Saunter

Sassy

The Universe sent out (as always) an interesting note for the day this past week:  Expect miracles, Tammy. Don’t attach to unimportant details. Don’t insist “how” your dreams will come true. Prepare to be amazed. Feel the joy when you daydream. Take baby steps in the dark. Every single day physically do something about your dreams. And most important, saunter.”

I posted it on my FaceBook because “saunter” seemed like a good thing to do – my definition:  stroll with attitude.   Which sounded like a good practice since between Mercury going retrograde and the Full Moon I was anything but sauntering around.  More stamping and stomping than sauntering. 

Sashay

 dreams will come true. Prepare to be amazed. Feel the joy when you daydream. Take baby steps in the dark. Every single day physically do something about your dreams. And most important, saunter.” 

It spiked a discussion in which FB friend Sue noted that she likes sashay better, and of course it sounded even better to me than saunter because my Momma used to say:  “You sashay yourself right over here, Yung’un” when I was maybe going a bit out of my boundaries (not necessarily good as a yung’un but waaaay good at my age).

I think words sort of take on their own meanings with use.  Often those meanings are couched in the story where the word finds itself.  For instance:  I love you can mean:  I want to have sex with you; I want to spend my life with you; you make me feel at my best; I want you to just change this little thing about yourself; I want you to wait on me because I’m needy; I want you to think and feel for me because I can’t, etc.

When I think of “sashay” my story includes a taste of spice, a hint of saucy and a good portion sassy.  Saunter has a story, yes, and it can be a very self-possessed one.  But sashay is a whole ‘nother thing.  It’s quicker, lighter on its feet and absolutely full of itself.

I looked up sashay.  Turns out it refers to chasse, a dance step, which is any 3-part step that is: step, together, step.  Which brought sashay into a whole new light for me.

Step:  movement; together: rest, reflect on that movement; step:  next movement.

It can be forward, backwards, sideways or circular.

As Fabeku would say:   a true case of awesomeness! (or something else that sounds much more boisterously joyful but you get the idea).  Along with a bit of the exotic in the sound  and a whole lotta  “You Go Woman!” in the execution.

I think I must now sashay though life.  I don’t have to move forward (big, bigger, biggest, BIGGER, BIGGEREST as urged by way more than one internet guru these days), I can move sideways or even backwards for a while (wait!  I have to go back and see what just happened…rebuild a bit…rethink a bit), reflect, and then decide on where I want to go next. 

 Everyone take note: that reflection thing?  It’s a PAUSE. 

It’s a rest.  It’s chocolate by the pool for the day; it’s your toes in the ocean for a morning; it’s a good book and a nap in the afternoon; it’s popcorn and a favorite movie in the evening or even tv.  Without guilt or shame.

As I have worked with and without a coach over the past year, I have gotten very clear that I don’t want to make a million dollars.  I have nothing against those who do.  Yay! for them.  May they follow their heart.  My heart doesn’t want that.   And for a bit, my coach telling me I could do what I want AND make a million while I was at it, set me to feeling guilty to not “measuring up” to her standard.  Not mine, hers.  Bad, bad. (to be clear, that “bad, bad” is my not taking responsibility for myself and my own wants. )

( But it did teach me to be very clear in my own coaching practice –  that what I am doing with my clients is walking beside them – not in front leading, and not behind pushing - beside them, helping them clarify and reach their own goals, not my goals for them.  Which is really just building on 20 years of experience working with communities doing the same thing – except one on one is MUCH easier and lots more fun! Definitely the right direction!). 

I don’t have to fill every minute of every day with someting that moves me forward and makes me money.  I can play.  And it’s just fine.  I can even play for more than one day if I want to (since I’m my own boss), and that’s just fine.  This is a very large AHA for me.  Perhaps you already know that, but as a recovering type A, I have never really made that understanding mine, until now.  And I still have to practice it (and probably will for the rest of my life).

In fact, this is such an important AHA that I am going to celebrate my discovery and change my word of the year from extraordinary (too much forward push in that one now) to sashay: an attitude , a perky saunter, a bit of rest, a next movement that fits in with the whole and, Wah-La!  a masterful dance that only I can create! 

Join me!

Wylde Women’s Wisdom

The Universe not only loves you but is also thrilled with you!  Dwell in that abundance.  You’re fine as you are, where you are.  No guilt in waiting until you’re ready for whatever comes next.  No shame in not knowing what comes next.  In fact, celebrate your confusion as the chaotic spiral that will take you where you need to go whether or not you’re exactly clear on how!  Here’s to the amazing, outrageous, diverse, immensely creative, sashayingly imperfect beings that we are – and will always be!    Tammy Vitale

Technorati Tags: be true to yourself, chasse, coaches, coaching, Fabeku, sashay, word play

Storm clouds with lonesome pine by Tammy Vitale

 You know you’ve hit on something when you throw up an update on FaceBook and immediately hear back from folks you literally haven’t heard from in almost a year! (Hi Lizzie!).

At first I thought it was re-entry blues – you know:  awesome vacation, eat out a lot (and nothing but great food out West, folks.  Good food and more good food!  And we don’t even eat meat!), someone comes in an makes your bed and cleans your bathroom, and generally there is no clock, and new things just keep appearing on the horizon, and then you come home.  Well, actually these days it usually starts with:  then you have to deal with the airport and flying and then you come home.

Symptoms can include starting out the window, inability to focus and resistance to your normal routine (whatever that is, and in my case it’s getting up on my own time clock.  You’d think I’d be fine). Usually lasts a few days and then gratitude for all that lovely open time, and the lessons you learned about what’s really really important in life come crowding in and you hum back through your days energized for having gone and returned.

There's a storm coming by Tammy Vitale

I must admit that since arrival it seems to have been going downhill attitude wise.  To the point the snarky head voice (this one isn’t the hamster, the hamster is just repetitive.  This one is nasty.  And would have me be hopeless) has started commenting on “all those perky quotes and affirmations” (the voice, not the real me) with a resounding “Right” (dip that in sarcasm and let it drip its acid a while – you get the picture).

So I there I am wanting to do something and with more than enough “somethings” to do if I could just get myself in gear.  All kinds of ideas for clay, a big jewelry show coming up (and a smaller market and a private show before that…alert! alert!  all this is starting tomorrow!), new beads, a torso class this weekend  – plenty plenty to do.  So what am I doing (do I dare admit this?)?  Playing Bedazzled on-line.  Not even playing on Facebook which I can make networking excuses for.

I had already heard Mecury is retrograde usually calling up the trickster aspects of life and “distortion of perspectives.”  So I posted “phbllt to Mercury” and learned that we also have a full moon tonight and 5 other planets are in retrograde (Rob Tillett says: Mercury’s retro phase tends to bring unforeseen changes and blockages, but the

big sky by tammy vitale

aggravation and frustration that many of us experience during these periods is often due to our own inability to roll with the punches.) Okay – I’m not a fanatical follower of astrology, but you know what?  I DO know the full moon and how it swings me sometimes either wildy joyful or terribly depressed.  If it ells you anything, Husband didn’t believe any of this stuff until he lived with me for a while, and now he watches the moon cycles if nothing else.  Anyways, just knowing the full moon was coming opened up a wide, spacious:  “Oh! that’s what’s going on.” And I found myself relaxing into all this and stopped fighting it.

The key:  stop fighting it.  Don’t give in to it, just sit with it.  So I went and cleaned up my studio for the workshop, spent a bit of time playing in clay – not as much as I would have once, but enough and it felt really good.  Then I trundled into the jewelry studio and started getting things really organized.  And I felt good at the end of the day.

This is all by way of letting you know that we all have our day(s0 or week(s) or even month(s) and year(s).  And it’s okay.  It’s okay not to be on your game every last second of every day.  In fact, the dark side of all this “affirm it and it will come” is that if you aren’t affirming and doing and generally getting bigger and bigger every day you can now feel guilty because if it isn’t working, Baby, it’s all your own fault.  Notice the wording there “fault.”  Not:  it isn’t time, rest in your present joy; not: stuff happens and it’s okay to feel sad, mad or boxed up; not: breathe in and out and go stand outdoors and refresh yourself.  None of that.  Nope, it’s your “fault” and so you “deserve all that is happening” because “you are obviously [okay - I'm going to let you fill in the blank here because I know you can]. 

Tell me how this is any different than nose to the grindstone industrial time management thinking.  And tell me how this is going to advance either you or society as a whole.

So if the planets or the Moon or Mercury or your kids or your husband or your job are making you crazy, stop.  Breathe.  Moderate those head voices.  Find yourself the support you need (even if it is a chorus of “oh, me too”s on FaceBook so that you know you aren’t alone), and, just for this one minute, rest in all is at it should be (because it is, after all – and all we have is what is right at this moment).  Finding one small thing to be grateful for doesn’t hurt either. 

In fact, if I’m honest, all of my greatest and best life changing growth has come from moments of discomfort (some bigger than others, some even life threatening).  So if nothing else, you can be grateful because you know you’re in the midst of some life lesson and that means you are Alive!

Here’s a great post on the balancing act we all go through by my friend Ruth David:  Funk or Fire (don’t you just love that phrase?!)

rainbow clouds by tammy vitale

Wylde Women’s Wisdom

There are some things your learn best in calm, some in storm.  Willa Cather

Life will break you.  Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning.  You have to love.  You have to feel.  It is the reason you are here on earth.  You are here to risk your heart, you are here to be swallowed up.  And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness.  Tell yourself that you tasted as many as your could. Louise Erdrich

(two qutoes today because sometimes we need a boost!  What are you doing to make sure you have a support system in place?!)

Technorati Tags: after vacation, full moon, Mercury retrograde

Mother Earth She Comforts Me, Tammy Vitale

Clarissa Pinkola-Estes, in Women Who Run with the Wolves, says:

In order to coverse with the wild feminine, a woman must temporarily leave the world and inhabit a state of aloneness in the oldest sense of the word.  Long ago the word alone was treates as two words, all one…That is precisely the goal of solitude to be all one.  It is the cure for the frazzled state so common to modern women, the one that makes her, as the old saying goes, ‘leap onto her horse and ride off in all directions.’”

She continues:  If we are gasping for creative energy; if we have trouble pulling down the fertile, the imaginative, the ideational; if we have difficulty focusing on our personal vision, acting on it, or following through with it, then something has gone wrong at the waterspill jucture between the headwaters and the tributary…Wild Woman is the river beneath the river, when she flows into us, we flow…”

Sometimes we are so used to hungering for something we can’t name that we no longer notice we are hungry.  We name it “tired,” out-of-sorts,” and strive to be superwoman and push on through.  What we need to do is stop, and listen, and feed from a life-giving, not a soul-deadening force.

Artist's Pallette in the Painted Desert (natural colors) by Tammy V

Having just come back from the wild – or at least as wild as I’m comfortable to get (camping with a tent or sleeping bag between me and wild animals is not my idea of fun – more my idea of invading their space which I am happy not to do), I find myself  not quite ready to re-enter the “push toward success” – or maybe I just want to rename success as the thing that feeds my soul and maybe my bank account instead of the thing that feeds my bank account and maybe my soul.  If there’s going to be a “maybe” in the equation, I have decided that I definitely do not wish it to apply to soul.

Easier said than done as all the property taxes, house insurance and 6 month car insurance bill sat waiting for me on my return.  Rough landing!  Of course, I knew they were coming and had planned ahead for all by the car insurance

Muir's Grove by S. Vitale (I hiked waaaay back into the Sierras, 6 weeks after major foot surgery. It was grueling and I've never for one minute been sorry!)

which I forgot is now coming twice yearly instead of once in April….and the dogs need their teeth done…and we need to add gutters to a wing roof to see if that won’t help the leak we can’t seem to fix.  You know how it goes.  The soul stirs from vacation and that space of suspension and then you return to “reality.”

Well, this is my year of extraordinary (and is living up to that for sure!) where things are not going to be the same.

Rather than define re-entry as again taking up with the bank account side of the equation, I’m going to relegate that to secondary status and focus on ways to keep the Wylde by my side this re-entry, and way to keep my focus on what is really important, and ways to make conscious choices about that instead of descending into all the stories of how I’m going to be a bag lady if I don’t get a “regular” (i.e. 40hours+ a week working for someone else) job.  Paying attention, I recognize that I have a choice in how this plays out.  So I have assembled an arsenal of reminders for myself – and you’re welcome to peruse them for things that help you too.

1. Wylde Women’s Wisdom:  yes, I subscribe to the quotes which I have collected under that name so th

   

   Montana - first time I ever say rainbow clouds! photo by Tammy V

   at I get daily reminders of the things I love and that are important to me.  Even though I collect them, I don’t always have them at hand when needed.  This way, just like you, I have one quote a day in my in-box that reminds me to breathe if only for the seconds it takes to read.

2. Poetry.  It’s faster than prose and more densely packed with visions of the world as it may be seen if we care to look with our soul’s eyes.  Here’s Mountain Lion by Linda Hogan:  She lives on the dangerous side/of the clearing/in the yellow-eyed shadow of a darker fear./We have seen each other inside mortal dusk…I was the wild thing she had learned to fear./Her power lived in a dream of my leaving./   And Patty Digh’s Poetry Wednesday blog:  I come into the peace of wild things.  We have an effect on everything around us.  What ripples are you sending into the wild?
3. Annie Dillard’s book, Holy the Firm, is small and quick and achingly beautiful:  “There is no one but us.  There is no one to send, nor a clean hand, nor a pure heart on the face of the earth, nor in the earth, but only us, a generation comforting ourselves with the notion that we have come at an awkard time, that our innocent fathers are all dead–as if innocence had ever been–and our children busy and troulbed, and we ourselves unfit, not yet ready, having each of us chosen wrongly, made a flase start, failed, yieled to impulse and the tangled comfort of pleasure, and grown exhausted, unable to seek the thread, weak, and involved,  But there is no one but us.  There never has been.”  (we all live an imperfect life.  And it is perfectly okay.)(See Michele Woodwards book:  I am Not Superwoman: Further Essays on Happier Living, blog size bites of real life.  Real life).

   

   Morning in my back yard by Tammy V

4. Wild Thing by the Troggs – music for the aurally inclined (of a certain age)
5. Where the Wild Things Are the book – because it is magical (and I can still say it by heart even though Daughter is now 34 not 3)
6. Where the Wild Things Are the movie – a bit darker, Daughter says not so magical, but I thought it was interesting and certainly speaks to the Wylde in each of us (which isn’t always magical, so lets allow that we do indeed have a dark side, and invite it into the light and make friends)
7. A hike into the wilderness however you define that (and in a pinch I can definitely define my back yard that way).
8. Try new (exotic) food.  My granddaughter adventures in her world through taste.  In her hand?  Now, what does it taste like?  I’m not saying you should follow her example to the detail, I am saying that we get in ruts with what we eat.  Try something new, somewhere new.  Just the change will engage you (and at the very least create new synapses in your brain as you negotiate a strange place – wilderness it may not be, but different it will).

"Fairy Pipes" in my backyard - I've lived here 16 years. They appeared twice one summer and no more.

Wylde Women’s Wisdom

General Wolf Rules for Life:

1.  Eat; 2. Rest; 3. Rove in between; 4.  Render loyalty; 5.  Love the children; 6 Cavil in moonlight; 7. Tune your ears; 8.  Attend to the bones; 9.  Make love; 10.  Howl often.  Clariss Pinkola-Estes

Rules for Living Wylde

1.  Protect the wild places (inside and out).

2.  Clear the rivers.  Without water there is no life.

3.  Rumble, erupt and spew:  recognize that sharp points will dull as new spires rise with a great deal of commotion.

4.  Reflect the moon.  Do not be afraid of darkness.

5.  Honor the creature in you and her needs for life (a safe nest, food, space to roam, a place to play).

6.  Acknowledge that healed means having been broken, and that broken can put old things together in marvelous new ways.

7.  Name “mis-takes/mis-steps” as stepping stones on your learning path, not stumbling blocks.

8.  Welcome movement and transformation and the chaos out of which they arrive as a given to be welcomed as the norm.  Understand that some years are quieter/noiser than others.

9.  Respect your instincts.

10.  Listen to your intuition.

11.  Celebrate your divinity daily. (Tammy Vitale)

Technorati Tags: Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Michele Woodward, National Parks, Where the Wild Things Are, Wolf Rules for LIfe; Rules for Living Wylde; wilderness; soul work

Castle Rock, Yellowstone Nat'l Park geysers every 14 or so hours - luckily we caught it!

There are places on this earth that will make you think you have stepped into another dimension.

This is not a bad thing.

Getting lost at your own discretion can, in fact, be a very very good thing.

Make sure, while you’re at it, that you find someplace where phones, blackberries, computers and other modern day miracles simply don’t function.  So you can leave them behind too.  Just bring your curiosity, a willingness to be awed and your bearspray, and take off for the wilds. [More on Castle Rock geyser, pictured, here.]

Who knew there were dozens of geysers besides Old Faithful (which you can’t get close to and, compared to some of the other geysers, seems less than spectacular…perhaps because when viewing Old Faithful one is hardly lost.)

According to information supplied by the Park, geysers produce acids strong enough to eat through the soles of boots and hot springs run around 270 degrees F.  Interesting enough – but put on your imagination and consider finding this place waaaaaay back in the 1800s and then trying to convince someone that it existed. (And yes, a dozen or so sillies have not heeded the warnings and have lost their lives.)

Morning Glory Pool - used to be all that aqua you see on the left, but people have thrown things into it, clogging its vent and cooling it off which creates yellow algae (and makes the green where they combine). those are lodgepole pines in the background for scale.

Which is why it’s good to get lost.  You find things you never even thought of.  And when you come back and tell the rest of the world, that telling can teach you to rely on your own senses no matter what anyone else believes or doesn’t.  You’ve had an experience that may be unbelievable to those who have not had that experience.  Don’t let them make you disbelieve. [More on Morning Glory Pool here]

This is where you learn to trust your eyes and your instincts (after all you wandered and returned safely, if changed a bit), and where you begin to truly understand the phrase “step into your power.”  For if you have never wandered, how can you experience stepping apart from the whole and into your own special, one-of-a-kind self?

Here, Gary Snyder describes the etymology of the  word “wild”

Formation at Mammoth Springs

Renee Askins (she who returned wolves to Yellowstone Park) says:

Both [Gary] Synder [in "The Practice of the Wild"]and [Jack] Turner [who wrote "The Abstract Wild"] refer to Thoreau’s use of “wildness” and its connection to “will,” or self-willed.”  Inherent in the core meaning of wildness are the notions of autonomy, freedom, and self-determination.  However, most definitions reach far beyond the idea of an individual’s experience to encompass the theory of a system that is self-informatin and self-organizing….the word “wilderness” need not be limited to describing a place or an experience; it can be used to capture a more elusive idea, as for example, in the phrase “the wilderness of the soul.”  Wildness” is sometimes used to describe the fierce, elemental spirit that lives in us, underneath our civilized facades…to a part of us that remains undomesticated or unaltered from our original state.  Some believe the wild is only accessible when one is teetering on the brink of survival…I think of it as being breathed by the world.

Which to me means that you can get properly lost in your chair or your backyard (see, I think you need Nature’s help in this, but maybe not) and “relinquish your former identity, and sacrifice the story you were living, the one that defined you, empowered you socially–and limited you.  This sacrifice captures the essence of leaving home.” (Bill Plotkin).

In case you can’t tell, I’ve been reading a lot of new authors as I learn to get lost deeper in my own wilderness.

Formation at Mammouth Springs- detail

Before I sign off, I want to put one last bee in your bonnet:  We are beyond lucky, we are wildly lucky (if you will) that we have had people who have fought for and saved wilderness for us to get lost in.  You cannot know the place, and you cannot fall in love with it (or, in my case its denizens like the buffalo) if you don’t go.  If you are not in love with a place, you will not lay down your life to make sure it continues for future generations.  Getting lost isn’t just for you.

Wylde Women’s Wisdom

During your time as a Wanderer, the experience of soul encounter opens your consciousness to the central mysteries of your life, an opening that will guide the most creative choices of your adulthood and immeasurably deepen your appreciation of the world and all life.  Your goal…,however, is not just a single glimpse of soul but a developing relationship, an ongoing conversation with those mysteries.  Through that conversation, your life, in later life stages, becomes mature art–the engaged, active embodiment of your deep imagination in service to an evolving world…During a soul encounter, you learn something about your destiny, which can be variously phrased as:  why you were born, your mystical calling, what gift you’re meant to bring to the world, your one true life, the larger story you might live….  Bill Plotkin

Castle Rock steaming - getting ready to geyser, Yellowstone National Park

Technorati Tags: Bill Plotkin, Gary Snyder, geysers, morning glory pool, Renee Askins, Thoreau, wilderness, Yellowstone National Park

What I learned in School, Stand alone sculpture 12" high, by Tammy Vitale $297

Tell me about yourself.

Do you feel alive?

Can you name your passion?

Do you take at least one step every day toward living a “Hell, Yes!”  life?

Do you have a process for getting unstuck?  Do you look at obstacles and realize:  there is no door, there is no key.

Do you know how to find your elephants?  and love your dragons?

Do you have community that supports your passion?

Do you know where to begin if you’re not where you want to be?

Will you take a moment to click through and read the suggested writings?

Will you take another moment to the answer the questions? Because the answers make up the story that you tell.  And the story that you tell creates the life that you live.  The life that you live is made up of bits and pieces of all that comes at you after your subconscious filters it based on your beliefs.  Your beliefs are reflected in the story that you tell.  When you answer the questions your understand the storyline.

It’s how you can change your life anytime you want.  Find the story.  Decide to tell it differently.

Life hands us what we need all the time.  But we have to hold out our hands and take it.  Because we can choose to drop it by the wayside, or ignore that it was even offered.  It’s your move!

Wylde Women’s Wisdom

There is no more meandering.  There is no more escape – not one more errand to run, not one more load of laundry to wash and fold, not one more phone call to answer, not one more word I can write until I take the next step.  Until I am willing to fall.  I am staring into the bright eyes of an angel.  “You cannot know if you are ready until after you fall, ” she says.  I do not jump.  It is more subtle than that.  I simply let go.  Christina Baldwin

Cat! Stand alone sculpture, 12" tall by Tammy Vitale. Sold.

That title?  That would be a trick question.

“AHAs” are unlimited.  I can’t even begin to imagine trying to count them all.  Worse – I can’t imagine a life where  I could count them all! 

It’s sort of like:  how many blackbirds backed into a pie?  One of those unaswerable thingys that make life interesting when you feel like the world is a bit too mundane.

Sometimes it’s fun to act as if we do know the answers.  In fact, at a workshop with Brooke Castillo, “I don’t know” was not allowed.  And I’ve often heard that if you can pose the question, you can pose an answer.  Well, of course you can pose an answer – it might even be a right one.  There may be a plethera of right ones – how do you know until you ask?  Isn’t that what branstorming is all about?  Opening the floodgates so that the AHAs can make it through?  Engaging the magical “what if?”

Kathe Kollowitz one asked:  “What would happen if one woman told her story?”  and then took the time to answer it (just so you wouldn’t get lost):  “The world would split open.”

Wow – there’s an “AHA” for you.  Just share your story with one someone else or several other someone else’s and watch the world change.  That’s how powerful Story is. 

We forget that because we’ve learned to read stories nailed to the page.  We forget that whoever nailed it there in black and white got to decide the story and the way it was told.  We are so used to being spoonfed Walt Disney and The Brother’s Grimm versions of things, that we forget that once upon a time stories were both a teaching method and a reflection of the culture’s values.  What happens when a story gets nailed down?  It stagnates and dies.  It no longer has the life and breath to create meaningful spaces for reflection among the listeners.

Here’s an AHA for you:  Jack Zipes talking about stories:

In my book The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood [wherein he identifies more than 30 versions of that story- the endings changed], I demonstrated that the origins of the literary fairy tale can be traced to male fantasies about women and sexuality.  In particular, I showed how Charles Perrault and the Grimm Brothers transformed an oral folk tale about social initiation of a young woman into a narrative about rape in which the heroine is obliged to bear the responsibliity for sexual violation.  Such a radical literary transformation is highly significant because the male-cultivated literary versions became dominant in both the oral and literary traditions of nations such as Germany, France, Great Britain, and the United States, nations which exercise cultural hegemony in the west.

Believe me, Little Red Riding Hood  is just the tip of the “innocent” fairy-tales we were (and are) spoon fed as children.  Little wonder one of the first thing feminist writers took on was the rewriting and updating of those tales!

Here’s another AHA for you (in case you’re new – because if you aren’t, you’ve surely read this here before, but it bears repeating):  You write your own life story.  (Unless, of course, you are in the process of letting someone else write it for you.  How’s that for an AHA?) You pick and choose the themes by focusing on occurances in your life until they are writ very large – and very “true” – and create the world you see around you.  Which is fine because we all do that.  Which isn’t fine if your story continues to make you as passive as Disney’s Snow White who is acted upon by the rescue of someone outside her – and thus proves that it is impossible to rescue yourself , the sad model for every woman who still awaits Prince Charming so that her life can begin.

Take your favorite fairytale.  Rewrite it.  See how many AHAs you can find in just one rewritten story.  For that matter, take any story you wish and rewrite it.  You have that power, you know.  Exercise it.

For my master’s thesis, I rewrote the creation story, in poetic form, as “an act of trespass on all male-dominated authorship of poems of creation and transformation, as a place where other women can recognize their own faces and voices in the story, be encouraged to futher explore the myth’s inner meanings as a means of approaching self-awareness.”  It was, and is, delicious. 

Try it!  You’ll like it!

Wylde Women’s Wisdom:

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Old stories are changed, changed utterly, by female knowledge of female experience.  These poems that trespass are corrections; they are representations of what women find divine and demonic in themselves.  Alicia Suskin Ostriker

By going into the darkness and returning to light, I claim both sides.  By writing about my journey, I leave a path leading those who might wish to follow towards “home.”  Tammy Vitale

Technorati Tags: feminist writing, rewriting fairy tales, story, the power of stories

Chasing the Quarter Moon, stand alone scultpure, 10" tall x 13" L by Tammy Vitale $397

1.  Recognize you aren’t alone or the only one.

Tama Kieves offers us a look you may recognize – and since you recognize it, you know that at least she, if no one else (do you really believe it’s just you and her?) understands the crazy cycle of creativity called life.

Tama’s Diary of a Creative Mind:

Week one:  Get a creative idea and the slightest bit of encouragement and feel on top of the world, burning, singing, dancing and feeling as though it all makes sense now and everything will come together.  You are magnificent.  You will be rich.  Life is so beautiful.  You will never be stopped.  How could you have ever dobted?

Week Two:  Get a cancellation from a client or a form letter back from your proposal, query, or inquiry and feel the world is harsh, cruel, sick and scary.  “Reality” sinks in.  This will be hard.  This is not easy.  This will take a lot of work, time and adjustments to your personality.  Your therapist might not be that good.  You may just be too old.  You may just be too tired.  You may just be too sensitivie, like your family said.

Week Three:  Turn on television and have a love affair with chocolate, Cheetos, cookies and guilt.  Notice how thin the leading women are.  Notice how the celebrities are getting even more famous and fabulous.  They are thin.  Many of them look like they are fourteen.  Many of them are fourteen.  Notice how you haven’t moved from the couch in about six hours.

Week Four:  Begin to be clear that your life will never work, you don’t have what it takes, and you should just give up.  Journal morbid, angry things you hope no one ever finds.  Get paranoid about the possibility of them finding these things.  Write illegibly.

Week Five:  Slip into depression, like slipping into a cozy, unmade bed.

Week Six: Eventually pick up a self-help book and read it cynically.  “Yeah right,” muttered after every page.  Keep reading anyway with hunger and buried hope.  Have one idea slip in that makes you wonder:  “Maybe.” Attempt to be positive.  Affirm to be positive.  Read more self-help books and buy the tapes and programs. [or, you could just work through the ones you have that you didn't quite make it through before.]

Week Seven:  Get a creative idea and a flash of excitement and possibility and begin the process again.

2. Practice imperfection

Read a little of Anne Lamott.  Wait.  Read a lot.  Often, stuck = fear of imperfection.  Here is a woman who is out there in all her radiant (and successful) imperfection.  Do you think people love reading her because she’s different than the rest of us?  No – we read her because we recognize – and get permission to be only and just – ourselves.  Here’s a bit of Anne:

Perfectionism means that you try desperately not to leave so much mess to clean up.  But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived.  clutter is wonderfully fertile ground – you can still discover new treasures under all those piles, clean things up, edit things out, fix things, get a grip.  Tidiness suggests that something is as good as it’s going to get.  Tidiness makes me think of held breath, or suspended animation.  (from Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life)

Here are the two best prayers I know:  “help me, help me, help me,” and “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”  A woman I know says, for her morning prayer, “Whatever,” and then for the eveing, “Oh, well,” but has conceded that these prayers are more palatable for people without children.  (from Traveling Mercies:  Some Thoughts on Faith)

3.  Realize that there are no rules.  You can make this up as you go along.

This would be me speaking to you.  Long experience studying communities and the art of change has taught me that they who make the rules win.  Take back your power.  If you need rules, make your own.  Base them in your experienced life, and in the integrity of your best self.  Don’t worry about everyone else and what they’re doing.  Your doing what you came here to do, instead of stewing in a job you hate or a relationship that does not support your being your best and truest self, will make the world a better place.  Simply by following your own rules – which of course means following your own heart.  Which of course means living life at your most courageous.  At least it won’t be boring!

4. Forgive yourself (bonus 1)

(me again).  Forgive yourself whatever you need to forgive yourself for, most likely not being perfect (see Ann Lamott above). 

5. Celebrate (bonus 2)

Henry Thoreau wrote:  The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.  By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal.  It is a fools life, as they find when they get to the end of it, if not before.”

Celebrate that you do not have to be stuck or live a life of “quiet desperation.” Celebrate that you have amazing choices in front of you that generations before would have gladly given their all just to taste, never mind live.  Celebrate that small step towards your Real Self and ignore all the clamoring desperate voices that would have you instead focus on what you don’t yet have.  Celebrate what is right in front of you right now, this moment.  It doesn’t take long.  Light a candle.  Breathe in and be present.  Blow out the candle, breathing out in gratitude.  Notice that joy is knocking on your door – let it in.  (Me, yet again.  I have a lot of practice learning this stuff!).

One small step.  That’s all it takes to get unstuck.  And if you fall down taking that step, it’s okay.  It’s just fine.  Because you can get up and have another go at your heart’s desire anytime you so choose.  And it’s the getting up that makes the difference.  I know you can.  Do you?

6.  Give yourself to a cause for an hour or a day (bonus 3 – and this is the biggie)

Get over yourself.  Get outside yourself.  Find your passion again by finding something you can be passionate about.  Raise money or awareness that Haiti hasn’t healed yet.   Volunteer at an animal shelter that is taking in homeless animals from the Gulf.  Teach someone something you know inside out that they don’t know.  For free.  Start a book club. Smile at everyone you see for a full day.  Create a no-complaint zone around you:  only positive things shall pass your lips.  Ever again.  You get the idea.

Better yet?

Wylde Women’s Wisdom

(two bits of wisdom on my twice weekly blogs not enough?  Click through and have some Wylde Wisdom mailed to your desktop daily!)

At its root, discouragement is a decision in favor of stinginess.  We are voting that the universe has done its last nice thing for us and that we have come to the bottom of Santa’s bag of toys.  No one will ever be spontaneously nice to us again – and we certianly aren’t going to point the way by mustering any authentic and healing compassion for ourselves either.  We are bingeing emotionally on not doing what we want to do.  As a rule of thumb, repeat this mantra:  Sudden problems in my life usually indicate a need to take a step.  Julia Cameron (slightly rephrased by me)

Technorati Tags: Anne Lamott, celebration, compassion, get unstuck without comiong unglued, gratitude, Henry David Thoreau, imperfection, joy, patience, Tama Kieves

Billie, Bob and Jo: Ugly Fish by Tammy Vitale, $37 - $45 (Billie and Bob already sold)

Summertime – and the living is easy!

I finally made it back into the clay studio this week, thanks to girlfriend who wanted to play in the mud and several commissions.  Included in the commissions was 2 Ugly Fish to trade for glass beads with glass artists Sue Page.  Most happy to oblige!

So I posted that on FaceBook and all the Ugly Fish lovers came out of the wood work.

Well, Ugly Fish are cute.  And if you aren’t cranking them out in production mode, they’re fun to make.  So I made 4 which gave me 2 extra.  Clear to me I need to make a few more.  They will possibly buy xmas gifts for me this year! 

Have been relaxing this week, and  browsing around and making lots of new friends on Facebook and through that finding lots of lovely writing and pretty things to share.  Thought today would be as good a day as any to do that!

First:  Do you know Choosing Beauty?  They have weekly giveaways, and this week they’re giving away a print of my “I Know I Have Found My Way Home” watercolor.    All you have to do is go to their site and “Share one thing about yourself that few people know.  A hidden talent, a secret wish, a quirky collection, a giant fear?  Time to celebrate that part of you!

And you know I love celebrations!  So spread the word.

Here are the Good Things

1.  Author Patti Digh (her most excellent book:  Life is a Verb), shared a new poet today on her blog, Maya Stein.  Wonderful little slices of life – go see! (Okay, technically that could be 3 things, but we’ll only call it one and be grateful for abundance).

2.  Julie Daleys post, Grace Like Rain , which is third in a series that started with Tenderness and Power.  Julie is a recently added “friend” on FaceBook.  One of the reasons I love Facebook:  there are so many people out there sharing such lovely ideas…and now we have ready access! (x 3 must be today’s lucky number!)

3.  A great idea for a Virtual Board of Directors written by Zoe Routh and presented by Jeannette Maw on the Good Vibe University site. (three again!)

There’s some great reading for you, and some things to chew on mentally.  Enjoy!

Wylde Women’s Wisdom

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Empty time is time to lie in bed and contemplate dreams or the marks on the ceiling, time to go for an aimless walk or sit by the fire staring at the flames while pretending to read.  Empty time is time to rest, renew and replenish by following the impulse of the moment.  Empty time is time to slow down, to find the stillness and spaciousness that allow us to stop all the doing and simply be.  If there is one thing that consistently stops people committed to doing creative work from doing it, it is this:  a lack of necessary silence in their lives, an inability or unwillingness to find and stay with the stillness to regularly create empty time in their day or their week.  If there is no time when absolutely nothing is expected or scheduled, we are not likely to arrive at the appointed hour ready to do our creative work…the spaciousness of empty time in our lives allows that which lights a fire within us to find and to speak to us.  Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Technorati Tags: Good Vibe University, Jeannette Maw, Julie Daley, Maya Stein, Patty Digh, ugly fish, Zoe routh

Some recent work I've decided to keep for myself! Hanging in my foyer.

What do you think of when you think of shame?

It usually starts off with:  “You aren’t…,” You don’t….,”  You can’t….” (that voice in your head).  Which also comes out as “Why can’t I…,” “Why didn’t I…,”  or “Why aren’t I….”  Or:  “What will the neighbors think?”

I’m sure you can fill in the blanks.

I’ve been thinking a lot about shame and how it manifests.  How it moves from a feeling of lack.

For me, it tweeks that part of me who thinks I should be perfect, always, anywhere and at anything.

Looking back, it’s that part that often keeps me from trying new things because I might look awkward. It keeps me from starting that new painting because, gee, what is there is to paint (or write, or sculpt or create) that hasn’t already been painted and better than I can do it?  

It may be why I can’t play pool (who knows – hubby and I are pretty on par pool wise, and play it in the Poconos when we aren’t holding anyone up – that’s as far as I’ve gotten). 

It may be why I haven’t played piano in 40 years (Momma could play by ear.  That’s what I wanted.  I could only read like a bandit – mostly because I didn’t practice enough so had to in order to get through my lessons.  That’s what she wanted.  Neither of us got what we wanted there).

Here’s another one:  “Why  didn’t I start on my own business younger so that I’d have time to build something that supports me so I can relax now.” (As if relaxing is what I want to do – then what would happen to all the ideas always roaming around my head.  They’d go elsewhere?  No – more likely I’d just get a “bit” touchy and cranky because I was laying around eating bonbons and being bored).

Or how about being ashamed because you’re getting older and there’s no way outside of surgery, botox and the latest eyelash growing drops that’s going to help you even begin to look like you once did (if you even liked what you looked like then!).  Or because you are heavier than you “should” be.  That’s a great one…go ahead, define “should” for me. (These are what got me thinking about shame.)

Then there’s working in community around issues of social justice, and being ashamed that even though you’ve accomplished some really awesome changes (and I know you won’t define them that way, but trust me – they probably are way beyond anything you’re willing to admit), there are still so many issues and so little time to deal with them.

And for sure, what will the neighbors think if you’re out there in public making noise and making folks uncomfortable?  Shame on you!  Don’t rock the boat! 

Or this lovely from my 2nd semester facilitator working toward my masters degree:  You may well be different, but we mortal folks need to work through it this way…. (Got any teachers in your long student career that did anything like that to you?)

Shame is a voice that has been inherited and made itself a part of your personal story somewhere along the line, usually from someone outside yourself.  It is about who we are, and meant to make us feel smaller or less than we actually are (guilt is about an action). 

AA, (steps 4 and 5) which I am very familiar with as Son is now 2 years into being clean and sober, says:  write it down.  Tell at least one other person.  And by the way, make sure that person can be trusted to love you through whatever you are telling them.  This is not the time to choose someone who’s going to shame you more (you want a “disinterested” party – which is why AA has sponsors).

 I can say to you (and to myself):  You ARE enough!  You DO enough!  You HAVE the skills to do anything you want.  But until we identify SHAME, and the stories and emotions we have attached to it, until we bring it out in the daylight and share with one other person, we’re going to be stuck.

So, what part does shame play in the place you are currently stuck?  Write it down.  Tell one other (disinterested) person.  Want to delve?  Therapy can help define how you got to where you are.  Coaching can help decide where you want to go from here.

And, by the way, if you aren’t ready to do any of that yet?  Go ahead:  The Universe not only loves you but is also thrilled with you!  Dwell in that abundance.  You’re fine as you are, where you are.  No shame in waiting until you’re ready!  Here’s to the amazing, outrageous, diverse, immensely creative, imperfect beings that we are – and will always be!

Wylde Women’s Wisdom 

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Every time a Story in the vast human collection gets an upgrade, it has a positive impact on the qauntum field – and that makes life a little better for everyone else.   Each time one of us makes a tiny correction, changing a tired old story into an empowering, life-affirming message, we can turn this world away from scarcity and toward the direction of plenty.  Victoria Castle

Technorati Tags: abundane, coaching, dealing with shame, scarcity, story

Zen, ceramic torso 21" x 16", Sold, by Tammy Vitale

Summertime and the heat is going to be 102 outside today.  I’m moving into vacation mode, or stacation as the case may be.  At any rate time off to reflect on where I’ve been this year and where I’m going.  A mid-year check in to my word choice of extraordinary for this year’s guidance, and course adjustments as necessary.

So this is a short post – you can review my year with me, browsing through the links belowe.  The lazy, hot summer day’s way of not having to think of anything new.

And while you’re browsing, here are some things to think about for ourself:  how’s your year going?  What are you using for your true-north word, quote, guide this year?  Have you even thought about it since January 1st?  (Which begs:  do you plan your life or does life just happen to you?)  What’s the best thing that’s happened to you this year?  What’s the biggest challenge you have faced or are facing – and how’s that going?  Any “ahas”?  Who do you go to to help you see what you’re not seeing?  How often do you celebrate you accomplishments instead of running off to do whatever is next on your list?

It’s summer.  I have time to wonder about these things.  How about you?

1.  Step into your own true power

2.  A Gift from Angels

3.  3 Ways to Ease Overwhelm

4.  Wylde Women (from 2006)

5.  Coaching:  Create the Life You Want

Wylde Women’s Wisdom

God may be in the details, but the goddess is in the questions.
Once we begin to ask them, there’s no turning back.” — Gloria Steinem

Technorati Tags: one-on-one coaching, self-help, the power of choice, Wylde women's wisdom