enough or sweet enough to heal the children who have been raped repeatedly, whose brainwashed state leaves them helpless for alternatives, who some find release in suicide or drugs and alcohol.

     

    The face of the church that is presented to the public is like the white sheet the Klu Klux Klan hid behind…  We are all fooled that the sheet is the man/woman instead of what lies behind.

     

    What lies behind is the pile of sins, the unhealed wounds of their own childhood, the eroded brain from too much washing, the unreality of life…who needs the trappings of the church in order to hide.

     

    I have often wondered of the deep-rooted fear that many struggle with about leaving the church, and I may have figured it out.  It isn’t the fear of going to Hell that keeps them there, but the covering of the sheet.

     

    They are too afraid to stand alone outside of the pews of the church.

     

    They need the covering of religion offers.

     

    They need the pretty faces of singing voices.

     

    They need it all to cover up what lies beneath.

     

    And what lies beneath un-addressed is the monster that continues to rape children and do extremely horrific deeds.  And this sheet, they believe, has the magic to bless it all away, that they can literally hid behind its whiteness.

     

    Sadly, it is true.

     

    For no one speaks of the filth underneath, nor do they address it, and haul it into the court of the land.  There are a few lonely voices trying to speak of above the hymns they sing so loudly as to not hear the cries…

     

    I do not know what it will take before their sheets fall once and for all, when the children unite and yank them off, when this vicious insanity will stop. 

     

    I get so incensed with the idea that this is called a ‘church’.

     

    It is the devils playground where children’s lives are sacrificed, where pedophiles reign supreme, and the brainwashed walk their narrow path, unquestioning, unchallenging, and unseeing to their final destination Heaven, to afraid of Hell to stop.  Yet no one tells them they are in Hell.

     

    The swing from Art to the harsh reality of sexual abuse hidden behind the white church…shows the distance I traveled, the valley of death that I traversed to be able to stand and ponder, Art.

     

     

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    Art is the complete opposite of that Hell.
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    The soul recognizes its worth in the wonder of Art.

     

  • Same Piece.

    Last night I viewed lots of different Art, and it seemed each Artist had a message or feeling of energy that came through the piece.

     

    The art piece said more about the artist than the art.

     

    It is like the art is an inner imprint of how the artist feels; a coded message from within.

     

    Some artists are so exact in realistic portrayals; their perfection is displayed as judgment or even a God like imitation, their gift is replicating, being able to mirror the landscapes.

     

    There was Art that made you stop and think, wondering about the message or dichotomy it presented…a confused thinker sorting out his thoughts, making you pause and wonder.

     

    Perhaps our attraction to Art equals the way we are attracted to certain people, and repelled away from others.

     

    Somehow I separated the Artist from the Art not really believing that the Art told the truth about the Artist’s life.  I believed you could paint a pretty picture while having a tortured soul.

     

    Yet you can tell a lot about a person in their Art, which is why I feel many are unable to do art, for they fear displaying their self.

     

    The same goes for writing 3 pages a day, the deeper unconscious fear keeps them safe behind the excuses of no time, nothing to write, I know me, done the work, am okay with who I am.

     

    It’s the voices of fear to be seen in public without the layers and layers of coverings… like a painting draped with cloth so the picture lies hidden underneath.

     

    To drop the cloth and stand exposed seems it would be fearful and it is actually the opposite, with nothing to hide, you have nothing to hide, and you are free to be.

     

    Perhaps the fear lies in not matching another painting nearby or being as colorful or as dramatic or as calm and serene. 

     

    Yet imagine a gallery  with walls and walls all displaying the exact same piece.

     

     

  • The Artist Way.

    December 1, 2004, I began writing Morning Pages, a tool in the book, “The Artist Way,” A Course in Discovering and Recovering your Creative Self, by Julia Cameron.

    Here Julia explains the Morning Pages.

    “There is no wrong way to do Morning Pages. These daily meanderings are not meant to be Art. Or even writing. I stress that point to reassure the nonwriters working with this book. Writing is simply one of the tools. Pages are meant to be, simply, the act of moving the hand across the page and writing whatever comes to mind. Nothing is too petty, too silly, too stupid, or too weird to be included.”

    “The Morning Pages are not supposed to sound smart – although sometimes they might. Most times they won’t and nobody will ever know except you. Nobody is allowed to read your morning pages except you. And you shouldn’t even read them yourself for the first eight weeks or so. Just write three pages, and stick them into an envelope. Or write three pages in a spiral notebook and don’t leaf back through. Just write three pages and three more the next day.”

    “Although occasionally colorful, the morning pages are often negative, frequently fragmented, often self-pitying, repetitive, stilted or babyish, angry or bland – even silly sounding. Good!”

    “All that angry, whiny, petty stuff that you write down stands between you and your creativity. Worrying about the job, the laundry, the funny knock in the car, the weird look in your lover’s eye – this stuff eddies through your consciousness and muddies our days. Get it on the page.”
    Julia Cameron

    Six and a half years later I read my first Morning Pages, and she is absolutely correct, they are rambling, fragmented, petty and all over the board, but I recall enjoying them.

    Sitting down with a notepad, a bunch of well sharpened pencils and writing three pages worth. Let me tell you, you do have to scratch and sift to find three pages worth.

    It is amazing what pours out of you once you begin, “Good Morning Pages….”

    I had a problem calling them pages I kept calling them papers. Nonetheless, I wrote. I wrote mindless chitchat for three days, and then it was discovered that my father was a pedophile on Dec 4th and there shows a break of about a week and a half and then I picked up a pencil and wrote again.

    The Morning Pages became journals and the journals changed into a blog, but the writing continued, the exploration and discovery and recovery deepened…

    This tool literally saved me as I walked into deep waters of life, however, I feel I want to go back and pick up where I left off, doing The Artist Way. Reading the book and doing the Twelve Week Exercises.

    As I begin again, I have invited a bunch of Lady Friends to join me…and I am excited I do have a few takers! Anyone can join…there is room for everyone!

    I am excited to begin again, as I was back then, for I felt I was idling along in life on pause or repeat perhaps and was feeling like I needed to open myself up wider…to grow or stretch, to expand my life to include more artist like things, classes or outings etc…and I feel that again.

    I am once again stepping it up a level or kicking it up a notch, expanding my horizons, using this one life and experiencing more that it has to offer, adding to me some new and different things.

    I will go back to handwriting the three pages each morning. I can’t wait to see what happens. I have missed the sharpened pencils and the exercise of writing without a thought…and even more excited to have Lady Friends who will join me on The Artist Way.

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  • Willing to Hear.

    Two years ago on Easter Sunday I began this blog. At the time, I felt that I would have something to say to help other women who found themselves lost in their own lives, and instead I have found it was all for me.

    The amount of clarity that I have gotten from asking questions with an open mind, willing to explore and delve into thoughts and beliefs is beyond what I could have imagined.

    The blog seems like a very trusting confidant and yet the key in keeping it real is that it is wide open for all to read.

    Writing to me has become another Art form and something that I believe will now be part of who I am…an Author who helps me be me.

    The truth arises when you are willing to not know the answers…but willing to hear.

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  • Surprises Me!

    “What is so interesting is that your quilt Lady has no body and your blog is all about the body…” is an insight a woman shared with me about my Art. “I don’t think you even see what you do…”

    I was so shocked and surprised at the way this woman was able to see and understand so clearly my Lady…and I was shocked she put the two together and seen the opposite.

    My lady quilts are all about feelings but there isn’t a body or even a face to be seen on the quilts. In fact it is a challenge to create them minus actually having a body, you make the clothes move like a ghost is wearing them.

    And the blog is totally different; it is all about the body, the mind and the soul…all things missing in the quilts.

    On my way home, I was thinking about the Lady not having a body and it struck me deep within, it is how I lived for so long, just clothes. That within me lay a ghost of me, but not one that was able to express herself.

    How curious or not, that my Ladies still have no body…yet are filled with expression or feelings…free enthusiasm a woman owning her life.

    I love that my blog is the missing body from the quilts and that each stand strong alone, but become greater together, like the blog is the background story or the Lady the pictures in a book.

    How interesting to be the author and the artist and learn about your work from another.

    I love that my work surprises me!

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    I can see how this quilt is the emerging awareness!

  • A field with no rules.

    Rewrite, Rewrite, Rewrite were the last words spoken in our final writing class for the year, they echoed and bounced around in my head, unsure if this was encouragement or a reprimand.

    We had just sat though an hour and a half of listening to the words the students had written. Words of emotion, of defeat, of growing up, of unique perspectives, of finding their way, and to me there was no need to rewrite a thing.

    They had given me pieces of their lives told with feelings and said out loud in fear or with great bravado, with pride and with youthful expression, to me it seemed they were perfectly perfect fitting into their life experience.

    Where they were in life fit perfectly in how they wrote. I am not sure rewriting is the answer, it seems that if you say, rewrite you are rejecting what they wrote.

    Rewrite, redo, and reword it…

    The juxtaposition between the enthusiastic teacher, her encouraging voice, and her caring eyes, and the words, Rewrite struck me with contradiction…like a smile with a slap.

    I then wondered how often I had done this, ‘rejecting the project’ while trying to teach technique.

    I began an Art Quilt group, and my intentions were to be with ladies who enjoy creating quilts without patterns, to let go of the ‘rules’ of quilting and just play with the fabrics and even mix metaphors and jumble up what those who came before us defined as perfect quilting.

    Rebels, daring to not follow the well-trodden path.

    When I began quilting, my Aunt told me that I could do anything I wanted, that I didn’t have to follow or adhere to any quilt rule or pattern, that quilting was making a sandwich, putting fabric batting fabric, and I was the creator.

    She taught me without teaching me rules.

    I wonder if you can do the same with writing, if you could just use the same writing instruments; words, paper, pencil and then allow writing to come what may.

    Let the writer go free, allow the writer to follow what feels right for him, to not make him bend and twist into a forgone conclusion of what writing needs to be.

    Whether it be writing, quilting or living life, we seem to neglect the person for the skill, toss out the personality, the Spirit, the essence in trying so hard to get to perfect.

    Maybe it isn’t the writing or the quilt or life but it’s getting to Perfect.

    Is there a way to teach without spoiling it with perfect?

    I guess what we all fear in life is not being able to measure up to perfect.

    I say, once again, kill perfect, declare it a swear word…

    Imperfect has to replace it; it will free so many from the fear of failing. Whether you are writing or creating art, if you let go of perfect you will set free in wide-open fields with unlimited possibilities.

    Lets all play in the field of pure potential as the wise masters say…a field with no rules.