Winter of Life Has Come

My falling hair, my roughening skin, my snowy crown, testify that my Winter has come... - Petrarch 1366-1367

Seriously, suddenly everything goes wrong.  They got the cancer in the bowel that was inhabiting two areas (through resection, it is good;  retesting in three months).

But, through the last few months been dealing with dizziness, high bp and chest pain, and diving into the river to retrieve daughter's fishhook was not a good idea.  It started off something new and wonderful.. not!!  Now, nitro sits in my purse waiting for the inevitable.  Atherosclerosis:  a lovely diagnoses.  And, because my bp was so high for so long, now I have diabetes.  Perfect.  

So, now, for real, I must figure ut how to not do such heavy physical things like carry groceries by the armfuls into the house, as I am wont to do.  And, to take bp twice a day.  And, to deal with stress.

Honest to God, I have been trying to deal with stress all my life.  Just when I get one thing handled, Boom, another thing.  

A quick research into hardening of the arteries in the chest area is a little daunting, but, also, not even something I can reverse.  I can slow it down, but not repair.  My bp can go from 199/99 down to 60/44 and it is a wild ride when it does.  I can easily go from clarity to confusion.  Yeah lifestyle changes.  

I am grateful to be back to doing most normal things I do.  I can art for relaxation.  I can stop watching any T-Rumpet news on any station.  I have a new sewing machine and I can learn to play with that.  I can continue to live one day at a time.  I am on medication that really really makes a difference.  Angioplasty and/or surgery in the future... but whatever... aging sucks.. truly sucks.

I have no fear of death, let it be said.  I would be grateful to just get this all over with.  I am in a good place in life.  I figure I am living a good life and have had a wonderful life full of not wonder and full of awesome.  I am not suicidal; I am, as many are, simply waiting this out.

Some grace and dignity is needed:  Some learning to not do too much too fast, (As if!) and try to walk away from anything that causes me stress.  I am not hurrying this.  I am simply one foot in front of the other til I can't.  Yes, I guess life is just that at this stage.

©Carol Desjarlais 10.17.18

MY-STORY - Page 9 - Self as Maiden

I have started a 17 x 12 "book using Mixed Media.  I am calling it "My-Story".  I want to leave it as legacy.  It is like an art journal, but focused on things that interest the Inner Me. (Not things I typically talk or write about).  It includes pages of zodiacs, moons, animal symbolism, empowering pages, and when I get the main things done, I will be sharing an art journaling page per week.  I will focus on a section for each week and a new technique.  It will be mixed media so anything goes.  Collect your goodies that you think you might use in a My-Story of your own. 

The 9th page of My-Story is all about Self as Maiden. 

The Maiden is Self as Child.  The Maiden lasts until you are circa child-bearing age.  There are many old and new symbolic representatives of The Maiden.  I have chosen the symbols that interest me.  You can choose to use anything that applies to you.  My page has the main symbols and associations I choose because I have learned such things along the way of my journey.  You may choose memories, or make a page that is a time line of events, etc.  I am keeping my pretty generic and will fill in more about my childhood as I work in the book ( or books that follow this main one). 

The Maiden represents enchantment, inception, expansion, the promise of new beginnings, birth, youth and youthful enthusiasm, and represented by the waxing moon.  There are many goddesses involved in symbolization of the Maiden.  On the Medicine Wheel, childhood/The Maiden is symbolized in the East;  the time of purity, the seed, repentance, and New beginnings.  The Eagle is the symbol of The Maiden.   The two colors of The Maiden are pink and white.  (This is important if you are working on something from childhood, to be used on your altar, or as a flag, etc.)  The Deer is also a symbol /metaphor, of The Maiden.  All if these symbols can be researched through google.  And, if you have any questions, just ask and I will answer your question to the best of my ability.  You may choose other ways to symbolize your childhood. These are just ideas and the way I have chosen to represent my Maidenhood. 

I choose a painting done in a previous art journal.  I guess I felt I was an old soul even as a child.  I know that I thought differently.  It does not mean better or worse, it means that I had a more mature way of analyzing things. ... not always positive.  I collaged the deer and owl, and used washi tape to border the sections.  The butterfly stickers symbolize emergence to me.  Again, I have not gone into depth.  I will pick apart each symbol at a later page in MyStory. 

What does Childhood mean to you?  How would you symbolize your childhood? 

©Carol Desjarlais 10/15/18

No Kicking and Screaming Here

Do not go gentle into that good night - Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there

on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

All of us have our reasons for continuing to go on when many would rather rest.  See, some of us just have to keep going because, if we did not, what would we do?  I find that 'nothing to do' eats away at me and I am not happy, I am restless, I am wont to worry and fuss.  If I keep to a schedule of some kind, then I feel like I am progressing to whatever it is that I am headed.

As well, I am not willing to live a life of quiet desperation, either.  We have to, still, be here for some reason.  We must remain alive because of some reason.  Life has held us and continues to hold us.  It is not for us to make the decisions at that level.  We plod on.  We stop.  We rest.  We carry on.  I think we should have done all our warrioring with windmills by the time we do not have the energy to do so.  Our engines were not meant for revving all of the time.  I hope we have not been on a speedway too long.  My heart is verging on seizing.

I am becoming aware that I need rest stops on this journey; Never more so than now.  I think I have missed many things by not being aware and present.  I get Being Present, now.  I need to be more aware of what is going on directly in front, below, beside and around.  And, most important, Within.  It is no longer, what can life offer me?  What does life owe me?  What can life help me get?    I am pretty sure I need to focus on what can I offer, what can I make up for, give out.  This life has never been about me.  It has been about the microbe I am in the biggest of things.  I have filled what obligations I had to the world.  I have already left my legacy.  This is it.  This is me.  I ought to be grateful rather than grasping for some illusive thing I think I did not get.  I need to slough off the old dead skin of memememememe and simply turn towards the spiritual segment of my personal medicine wheel.  As we age, into our Croneship, we still have obligations. 

In olden times, it was to be the wisdom keeper.  Today it is more about the kinskeeper, the memory keeper.  Our minds should not be burdened with the physical, intellectual, emotional arenas.  Yes, we must become more aware of so many things; especially our physical self.  I think our diligence to being beautiful for others, being intelligent for others, being caught in emotional dramas, is not for us.  Our soul needs a great deal of work, now, as that is what we will take with us.  I, for one, am tired of the burdens and am gratefully, going to loosen those things.  I am tired of being beholden and burdened by what I thought life was all about.  Perhaps once it was, now, not so much.  If I am going to go out happy, settled, calm, comfortably and lovely, dignified and gracefully, then I best learn to be at peace with myself.  Others do not count in this.  It is our soul, not anyone else's.  We are no longer here to please others.  Life is giving us a ticket to ride the rest of the way.  We are now allowed to take the time we have (no more boredom, no more rush) and develop our inner being.  We get to get off, and out of, the rat race.  We get to see develop an intimate relationship with Self.  No longer do we need life to entertain us, to fill our voids, to always be just beyond our grasp.  It is already here and life is flowing from within. 

Yes, there is a winding down.  Our body may not be able to take us where we thought wanted to be.  Our stories are our wisdom, we can share them.  Our emotions can be as they have always been, or we can accept that there will always be things we want(ed) and were not for us to have.  But, oh, our soul.  How have we neglected it in the balance of all things.  I have lots of work to do.  I can learn to turn down, absolutely, anything that does not fit my soul.  There should be no struggle there.  It can be a simple closing the door to those things that brought us sinking sand, toss and turmoil, and emotional drama.  It is over.  I refuse to accept it any more.  I am here for me now... just for me.  If you chance to meet me on the road and I walk with you awhile, it is because you fit my soul.  If I do not.  It means the other.  

I am thankful for the gleaning of those who do not fill and feed my soul. I am desperately grateful for those that do. My rage will be a quiet kind of rage.. and not a negative rage.. I shall not go kicking and screaming...,

©Carol Desjarlais 10/14/18

MyStory - Page Nine - The Child/Maiden

The cry we hear from deep in our hearts comes from the wounded child within. Healing this inner child’s pain will transform negative emotions."  - Thich Nhat Hanh,

Many of us, in our Croneship, have lost the sense of the "innocence within".  But she is there, weeping into the dark night, who needs love and compassion and self-compassion. 

When we are born, we are born with manipulative characteristics that work on the Mother to be fed, changed, and to have survival needs met.  As we age to crawling down from the knee, we learn anger management, we learn there is a world outside of Mother, we learn to seek approval and support of others for survival and to have our needs met.  Our needs change as we mature.  We blossom, and in that blossoming, we are in our wild glory, but we learn, as well, to protect ourselves.  We were testing life with no idea of what we might become.  We are very immediate and our wants and needs lead us to make demands.  We learn to fit in.  We learn to withdraw or to reach into wild abandon of fantasy and fiction and fact of who we are in the world.  As we age to puberty and into our teens and further into womanhood, we may drag some of those wants and needs, met and unmet, positive and negative, through into that next stages of Being Woman.  We move through the times of taming our Beautiful Whole Self.  We can become suppressed and we may repress some of those wants and needs as life cuts us back, pruning away some of that wild beauty within.  Deep inside, we long to express ourselves and that feeling grows as we move into our adolescent years.  Some will drag the Child through into our adolescent years and those years can be fraught with The Disappointed/Angry Child. 

Prior to becoming, woman, The Mother, we begin to think we know who we are to become.  Some of us rush it, and if we do so, we can drag the teenaged self through to our Croneship, as well.  We can learn to suppress or project The Inner Child through many negative ways.  We forget how divine we are meant to be.  We can become worldlier in both positive and negative ways.  Many will glide through those hormone-driven years knowing that the journey is a spiritual one.  Most will not.  We will seek the meeting of the Child's wants and needs and we are more manipulative and/or unhappy because we demand they all be met.  We can remain somewhere between fantasy and fact.  Towards the end of Maidenhood, we can move into a sense of regret.  Or, we can move into being a gift to the world;  that non-self-centered life that remembers we are divine beings here for a spiritual purpose.  To be the gift, we have had need to remember our true wild nature that remembers what a gift we are and why and how and when and where.  We mature into Self recognizing the good for and of all.  It is then that we either heal childhood wounds, or perceived wounds, or we remain stuck in the mire of thinking life is unfair, others are unfair, and others should, always and forever, meet our needs.  Or, we can blossom more fully and realize we are the answer to our own prayers.

In most all of us, there is a wailing inner child and many have experienced, or sense, wounds along the way.  We are good at stuffing everything we choose not to deal with.  We can become defensive and live in flight or fright mode.  Our Inner Child, then, can magnify its childhood demands, its need for attention, its wants, it needs.  Fight only adds more drama we will carry through the stages of being feminine.  Flight only prolongs suffering or negativity. 

Some of us will want love and care and understanding, and, yet, we attract the opposite.  We are blocked by past unmet needs and we forget we have the skills to move past it all.  Some of us go through periods of our childhood trauma, over and over, and tend it like a wounded child...which it is.  We, as mothers, and crones, need to turn back and comfort and guide that child within.  In that is the healing and the letting go of past stuff we are dragging along like a dirty old baby blanket.  To drag that stuff along will mean more suffering. 

To heal the Child is to feel great compassion rather than the great hurt.  We are now the adult that can comfort and nurse the wounded child within.  We need to turn to that child and assure it you will not abandon it again.  As we turn and care for our child-self, we may be healing generations of hurt.  Many of us have adopted our parents and their parents wounded children.  An abuser has been abused.  The hurt hurt.  We can generate so much love for ourselves, that we can become the answer to ancestor's prayers.  When we heal ourselves, we are healing the next seven generations, say the elders. 

I challenge you to love, so love yourself, so that you can be the change;  so that you can be the role model for those along the path of finding our way home.  Nurture that little girl within so that she can truly love and be loved.

For this page of MyStory, I have made sure to leave some blank spaces where I can add more when it comes to me. 

I have used a painting from an earlier journal, cut and paste, with a background, in that painting, that is full of modeling paste stenciling.  I have not done' the Baby' because so much of that section of life has been healed with my finding by birth family.  I have a sense if my wounding, still to be worked on, belongs to preadolescent and adolescence. 

I listed the Goddesses who are relationship with The Child/the Inner Child.  These Goddesses have ways of helping one deal with the Inner Child healing.    The fawn is there because I have a sense that my Inner child is wary, gentle, and carries the gifts and insecurities of a fawn.

Can you do an art journal page that expresses the inner child within? 

©Carol Desjarlais 9.25.17