A friend sent me a blog post the other week which was just lovely. I enjoyed it, I related to it which is why the friend sent it to me in the first place. I went away from it thinking, wow, this writer is totally holding back. I kept wanting her to really say it ... My sense was that with every sentence she would break through, and I would FEEL something, and I knew that she could ... And I never felt anything. Later I described this with my Midlife Midwife and and I got her not dismissive " ... hmmm, very interesting" response ... The whole idea of work with her is to absolutely trust myself, my voice and the world, and so she doesn't explain everything to me, sees what I can come up with. What I can feel / see. Anyway, the hmmmm, very interesting was hmmm-very-interesting because there is another concept I'm learning: when I say something about someone else, even try to formulate it in a wise spiritual frame - like I KNOW and maybe they don't - there are two things happening :: one, I need to stay in my world and let that person describe themselves and live for themselves, and two, my words are actually a reflection about me. This is a REALLY fabulous life exercise to go out there and try, because we do a lot of knowing about other people's lives ...
All of which is to say that I do trust myself completely, and yet, I am frozen with the tiniest of drops dripping, and I am the one holding back, not her. I have this amazing sense of humor and I don't use it. Sure G makes me laugh hard and a lot and I make him laugh hard and probably not enough, but that's us together, that's not me, here. I also can design things with my eyes closed, and am frozen there too, let me just toss that in. Designing for other people is all liquid like, but for my own ideas, completely frozen ...
I am to write about it all, that's the assignment. And so I do, in my head. I am very good at making lists. I am to write about the creative block for my logo, for my political icons, and this guarded way that I am here - even as I write, I have full sentences and visuals in my head, that stay in a different Space. I know to trust the design process already from the career I've built, but somehow this newness that is emerging, it's more personal, it's more real than before, it's wider (which is what I wanted), it's less silent, it's including more things than "just" design, and it's just coming from me, not an institution telling me I'm amazing. Didn't I just say that I do trust myself absolutely? There is more trust to be had then. How totally annoying.
The other day I was talking to S and a story came up about me and another friend, where the conversation blew .... my .... mind .... Even this moment as I try to bring it up again, I can feel my brain try to push it back down. She was encouraging and affirming "what" I am doing in a way that only G and my Midlife Midwife had before ... I'm not counting here, and also wanted to note that this isn't an ego statement and the affirmation wasn't FOR my ego. The thing that happened between us was the first time I experienced what it is like to LIVE that wider version of me, MORE. With another person. A person who I have read but not met. And the reason I knew, is because my body told me. As soon as I told S the story, my throat tightened up with the feeling that I wanted to burst into tears.
Thank god for our bodies. I keep reading and being told and now guided how to know my body-knowledge, but I tell you what, when it starts doing it, or when we start listening to that, there is nothing better in the world.
Another example was I was when I described a future post which is in my heart and that list, about a lecture at Barnard College about screen play writing. When I finished describing the post, my ENTIRE body broke out in goosebumps. All of it. Never happened before.
No no, wait, it's not about O, Anne needs to be a screen writer - that's not the point I'm trying to make - maybe I DO, but maybe I'm just going to be a frog, who knows, but the point I'm trying to make is this incredible way that our bodies hearts minds speak to us ... If .... we let ourselves de-thaw. And now of course it's May and June, sooooooooo there will be no freezing. Even if I try to freeze. Isn't Mother Nature hilarious.
xoox
