Gremlins

 

 

 

'Mama told me there'd be days like this.' - Van Morrison, song quote

Lord have mercy, of course there will be, and of course strange and rare things will happen (and it seems, just to us).  We all have gremlins in our way of seeing through to peace and comfort and freedom.  If there are some residuals, some side effects, some rare and stupid complicated stuff, it will happen to me.  (Note: February 10^th I will explain more).  Sometimes things are a pattern through the years.  Whatever cause or reaction, here I am again, having a unique, to me, problem. But mother did NOT tell me this could happen, nor did anyone else.

I am pretty good at “retracing my steps” to find the original trigger of whatever problem arises.  It is crucial that we do such.  Some may not need to and go to someone who can professionally help.  To ignore, or deny will cause more problems. 

We are made of four quadrants:  physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual.  Every area can become imbalanced.  Some of us are driving around with a flat tire.  Some admit it, some deny it and go thumping through life.  We all have triggers of past trauma of some kind.  The depth of it is unique and what may seem “nothing special” to us is huge to others and visa versa.  Just know, when you finally realize that you have a flat in one of the areas that has made traveling through life very difficult, you are sad, you are anxious or you hit a panic state, and/or you are having flash backs, that is a signal that you, perhaps without warning, are losing track and you are back at a familiar difficult time.  The only cure is to get out of where you are and identify the problem.

It is so easy to drive into a pity party and find many poor-weather friends who will pity party with you.  Don’t go there.  Cocoon in and do some hard work.  While you are there, that that quiet space and place, become a butterfly or stay in that mess and never know how high you could fly.

Once you get to the bottom of it all, you cannot imagine that weights lifted off, how easy it is to travel through life, knowing that you have conquered something huge.  It is then you can enjoy what is going on outside you.  You can connect with people without feeling “hard done by”.  You will realize you are nota victim but that you are a survivor and you can get busy and be an “overcomer” and “thriver”!

Part of the healing is reaching out and comforting others.  Knowing it is not “al about me”, you become a more compassionate person and that compassionate person can make huge differences in the ether… yes… the very ether.  There is such peace, and unequaled blessings in turning to help others on a parallel path to you in life.  They inpire you back.  You give out and it returns full fold. 

Be careful that you do not give out more care and love and nurturing than you should.  It is easy to slip into the other edge of “giving” too much.  Your joy and excitement at being free of some of those triggers is empowering and it is easy to forget you must , first, take care of you so you are not giving away what care and compassion you need.

As the world lurches forward from one danged health crisis to another, we can use this time to den in and take care of ourselves.  It is easy to feel “put upon”.  Make this restricted movement time to deal with your gremlins.  We all have them.  We share that environment and we can live with them or we can learn how to banish them.

Joy, peace, serenity, and grace are there if you learn how to look past the gremlins.  Do that, sisterfriends, do that!

©Carol Desjarlais 2.7.22

 This is a really fun artistic experiment:

I started by edging watercolor paper with paint tape.

I

I daubed a bunch of colors on to the paper.(guache).

 

then I used my brayer to smear white over all the colors.  Be careful to just smear a bit or yu get gray mud. Add lots of water ( I use a spray bottle) and run the colors.  Again, do not get into it but let the colors mix as they may.

 

I began mark making in bright orange.

Go, seek the gremlins through mark making and fall into the adenture of coming up weith primitive mark making until you can not fill the faces any more.

 

 Then, release the tape from the frame.  do it slowly and carefully because it will want to lift some of yur substrate.

This can be any art journal subject.  Once you focus on your own gremlins, this becomes very meaningful to you.