Stepping Large and Lovingly into 2018
"The two most important days of your life are the day you were born and the day you find out why."
- Mark Twain
During the week of Thanksgiving, words were set aside in order to reconnect to my artist self. I spent sixteen hours in a Photoshop workshop called "Bird Woman" learning techniques to collage photographs, and transformed my human self into an Eagle Woman. It was both a creative stretching and a spiritual quest toward becoming larger than my habitual thoughts—to visually empower myself in ways I'd ignored or didn't know existed until a book insisted on being written, and an eagle's face beckoned.
What I discovered in those hours of blurring the line between my perceived self and what Mark Twain calls my "why" is that it was time to soar above what weighs me down, with perseverance, curiosity, awareness, self-love, self-kindness, and joy.
Here is the collage I created, and another quote that has touched me in the last days of this turbulent year. To honor, and then engage our strengths, gifts, and inner moxie is akin to an eagle that despite snow covering both its nest and its body up to its beak, sits calmly on its precious eggs ensuring they will hatch.
To actively use all we have to offer as we step into a larger self and larger possibilities is more than just needed—it's inevitable. In these last days of 2017, acknowledge what has shaken you out of your old "normal" and how you have grown because of it. If the eagle found me, so too is your larger self looking for you. Give it a welcoming handshake or hug when the two of you meet. Enjoy your hatching.
"I am, I can, and I will."
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Calming Practice: Gifts of Goodwill
"Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly."
- G. K. Chesterton
Add the practice of fun, laughter, kindness, and overall goodwill to your days.