Join me at jlucyjournals for today's thought and writing prompt.
Showing posts with label journaling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label journaling. Show all posts
10.07.2009
9.23.2009
Jour du Journal: Interpreting the Universe
Join me at jlucyjournals for today's thought and writing prompt.
8.27.2009
8.19.2009
8.12.2009
8.04.2009
7.29.2009
7.22.2009
7.15.2009
Jour du Journal: You WILL find something to say!
Sprint on over to jlucyjournals for today's prompt.
7.08.2009
7.01.2009
6.24.2009
6.18.2009
Resume the Stability of Tension
A couple of weeks ago I attended a seminar by my journal-writing/therapy mentor, Kathleen Adams. At the time I was at the height of my distress over my job. The idea of a whole day writing and learning more about journal techniques from 'the master' had momentarily calmed and uplifted me. Then Kay asked us to finish the following statement, "Right now in my life.."
I wrote frantically for five minutes. It poured out of me. After the writing sprint we were asked to write a sentence or two of feedback to ourselves: "As I read this I notice..." This personal feedback was what we shared with the group (if we chose). I told them that although I was calm before the write I was now a nervous wreck! I had traded a relaxed attitude for hunched shoulders and a stomach of jumping beans. Kay told me I might want to explore this in an exercise we would be doing in the afternoon.
At lunch Kay and I shared a table, and the conversation - which was intended to be about my upcoming journal workshops - became a mini therapy session. I was still shaky and Kay, being the experienced therapist that she is, asked me all the right questions. The word "loyalty" came up.
That afternoon, Kay told the group about Alpha Poems. I was already familiar with them as they were a fun portion of my workshop training. I chose to do a poem based on the word Loyalty. Here's what came out:
Limits myself, always
Open, always
Yes, never no
Attitude
Limits the way I go
Take the road to
YOU
Wanting to play some more I chose to do a poem using the entire alphabet.
Always
Bending to others
Cutting out the
Day to
Everyone but me
Favoring
Goodness
Hating
Irresponsibility
Judging myself
Knowing how
Loyalty is my
Mantra
No one is happy
Open the door
Pursue the
Quest
Resume the
Stability of
Tension
Undo the
Values
(e)Xplor
Yourself
I didn't think about what word or phrase would come next, it just happened. I didn't even know what word I was going to write until I began writing it. It is a magical thing!
Anyway, the phrase that immediately jumped out at me was the strange, "Resume the Stability of Tension." Now, I am a tense person and in my experience, that is not a good thing. I have even taken drugs for it. Hubby frequently asks me in utter frustration as he runs out of door 15 minutes before he needs to, why it has to be "so tense around here in the mornings?" I couldn't put my finger on what it meant, exactly, but I loved the sound of that phrase and had a feeling it had something important to tell me. I played with the idea in my journal, even wrote more alpha poems around it. Still not knowing how to decipher its meaning, I decided it would be my new mantra.
Then a couple of days ago, I read this in Christina Baldwin's Life's Companion:
... you need to envision a lifeline between [where you are and where you want to go]. It needs to be tense, like a tightrope, something you can walk along. The necessity for tension requires we develop a different attitude about tension: this is creative tension. Creative tension is what creates the path. When we lose tension, we wander without focus (my bolding). We have to decide over and over again to stay close to the tension, to walk the wire.I was wandering without focus. I was trying to split myself between a job that was sucking the life out of me and the longing to pursue a writing/teacher career that was "dragging me about" (again, I quote Christina Baldwin; she *is* me). I needed to Resume the Tension (Focus) to gain Stability.
I put loyalty to my boss and my job aside and I chose to put my longing back in charge. Together we will walk the high wire of creativity - up where Potential and the Higher Self lives.
6.17.2009
6.13.2009
Journal-Write Wednesdays: Coming Soon!
Thanks to a suggestion by a reader from Mothering.com I have decided to offer some journal-writing advice and prompts. I'm not going to do it here because I have already set up a specific journal-writing blog at jlucyjournals.blogspot.com. Each Wednesday I will write a little something about the journal-writing process or offer a writing prompt or sentence fragment to get you going. I have some great ones from some of the most experienced and influential in the journal-writing world, like Kathleen Adams and Christina Baldwin.
So grab your cup of coffee and come on over for a little quality time with your journal, starting this coming Wednesday, June 17.
6.02.2009
If this is the first day of the rest my life, I want to get off
Today I just want to turn on the TV and not move, not speak, not be. All day. Today I don't want to be a mom, a wife, a writer, a entrepreneur, an employee... nothing, I want to be and do nothing.
I've always prided myself on not being a soap-opera-watching mom, but today I would like nothing more than that. But I know I won't, primarily because I hate soap-operas, but also because I took a mental health day off work and I have to justify it in my own mind. I will continue to work on something; something that "needs" to be done - I will email a potential client (I have already stopped writing this post once to do that because it popped into my head and I had to take care of it now), I will put some laundry away, I will organize something, or I will pay some bills. What I really need to do is get out my journal and have a chat with myself. I need to get to the bottom of this anxiety, this imbalance, this self-doubt.
I have too many balls in the air. I am trying too hard.
Yesterday I attended a Journal Therapy workshop lead by Kay Adams, "one of the most prominent and established voices in the field of therapeutic writing." It was a great day; I learned some more valuable information I can use in my own journal-writing workshops and got a new burst of adrenaline to push me towards my goals.
But I also received a mini therapy session over lunch that has thrown my already tilting world a little further off kilter.
This morning I was grumpy, frustrated, and an emotional time-bomb. Yesterday Kay told me I was on the right track, "ready to explode" (i.e. my business) but then today here I am again, mopping up apple juice, brushing out tangles, packing lunch boxes, and avoiding the shaggy-haired woman in the mirror with the bags under her eyes.
Although "ready to explode," I am questioning everything. Is it selfish to start my own business when my children are young and still needing me? But would I be sabotaging my own dream (and sanity) by sacrificing my needs completely? Do I have a responsibility to my job to give it my all while still employed there? Shouldn't my children see me pursuing a dream and so serve as a role model to them? But what kind of role model am I when I am impatient, distracted, or in tears?
"Ready to explode" might be more accurate a description than originally intended. Yes, I just might explode, or implode depending where the pressure is strongest - from outside responsibilities or the voice inside my head telling me I must achieve, I must succeed, I must be more than "just a mom."
I have a friend whose dream of being a yoga teacher has been put it on hold. She has decided to be all she can be to her children before they start school full-time. She told me she needs to provide them a nice house and a mom who's there. She said the most yogic thing she can do right now is not to practice yoga. She doesn't want to put that kind of pressure on herself. Trying to be disciplined in the whirlwind that is a stay-at-home mother's world is not worth the stress.
I'm beginning to think she might have the right answer.
Who is the most important right now? Me or the kids? Me or the kids? Someone tell me the right answer, please.
5.17.2009
It's 3:28AM
I have returned Tator Tot to his bed 3 times and been kicked in the back one too many. The rain is tap-tapping on the carport beneath the bedroom window. I roll onto this side, and on the other. No good. Brain has kicked in. Three blog posts have visited me. I have to give in and get up.
Something beckons from the other room. My beloved laptop. And silence.
I love sleep. The soft enveloping weight of my duvet and the cool of a freshly washed pillow case... ahhhh. But in the middle of the night when I can't sleep, it is writing that pulls me from my nest. Usually on nights like this it is my journal that gets my attention and because my analytical brain is still curled up on that pillow I can write for many a page - from a deeper place.
But tonight this blog called me. I'm not sure what it is I am aiming to say but I wanted to feel the satisfying tap dance of fingers on keys. It calms me to write. Even if I am writing for me alone, watching my words steadily fill a page/screen helps me feel alive. If someone reads it and relates then even better, but not necessary.
My bed is calling me again but this short sojourn into the pre-dawn silence has been enough to fulfill my need for a moment with me. My eyes are straining with the brightness of the screen. I know it would probably have been a better choice to fill the pages of the thick-paper journal that sits by my bed. But I believe I am here babbling about nothing for a reason - to avoid going to that deeper place only my journal can take me. I went to bed sad, maybe even angry. I do not know why - but my journal does - but I am not ready to talk.
When we avoid something there is usually a reason, and for that very reason we must push past our fear. Being afraid to hear what your soul, you higher self, your intuition has to say is a clear indication that that is exactly what you need to hear.
We have all the answers. We have all the resources we will ever need to heal ourselves. They are locked inside. It is our job to find the key. For some it might be meditation, art, dance, prayer. For me it is writing.
So here I sit at 4:06AM - weary and written-out (for the moment), having solved nothing. Except I now know for sure I need to sit down and have a little chat with myself.
Later.
3.23.2009
Channeling my inner Madeleine L'Engle
On the outside I am a jean-wearing (no, NOT mommy jeans, mine are boot-cut and come nowhere near my natural waist, thank you), anxiety-ridden, not-so-much-fun mother. I don't know how to play and baskets of laundry piled in my office can send me into a frenzy. I don't have the patience to do much with my brillo-pad of hair other than stuff it away at the back of my head or put more on my face than a swish of bronzer and a dash of mascara. I do "do" jewelry - my hands feel embarrassingly naked without the oversized rings I prefer, but I frequently forget to wear the many necklaces and bracelets I angle for each birthday and Christmas.
But inside there resides a different woman. This woman wears long, floaty skirts, with boots in the winter and sandals in the summer. She has bangles up her arms and huge wooden ear-rings peeking from beneath her wild hair. She raises early to walk with her large dog and comes home to a tidy, sunny, beautiful, antique and art-filled office where in perfect serenity she writes all morning. She laughs easily and plays in earnest. In her sun room she dances with abandon to Indian and African drum music.
I have had this authentic person inside for many years, I just didn't know she had Madeleine for a muse.
Being authentic doesn't always go over so well when you've forgotten the cupcakes again for your daughter's snack day because you've been writing since 5AM. But through my journal I do hope to introduce and forge a relationship between these two selves. I truly believe if I can envision the life I want I will make it happen. My inner Madeleine peeks out sometimes when I am dancing with my children to a Bollywood video on YouTube or when, on a (rare) special night out I reach for the long skirt and complicated shell and bead necklace. This is the authentic, slightly eccentric me who Sarah Ban Breathnach urges us all to recognize and become one with in her book 'Simple Abundance.' It will take a little coaxing to get her out, she is a little shy right now, but I am working on her.
2.13.2009
WEEKEND JOURNAL WORKSHOP
FEBRUARY 28 & MARCH 1
White River Junction, Vermont... Click here for details
1.22.2009
Mama got a byline
Two days ago there was a 8x5.5, unevenly folded, two-stapled magazine in my mail box, it's light lavender cover showing a pregnant mother earth holding up the sun and moon. I don't usually subscribe to such "hippie" mailings but I was particularly excited to have this publication show up at my door. Before I had even broken the tape seal I was jumping up and down in anticipation of what was inside.
And there it was... on the very first page!
My essay, my name: my first published work.
I don't care one bit that I was not paid or that it isn't in a full-sized glossy printed somewhere bigger and more important sounding. I actually love the fact that my first published essay is in a zine, lovingly put together in a small town just over the mountain by people who know people I know (I even know one of the other authors through my former job). I don't care that the number of readers will be tiny compared to those of the big "shinys." My only care is that I am on my way - to where exactly, I don't know, but I am on the path I have envisioned for myself for over a decade. And I sincerely thank the editor of Mama Says for giving me a leg up.
In March 1997, I wrote in my journal:
When I peer into an undated future (maybe 10 years)... I see myself in my own home, married... I never think of myself working [outside the home], no I'm writing... in a sunny room with birds singing outside the window...
Well, here I am twelve years later writing at a big desk in a sunny room (well, it would be sunny if this wasn't Vermont in mid January, and granted, I am only home from work today because my children are full of the ague). And next to me pinned to my cork board is the little magazine opened to a page with the title, "God and Condoms" with my name printed right below it.
I truly believe in manifesting your dreams, especially in writing. So many things have fallen into place for me because I had visualized and wrote about them first.
I have put in writing many times before my hope of becoming a freelance writer (and I am kind of partial to those paying types of jobs, please) but I am visualizing it here and now for you all to share (bear with me, s'il vous plait). I also have a new dream brewing.
OK, it's 2014. It is actually sunny in my sunny writing room. My children are at school (because in this dream they are never sick and preventing me from working) and I have a deadline for an essay I'm submitting to Brain, Child (my 5th one for them). This evening I will be walking over to the studio I have created in our converted garage to teach a journal workshop.
There's my mini dream. My nose is pointed down a path. I don't know the twists and turns the path will take but I know I will get somewhere good in the end.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
