Tag: female artist

Alive

Colors and lines morphing into something bright and brave.

 

I don’t know how this piece will end up, but I am moving forward with it. I had put it down for a bit, but once again I am enjoying the movement, the process of it. I managed to cover this canvas in thick watercolor paper so the lines are easy to draw.

We will see how it’ll all come together.. xo

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Healing Touch

Hello!

Welcome to the end of March! Sheesh! This year feels like it’s flying already. Wow!  Anyway, after a post the other day about not listening to my curiosities, I decided to do something about it.

I took a 2 days course on Healing Touch, something I have been CURIOUS about for a couple of  years. I would love to enhance my intuition, and so…. I SAID YES!

I must say, I really  loved it. It was a new experience to go into a class not knowing if I would enjoy it or not. But being able to be light about it,
to ‘check and see,
to keep my heart open,
to move through it with ease
and just ‘check in with what felt right.’

It was nice to allow myself to be a beginner and to not have signed up for all 5 classes already. ahahha

Anyway, it was a fascinating introduction to energy work, and I wanna go further! I actually think I want to take Healing Touch for animals in the next couple of months. I love animals, and the older I get the more my heart just relishes in them.

So that is the plan! For those of you curious about Healing Touch, check it out. What I love about it, is that it is taught the same way no matter where you go. Hospitals are now utilizing it, and seeing the benefits! Ha! So it’s not just gypsy women sitting on the street corner with no money begging for cans of tuna in exchange for energy healing. haahah

I feel great that I am paving a path for myself, and ART is still intermixed with it. I can do them both!

By the way, does anyone have any tips for schedules and creating balance? Between managing 3 buildings with my hubby, family, healing touch, art, volunteering at hospice, attending hospice classes, and uhhh taking an occasional bath, I sure could use some suggestions.  😉

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Passion and then WHAT?

I have always been excited about life. I have always been curious and fascinated and desiring to experience all. Of. It.

But one thing held me back from saying yes to EVERYTHING.

Art.

As interested and enamored and in awe as I have always been with the nuances of life, I also knew that if I ‘took on’ everything that caught my attention, there was a chance I would end up a shell that didn’t have any time for the one thing that fills me up more than most everything.

Making art. 

So I didn’t commit.

I didn’t take that class or research, or learn the things that gently knocked on my heart.

I’d get swept up for just a moment fantasizing about something new and adventurous, and at the last second I would decide not to take the plunge and explore down a different path.

When one has lived their life skipping from one piece of passion to another, and only moving forward when it’s hot and sizzling and wild, that are pieces that might have gotten missed.

I never followed a path that I laid out before me. Moving through it, sometimes slowly, just to get to the end. I would stop half way if it felt anything less than mountains moving.

I think in some ways I recognized that I had something really great. There are many people that don’t feel PASSION at all. The fact that I have it, I should probably hold onto it with tight fingers.
Hide it.
Keep it safe.
Make sure it doesn’t slip away, or worse, have it feel as if I am ungrateful or don’t care.

I guess by me always choosing art first AND ONLY, I felt like I was honoring the passion inside me. But I can see now that I was not respecting all parts of me.

I was always leaving the gnawing, whispering, playful questions at the backdoor. Unattended to. 

Maybe if I pursue/learn/dive in to all these new exciting curiosities, they may not feel the way art does.

Is that okay?

Maybe creating art is supposed to feel different for me. Maybe it will always be the place I can re-find me. Where I can curl up and breathe life back into my soul. Maybe that doesn’t happen with every activity/hobby/interest that I have.

Maybe these interests will STILL enhance my life.

Maybe I will STILL learn more about myself and my gifts.

As I ask myself these questions, I’ve decided that I no longer want to deny urges I have to experience life.
This year will be different.
This year I will move forward even with small quivers of my curiosities.
I will trust that what I’m curious about is there for a reason.

I will trust that there is so much more to discover about myself.

I will trust that life isn’t only buzzing, passionate smoldering energy. It is the space between as well. It is the not knowing, it is the dark lonely paths and uncharted heaviness. It is the light moments of joy that may not be connected to any depth.

I am going to discover all of those parts of myself as well.

Yea for the journey! Wow! I didn’t even know what I was going to write about when I sat down. This is what is so healing about writing. This blog is way more for me than anyone else. I am okay with no one ever reading it. What I get from just writing out my feelings is so phenomenal. If anyone happens to read it and understand or something connected for them through it, that’s great. But it’s not why I’m doing it. I love linking these thoughts and feelings together and walking away with a better understanding of who I am and what I want out of life. Yessssssssssss!

What have you discovered lately about yourself?

 

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Tiny Mountains

Here is one of the tiny pieces that I’ve been working on. Sort of a quirky, colorful way of depicting the mountains that we must climb everyday. I love the idea of bringing joy to the mountains in our life. With struggle, we gain strength.

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Your Musts

I was listening to Tony Robbins the other day….

Okay lemee explain. First of all I’ve KNOWN about Tony Robbins for years. All I knew about him what that he is this huge loud dude that resembles a G.I. Joe. But I’ve been looking for a bit of inspiration lately, I thought I would broaden my horizons.

Normally I love a little Abraham Hicks in my life, but you know, it’s easy to get complacent and it’s nice to veer down other paths.

I’ve set GOALS for a long time, and unfortunately have a difficult time sticking to them. I want to move forward, I want to look back and FEEL like I’ve accomplished. And yet, that has been an area I’ve really struggled with in my life. I used to not finish art pieces like I know I’ve written about before. Now I do that, but there are so many awesome ideas I have where I don’t have a PLAN, and they end up never getting created.

Anyway, I turned Tony on, and though he is a bit loud and pushy for my taste, there was some great nuggets that I can try for transformation.

One of the things I heard was that we don’t get our goals, we get our MUSTS. He says that if we just ‘set goals,’ it’s easy to not follow through. But if we really ask ourselves what we MUST do, then we will find a way.

Woa.

Like you guys have heard me mention a 1000 times, it’s much easier for me to spend all my time and energy choosing things that can help the kids, or even Andy. It’s much easier to do all of that then to
CHOOSE JACKIE. 

But at the end of the day, what are my MUSTS? 

I don’t want to look back at my life and see that I ONLY did a lot of the kids and others that I love but that I NEVER fully lived to MY POTENTIAL.
I know I have a whole world of things inside me to create,
and be
and do.

It’s my JOB, it’s my DUTY to do them.

So those have to be my MUSTS.

What are you here to do that you haven’t been doing???

I realized that if I can picture myself as a little girl, it’s easier to show up for me. The little girl with the dark eyes and the super chubby cheeks.

I’m not going to let her down.

I MUST create,

I MUST allow my creativity to flourish.
For her,
for me.

So what do you guys think? Does goal setting work for you? What do you think about the concept of getting our MUSTS? I’d love to hear YOUR thoughts as well!

xo Jax

 

 

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What Do You Do?

WHAT DO YOU DO? 

Ahhjjajse4vnsedrlflsfv! The question I have dreaded for years seems to creep it’s sneaky little head again into my existence.

I have hated this question since the beginning.

I guess I have just never been sure how to answer it. I mean, when I was working at a large recruiting firm and making great money, I hated the question. I knew that what I WAS DOING TO BRING IN A PAYCHECK, had nothing to do with WHO I AM AS A HUMAN. In fact, I hated my job. I cried almost everyday. I wanted nothing more than to be making art. But when I was asked this ‘what do you do,’ question, I gave a brief, quick, emotionless answer. I didn’t mention that my SOUL is an artist and always has been. I never talked about how I DO yoga, and I DO spirituality and I feel pain in other people’s bodies. I would immediately sum up the job I went to for 8 hours a day into a nice little packet, since I assumed that is what the question called for.

But I didn’t feel seen.
I didn’t feel that suddenly this person GOT me as a human or that we were able to maybe CONNECT on a deeper level. It just became a canned response to rattle off if someone in a half listening haze were to ask it.

Fast forward years later and I was working at a company where I liked my coworkers and occasionally got to use my gifts. I talked to people and got to help them and I laughed and for the most part felt like myself. But then again that sneaky little weird question would come up outside of work. ‘So,… what do YOU do?’ I felt awkward telling my memorized reply of being a project manager for a software company. It wasn’t interesting enough to have anyone WANT to ask a question about it.

In fact, I felt like a liar. 

I WASN’T A PROJECT MANAGER. I am an empathetic woman that is really good at talking to people. I am full of light and joy. I am eternally an artist. (My art journal sat on my lap so I could draw during calls.) I am able to laugh at myself and people feel comfortable talking about their own mistakes. I am a teacher, and enjoyed showing and sharing. And the whole time I wanted to be making art. Just making making making….

Uhhhhh I could never say all that! ahahha

Fast forward again…. My hubby wants me to fully show up exactly as I want to.

So I am making art.
I am working on a website. I am learning how to push through even when I am struggling or don’t understand something. I am an artist, and finally get to be one everyday.

Nowadays when people ask this super surface sad question, I tell people I am an artist. Because I am. It doesn’t matter how much I’ve sold or not. I have never cared about that anyway.
The way I see things is as an artist.
The way I feel things straight to my core is an artist.
An artist may draw or paint or write or create anything, or just notice the tiny little details of life.
Even this is confusing for people.

They don’t know what to make out of this answer because they can’t put me in a box.

I can feel their brain bursting with, ‘WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? DOES SHE SELL? HOW MUCH? HOW OFTEN? WHO KNOWS HER? How many followers on Instagram does she have? What is happening here? SO DOES SHE NOT WORK???’

I guess those are all valid questions for someone that only measures success by money. But if you were to feel that money is just as small percentage of the abundance that surrounds us, you probably wouldn’t get hung up on my answer. By me stating that I am an artist, I am sharing far more with you than just a job description. I am sharing how my soul was made. I am sharing everything I have judged and feared and wished was different about myself.
I am sharing my very essence.
It’s funny how writing all that out is actually teaching me in the moment how I really feel.

But then my stepdaughter asked me the other day, “So what DO YOU DO? I mean like, WHAT IS YOUR JOBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB?” And for some reason my confidence all went away. It’s probably because her mother is a hardcore intellectual, and works 80+ hours a week at a job she hates. So I guess there was a feeling that I was going to get judged. But I was super uncomfortable with the question!

I sort of mumbled something about art and websites and then changed the subject. I felt so out of my body.

Days later I realize that she wasn’t trying to be rude, she was just curious. And if ANYONE is going to lead her to follow her truth, it’ll be me.
It will be.

If anyone is going to show her that she can DO AND BE AND HAVE anything she wants, it’ll be me.

But! I need to OWN my journey before I can properly explain it to her. If I am looking for approval from her, or needing her to get it, or agree, or have what I say be enough, then I am not helping. I need to OWN all of me and then speak from the truth of that.

Ahhhhh…. writing this has been so validating. I love not knowing what is going to come out until I sit down at the computer.

Why do most of us spend so much of our time and energy not feeling like we are enough?

What if we are EXACTLY enough in every way? All these years of wishing I was different, I am just going to start embracing who I am so I can help my daughter do the same.

 

 

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