Even before she named it out loud, I suspected its presence.

Even before she said the words, I heard them spoken in everything she did.

She was disappearing before my eyes. Vanishing. Carving out the soft curves of her body. The edges of her bones becoming visible beneath her skin.

I felt powerless. Helpless. Confused.

To confront or not to confront? To ask or to let go? Be patient or inquisitive?

We talked around it. I shared articles I thought would interest her about self-esteem. Self-worth. I talked about my own healing journey from abuse. Wrote  my blog and purposefully wrote about body image, self-concept. I know she read what I wrote. I know she heard the words. Saw the love shimmering.

But what I couldn’t know was how no matter what I said, what I did, how much I loved her, how much I cherished every cell of her being, she could not hear nor feel nor acknowledge nor see the beauty I saw. She could not hear the words, take in the truth, feel the Love. All she could feel was the pain of being lost in the maws of a monster  insisting she was unworthy. A monster who consumed every thought she had, every morsel of food she took into her body, everything she did.

ED held the reins of her existence. ED decided her destiny and she was lost in his vicious insistence that the only way to become worth, to be free,  to live was to be less, get smaller, become invisible.

It is Eating Disorder Awareness Week in Canada.

Alexis, my eldest daughter is one of EDs victims.

She works everyday to be a survivor. And one day, she will be its victor.

For now, it is a daily journey of one breath at a time. One conscious choice of LIFE over ED. Of choosing worthiness over worthlessness. Of picking up a fork and eating that last piece of pie, of taking that forbidden bite of fruit without throwing her hard won progress away in the name of EDs insistence he is the master of her body. The keeper of her life. The holder of her destiny.

As a mother of a daughter with an eating disorder I too must stay conscious. I too must choose LIFE over ED. I too must choose to be Loving. Informed. and Fiercely Embracing of my daughter exactly as she is.

I cannot shy away from this monster who would consume her. I cannot turn my back on EDs power to speak lies.

I must stay committed to the truth.

She is not ED. And ED is not her.

ED is a mental health disorder that has taken up residence in her mind and body.

ED can be conquered. ED can be outed.

As long as we speak up. As long as we stay conscious. As long as we stand in the light.

ED has no power in the light. Though ED would like me to keep dragging the past forward, scouring my memory banks searching for that one clue, that one moment in time that would say, ‘here’s where it started’ so that I can retrace our steps and unravel the source of EDs presence.

That’s when ED wins. When I step out of the light of this moment to live in the darkness of my fear.

I will not do it. I will not let ED have his way to believing he owns my daughter.

I choose LIFE over ED. My daughter deserves it. I will not waver in my resolve to love her, exactly the way she is. To speak truth. To speak up. To speak out.

ED cannot survive when we let go of silence. ED does not like anyone to have a voice.

I cannot oust ED from my daughter’s mind and body.

I can speak up and in my voice, and all the voices of its victims, survivors and victors, joining together we can shine a light on the darkness so that everyone can one day see their way to freedom.

It is Eating Disorder Awareness week in Canada. Let’s all play a role in lighting up the darkness. Let’s choose LIFE over ED and any other disorder that would have anyone believe they are not worthy. 

We are all worthy. Of life. Of love. Of joy. Of freedom. We are all worthy.

Alexis’ blog today, In the Broken, is a song of courage, gratitude, bravery and love — It can be read HERE.

Therapist, teacher, counselor and all around amazing woman Jodi Aman, writes a thought-provoking, spirit stirring blog today called, “Can you be too generous? I don’t think so.”

Jodi writes about one of the many simple tools to living a better life that Choices teacher — Giving is receiving. More than that though, giving can also be healing, writes Jodi.  She demonstrates its healing powers through a story she tells about a day when, in great distress, she saw a tiny turtle lying on the ground, a piece of gravel in its eye, its body dehydrated. The act of picking it up, giving it water, taking care of it until it could be released to the river, completely shifted her thinking from her own pain to the turtle’s distress and what she could do to help it — and in that moment, she was healed.

Jodi writes, You can give and be a victim of it, and you can give and not be a victim of it. 

It is all in our attitude. Our choices. Our willingness to let go of pain to move into the promise of hope and healing.

What if, giving is healing?

What if, when I give I am feeding my heart, and my mind, what it most needs?

Several years ago, when I was in the first days and weeks of awakening from a relationship that had been killing me, I chose to get actively engaged in my healing by giving back. Every Tuesday morning I would ride my bicycle to a church some miles away and join with a group of people who made sandwiches for the lost souls who lived on the streets of East Vancouver, a notoriously drug-riddled area of the city where junkies and prostitutes and dealers jostled for attention.

Making those sandwiches was just such an act as Jodi describes in her article.

In buttering the bread, layering it with meat and cheese, my thinking shifted from my own woes to thoughts of the people who would be biting into the sandwiches I was making. I imagined that when they bit into each sandwich, they would feel the one thing they couldn’t see that I was consciously layering between each bread slice — the  one thing I needed most in those first fragile days of my recovery, self-love. (My TEDx talk from a couple of years ago, Lessons in Love, describes the power of that act.)

In the conversation around me, in connecting into community, I was lifted out of my own pain to a community of giving and receiving. In the stories we shared, the laughter, the prayers, I felt connected, supported, part of something greater than myself. I wasn’t different than the people I was making sandwiches with. I wasn’t ‘other’ than the people for whom we were making sandwiches. We were all one. All connected.

In giving back I received the gift of healing.

It was powerful.

So often, our minds become trapped in the darkness of our pain, churning around and around the same thoughts of what is wrong as if continually thinking about them will pulverize them into sand. Instead of minimizing our pain though, our continual thinking about it reminds us of all that went wrong, all that is not right, and in those reminders we feel hopeless, exhausted and defeated. And in our exhaustion, we tell ourselves there’s nothing we can do, nothing we can change, nowhere else to go that will be any different.

It’s not true.

There is always something we can change. Our attitude. Our position. Our perspective can all change when we give back, no matter how broken, defeated or exhausted we are, giving back feeds the soul.

I saw this constantly at the homeless shelter where I used to work. People who had nothing, choosing to give to others. When asked why they volunteered, the response was always the same, ‘it makes me feel good’; ‘it takes my mind off my troubles’, ‘because I can’. It was those who chose to volunteer clearing tables, washing dishes, sweeping floors who had the greatest sense of grace in the chaotic world of a homeless shelter.

Giving back is healing.

Give back to yourself today and take a few moments to read Jodi’s article. It’s great soul food.

Can you be too generous? I don’t think so.

I cleaned my office yesterday.

Over the holidays, it had become the repository of all things not Christmas. After the holidays, it remained the repository of all things not Christmas and everything else that had nowhere to reside in the house.

Having a messy office stunts my creativity. It inhibits my time spent at the keyboard. It gives me anxiety. Makes my mind feel chaotic.

It was time to make it stop.

And I finally figured out, after one month of allowing it to stay messy, that the office fairies were not going to magically appear and make it all better.

It was up to me.

What do you do with all those papers and ephemera that sit about? Mail. Flyers. Cards I want to keep because I like the image and won’t that be just so perfect for a painting?

Well… I can tell you what I did. I created three piles. One for trash — and that got piled in the garbage bag. One for ‘need to keep to look at’ and one for ‘artful ideas’. If it didn’t fit in 2 or 3, it went into 1. No questions asked.

Unless of course, it had C.C.s name on it or one of my daughters.

They got their own piles.

If I’d taken before and after photos you’d be amazed that I could even find my desk before I cleaned it up. I was. Between piles of books, mail, papers, and an assortment of unidentified objects, other than the space where my laptop sits, there was little room for working.

No wonder I was feeling so creatively stunted on the page. I was all boxed in with mess!

I told C.C. afterwards that I don’t create well in chaos. Even in the studio, while it is designed to be able to leave ‘the mess’ in place, I don’t like it to be chaotic messy. I like it to be orderly enough that I can find what I’m looking for and have space to put things as I work. When it’s messy and chaotic, I feel edgy, my skin itches and my nerves are all jangly inside my body.

I create more freely when the space around me is tidy.

It doesn’t mean there’s no clutter, or excess. It just means that what is there is not randomly strewn across every surface.

Which is interesting given that in colour personality typing, Gold is not very prominent in my personality. (You can take a colour test HERE)

I’m fairly balanced in Green, Blue, Orange —  I like to think my way through problems, create out-of-the-box solutions and go with the flow. I do not like routine nor structure, and I definitely don’t like rules.

Which is a good thing because when it comes to art-making, I tend to work from that space that says — there are no rules. And if I find one, curiosity will always drive me to want to see what happens if I break it, stretch it, reconfigure it, adapt it. Usually, what happens is, I find myself immersed in the creative process, feeling alive and enlivened by the very act of creation.

Which is what I love to do most.

So, yesterday, after I had cleaned up my office, I spent a few hours at my newly uncovered desk and created….THIS!  (click on the link and see what the Basement Bombshells Art Collective is up to) 🙂

I awaken and wonder what the day will bring. It will happen, soon enough. For now, I lie in the dark and feel the air moving around me, the stillness of the house all around me. I feel the night lift to awaken to daybreak slipping through the cracks at the edge of the horizon.

This is morning.

This is a new day dawning.

This is my world.

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My blog friend Sandra Heska King offers up Still Saturday every week. Today’s Still Saturday, with her invitation towards ‘being nothing’ and the words of Mary Oliver she shares,  inspired my poetic soul to write my own Still Saturday contribution over on my poetry blog, A Poetry Affair.

It is a wonderful feeling, to awaken to the stillness of a Saturday morning quietly stretching into the day and feel the muse stirring deep within my roots.

Summer is in the distance. Snow covers the ground and still, I am mindful of the sky above me.

What the sky sees

— thank you Mary Oliver and Sandra for the inspiration.

Art Journal: theme DARE

The message was terrifying. A sad smiley face and the words written in soft blue across my computer screen. “Ooops. Google couldn’t find dareboldly.com. Did you mean darebody.com?”

No. I did not mean dare body. I meant dare boldly. I typed it into the browser bar again. Ahh, if fingers talk do you think Google can hear calling it an idiot beneath my typing?  Hope not!!!!

But then I wonder… maybe it can. I get the same message. Can’t find it.

What do you mean you can’t find it? I was just on it. Granted. It was all messed up. The formatting all HTMLy and linear with no graphics and little beauty. But it’s there you idiot. (note to self. Do not call anyone or anything an idiot, even in cyberland. It’s not good for your state of mind.)

Right. But where was I in my panic attack? Oh yah. Terrified to type the letters to my URL into my browser again just in case it was true. All was lost…

Dare I try it again?

My heart was pounding. My body tensing up as fast as a flash freeze  killing off all access to air as it wrapped its icy grip around the naked branches of a winter-bare tree. 

I opened a new browser. Entered the URL.

Whew!

The cyber-gremlins hadn’t stolen my blog. It was all there.

But for a moment, I had thought it was all gone. I had believed it was destroyed. Vanished. Evaporated. Disappeared into the abyss never to be seen again.

It only took an instant. It only took one message to momentarily pull me from my path, to tear away my peace of mind and sense of rightness with the world.

Yeah. All it took to set my heart racing, my temples pounding and my pulse tripping was a message from Google.

Pretty scary.

I am constantly astounded, and fascinated, by how fragile peace of mind can be sometimes. How the voices of doom can be so close. How the victim’s call can be so seductive.

In the few moments it took for my blog to right itself, for Google to quit sending me dire notes, for cyberspace to give it all back in the right format, I fell into that place where messages of, “I told you so.” “It was bound to happen. Nothing ever goes right for you.” leapt into the darkness of my thoughts spiralling into doom.

Ain’t gonna happen.

But man, it sure is a good wake-up call to remember, the darkness is as close as the edge of the light.

It sure is a fascinating look into how easy it is to get pulled from ease into disquiet. To see how trust and all its demands continues to require my attention, my commitment, my Be. Do. Have of living life in the rapture of now, trusting in the process, trusting in the universe around me, trusting in the Divine to be one with me, of me, within me, championing my well-being, celebrating each step I take, in darkness and in light.

And yes, I know it was just a momentary glitch in cyberspace. No big deal.

But… when the deal is related to this space, this place where I have invested so many words, feelings, thoughts, ideas. This place that has taught me to be vulnerable, open, transparent and dare I say it, trusting. Well, the lesson is always there. The opportunity to dive deeper, learn and explore more, always present.

Cyberspace caught my attention this morning. And in its wake-up call, I was reminded to keep the light on what I’m doing and, to stay unattached to the outcome.

I was also reminded to do the right thing — like maybe, it’s time to backup my database?

Now that would be a good idea!

From my art journal

We are standing on the sidewalk saying our good-byes, our breath an icy cloud mingling between us, our bodies huddled into our winter clothing. We’ve been talking about a joint project we’d like to engage in and she reminds me that the group is Christian based. “Are you okay with that?” she asks.

“The faith of anyone is not my issue,” I say. “My greatest leap of faith is to jump without a label.”

“What does that mean?” she asks.

And I stumble over the words, trying to articulate the depth of my knowing of who I am and what it means to travel everyday with faith, and no label.

I am a rebel at heart. A soul revolutionary. A seeker. A voyager into spirit matters.

I believe in God, a being greater than all, a Higher Power. I believe in the Creator. In the goodness of the Universe. In the greatness of life, the magnificence of the human being.

I believe there is God in each of us and each of us is an expression of the Divine. Miracles of Life. Vessels of Love.

I believe Jesus walked the earth, that the apostles and saints were his disciples. That holy men and women continue to fill our world with goodness. That buried deep within each of us is the capacity for evil and that the only way to not give it breath is through Love.

I believe that Love is the greatest energy. It is limitless. Unending. Forever. Everywhere.

I believe Love flows all around and through and under and into and within each of us.

And I believe that for me, letting go of the label of who I am in the world gives me the grace to simply be, who I am in the world.

It has taken me a long time to reach this place where I can pray comfortably in my faith, and not claim affiliation, connection, oneness with any religion, creed, or doctrine.

I believe in angels. I believe in miracles. I believe in Love.

It is a personal journey for me. A place of deep meaning. Of revelation. Of exploration. It is a place where I know, deep within me, that the Universe is with me, supporting me, loving me, cheering me on and holding space for all my beauty to shine.

It is not someone else’s responsibility to allow me to shine, to flower, to blossom and grow. It is not someone else’s job. It is mine. And when I trust, in Life and Love and miracles and wonder, when I trust in the universe to turn up with me, I turn up in my magnificence, fearlessly in Love with all that I am.

I believe spirit is eternal. That life in our human form is part of soul’s journey home to spirit.

I believe we are all magnificent creations. The divine expression of amazing grace.

And in my belief, I believe everyone is entitled to pray at their own altar, kneel before the God or gods of their choosing, and honour life in their own special way.

I believe that when we stop hurting others in the name of God and stop killing in our quest for peace and judging for the sake of holding our ground, we will find ourselves in that place where our magnificence shines for all the world to see the wonder and awe of our human condition dancing in the light of love.

And until that time, I believe it is my right, and my duty, to stand in Love for what I know is true for me and to Love the truth of others so that we all have space to shimmer in the light of our shared human connection.

I believe we are all one and in our oneness, there is no difference between us other than the labels we carry to name our beliefs.

Art Journal Theme 4: Create

A friend came over to paint with me on Saturday. She doesn’t paint, in fact, if you ask her, she’ll tell you she doesn’t have a creative bone in her body. Which isn’t quite the truth.

I believe everyone has creative bones in their body. It’s just sometimes, we don’t exercise them or let them express themselves freely. Sometimes, we block the muse with our assertions we don’t have one, or can’t hear her, or don’t like her attitude. Sometimes, the daily noise in our lives gets so loud, she can’t find her way through the muck.

But she is always there, waiting, caring, knowing your heart’s calling to express yourself.

Sure, there are those who can draw straight, curved, crooked and every kind of wicked line and make just a line look beautiful. And there are those who can write a poem that makes hearts weep and catch an image on film that takes your breath away.

Creativity isn’t just in the medium that appear on canvas or the page or photographic paper.

Creativity is expressed in everything we do. How you set the dinner table, dress yourself, decorate your home are all acts of creativity. Heck, there’s even creativity in how people add up numbers or  can see the beauty in scientific data.

Creativity is everywhere, and when we let ourselves freely express our own unique creative urges, we set our world on fire.

Allowing myself to explore my creative core has given me the freedom to become authentically me, to express all of me, not just the parts I judge fit for human consumption.

Delving into my creativity has taught me an amazing truth. It’s allowed me to explore a question that has continually risen up through meditation and through living. And that question is:  What if I’m not broken?

What if the pieces of me are all there, fit together, some a little too tightly, some a little too loose, but the truth is, when I treat myself as broken, I see myself as a mess. As bits and pieces falling off. As incomplete. Unfinished. Unfixable.

What if I make the assumption…. I am not broken… And then live from that place?

What if I choose to believe in my completeness and embrace my wholeness without fearing the parts where my wiring is a bit crossed, or my thinking a bit crooked? What if I simply accept that those bits make up the whole — and the whole is beautifully, magnificently, authentically me.  All of it. Not just the parts I like, or want to accept, or am willing to put on display. All of it. All of me. Every itty bitty, chipped, and cracked and whole and complete bit. It’s all me and all the sum of the parts adds up to one amazing, expressive and creative soul?

And what if, in my willingness to accept ‘I am not broken’, letting myself go wild in my creative expression is the best way I can inspire others to see the beauty and wonder and magnificence of who they are?

What if, my creative expression is how my light pierces the darkness?

What if, each of us allowed ourselves to shine our lights, no matter how scared or broken we believe we are?

What if, it’s all about our willingness to shine and be magnificent, in all our broken down, cracked up, crooked and mis-wired ways?

All of us are creative, in our own ways. None of us are broken. It’s just our wiring has gotten crossed, our arteries blocked with lies appearing as truth, with denial appearing as right, and fear parading as fact.

Spending as much time in the studio as I have recently has given me the gift of self-expression — without fear. It’s unplugged my arteries, rewired my thinking as to who I am and what I am and what I do, and bring, to the world.

It’s set me free to express myself without judging the output, outcome, or awkwardness of my expression — in everything I do. From making dinner to walking the dog to painting on canvas..

A girlfriend came to paint with me on Saturday. In her assertions that she just can’t do it, or it’s not her thing, I saw me with my muse. She’s been calling me to rise up and start a creative revolution. She’s been calling out to me to get busy and live on purpose.

I am an alive and radiant woman, touching hearts, opening minds to set spirits free.