Born out of frustration, One Voice Is  will be a place for permission, for encouragement, for wisdom. I’ve enjoyed blogging here and working through the transition from one season to another. But it became so clear to me last week that I want to create a community. A safe space where we can toast successes, weep with the brokenhearted and find the gumption to keep going.

Consider this your invitation to head over and join me. One voice represents more than just MY voice. I am hoping to create a chorus of voices, joined together as one, singing  a freedom song, drumming a rhythm of truth.  Today is a special day as I am hosting my first art giveaway!  I hope you will come put your name in the hat! 

See you there!

And this Monday, I will finally be forty-seven and I am inviting you to join me here for a special announcement. 

Just one week ago, I told my friend that I was going to shut down my blog. Then I had an encounter which spun me into a vortex of energy. Since then I have been busy planning and preparing something new. I hope to see you on June 6th to celebrate my birthday with me.

Until then I have lots to do … see you in a few days!

During our time together, we were exploring some questions about spirituality, about searching for meaning and guidance and wisdom. Specifically at this time we were talking about the tarot and some comments were made about superstition.  I told her that I don’t hold things with superstition because that introduces fear and I am choosing not to walk in fear. 

If there is anything I believe, it is that Godde is love and that love, true and pure love, drives away fear. In my previous journeys through Christianity there was a paradox of trying to understand Godde as total love but at the same time much of the teaching was infused with fear and did nothing but to pierce the heart with that same fear. As I have walked away from that idea and as I have continued to my spiritual journey, I have come increasingly closer to the absence of fear. On my way home, this song same up on my ipod.

Inside my skin there is this space
It twists and turns
It bleeds and aches
…Inside my heart there’s an empty room
It’s waiting for lightning
It’s waiting for you
And I am wanting
And I am needing you here
Inside the absence of fear
Muscle and sinew
Velvet and stone
This vessel is haunted
It creaks and moans
My bones call to you
In their separate skin
I make myself translucent
To let you in, for
I am wanting
And I am needing of you here
Inside the absence of fear
there is this hunger
This restlessness inside of me
and it knows that you’re no stranger
you’re my gravity
My hands will adore you through all darkness aim
They will lay you out in moonlight
And reinvent your name
For I am wanting you
And I am needing you here
I need you near
Inside the absence of fear

Spontaneously, I raised my hand and allowed the words to become my prayer, my new worship song, an expression of longing, an invitation for Godde to be here again.

I write a lot about starting over, beginning again. As I came to the keyboard today, to write, to write myself into some clarity and answers, internally I am berating myself for having to start over … again.

But why?  Why get lost in a cycle of self-abuse, of questioning myself, of belittling myself?  The reality is that I need to start again. So, I will. Today. Because as a wise woman has written, every day is a day one. 

Today, Thursday, April 28, 2011 is day one so I will begin again. 

I need to because in the middle of the night, I had a realization. I have been chasing the unattainable. I have exhausted a lot of energy trying to manifest something in myself that would not, could not fill the emptiness for someone else.  That effort has left me feeling broken, damaged, not enough. 

Here is the truth.  I can’t jump through those hoops anymore. The expectations are so arbitrary and elusive but I have tried to make sense of them all.Last night I realized that it doesn’t matter if I do the routine perfectly it still won’t be perfect, it still won’t be enough. And I just have to accept that. 

In the face of this, what does it mean to start again?  Well, honestly, I am not sure.  I hope to create a path to find out though.  A path of honoring myself, of nurturing myself, of being healthy and strong and focused … so that I won’t be the ringmaster demanding a performance of someone else. 

Wow. Look what just showed up.  Truth. Painful truth but truth.  I recognize that I have fallen into that role as ringmaster because it is one I know so well.  I have become a mirror, a reflection of the very thing that hurts me most and have been projecting that back and toward others in my life.

photo by spiesteleviv	via PhotoRee

The first step in starting over will be in acknowledging  my own role in the three-ring circus of madness.  The second step is putting down my baton and walking out of the Big Top.  That begins today because today is day one.

I am moving far, far away from the circus.  yeah, yeah, I know the circus is a traveling one and may come to my town occasionally. But just because it is near, doesn’t mean  I have to attend and I certainly don’t have to participate.

I know that I and my choices will continue to be misunderstood.  But I can’t control that.  I know in my heart that all along my motives have been pure.  I have tried to do the best thing, the right thing and that is what matters.  I know the truth. I know my heart and I am not broken, I am not damaged and most importantly, I am enough.

Sarah Kay: If I should have a daughter … | Video on TED.com.

There’ll be days like this, my momma said.

When you open your hands to catch

and wind up with only blisters and bruises;

When you step out of the phone booth and try to fly

and the very people you want to save are the ones standing on your cape;

When your boots will fill with rain, and you’ll be up to your knees in disappointment.

And those are the very days you have all the more reason to say thank you.

Because there’s nothing more beautiful than the way

the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline,

no matter how many times it’s swept away.

Sarah Kay

spoken word poet and founder of Project V.O.I.C.E.

I am donating two pieces of artwork, one that I wrote about in Look Closer.  The other was painted specifically for this event as I wanted to create the power of life-giving water.  My idea was to have a woman, coming up out of the water but her hair would be water droplets falling back down into the water. A perpetuating cycle of water.

My first attempt was good. I like her. 

But I made a mistake with the measurements of the paper and she wasn’t going to fit in the frame I had purchased without cutting it down, which I couldn’t do without ruining her.  I could have tried to purchase another frame, possibly having to have a custom frame made.  But something told me to start again. My spirit told me to start again.

And this is where the lessons I learned from Connie come into play.I woke the next morning and I painted fearless.  The music was playing, I was bouncing on my toes as I brought her to life.  I didn’t worry about a line being perfect, about whether or not she would turn out ok, I just painted. I thought about every mother and daughter that walks for miles to find and carry dirty water but it is water they need to survive and I wished for that savior for them, that savior from the water that would free them from this particular bondage.  Free them to learn, to create,. to provide in a different way. And this is who showed up:

She is Moisella, Savior from the Water and I LOVE her! She is so much more my style, my heart, my passion!  Before I was painting to donate. This time I was painting from somewhere deep inside me and she feels alive! 

The auction is next week. It is in Greenville, SC but if you’d like to make a bid, contact me (there’s a button at the top) and I will work out the details.  If you’d like to donate to the cause, you can do that too. Just visit this page: Benefit Concert for Charity Water.  And if you’d like to sign up for Connie’s BIG workshop, visit her here.

Truth be told, I grow tired of the same thing all the time. But more importantly, I want to start showcasing my artwork again. Though I let myself get bogged down in some unproductive weeks recently, I am back on the creative wagon. I’d like to say that I won’t fall off again. But I know the reality.  I am glad that the times I am wallowing in the pit of not exercising my creative energy are becoming fewer.  That is encouraging.  So this theme allows me to upload a custom header; a perfect place to show off my artwork.  Right now, I am posting this lovely lady: 

I painted her during the first part of Connie’s Big workshop.

Guess what? She is offering the workshop again in May. Go now, sign up! I learned so much about how I paint, how I express myself and I learned to let go and paint BIG!

There’s even more to tell you about my experience but it is going to have to wait until daylight tomorrow. Have to be able to take some photos to share with you.

Until then … Grace and Peace … and it’s good to be back here with a fresh new theme!

I have given birth nine times. Each experience was different. Hospital births, home births, medicated, non-medicated.  Birthing profoundly changes a woman. I am not speaking about being a mother but just the act of giving birth, the labor, the transition, pushing, the entire experience becomes part of our language and is used a metaphors in other parts of our life. I think that is why traumatic birth experiences really can cause such an imbalance in a woman’s spirit.

My birth experiences weren’t traumatic but there was a sense of frustration with them.  In various degrees and for various reasons, each birth was conducted, directed by someone other than me. My choices of delivery options were shaped externally not internally.

Until the last one. My ninth. I cannot express how grateful I am for the obstetricians I allowed into that experience. They let me guide the pregnancy, the labor and delivery. They trusted my wisdom and taught me to trust myself as well.

That labor was not classic, not textbook and any other doctor would probably have intervened. My contractions were calm, not intense and didn’t last long at all and never became more frequent than every five minutes. My request for an epidural when I felt I needed it, which was my plan all along, was honored without hesitation or trying to convince me to wait. I clearly knew when my body had turned the corner and delivery was growing imminent and when I communicated that there wasn’t a hustle and bustle but a peaceful transition of the room, the team. It was calm, it was quiet, it was relaxed. Four pushes later, my ninth child was born.

I don’t think I realized the importance of that experience until today, just now, as I am writing these post. I was allowed to trust myself.

I can trust myself.

I need this realization today, in this moment, in the days and weeks that are ahead of me because I am giving birth again.

That’s the metaphor. There can be no other. It came to me this morning as I started re-reading The Dance of the Dissident Daughter. At the beginning it is full of the birthing language … conceiving one’s self, pregnant with new consciousness, hard labor followed, stalled labor, feeling like a newborn upside down and slapped.

I sat and meditated on the few pages I read this morning, I realized that I am giving birth to myself … again. I think I’ve done this before. But I am afraid that newborn died from malnutrition and neglect. I didn’t know how to nourish and nurture and protect her.  At least I didn’t think I did. I didn’t trust that I did.

But now I do. I know and I trust myself.

It is going to look a lot like I am stopping up my ears and not listening to conventional wisdom, to how things are supposed to go, what progression should be happening, what markers to look for. It’s going to look like that because that is exactly what I am going to do.

I am going to trust myself. I can do this.

The first thing that I know to do … breathe. Breathe deeply and know that I do not have to rush this process. No pitocin for me, thank you very much. We will let this happen naturally and as it should. There is only one thing I am focused on … bringing my life into this world. I am not trying to do this for anyone else but me. So I am going to listen to my heart, my wisdom.

Well, like I said, there are two themes. That is one of them … the other will just have to wait until another day.

Grace and Peace, y’all!

Our library has this annual event called The Great Amazing Read. For the Spring, all the branch book clubs read the same book and they plan lots of activities to go along with the book.

This years

Great

AMAZING

READ?

Only the book that prompted BookMagazine to write, “Maybe it’s true that there are no perfect books, but I closed this one believing that I had found perfection”

I have to agree. This is a beautiful book and it is passages like this one that make it so:

If the heat goes over 104 degrees in South Carolina, you have to go to bed. It is practically the law. Sopme people might see it as shiftless behavior, but really, when we’re lying down from the heat, we’re giving our minds time to browse around for new ideas, wondering at the true aim of life, and generally letting things pop into our heads that need to. In the sixth grade there was a boy in my class who had a steel plate in his skull and was always complaining how test answers could never get through to him. Our teacher would say, “Give me a break.”

In a way though, the boy was right. Every human being on the face of the earth has a steel plate in his head, but if you lie down now and then and get still as you can, it will slide open like elevator doors, letting in all the secret thoughts that have been standing around so patiently, pushing the button for a ride to the top. The real troubles in life happen when those hidden doors stay closed for too long. But that’s just my opinion.”

I want to swim in those words, let them soak into my skin, penetrate my heart.

So anyway, back to Sue Monk Kidd.  The bookstore I worked at provided book sales at the kick-off event for The Great Amazing Read so I got to attend the book-talk and then chat with Sue Monk Kidd a bit at the very end.

She is funny, gracious, kind. She signed books for every one in line then signed a ton of books for our bookstore.  Mine was the last book she signed … but it wasn’t a copy of The Secret Life of Bees but The Dance of the Dissident Daughter. Writing what that book has meant to me in my life would take not only another post but an entire series of posts. I will sum it up with what I told Sue Monk Kidd … this book saved my life.

It did. But I still love The Secret Life of Bees .. and The Mermaid Chair. I am beginning to read some of her earlier spiritual writing and am looking forward to more, more, more.  She did say last night that she is working on another novel!