In my last post, blogger friend Rita McGregor left this awesome note:   I have always found those soul-path reevaluation times to be so difficult at the time, but so wonderful after the fact, you know? I think I learned that the less I personally struggled with trying to figure it all out myself and the more I let go and listened… (hard to do in high stress times and when it has to do with the roof over your head or your heart)…the quicker and clearer the answers came. My problem has always been prying my hands off the steering wheel.

We chatted a bit about this off line because that high-lighted phrase “the roof over your head or your heart” stopped me dead in my tracks.  Rita got it!  She really really got it.  And up until she said it, I don’t know that I did!

Oh, I got the “roof over your head” thing – no question.  That has been with me forever (and so I think perhaps my main life’s lesson is tied to that because it is in every single one of my journals from my 20s to now).  But a “roof over your heart.”  Now THERE is a new concept – one that helps me understand the insecurity isn’t just physical.  It’s psychic and emotional – and it has to do with losing the part of me that creates daily, getting lost in the flow.

Roof over my head too often argues with roof over my heart.

This is what I believe:  as integral as money is in my ruminating thoughts described in journal after journal, it is not as integral as following my creative spart which manifests as visual artist.  The older I get the more I understand how I AM the creative process (not the final product – and the difference between the two is crucial to keep in mind if I want to stay sane and centered).  Perhaps we all are the creative process we came here to pursue.  And the only reason we don’t is the “roof over our head.”

I believe I create art because someone out there is looking for it.  My job is to bring it from concept to concrete and then get it “out there” so whomever is looking for it can find it.  Unfortunately finding them doesn’t come with a road map so it’s been pretty hit or miss.  Plus, with the economy stagnation, many who were once looking have stopped to focus on their roof.  Makes tracking them down all the more difficult.

But, as I remind my coaching clients and myself, if it were easy we’d all have arrived – and I don’t mean at a fancy house with a large roof over our head.  I mean we would have all arrived at the pinnacle of Maslow’s mountain of individuation.  Roof over head is, as you see, the very basis, the foundation of the hierarchy.  One ignores it at the danger of building a house of cards.  Roof over heart, as you see, is the pinnacle.  And it is built on roof over head.

So in the end, I need to get the voices to see that they really aren’t at odds, they are part of something larger – each has its piece to play.  I wish I knew how that looked in the “real” worlds of my head and my heart because they feel like they are two separate universes.

In the meantime, I am refreshed with a new tracking plan for those who don’t even know they want to be found, and am in the process of creating their lovelies.  It is keeping me very occupied in the studio and head is more focused on how to make a certain technique work than on the roof over it.  Heart is ever hopeful that we are creating a world that will take care of keeping the rain off of head AND feed hearts – mine and others’.

Wylde Women’s Wisdom

What I’d love for you is to remember that you have a choice when things look bleak.  Without beating yourself up for feeling discouraged or less-than, see if you can find the optimistic story.  Play with the possibility that it is at least as true as the pessimistic one.  And stand up for yourself and your business as you create your unique contribution to the world.  Molly Gordon