There are times in every life of self examination, where you have to peel back a whole layer.  It seems to take a long time, and it’s never comfortable.  I find myself in one of those phases now.  Because I have experienced severe depression in the past, this phase always scares me.   I know digging deep always disturbs the complacency and throws me off balance.  But that feeling of discontent is eerily similar to depression so I get scared and tend to run to find a quick fix.  I’ve been journaling and talking to trusted loved ones which is my way of dealing with life’s challenges.  I think I’m making progress but it sure is slow going.

My life has changed completely in the past year, and I’m trying to find myself in the changes.  After living alone for so long, it’s an adjustment to having a partner.  I am so grateful not to be alone anymore.  Mister is the perfect companion for me.  He has introduced me to many things I never would have known I loved if I hadn’t met him.  I’m becoming quite the fisherwoman, and I’m learning to tie all sorts of neat knots for attaching hooks, lures and swivels to fishing line.  But with change, there is always something that challenges us.  My challenge is not having friends or family in the town we live in.  I am an extrovert and have always thrived by being with lots of people.  I have coped with life by having friends to talk to and to do things with.  When I’d tackle a problem or a project I always involved my friends.  It feels lonely now to deal with decorating, rearranging, planning things alone.  Mister is always involved in my plans and dreams, but what I”m talking about is a girl to go shopping with to buy supplies, or to change the furniture sixteen times to see which way it looks best. Those kind of things are not what guys typically enjoy.

Last week I went to Tulsa and spent three days with my sister.  We went to garage sales, estate sales and thrift stores for three whole days.  It was wonderful.  We sat at night and had those deep, comfortable sister talks.  It was great to be out and about and finding all sorts of art goodies.  My sister and I are the BEST garage sale partners.  We know what each other like and help the other find treasures.  I also got to see my niece and her little girl.  I miss seeing all of them.  I guess I took it for granted when I got to see them almost daily.

So, wanna see some of my treasures from garage saleing?

1. Some of the books I got.  One is the journal and sketches of a woman in the 1930′s who in remote Alaska with her husband.  One is “The Power of Myth” by Joseph Campbell and the other is this wonderful little decorating workbook.

2.  This is one of the pages in the decorating workbook.  It has questions you answer, pockets and pages for pictures, color swatches, floorplans, etc for every room.

3.  A lovely cosmetic bag that I will cut up for the fabric to use on journal pages.   Some embroidered trim and a lovely pearl collar.

4.  A nice gray leather purse.  It’s that super soft leather that I love.

I am working on a new class.  It is all videos.  One every day for a month.  I have had trouble getting the camera positioned right, so I asked Mister to help me.  He volunteered to film all of them for me!  I am so thankful he’s willing to do that.  It’s a huge help because we don’t have a flip screen on our camera so it’s hard to know if I’m getting everything in the shot when I do it alone, and I can’t zoom in on anything if I do it myself.

What I didn’t realize when he offered to help me is that it has brought him into my world of journaling.  He sees me painting and writing in my journal all the time, but I don’t know if he understand what I’m actually doing.  By filming the videos it is like he’s taking the class and I think he is beginning to “get” it.  We messed up the sound on one video we filmed, and had to re-do it.  Before we started the second one, he gave me some great, creative suggestions for making the video show more possibilities.  I’ve always known he is creative but he denies it.

He was looking at his boat longingly while we stood on the back porch this evening.  He said, “If I journaled I’d put a picture of my boat,  draw some waves,  cover it all with gesso, then write I wish I was on the lake.”  I guarantee you that before he met me he didn’t know what gesso was!

It’s nice to have someone to share my life with.

How It Started

I have journaled most of my life, in some form or another.  Initially, it was just writing in a diary.  Writing was a way for me to empty my mind of the squirrel cage of thoughts that occupy  it a great deal of the time.  It provided me a way to get my thoughts down on paper and then make sense of them.  During a marriage that was gradually deteriorating, it was valuable for me to sort out my emotions and record the facts of conversations and situations.  Journaling enabled me to make decisions that I couldn’t make when all the thoughts and emotions were jumbled up in my mind.

That’s why I kept journaling.  Because it worked for me.  Being creative, it became boring to write page after page of black ink on white pages, so I added color by using colored pens.  There were periods when it felt too heavy to write.  It seemed that there was just too much information, or too many emotions to explain by writing.  I found that I could express a lot with images during those times by using magazine images and text phrases glued to the pages of my journal.

This process continued to evolve over the years.  I began to add color to the background of the page.  I doodled on the pages.  I found many ways to use color and images to express what I needed to express.  If I was very angry I would write with a thick black pen in huge letters.  If I was happy I’d write in yellow and draw suns.  I had never heard of art journaling or even been on the internet yet at this point.  But my journals over the years saved my sanity.  Not only from writing, but also from reading old journal entries.  I could see patterns in my relationships and my behavior that I wasn’t aware of, which allowed me to change or adapt to bring more of what I wanted into my life and let go of things that obviously weren’t working for me.

Around 2003 I met Marney at Artella and she mentored me in creating online classes.  Her advice to me was, “Teach what you know.”  After a lot of thought and discussion, I saw that one of the things I knew best was creative journaling.  I was passionate about it, because it had truly made a difference in my life.  For years I had encouraged my friends to use journaling as a way to improve their life.  In fact, it was a joke among my friends that if they called me with a problem, at the beginning of the conversation they’d say, “No I haven’t journaled about it!”.  Marney knew that I loved journaling and had sort of created my own process and she encouraged me to write a class explaining my journaling process.

That is when I wrote and started teaching my “Fun Art Journaling” class.  I loved writing and teaching that class because it was about something I knew and was passionate about.  I sincerely want others to experience what I’ve experienced by regular, deep, thoughtful writing.  I met so many lovely people through teaching that class, and remain friends with many of those people today.

The Unconscious Change

When I started offering the “Fun Art Journaling” class, it flung me into the world of online art journalers.  As I look back now, I’m still not sure exactly how it all happened, but somewhere along the way, I decided that I wasn’t “enough”.  That’s a common pattern in my life.  And that’s why my word for this year is acceptance.  I am enough, no matter what anyone else is doing, and I want to accept that.   But what happened back then was that I saw all these artists displaying and even selling their art journals.  Each page was an actual work of art.

I’m not sure how much was me comparing my journals to those artist’s journals and how much came from class participants.  They were used to the journals seen online that are more for the purpose of art than self exploration.  Some of them came to my class expecting to learn the techniques to create beautiful works of art on the pages of their journal.  In my inability to believe in myself and my process, I adapted…or tried to.  I tried to give people what they wanted, writing courses with more techniques, and backing off what I considered to be the real value in journaling – writing.

It has taken me several years to  realize what I did and where I lost myself.  In my year of accepting myself and being authentic, I am writing this post to come clean.  To say that what I want to teach is the process of self discovery and life changing that is possible through journal writing.  And being creative I know that it is much more fun to journal if you use color and images in your journal.  That’s what my first journaling course was about, and I want to return to that.  I don’t care if anyone sees my journal pages.  They aren’t created for art – they are a piece of me – the deepest me.  The words written there are my most private thoughts.  My journal is a place where I can say anything.  I can write about anyone.  It’s a sanctuary free from judgment or riducule.  Why would I want to put that online after taking such care to write my private thoughts.    Occassionally a page turns out so cool that I want to share it with other journalers and in those cases I blur the writing with photoshop.  But the important thing to me, and that I want to teach is that your journal is for you.  If you create a journal page with the intention of sharing it publicly then you can’t do the deep work that is essential to using journal writing to improve your life.

So, now that I’ve said all that, here is my intention.  I want to encourage anyone who is interested to use a journal to express emotions, sort out problems, work toward changing what isn’t working in your life, making decisions and celebrating your life. I want to share how using creativity, color and imagery can enhance the writing process.   I am letting go of trying to do pages like “them.”  I’m no longer going to feel like I’m not good enough to teach art journaling.

Incidentally, my “Find Your Personal Symbology for Art Journaling” class starts on the 25th.  It is about discovering the visual symbols in your life and integrating them into your journal. It is not about art techniques but rather about digging deeper to learn who you are, what messages are there for you and how to use them to improve your life. And I’m currently working on a new course (with videos!) that addresses the problem of the white page fear in journaling.  It’s involved techniques for backgrounds but is aimed at doing what you need to develop a daily writing habit.

I haven’t been keeping up with this blog challenge very well.  Even though it’s late I’m posting a response to today’s prompt, which is:

“Challenge. Something that really made you grow this year. That made you go to your edge and then some. What made it the best challenge of the year for you?”

Reflecting back over the year, there were several challenges but the most challenging situation I found myself in was a not so pleasant one.  I lived upstairs from my sister and brother-on-law. My sister was out of town and called me to see if I would go check on her husband because he wasn’t answering the phone.   She was still on the phone when I went downstairs, taking the phone with me.  When I found my brother-in-law, he has passed away.  I believe the hardest thing I”ve ever had to do was tell my sister that her husband had died.

A million things went through my mind during those seconds that passed before I spoke.  She was keeping her three grandchildren, one of whom was just a few months old.  I worried if she would be able to care from them once she heard the news.  Finally, I realized that I had to tell her because she’s on the phone waiting to talk to him.  There was nothing I could say except the truth.  Strangely enough, I went out into the hallway, and sort of whispered to her, “Judy, he’s dead.”  I’m not sure why I was so secretive about it.

The next several hours that followed continued to be challenging.  I called the police and they came soon with the paramedics.  They questioned me over and over about what had happened, and informed me that it was a crime scene and would remain so until the determined what had happened.  My brother-in-law was like my dad.  My parents  died when I was young and he and my sister basically raised me from the time I was 16.  So, I was devastated that he was gone, and yet had to maintain my composure to answer their questions and make sure I did what was necessary, in my sister’s absence.

Their daughter came right away, and later that evening my sister flew back home.  I knew I had to be supportive for them and did my best to have the strength I needed to help them through this tragedy.  But the thought of  my brother-in-law lying there wouldn’t leave my mind.

I wondered why it had happened the way it did.  As the weeks passed, little answers came to me.  There are many gifts that came from that event.  Not the least of which was that I saw the peace on his face.  I knew without a doubt that he had laid down and fallen asleep and just not awakened.  I had the gift of telling that to his family.  My sister felt guilt about being gone when he died.  But she was able to let go of the guilt when I described to her how peaceful he looked.  I knew she was imagining that he had suffered and that if she had been there, she might have been able to keep him from suffering.  Being the one to give her the truth and alleviate her guilt was a huge blessing to us both.

Challenges are not something most of us welcome, but if we  look for the gifts within them, they are nearly always there.  I feel so honored that God chose me to be there when my brother-in-law died.  I feel that he and I shared a moment that is so spiritual it can’t be explained in mere words.  The hardest moment of my life turned out to be one of the most special.

Since I was very young, I longed for a life of peace and harmony. I saw families in movies where no one yelled and people didn’t have fights and arguments. I wanted that, but had no idea if it existed in reality, and I had no clue how to go about getting it for myself.

Now I find myself living that very life. A dream come true. And yet, it is challenging because I don’t how to function without chaos, fear and uncertainty. My life is predictable and easy. I can’t imagine anything more wonderful, but I don’t know what to do with it. I find myself looking for things that might be wrong, or might go wrong. On a subconscious level, I think I’m expecting the chaos to begin at any moment.

Reminding myself of the truth has become a ritual for me. Harmony has truly come to me. I tell myself that I can relax and just enjoy this new life. They say that farthest distance is from the head to the heart, and this truth hasn’t quite made it to my heart yet. Enjoying the peace and relaxing is such a wonderful place to be, but suddenly some unexpected negative thought or emotion will jump in, as if I just cannot allow myself to accept that this is okay for me.

It reminds me of a group of women I worked with as a student during one of my clinical internships in occupational therapy school. I was at Terrell State Hospital in TX. For one of my projects, I chose 8 women who had been institutionalized for a decade or more. These women had no social skills. They were dirty, rude and unkempt. I spent my three months there helping them learn personal hygiene, politeness, table manners, etc. As they progressed, I taught them how to apply lipstick and select nice dresses from the community clothing closet. For the finale, we planned a tea. They would host a small tea for some of the staff and other patients.

I was so proud when all the ladies in my group showed up with clean clothes, clean hair and they readily set the tables with napkins and untensils. When the guests were seated, my ladies sat down and put their napkins in their laps. I was bursting with pride when one of them removed her false teeth, sat them on the table and began eating!

I sometimes feel like that lady. I’ve come a long way in accepting my peace filled life, but every once in a whle I forget where I am and just lay my teeth on the table.

I am on a Mission next year and would love for you to join me.  Here’s a little background.

For many years I have selected a word  in January that I want to focus on throughout the year.  These words were things I wanted to bring into my life.  I’m not talking about words like Cadillac or husband, but more like love, harmony, awareness.  By selecting a specific word, it gave me something to focus on in order to bring my life closer to what I wanted it to be.  Having a word allowed me to look for opportunities to practice the thing I want.

I have outlined a lot of activities that we can do together to keep us focused on our word throughout 2010.  I have seen this work in my life for many years and I would like to share this exciting experience with all of you.  This is something we will share and do together. It won’t require much time and the activities are fun.  I will post a monthly focus activity.  We will do these activities in our blogs or journals or just alone with no one else.  We can share if we want, encourage each other and celebrate what we’re doing.

If you want to join me, let me know here by leaving a comment on this post.  If you aren’t already subscribed to my updates, please click the link at the top of the right column.  That will keep you updated when I post our activities throught next year.  If you use Facebook, you can join the Oh My Word! page there.  And if you use Twitter, my updates will include the hashtag #onmyword.

All you need to do for now is select the word you will focus on in 2010.  In order to do this, just be open.  Spend a few moments being still and quiet and listen.  It might not come to you immediately.  Be patient and wait.  If you don’t feel this method is working after a few days, look through books or magazines.  Pay special attention to any words that you are attracted to.  Don’t analyze it.  Just be willing to be drawn into any particular word.  If it speaks to you, then that might be your word.

My word for 2010 is acceptance.  The word I have used for several years in a row was harmony.  It took several years to bring that into my life because when I chose it I was living in anything but harmony.  It took lots of patience and time, but I did it.  I have a life of complete harmony now!!  So, I think it’s time for some serious self-acceptance.  But just as you can’t give love away unless you have it for yourself, you also can’t give acceptance to others unless you accept yourself.  That’s my mission for next year.  I want to completely accept everything about myself.  I’ve worked on change for most of my adult life.  That’s a worthy goal but after years of focusing on what’s “wrong” I’m ready to just BE!

This was a visual journal type thing I made many  years ago.   It represents all the people past and present that made me who I am.  During the process of creating this collage, I realized how many people had been, and still were, in my life that weren’t helping me grow in a positive way.  Around that time, I saw a quotation that said something like, “Surround yourself with people who love you.”  I thought that was ridiculous.  To think that someone could control who was around them seemed impossible to me.

I will be 60 years old this coming Sunday. I was in my 40′s when I made that collage.  The years from then to now have afforded me some amazing opportunities to learn about myself and discover abilities that I had didn’t  realize I possessed.  Of the things I’ve learned, one of the most life-changing is that we can control the kind of people that surround us.

Since that time, I have been divorced and remarried, my kids have grown up and left home and   I’ve moved many times, including two state-to-state moves.  The people physically in my life have obviously changed but more importantly, I have chosen to nurture only those relationships that help me be who I really am. And now, as I approach my 60th birthday and the upcoming holidays, I am taking time to reflect upon who is in my life.

It is amazing that I truly am surrounded by people who love me.  There is no one in my life that brings me down, criticizes me, yells at me or demands anything of me that isn’t true to who I am.  I didn’t just wake up one day and surgically remove those people from my life.  I just sought out love and support so gradually my “tribe” shifted.  It required that I learn to believe that I’m worth loving but I did that, step by step, through writing, talking, reading and listening to loving people who offered encouragement.

It’s exciting to know that for the rest of my life, I will live in love.

Learning in a Scary Place

I have packed most of my art stuff so I did some digital art today because I just really needed to.  Every year when school starts I feel such sadness for all the kids that have to go back to school.  I know most kids do fine in school but it was such a traumatic experience for me that I just wish no kid had to go.  When I hear any mom say “I can’t wait for school to start”,  it hurts my heart.  I cried every year when my boys had to go to school.  If I had known then what I know now, I would have home schooled them.

Most of my career as an occupational therapist I worked in the public schools.  So many kids just aren’t wired to sit in a desk 6 hours a day.  If only we could find a way to allow all kids to learn the way they need to learn.  So many times a child was referred to me because “his handwriting is awful”.  The solution would be something as simple as letting him write with a felt tip pen or letting him sit with his knee up to stabilize his arm.  But teachers would not allow these simple solutions because “every student has to do things the same way or it will disrupt the class”.

So, here’s to all the kids who are starting back to school.  May you be allowed to be yourself – to learn and grow and blossom with your spirit still intact.

I live in an apartment above my sister. Her husband died in May so she is moving out of the home they’ve lived in for over 30 years. She is, of course, still grieving the loss of her husband, so moving is a very big challenge for her. I have been helping her find an apartment, organize people to help her pack and help her do all the extraneous things involved in a move. I am glad that I was here with her during this time. She’s always been my big sister in the strictest sense, so she’s been there for me all my life. Now I have an opportunity to be here for her.

Since I am getting married in October, I would have been moving then. But since she’s moving next week, it meant that I am moving to Mister’s house this weekend. So I’ve spent the last couple of weeks packing and loading Mister’s truck as he hauled loads to his house for me. This weekend he will get the last load and I’ll be moved.

During this moving adventure I’m also still working on wedding plans. I’ve never had a church wedding so I had no idea how much work is involved. It’s complicated because all Mister’s family, except his son, live pretty far away. And my kids live in TX, so that has been challenging to coordinate and organize everything with them.

Mister’s son’s girlfriend works at a liquor store so she has gotten us an abundance of boxes!! That has been a lifesaver. But, I’ve learned a tip I want to share. Inside liquor boxes are dividers that are made of cardboard similar to chipboard. Lots of liquor stores put their boxes out each day. Check in your town to find where, and go get some of those dividers. They are great for atc’s, die cuts, journal covers, and probably a lot more I haven’t thought of yet. As tempting as it is, I haven’t saved any for myself. While in the throes of dealing with all this art stuff I’ve already accumulated, I just couldn’t bring myself to save yet something else to pack. But, you can be that when I’m all settled, I’ll be getting a stash of them!

I’ve also learned that having to pack all my art supplies has given me the opportunity to re-evaluate which media I am really still interested in. It has been nice to go through everything and realize that there are things that I’m just not that interested in any more. I have no regrets, though. I’m glad I tried all the things I did, because I learned something from everything, even if I sucked at it.

A big thing I learned is about love. When you have struggles or big events in your life, if you are surrounded by people who love you, everything goes smoothly. Well, maybe not smoothly, but people are just there for you. And that makes anything easier.

Mister has been right here helping my sister with all the things you just need a man to do or decide. He has hauled boxes, helped me pack, hauled loaded boxes up and down stairs, loaded that truck up I don’t know how many times, and never once got cranky or complained.

My friends have jumped in to do things for the wedding in abundance!! I’ve had so much help. And I’m talking about my online friends, too!! When I receive all the things they are making for me, I’ll take pictures and tell you who made what. It is just amazing to me that so many people are willing to do so much for me.

Life is hard. Life is good.

This week was the 40th anniversary of the Woodstock concert.  As I watched the coverage from various tv news shows, I got the feeling that anyone watching, who wasn’t a teenager during that era, might get the idea that all young people are represented in the people attending Woodstock.  I’m going to offer my view of that time. My view is that of a very normal 19 year old living in a metropolitan area at the time.

I had graduated from high school a year before Woodstock.  I was still living at home, in Dallas, TX.  I listened to rock and country music and I worked in a hospital.  I was pretty typical of most young people at that time.  I drank but had never even seen marijuana and knew no one who used it, except the boyfriend of my friend.  He had just come back from Viet Nam.  We all thought he was so worldly that he knew what marijuana was.  Within a couple of years, we all knew what it was, but not in 1969.

I was not politically active.  I didn’t know anything about the free love movement or who “the man” was.  I liked music because of the way it sounded. If it had a political message it was lost on me.

I was going to movies like Bonnie and Clyde,  going dancing on weekends and trying to get my boyfriend to buy me an engagement ring.   I was jealous of my friend who got to drive her boyfriend’s ’69 Mach I Mustang.  My boyfriend had a 62 Chevy and wouldn’t let me drive it.  I often danced to Willie Nelson’s band, who wore iridescent blue suits, skinny black ties and all had short hair.

I don’t know who the people were who hitchhiked to Woodstock from TX.  I dont’ think I even knew it was happening.  I truly wonder what subculture it was that knew and and wanted to go to Woodstock.

If I had, somehow, shown up I would have been terrified!  I had never been around drugs.  And I was very respectful to authority.  I would have been very scared to break any rules, expecially taking off my clothes in front of people!  I doubt I would have kissed my boyfriend in front of people.

A couple of years later when I started college, I had my first encounter with what are now called hippies.  They called themselve “freaks”.   They were very poor and always bummed pens, cigarettes and money off other students.  They were dirty and had nappy hair and beards.  They were not particularly political, but more interested in drugs, booze and sex.   I’m sure that wasn’t the case everywhere, but it was in Denton, TX.

Nationwide, the young people who shunned the established norms, did make some big changes in our society.  Equality for women came from this movement, as did diversity and tolerance for minorities.  There were some brilliant people in this movement that had a lot to do with the technology explosion.  Their goals were not met, but their ideals did affect change in the U.S.

I feel proud of those of us (the majority of young people in the late 60′s and early 70′s) who were not activists for free love, drugs and social change.  And wanted to speak for all of us, when the fringe gets all the media attention.  We, too, made a contribution to society.  We lived by the rules, went to Viet Nam, worked for the Peace Corps, went to college, raised families, voted and paid our taxes.