What is failure?

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I spend the evening pouring paint on an old canvas. I was never quite happy with this piece of work. Never content it was finished. Yesterday I decided to take it on. To dive further into the story it is trying to tell.

I have a vision, an idea of what I want to create. Of the painting’s story. I am excited.

Two hours of pouring, hair-dryer blowing, torching, moving the canvas this way and that, I am scraping the paint off, letting it slide into an old bucket.

I breathe.

It is the second painting in a row which has not pleased me. Not ‘measured up’.

I breathe again.

Flutters of panic stir the outer reaches of my mind.

“It’s a trend!” the critter hisses. “You’ve lost your touch. You’re a failure. But then, you were just trying to fool yourself into believing you were an artist anyway. Give it up.”

I breathe again and turn to face the imaginary but oh so real culprit of my negative thinking.

“I see you,” I tell him. “I see you and I know your fear. I know you’re just trying to keep me safe. That you are simply doing your best to prevent me from feeling the pain of disappointment. Failure. It’s okay. Painting bad is like being willing to write bad. I gotta go through the rough spots to get to the good. It’s never a failure. It’s all just part of the invitation to begin again from where I am.”

The critter hisses and stomps his feet and puffs up his body in preparation of giving me another blast of limiting beliefs he’s created to keep me from feeling the pains of life, to prevent me from stepping so far out of my comfort zone I lose the way back.

I breathe.. Into fear. Uncertainty. Confusion. Resistance. The unknown.

I don’t need a comfort zone to keep me safe. I need wide-open spaces. The freedom to explore what it means to live on the other side of who I am when I dare to cross the boundary from being safe in who I am to honouring the sacred of all I am.

I breathe and remind myself that not every painting becomes a final project in one go. Just as the canvas I was painting on began two years ago and only now is being viewed as full of possibilities, going through the messy is part of the journey of getting to the good parts.

It is all part of the process.

And the first painting that ‘failed’ slips into my thoughts. It’s pretty ugly… at this point. But a random thought enters. What if…. and ideas on what I can do to delve into its story, to reveal its mysteries rise above my fears.

Ooooh.  That could be fun, I think. And ‘what if’s’ of trying this or that dance in my thoughts.

I want to race down to my studio. To pull out my pens and get to work.

It’s not that time of day. I have to ‘get to work’. I have meetings to attend, a Strat Plan to complete. interviews.

I breathe again.

It’s okay.

I’m okay.

It’s all just part of the process to get from here to there. It’s all just part of the invitation.

I begin again.

Life is a journey and everything on my path is necessary. It is all part of the Sacred.

 

Namaste.

 

 

Is this the new norm?

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I am wondering if this is my new norm.

I awake at 5am. Check the time. Roll over. Drift off into the exquisiteness of a Monday morning with no rushing about on my agenda.

At 7 I arise, and while it feels late and decadent even, I do not rush about. Beau stays in bed with his dad. I come into the kitchen, make myself a latte. Watch the river flow past. Sit down at my desk. Breathe into the silence. Meditate. When I open my eyes, the river continues to flow past yet every drop is different. I notice the snow that fell over the weekend is gone. It disappeared overnight. I thank the morning. The buds appearing on the branches of the trees outside my window. A squirrel leaping from one branch to another. They all add texture and wonder to my morning.

I turn on my computer and a popup heralds a Youtube art tutorial video. It catches my attention. I watch it, get inspired and watch another in the series.

Ideas percolate.

I get excited about the possibilities.

Is this my new norm?

To savour morning’s passing without an agenda constraining me.

I have things to do. Places to go.

But first. Time to savour the morning.

I am not working today. At least, not at the office.  I have some days to use up by the end of the month. As my artshow is Friday/Saturday, I’m using today to get organized. Yesterday, I mounted paintings, created the file for my flower cards that I’ll drop off at the printer later this morning, on my way to my massage. (The painting above is one of the cards.) Other than that, I’ve got time to be present in the sun’s rising. To take Beau for a long leisurely walk. To work on a painting I’m thinking of putting in the show if I get it finished. If not, there will be other shows.

I have four day work weeks from now until the end of May when I will leave my place of employment for the last time. In fact, with the days off I’m using up, I have a total of 12 days to work at the office. When I put it in the context of days to complete, it doesn’t seem like much! Yet, when I compare the time to work versus how much I still have to complete, I can feel the panic arising within me. There’s still a lot to be done.

I breathe into my fluttering heart and the knot in my stomach. I can only do my best. It is not all mine to fix, complete, do.

I practice releasing.

I am releasing. I am releasing. I am releasing.

I breathe. Deeply. In. Out. In. Out.

At a dinner party on Saturday night someone asked me if I was nervous about losing my identify. I laughed. I can’t lose my identity, I told them.  My job is not my identity.  I am more than my title, my profession, my being known in the sector in which I work. My ‘identity is a beautiful tapestry woven together in the vital and life-giving colours I create when I live my life leaning into the creative edge of all this is possible when I let go of believing what I do that pays me, defines me.

I am exploring my new norm today.

I think I like it.

 

 

When life throws up a speed bump, how will you grow?

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No 37 #ShePersisted
The Naked Truth
Mixed Media on canvas paper
11 x 14″
@2017 Louise Gallagher

You know when things happen in your life and you think…. “Wow. I didn’t see that coming?”

And then, it’s there in front of you. And, even though you know it isn’t the best course of action, what you really want to do is rail against it and fling up your hands and stomp your feet and exclaim, “Why me?” or something to that affect?

Take a breath.

Step back.

Get present.

Breathe.

Playing the victim. Pointing fingers at the other and highlighting their faults, limitations, wrongness – it just creates more chaos and angst.

It ain’t easy in the face of adversity to turn up and stay present without fearing the darkness. It is necessary if you are to weather life’s storms without getting pulled from your course, from the centre of your “I” of who you are and how you strive to be in the world.

Stepping into your integrity, speaking your truth with a kind and compassionate heart, being congruent in all your actions, accepting and recognizing there is truth in all things and not all things are true, creates a world of possibility. It shines light into the darkness and creates space for all our shared human condition to be present, including frailties and imperfections.

Awhile ago, someone accused me of acting in a way that took me by surprise. Being called something that is not a trait I admire, wish to emulate or be known as, felt confusing. Yet, there I was, having to face someone else’s assertions they were experiencing me in a way I do not want to be.

It was humbling.

To defend myself, I felt the urge to pull out everything I knew about the other that would make them look small, less than, other than the remarkable human being I know them capable of being.

to find my center, to stay grounded in my truth, I had to…

Take a breath.

Step back.

Get present.

Breathe.

Trying to make someone else look small does not make me the bigger person. It just makes me less than who and how I want to be in the world. To walk with integrity in my life is more important than playing in the mud of someone else’s chaos, pain or whatever it is they are experiencing that causes them to do the things they do for reasons I can’t make sense of. In those situations, my integrity must trump getting down and dirty

My intention in life is to celebrate people, to connect through our magnificence, to create space for everyone around me to shine bright. In the lightness of our being bright lights of possibility, we illuminate the path for all the world to see, violence, bullying, discrimination, sexism, racism, anti-humanism do not create a world of peace, harmony, love and joy. They destroy humankind.

Life is a fascinating journey. It brings opportunities to shine, to express our magnificence, to be our best selves through the good times and the tough. It’s easy to walk with integrity when things are going well in your life, the challenge is always to stay true to yourself when the going gets rough and the rough is calling you to get down and dirty to ease your pain or confusion.

Standing in your integrity means letting go of the need to act out. It means turning up, speaking your truth, walking your path with integrity and staying unattached to the outcome.

And when you do that, life’s hurdles become opportunities to learn and grow and be the more of who and how you want to be in the world, in every kind of weather.

 

 

Namaste.

Critters and other inner beasts

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A friend and I are talking about inner discord. “I was surprised to read about your struggle with your internal critter,” she says. “I always think you’ve got everything so together.”

I laughed.

Recognizing and acknowledging my inner critter isn’t about not having things ‘together’, it’s about seeing everything fitting together the way it does, critter and all and accepting it is all essential to the whole of my life.

I don’t judge myself for those inner struggles with the critter, I told my friend. They are imminently human and, because I like to celebrate my human condition, I accept my struggles and celebrate my capacity to move through them — sometimes with grace and ease. Other times kicking and screaming as I pound my fists against the injustices of the world around me. Even when I falter and give into ‘the veg in front of the TV’, I celebrate my process. If I’m going to give myself that space, why not accept with grace my choices?

For me, it is about our human struggle with the need to be perceived, or our need to attain, perfection.

I will be perfect when I know no struggle, we tell ourselves.

My life will be perfect when I know no conflict.

Ain’t gonna happen.

Living life fully involves struggle and conflict. It involves engaging deeply with life, not just skimming its surface in search of the easy, constantly staying on the lookout for quick exits from anything that involves going deeper than the superficial.

Life is a joyful, complicated, messy journey. How we navigate its many byways and detours, how we travel its unknown depths determines the quality of our experience, not the journey itself.

The journey is what the journey is. Somedays, it feels like a walk through the park, every sight and sound a joyous reflection of our peace of mind. Other days, we wonder if we need to go back to bed and get up on the other side. On those days where discord abounds, we get to decide if we fight against it, or lovingly delve into what is happening within to create our angst. It’s always a choice. And it’s always our choice, even on those days when we tell ourselves we have no choice.

Every day, we are the judge, the juror, the architect, the conductor of our experience. Choosing to love ourselves in all our complexities creates space for the journey to be less of a struggle against ourselves and more of an adventure into falling in love with ourselves.

Falling in love with ourselves isn’t about seeing only what we judge to be the beautiful or worthy about ourselves. It’s about accepting all of ourselves, critters and angels, sinners and saints, those parts we deem worthy, those we don’t.

Ultimately, I gotta love all of me ’cause all of me is all I got. Loving all of me means embracing beauty and the beast. Dark and light. Yin and yang. Wounds and wisdom, without wishing I was some other way. If the way I am, the way I am being present in the world is not creating the peace, joy, compassion and love I seek, I get to choose what I do with it – and if I choose to do nothing, then that is the journey I’m on.

Change or stay stuck.

Move or stay put.

My choice.

Seeking perfection is just a way to stay stuck. It lets us off the hook of being 100% accountable for ourselves; our actions, words, thoughts, impact.

A friend told me she was surprised I struggled with my critter.

I laughed.

My critter and I know each other well. I love him in all his angst-driven chaos. Loving him doesn’t mean I give him control of my life. It just means when I recognize his strident calling for me to act out or to ‘get perfect’, I lovingly embrace his fears and pains and let him know, I am perfectly content being present with my perfectly perfect human imperfections.

 

Namaste.

 

 

 

What is always is what is.

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“Bursting Out”
Alcohol Ink on Yupo Paper
11 x 14″
2019 Louise Gallagher

Yesterday I had a lesson in expectations. I am grateful.

With the South Calgary Art Show & Sale fast approaching on May 10 & 11, I am spending as much time in my studio as I can.

Last night, when I came home from work, my beloved was engrossed in ‘Hockey Playoffs’.  I headed to the studio.

It was a struggle.

My mind was roiling about, thinking over a situation at work that is not the way I would like it to be. I was tired. Maybe even a bit grouchy. I was having trouble letting it all go so that I could sink into the joy of simply being present at my art table.

I wanted the time in my studio to be fun. Light. Airy.

I wanted to feel content. At peace. Present.

I didn’t feel any of it.

Instead, I felt the expectations of what I wanted and the contradictions of where my mind was at, weighing heavily on my entire being.

“Don’t let the worries of your day go, Louise,” the critter who likes to slide into my thinking when it knows I’m feeling tired and grouchy and make it all stinky and yucky whispered inside my head. “I mean, really. These are big worries. You need to chew on them some more.”

The calm, loving voice of reason tried to edge in. “It’s okay Louise. Just be present. In the worry. Sadness. Confusion. Disappointment. Be present and let all your emotions flow.”

The critter was having none of it, which was evident on the canvas. The colours weren’t flowing. The bottom part of the painting was a blob of dark, messy mud. “You gotta worry this bone Louise. Sure, you gotta let your emotions flow. But don’t you dare let them flow to acceptance, love and harmony. Joy and contentment. People are out to get ya’. You gotta worry about that!”

I kept pushing the paint. I kept moving it around.

I wanted to give up. To simply throw my hands in the air and say, “Fine. I’m not meant to paint tonight. I’ll just go turn on some mindless TV and veg out.”

The mess on the canvas stared back at me.

Stay or go. Give into the unease in my mind or fall into the flow of creation?

See, that’s the issue.

I know what is good for me. I know what is healing and life-giving. Being in my studio. Being in nature. Meditating. Playing. Dancing. Savouring life.

In times of stress, I sometimes like to convince myself I don’t need to turn up for me. I don’t have to be accountable for my journey.

The canvas never lies.

It reflects my lack of ease, my expectation of it being ‘easy’, my desire to not do the hard, my need to make sense of nonsense.

It also reflects my places of discord, Of not feeling congruent within myself. Like the critter urging me to give up, the canvas resists my efforts to make sense of stinkin’ thinkin’.

I entered the studio last night with the expectation that being there would be a walk in the park. That it would all just flow easily. That I would create a masterpiece without any hard work.

My expectations lead me astray. The critter lead the parade.

And then, I let go and in the surrender, I found myself falling effortlessly into the joy of creating. The result is a painting that is very different than what I expected it to be. It may not be a masterpiece, but it is a reflection of my journey from discord to ease, from expectation to anticipation of what can happen when I let go of believing ‘what is shouldn’t be what is.’

What is always is what is. How I respond, how I journey through life’s inevitable what ises that cause me unease is a reflection of where I am at, how I am in my life. When I choose to surrender expectations of how what is should be, I find myself flowing with grace in the river of life, swimming joyfully in a sea of contentment, beauty and colour.

Life is good.

Namaste.

 

 

 

How to connect heart to heart.

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I awoke from a dream about death. It had something to do with telling people all the wonderful things I saw in them, after they were gone.

Didn’t make a lot of sense. Why not tell them while we’re both alive and able to enjoy each other’s company, I wondered?

A tool we practice at Choices Seminars is the “The thing I like most about you in this moment is….” and then you name it.  There are other versions of that tool around as well. “What I appreciate about you right now….”  “I really like how you….”

You can get even more creative as my beautiful friend, mentor, inspiring human being Patricia Morgan of Solutions for Resilience does.

Her question is simple. “What do you think I think is incredible about you?”

The question always gives people pause to think before they answer. And after they’ve quietly (hesitantly/shyly…) said one thing they think you think is incredible about them, the response is…

“That’s true and that’s not the only thing. What else do you think I think is incredible about you?”

And after their second answer, the response is the same… “That’s true too and that’s not the only thing either. What else?”

After their third answer, you get to tell them more… “All those things are so true about what I think is incredible about you. What else I think is incredible about you is…..” And then name all the amazing, incredible, inspiring, beautiful things you think about them.

Believe me, they will be delighted to hear what’s on your mind about them and you will have created space for a deeper, more inspiring connection!

Human beings yearn to connect in deep and meaningful ways. It’s in our DNA. Often, though, we make it hard. We put up walls. We talk over one another. We don’t listen to eachother’s hearts. We discount each other’s voices. We listen to the voices in our own heads telling us people will think we’re silly, or we’ll be judged if we get so honest, or hurt if we are too vulnerable.

Connecting with people is pretty simple.  The first step is to ask a question. Ask them about who they are, what makes their heart beat, what gives them joy, what brings them peace, what inspires them when they get up in the morning.

The second step is to listen deeply to their answers. Let them tell you what’s on their minds, their hearts, what’s rumbling in their tummies and stirring their possibilities.

The third step to connecting to people is to repeat the above, again and again and again.

Because let’s face it, the answer to who we are in the world, how we want to be seen often stays locked inside us, disconnecting us from those around us with whom we’d really like to feel connection.

It isn’t until we ask ourselves, or someone else asks us:  What makes you heart beat? What inspires you to get up in the morning? What do you do that makes a world of difference?, that we really start to feel and live into the answers of our heart’s-calling us to connect, dream big, live large.

Deep down, we all know how incredibly magnificent, special, unique we are. It’s just life has taught us a whole bunch of not so healthy ways to deny our beauty. When we learn and accept our worth is priceless, we learn how to navigate the world in new, inspiring and creative ways that ignite possibility and create a world of opportunity for better all around us.

Knowing and believing our worth is priceless is essential if we are to live our dreams, fulfill our desinty. Connecting and helping someone see their own worth is important to making the world a better place. In that connection, hearts find a common rhythm so that together, we can make a world of difference.

Namaste.

Living life in all its colours is a Choice.

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Living life in full colour
alcohol ink on yupo paper
5 x 7″
2019 Louise Gallagher

My heart is full.

After five days in the Choices Seminars room, I feel grounded, peaceful, whole.

Stepping into the Choices room felt like coming home. It felt so effortless and easy. So life-giving and fulfilling.

There is something miraculous about being in a room with people intent on finding their path out of the darkness — even when they walked into the room scared and full of trepidations that they don’t belong there, they don’t fit in, they are not welcome.

There is something so incredibly inspiring about witnessing hearts breaking through the walls their human has erected to keep themselves from feeling the pain of loss, the confusion of betrayal, the agony of grief.

We all do it to some degree or other. Life happens. We get hurt. Betrayed. Griefstricken and we desperately fight to keep ourselves safe from more pain, more sorrow, more loss. In our efforts to ease our pain, we build walls around our heart believing the wall will keep us safe. And then one day we realize, the wall has become a prison and we are trapped on the other side, convinced there is no way out. To make sense of finding ourselves imprisoned by the very walls we’ve built to keep ourselves safe, we tell ourselves, it’s better this way. We don’t need to feel, to breathe freely, to dance like no one is watching or live like this one life is a precious gift. We’re safer in our prison we tell ourselves and then we name it — our comfort zone, our safe place, our doing our best to get through the daily grind that has become our life.

The label is important to us. It has to be for us to make sense of the limiting beliefs that are holding our lives in check and our walls intact.  I’m okay in my comfort zone we say. I like it here. At least I know what to expect. At least no one can hurt me if I don’t let love in.

Imprisoned by our limiting beliefs we convince ourselves not to risk change, not to dare to try to fly, not to even breathe deeply. We’re safer that way.

There is no need to live imprisoned by our pasts, trapped in our belief we are not good enough, or too small, too big, too loud, too weak, too stupid, too much, too anything other than beautifully, exquisitely human.

But we do it. We convince ourselves our beautiful, exquisite human selves do not measure up to the expectations of voices from the past, the chaos and pain of the present or the fears of an unknown future. And in our pain and grief of having lost connection with the magnificent, exquisite human being we were born to be, we act out. We rage, we lie, we hide, we crumble beneath the weight of our sorrow, we strike out at the one’s we love, we beat ourselves up with our disappointments.

Last week, I got to witness the miracle of hearts breaking free, of minds awakening to the brilliance of their true selves and of human beings stepping into the truth of who they are when they let go of the past to live fearlessly and fiercely in the present.

I am so blessed.

Namaste.

 

What do you want more of in your life?

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Alcohol Ink on Yupo Paper
5 x 7″
2019 Louise Gallagher

This is my last post for a few days.  I am off to coach at Choices Seminars tomorrow — Long days. Short nights.  And I am excited.

There was a time when I coached at least 6 – 7 times a year.

It’s been almost 2 years since I’ve been in the room.

When I joined the team at the homeless shelter where I work, I struggled to balance worklife, homelife and such a significant volunteering commitment. Something had to give, and I let my Choices commitment go.

I am soooo excited to be back in the room for the next five days.

There is something incredibly enlivening and inspiring about being in a room where I get to witness miracles happening with every breath.

It doesn’t start out easy. Trainees walk into the room scared, confused, defiant, eager to learn, resistant to changing. They are all over the emotional map.

And then, slowly, they begin to get the idea that Choices isn’t about magic wands that will suddenly solve all their life issues and feelings of loss, unworthiness, separateness, loneliness.

Choices is about doing their own work to discover their own answers, their own way of being in this world that gives them the ‘more’ that they are looking for.

It’s one of the key questions we each get to explore in our lives, when we are willing to peel away the layers of past hurts and shame and fear and self-loathing that prevent us from seeing, ‘better is possible’.  The question is:  “What do I want more of in my life?”

For me, I want more time… to create, to spend with those I love, to laugh and sing and inspire others feel joyous and light. I want more space to simply be present in each moment, without worrying what the next will bring.

I want more of being me without the masks, without the fear that being me will bring ridicule, shame or blame.

I have been blessed. Thanks to a beautiful friend I trust deeply, I entered that room in April 2006 and began this amazing journey into peeling away the layers of the past so that I could be free in the present.

I am so grateful.

Thirteen years ago, my Choices journey began. At first, I was kind of dubious. Kind of, ho-hum, done all that digging, there’s nothing else about me I need to learn – or change — for that matter.

We don’t know what we don’t know until we’re willing to explore what’s possible when we give up believing we know it all, or that this is all there is. Blinded by our beliefs and fears and judgements over who we are, and who others are, we become stuck in the comfort zone of our unease and fear breaking free.

Over the past 13 years I have been in that room countless times and every time I come away with my own, ‘Ah Ha’s!’ that break me free just a little bit more, that give me just a little bit, or a whole lot, of what I want more of in my life.

In that room I have witnessed hearts breaking open, spirits breaking free and lives being changed for the better.  I have witnessed people choosing to drop their anger, pick up their self-esteem, walk away from relationships that were unhealthy, forgive themselves, forgive others.  I have witnessed those who felt so lost they only wanted their lives to end, claim their right to live. And I have watched miracles happen again and again as people awoke to the beauty and wonder of how incredibly powerful they are when they walk in their own truth.

I am off to coach at Choices tomorrow. Off to stand in a room where the common denominator is that our human journey is so much richer and fulfilling when we let go of what is holding us back from living the more of what we want in our lives.

No magic wands. No abracadabra’s. Just a whole lot of opportunity to walk alongside people as they learn new ways of being, new tools to use so that individually they can find their own answers to living the life of their dreams.

Namaste.

 

 

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Lessons from the studio

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5 x 7″
Alcohol Ink on Yupo Paper
2019 Louies Gallagher

_

I am in an art show May 10 & May 11.

There’s a lot to get done.

I haven’t been in this show for a couple of years. Work, busy, no time to prepare kept me from entering. As a commitment to my ‘rejuvenation’ vis á vis retirment, I decided to participate this year.

I’ve been getting ready.

Most of the work I’ll be showing will be my alocohol inks. I don’t have my studio well enough set up yet to work on large canvases and I’ve been loving working with the aochol inks so much I’ve just kept creating.

Yesterday, along with sealing my finished work with Kamar, I played with a new toy — an air brush — and even though I still don’t quite have the hang of it, I think I’m in love!

Working with alcohol inks is all about letting flow what will flow, where it will flow. It’s about layering on, taking off, trusting that whtaever happens will be okay. Sometimes, the end result doesn’t cut it. Most times, with enough play and a whole lot of alcohol, magic happens.

Three important life lessons working with alcohol inks have taught me are:

  1. You don’t need to be in control.
    • Alcohol Inks are free flowing. Sure, you can use various media such as Friska to create specific images, but the joy and pure delight (for me) comes when you simply let go and let it flow. Letting go of wanting the inks to go one way, of wanting them to blend to create a certain ‘look’ is something that you need to give up (unless you really want to drive yourself mad!). Letting go doesn’t mean you don’t care about the outcome, it just means that along the way, you take pure delight in the experience of being in the moment, are willing to risk experimenting and are flexible enough to go where the ink flows.
    • Like life, trying to be 100% in control of everyone and everything creates frustration, anxiety and disappointment. Svouring the moment, keeping an open mind, creating space for magic is vital to the experience.
  2.  The journey isn’t in knowing ‘how’, it’s in trusting you will discover the way as you go.
    • Predicting what happens when you apply ink and then layer on alcohol and more colour, use a hairdryer or airbrush or any other method of moving the ink around is part of the process, but it’s not all of the process — you gotta be willing to follow the flow. Sure, you can master the airbrush and create images that resumble a flower or leaf or tree, but working with the airbrush means staying loose enough you give the ink room to flow as it will — because seriously, you can’t ‘make’ it flow exactly where you want it to or how you want it.
    • Starting with an ‘idea’ of what you want to achieve is important — but as you move through the process, being flexible enough to adapt, and being open to new ideas as they arise is vital to creating a life that is joyful and fulfilling.
  3. Everyone has their own unique Point of View. Honour the differences.
    • Some of my paintings bring me great joy. Some, I think are okay – and then someone else sees the same painting I deem ‘blah’ and says, “Oh wow! That’s my favourite!”  and I have to smile. We all see the same thing through our own unique perspectives.
    • My sister always finds animal faces in my paintings. I don’t see them. Doesn’t mean they’re not there, it just means we are both looking at the same thing through  different eyes and points of view. She looks for faces, I tend to ‘feel’ the colours and mood of a painting. Neither is wrong. Both bring value to our lives and to our conversation (believe me, I have spent a lot of time trying to see what my sister sees and seldom do — which is what makes life so rich. We each have our own POV and can celebrate the differences by honouring where we each come from, creating space for sharing of our opinions, views, ideas.  — and just like layering on ink to create a whole new look and feel, creating space for someone else’s POV into your conversation creates a whole new landscape of texture/depth to work with!

I spent the weekend getting ready for my artshow in May.  It was a labour of love and delight that colour my world in vibrant, beautiful hues of possibility.

 

 

Follow Your Heart No 53. #ShePersisted

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No. 53  #ShePersisted Series  — Follow your Heart  —  2019 Louise Gallagther

My intent with the #ShePersisted series has been to complete 52 in the series. I just reached my goal.

And the muse is not yet finished with me.  She keeps delivering new ideas for the series. And I keep creating.

It is a process I love. A creative endeavour that challenges and fulfills me.

As I continue to explore all the muse has in store for me, as I move deeper into rejuvenation mode, I shall have more time to mediate on the messages and thus, be able to continue to write ‘The Teachings” for the each painting/message in the series.

It is an exciting journey. One that also invites me to go back to some of the original art pieces and possibly re-work the art, not necessarily ‘the message’.  The earlier pieces have a different style that became more recognizable as I continued to create in the series.

And that’s the beauty of this journey. There is no formula to follow. No rule saying I must do it one way or the other.  I get to create my own path. My own way. My own creative expression.

The Teaching

No. 53
The #ShePersisted Series
Follow Your Heart

Many years ago, Robert Frost penned one of his best known poems which ended with,

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

This card is calling you to examine where you are walking. To look closely
at your choices and see if you are choosing them for yourself
or are you following someone else’s plan, marching to someone else’s drum?

Life is full of opportunities to find your own beat, to carve your own path.
Yet, too often, we let fear of the unknown, fear of leaving the pack hold us back
from hearing the calling of our heart to follow no one person or thing, but our own beat.

Let go of fearing what others may say and listen to the voice of your heart.
Your heart knows. Listen to your heart.