Rain Gratitude
Today I had my first session with my new mental health provider, an art therapist. I was anxious, which left me dropping things and forgetting things, ultimately leaving me running late. I was grateful we didn't dive right into art today, although I did get to play with some Sculpy clay. She had me pick out my favorite color and gave me a package to play with, she'd recalled that EMDR had been effective for me and that playing with clay would provide bilateral stimulation. I even got to take my clay home with me, which for some reason really pleased me and felt special.
Therapy is important, I've given myself a break from looking for a new therapist after my EMDR person moved. My training program had me in on-going therapy and mentoring sessions pretty much every week, so it seemed just fine to take some time off. Now that I'm done, it is time to start back up again.
I'm feeling much more stable, less anxious overall and depression not leaving me feeling as low. This makes it a good time to begin a new relationship, I'm not in crises mode and am managing my Complex PTSD well. Not only will it give me additional resources when my own work with people stirs up my own trauma history, but I will have a resource in place when my missing memories at age 14 decide to surface. I also want support as I work though the shame that drives both my anxiety and my depression, getting in the way of authentic connection with the people I love.
While it makes for a busy morning, I think having these sessions before teaching two yoga classes will work for me. Teaching grounds me, especially for the times when therapy leaves me feeling stirred up.
Today though, it just meant I was tired and having some lunch only left me feeling more tired. The dogs and I were due to go for a walk, but it began pouring rain, then the thunder began. Rather than a walk I ended up with the dogs and the cats on the bed, napping between reassuring the younger dog that the thunder didn't indicate danger.
I love the sound of the rain falling, especially when I'm warm and cozy inside. Today it felt like especially needed self-care, snuggling the dogs and the cats, snoozing while the sound of rain filled the room. I was so grateful to be dry and warm, able to take this time to just rest after an anxious morning. I am grateful too for the rain falling, not only for the soothing sound of it falling against our home, but for the nourishment it is bringing to the still dry forests, to our yard and neighborhood.
The summer was hot and dry, as we walk on the forest path near our home there are still dry cracks in the ground and the paths are baked hard. As the rains of autumn have returned to Portland, all around plants are bursting into new growth. Flowers are awash in color as last blooms appear with the rain. I'm grateful for the return of cloudy days and rain falling.
Grateful Rain
I keep putting off getting back to writing thinking I need some massive "catch up" post, butI don't really. It is just a reason and not a terribly good one. Poetry is bringing me back, something I connected with as a writer at a young age, poetry and the practice of writing.
It rained in Portland after weeks without any along with long days of hot weather. I heard it last night as I was drifting off to sleep and was overjoyed to bursting to see it this morning when I took the dogs out. Despite feeling heavy with sorry, anger, and horror at the deaths in Charlottesville yesterday due to another white, male American terrorist, I felt such a welling up of gratitude at seeing the rain breathing in the smell of ground that comes with fresh rain.
Soft raindrops falling.
Welcome lull from Summer's heat.
The garden drinks deep.
November Blues
Realizing I haven't posted since my birthday. I had a bit of a slump around my birthday, just spent some downtime, teaching classes and resting on many levels.
I've since been regrouping on all the tasks to complete after finishing my Advanced training in Integrated Movement Therapy, seeing clients, having meetings with my mentor, writing. Then it was October, which arrived uncharacteristically wet. We were overwhelmed with garden produce, unable to get to a lot of it processed.
A guest in October left leaving us feeling exhausted and anxious. About the time it felt like my energy was picking up, well the election happened. The next day each of my three yoga classes had students crying in them, which was a lot of energy to contain and hold gently, tenderly. I was exhausted utterly at the end of that day, the next morning I awoke with a fever and sore throat. That quickly turned into a hacking cough. Missed classes, came back to teaching too soon, relapsed and ended up missing out on the first real rest and treat I'd planned for myself at a yoga & art retreat out at the Oregon Coast.
I'll be wrapping up the last of my to-do items before applying to my internship, I'm not too far off my original goals for my program. I'm grateful to have been able to keep focused on this goal while at the same time working on completing my business plan. This week I'm submitting my application for a small seed grant for starting my business, which I'll be using to pay for internship costs. Things are coming together nicely even with needing some downtime around my birthday.
I'm trying to keep focused on all the I've been getting done, because once again this year November has rolled in with rain, dark, and some serious blues.
Trying to be gentle with myself. November and December bring together the anniversaries of 3 deaths: My Dad (step-father) died in December 2000, the a little over 11 months later my biological father died in November 2011. Next month also marks the first year since my Mother died last December. The year my Mother did her best to blow up our lives, that all started in November, continuing on through into the New Year. When I keep in perspective that these last two months of the year have just held a lot of grief.
Which means this year won't be the year the blues don't stroll on into my life in November. Another year of practicing appreciating what I am getting done and reminding myself that these blues aren't here forever and in a few weeks the light will slowly begin to return.
Here and Now
All told I've opted for a really quiet birthday this year. We're having a leisurely morning then going on a hike & letterbox hunt at a park not too far from our house. We'll picnic and then come home to garden. It is going to be a pretty wonderful day spent with some of my favorite beings.
I'm celebrating my first birthday since my Mother died this past winter. It has felt at times pretty rough, although given that my last birthday-related communication from her was deliberately hurtful, it is also something of a relief. More steps into this strange, new world where my Mother no longer can hurt me. Still, it has made this birthday seem a little less celebratory in some ways.
In other ways it feels like an enormous milestone. Over the past 16 years I've completely changed my life to live more healthfully and more ethically. I don't have as much of a comparison to my Father's family, since they've always been estranged, but on my Mother's side the later half of the 40s, if not the early half, came with one or more prescriptions for managing heart disease and/or Type II Diabetes. Hypertension, high cholesterol, and dangerously high blood glucose levels all ran in my family. Women tended to die of strokes or some type of heart failure. Obesity was also something that just began to happen after high school. It was the normal behavior for pretty much all the women in my family, always on an endless cycle of dieting, binging, stress-eating, etc.
To be 47 years old, not obese and not on a single medication for heart disease or diabetes is an enormous accomplishment.
Yes, I take daily medications. I take things that help me live with the chronic pain from my back due to degenerative disc disease and I take things to help me manage the anxiety and depression that arise from my C-PTSD. Those and things to further support my overall health, like a daily multivitamin! That's it though, and that is something that my Mother would make out as if I'd performed some kind of miracle instead of giving me the credit for working really very hard indeed to change my life, to steer myself toward health.
In a way I don't think I'd ever thought I'd be here now. Bigger than the still daily shock of recalling that I stopped working in tech nearly 3 years ago. I really doubted my health for so many years, internalizing my Mother's never-ending medical crises until I started to believe that I was next, I'd get cancer and die. I'd have a heart attack. I'd get congestive heart failure too.
Yet here I am.
I'm still figuring out how to engage around doing work with other people, which still feels challenging to get back into but I'm slowly learning the boundaries of my ability to work on projects again. I'm at a point now that I don't think I really could go back into the stress of the kind of tech work I did for nearly 2 decades, even very occasional meetings tends to increase my anxiety. Not that I really want to go back to tech in any way, sometimes I just miss the money and it briefly crosses my mind. That's when I recall the tone of my doctor's voice when she describes my health a few years ago as being in "acute crises" and "on the verge of hospitalization".
I'm learning how to be a business owner, luckily with the help of a program for "dislocated workers" that provides me with free training and support from a business advisor. I'm close to completing my business plan and then can submit it for a small seed grant from the program. I came from such a blue collar family that being a business owner, trying to get my brain around how business works, feels like such an unexpected experience.
So much about my life now is unexpected, not at all what I used to be planning for. 47 sees me watching for sales and trying to do our grocery shopping strategically, cooking more inexpensive meals at home. I am reminded of the frugality, the barest of minimum my Mother and I lived with for long stretches at a time. It isn't always easy and I do miss my tech salary. That said, my life now is so full of richness, wonder, delight, and love. There are so many things I continue to discover are possible when I don't work 50-60 hours a week, including connecting deeply with CK over gardening as well as having time to really appreciate all the things, including beautiful flowers, she brings to my life.
I'm so grateful to be here now, in this life, with this health, and with the support of the loving beings that now surround me. I'm teaching 9-12 Yoga classes a week now and continuing to work towards completing my certification in Integrated Movement Therapy. I'm stretching my confidence slowly in regards to my art, but continue to explore the ideas that come to me as both a way of creating beauty and to let myself use my art as a way to express the journey I've been on as I heal.
Having come all this way through all this welter
Under my own power,
I've earned this worn-down, hard, incredible sight called Here and Now.
I've taken liberty a bit with some lines above from a poem by Northwest poet, David Wagoner, "Getting There". It's a poem that has continued to open and unfold for me since discovering it when I was 15 or so. It feels appropriate to put it here again, it has been in my mind the past several days as this birthday approached.
Getting There
by David Wagoner
You take a final step and, look, suddenly
You’re there. You’ve arrived
At the one place all your drudgery was aimed for:
This common ground
Where you stretch out, pressing your cheek to sandstone.
What did you want
To be? You’ll remember soon. You feel like tinder
Under a burning glass,
A luminous point of change. The sky is pulsing
Against the cracked horizon,
Holding it firm till the arrival of stars
In time with your heartbeats.
Like wind etching rock, you’ve made a lasting impression
On the self you were
By having come all this way through all this welter
Under your own power,
Though your traces on a map would make an unpromising
Meandering lifeline.
What have you learned so far? You’ll find out later,
Telling it haltingly
Like a dream, that lost traveler’s dream
Under the last hill
Where through the night you’ll take your time out of mind
To unburden yourself
Of elements along elementary paths
By the break of morning.
You’ve earned this worn-down, hard, incredible sight
Called Here and Now.
Now, what you make of it means everything,
Means starting over:
The life in your hands is neither here nor there
But getting there,
So you’re standing again and breathing, beginning another
Journey without regret
Forever, being your own unpeaceable kingdom,
The end of endings.
Calm Abiding
This past Saturday would have been my Mother's 73rd birthday. It made the week feel a little fragmented, but I was upfront with people about it. With CK's encouragement I made it off to the Collage Guild meet-up and worked on a few pieces, including this one that veered off the month's theme project quite a bit and is still in process.
In the evening I went over and saw a friend I've not seen in many years. She's moved many times, in pursuit of her studies in medicine, and because I have a hard time getting out. She had a clothing swap Saturday evening and I arrived with a backup plan to ditch my clothes and leave, but ended up staying 2 hours, enjoying the company, and scored some great new-to-me clothing.
Perhaps it is the returning light and the cherry blossoms, but I feel as though I weathered the "bump" of that birthday milestone without too much difficulty. Yes, some extra encouragement was asked for and given.
It is becoming easier to think of her as really dead. That's been part of the pain caused by how she planned her death, and my exclusion from it, just this surreal sense of not believing she's really gone and I'll never see her again. It is getting easier to hold onto this reality.
Two boxes of her personal property were sent to me by way my Mother's old pastor. I was teaching and asked him to leave them on the porch since I wouldn't be away long, also saving CK from the need to interact with him. I found myself somewhat baffled as to why I was sent many of the things the people going through her belongings chose to send me.
In the meantime, I'm waiting for my right shoulder to heal so I can start digging up the soggy earth of our yard. The plan is to move several rose bushes, at our house and some from a friend's house, from shady locations to the front edge of our front yard. I have a goal of roses, dahlias, and lots of differing spring bulbs forming a natural border between the road and our yard. For the moment I need the rain to let up a little, buy a lawn destruction tool, and get my shoulder improved so I can use it. There's also a plan for a blueberry bed for the 3 plants we currently have in big nursery pots.
All that and I'm four weeks into a training program for new business entrepreneurs. I was accepted to a pilot program that provides training and other resources to people who are starting a new business after being unable to return back to their old job. Leaving my old company ill and unable to sleep, and told by my doctor to not go back, ever, qualifies me for a lot of support.
I'm writing a business plan, working on a marking plan, defining my services and customer personae. It is a whole new world to me, I feel like my to-do list for Samatha Yoga grows every week I'm taking this workshop! It is pretty exciting to be exploring actual business planning protocols to my ideas around teaching yoga.
Those weeks stretching long into the cold, darkness of winter, after I found out my Mother had died, just seem to dull the light inside of me. I don't feel fully restored, still yet healing and grieving in bigger ways too, but I feel more of a sense of equilibrium instead of the flat apathy the news brought.
Just recently the dogs seem to have gone beyond just mild friendship, which is to say that Dora not trying to angrily bite Bertie's face off. Yes, she still bites his lips, only now she does it while wagging her tail with excitement and joy while she does it. We've also seen snuggling happening.
Welcome 2016
So far the New Year has brought sleeping dogs, which is a big improvement since Bertie the Bulldog arrived in June unexpectedly.
First Nap of 2016 - January 1, 2016 - Portland, Oregon
Snow, at least for a few hours. Long enough for a two+ mile walk to, and around a nearby park.
Bertie's first experience with snow was pretty awesome. He particularly likes snowballs.
Soon after we got home from that walk the freezing rain started, leaving us with old Portland folks might call a Silver Thaw. It inspired this first poem of the New Year:
Ice envelops all.
Winter’s chill embrace lingers.
Swaying trees murmur.
Thankfully, by the time I needed to teach my first class of the year, I was able to safely drive. My current schedule of classes around the Portland Metro area can be found on the Samatha Yoga site.
I will be heading back up to Plain, Washington, later in the month to attend a contemplative retreat lead by my teacher. It will be truly snowy; I'm looking forward to photographing the beautiful Grunewald Guild in the winter. Having already photographed summer and autumn, I'll have to think about a trip in the spring to complete a year of seasons!
Before I leave for the Guild, I'll hopefully pick up new glasses. My distance vision hasn't change that much, but my reading vision is showing my age even if I do still get carded once in a while. I've found frames, apparently made by an Italian designer who has Sir Elton John among their customers. This time the eye doctor, in discussing what they call my "photophobic eyes" (so nice to feel like I'm not making up my light sensitivity for the sake of melodrama), is suggesting a rose tint instead of yellow. That as well as a coating to filter out blue and UV. Should be much more soothing. I'm amused that I will indeed be wearing "rose colored glasses" when they're ready!
2016 will bring more teaching, new yoga classes and workshops in the works! I'll be working on my certification in Integrated Movement Therapy and my goal is to be done by the end of this year! I'm excited to continue to learn and grow into my path as a healer and teacher. I'm also hoping to attend the Northwest Yoga Conference in early March.
Some fun stuff too, as well as the intention for CK and I to do more fun adventures together. In May we'll be in Los Angeles to see The Cure at the Hollywood Bowl, which is pretty exciting. Discussing making it a road trip, camping in the van along our way south.
2015 ended with the news of my Mother's death. I'm not yet ready to write about it publicly. Not too surprisingly, she used even this to find a way to hurt and exclude me.
New Path and National Poetry Month 2015
As I am feeling my way into this new way of being in the world, emerging into the life of a yoga teacher, artist, and writer with equal measures of joy and trepidation, I am trying to return to some things that helped foster my creativity, like annual 30 Poems in 30 Days project for April, which just happens to be National Poetry Month.
In years past I've really loved showing my love for poetry by committing to challenge myself to write 30 poems in 30 days. I'm not sure 
here on April 1, 2015, if I've ever done them all. I'll have to look back and see. I'm not sure I'll get them all done this year, but I feel good about reviving this "tradition" on my blog. Trying to write poems each day challenges me in many positive ways.
The biggest challenge is to just compose a poem. Write it, one day, often at a single sitting (although a haiku may take me the whole day to compose). Don't fiddle with it, just write it, publish it on the blog. Don't judge it, just write it. That's a hard one to work with, but this annual exercises challenges me to work with my inner critic.
New Path
Hospitality Agent Lumpy - Portland, Oregon - April 1, 2015
This uncharted territory
Had beckoned to me,
Yet always seeming
Far off, shimmering
On the horizon.
Yet now I find myself
Right at the edge,
Ready to step down
The road to a new way.
Now, now is the time.
I feel, all at the same time,
Joy, fear, uncertainty,
And, to my surprise,
Delight at moving into a life
I never dared hope to live.
Taking Flight
In February I registered my business, Samatha Yoga, which I hope to begin growing this year as a mobile yoga teaching practice, bringing classes to offices, conferences, wedding showers, and more. I've been communicating with one local company already after having counter-pitched an inquiry from a technical recruiter; saying that I wasn't in the tech business anymore but wouldn't they love to improve the Health and Wellness options at the office by having me come teach yoga.
I've also been teaching two mornings a week at a gym in Happy Valley. It really is growing the ideas I come up with without any props aside from the yoga mats the students bring themselves. However, if my resolve to eventually only teach classes or private sessions were props are abundantly available wasn't already made, this experience only strengthens it!
I also spent part of a week attending workshops at Art and Soul last month, which was exhausting and exhilarating in equal measures. I took two workshops, which I'll be writing about soon on the ZenZada blog soon.
I've recently done some immersions where yoga, meditation, and/or energy work and journaling is used an approach to work with anxiety. These aren't teacher training, but as a teacher I'm finding them very valuable as I gather information to make the best decision for my training to become a certified yoga therapist.
At the beginning of March I sold my old house in North Portland. The sales cleared all the debt associated with the property as well as some remaining personal debt, including the very last of my student loans. As embark upon this exciting new experience of running my own business it is an enormous relief to have the liability of the house hanging over me now that I no longer receive a lucrative tech income.
So in many ways my new life seems to be taking off! Which is as exciting as it is tiring.
Fly away, Scrub Jay!
This month also sees my unemployment benefits expire. I am feeling anxious and guilty about this date sneaking up on me. I have been refining, tweaking, researching, refining, etc. on my application to the Self Employment Assistance Program that I'm afraid I may have missed the deadline to apply. There's another federal program I should still be able to apply for, I hope.
I'm feeling mad and frustrated with myself and the days where I feel like I've been zapped by a Cone of Demotivation (+4) that leaves it hard to even keep up with things around the house, make art, improve my business materials. I've been hit by another round of headaches; seems muscle tension is impeding the circulation of lymphatic fluid and blood in my head and neck.
In my meditation practice I've returned back to something my old Zen teacher used to say, "I am whole, complete, lacking nothing." It helps keep firm the reframing of seeing myself as wounded, not broken. I'm working on a bright book of affirmations for the year and am including this mantra, of sorts in it.
In February I also played around with using one of the heavy paper cranes I'd made for our first wedding as the basis for collage, becoming a kind of paper sculpture. One of these large cranes had been delivered to my Mother in the hospital on that day. When packing up her things for the last time I chose to keep it. However, seeing it was rather bittersweet for me. I added more layers of paint to it, a quote from Mary Oliver on one side, "Leave some room in your heart for the unimaginable." and that mantra on the other. In February it was sent, along with 60 beautiful cranes folded from chiyogami paper and two hats, knitted by my friend LG, with a paper crane pattern worked into it. It made it in time to Lansing, Michigan, to bring one of the last smiles smiled by my second college friend to lose their battle with cancer. Yesterday, very early, she peacefully passed onto the next journey.
Spring starts as rather a mixed bag. Sadness, excitement, joy, anxiety (always), hope.
Cranes4CJ Paper Sculpture
The Weight of Waiting
I haven't written much this past year, a huge 12 posts in all of 2014. It was the kind of year I never expected to happen, really, I never expected to get the privilege of having time to stop, to honestly look at things, to heal.
I wrote in December 2013 that things had blown up spectacularly with my Mother. It still isn't something I want to talk about as publicly as my blog, but if you're someone who knows how to contact me directly, drop me a line or give me a call, invite me out for tea or lunch if you're in Portland, and I'll give you the high level of all my Mother put us through.
Back in April of 2012, when all the chaos of trying to get my Mother's financial assets returned to her by her husband, someone left this comment on my blog. Understandably, I choose not to publish it (exactly why I have a posted comment policy).
Take your mother home
Anonynous@mailzzz.poo
198.228.223.30It’s your duty to invite your mother to live with you in your home. Take care of her until
The day that she dies. Anything less from YOU is a disgrace.Karma, dude.
Umm... yeah, I've been carrying that one around for a while. It has made me felt crushed by guilt. Ironically, when this compassion-impaired, ignorant, judging person posted this unpublished comment we were already discussing what would have to change in order to have my Mother move in with us.
We bought another house. I became a landlord and rented out the house I'd purchased. We moved all our stuff. A month later we moved my Mother and most of her stuff into the new house. A week later we had a house full of emergency responders in our chaotic house because my Mother took her lunchtime insulin and fell asleep, so her blood sugars dropped so low as to require a trip in an ambulance. So began our daily oversight of her medications, insulin, blood sugars, meals, etc.
The amazing thing was is that it actually helped. Her care providers were truly seeing improvement in her health overall, things that had worried them for years. The constant message from them was to keep doing what we were doing. The diet changes, the help with medication, the fall prevention (in part due to stopping her over medicating herself), and the regular oversight was really shifting her health dramatically in a positive way.
Except we were to find out she didn't want it. She really didn't want that improvement and even rejected me personally in one of our last conversations in October 2013.
Yes, all this while working in a position at a large high tech company that constantly demanded more and more of my time, and where I'd eventually experience sexual harassment from my boss.
The combination of all of those things just shut me right down last year. "Dangerously Exhausted" was a phrased used by both my new physician and new mental health nurse practitioner. Total emotional and physical exhaustion, nearly the the point of hospitalization. In the end, seriously harming my health as well as the health of my marriage, was all I got out of throwing myself fully into trying to care for my Mother while working to the point of tears over a project that just couldn't succeed.
In late November 2014 I commented to my therapist that it had been a while; that I was expecting to hear from my Mother any day now.
Yes, despite my letter asking her to direct all communication thorough CK, she has sent some cards and letters, which mostly focused on asking for things we've already tried to send. Less than a week later a social worker called CK and told her that my Mother had chosen to go to hospice care, with no further treatment of the thyroid cancer or anything else. CK then called to share the news with me.
So now there is the weight of waiting. Tom Petty said it best, "The Waiting" is the hardest part. This is the state I've been in since early December. Back when she had a "month" to live, possibly more if she responded to the palliative treatment.
Only he was singing about love and passionate encounters. However, the same adage applies to this limbo state I've been in since early December. Waiting for the call, the news that she's finally passed over.
Waiting for the news I've prepared my whole life for. It finally feels like I'm ready for that news and now I wait.
I sent her a letter that arrived early this week. It reassured her that I'm doing fine, that I know she (believes) she loves and cares for me, and that I hope she was finally moving toward peace at long last. Now I just feel the weight of waiting for that final phone call, waiting for the news that she is gone.
October Observations
October is here, arriving with a burst of rain and then come days of warm, summery days and crisp evenings. Really, one of my favorite times of year in Portland. Leaves are just turning, apples are plentiful, all the moss that had gone brown in the summer heat turns to green again. I'll miss the last two weeks of the month because we'll be leaving the house, and all the beautiful creatures living in it, in the very capable hands of a dear friend while CK and I enjoy a trip.
Kitchen Benefactors
Part of the trip for her will be work, but we have several days for just us. It has only taken two marriage ceremonies for us to have a honeymoon, but we're finally doing it. I'm getting really excited for the adventure of an entirely new place, one I've always wanted to visit. I'm also just happy for us, the last few trips CK and have taken together have been completely overshadowed by the Mama-Drama-Rama the claimed 2012 & 2013. We deserve a nice holiday with no emergencies to deal with at home.W
My talk to MozFest didn't get accepted, which is disappointing, but it is nice to not be worrying about my slides, etc. before giving a talk. I will be attending though, if anyone else is there and wants to look me up.
I've been applying for teaching positions at studios around town. Really, it feels like auditioning, particularly when I give a demo of my teaching. I never thought I'd come to prefer the grueling, multi-person, multi-hour interviews of the tech industry, but the audition thing is so nerve wracking that I'd take the old way back any day! What I've discovered is that there are a lot of teachers in the area and a lot of owners that have a very specific image they're trying to project.
No, I'm still not working in tech. The earliest review of that, a date given grudgingly, would be January 2015. However, the overwhelming opinion is in favor of me not going back to the tech industry at all. I've been noodling over this quite a bit the past few weeks after getting some unexpected news about my last company/team. I spent a good week in blue sky mode, fantasizing about going back so I could prove I could hack it, or make a difference, or finish something.
Then I had a good talk about all these feelings coming up with my therapist and after some discussion I saw that a large part of my desire to return to my last company is out of some hope it will "fix" my feelings about leaving college. It will somehow repair the past if I prove something that doesn't really matter in the present.
That brings me back to healing from the idea that you can spend 17 years building yourself into something and be told that you have to stop. I never thought that would ever happen. Maybe wouldn't have had I not had such a supportive wife and felt that I still had to keep everything moving along, regardless of my own health and the health of my relationships.
I am humbled by the abundance of support I now have in my life. Instead of trying to find a job that just gets me by, that doesn't let me take the time to really heal the hurt and trauma I've survived, I am instead thinking of ideas of how to market my private yoga sessions with people. I'm also on Week 6 of The Artist's Way, and that has been bringing me some profound insight on how I view my health and identifying the ways in which I'm mean to myself; writing things down so I can better work with them. I've also been working through a lot of anger about my Mother, huge amounts; my therapist and PMHNP both say that it is about time for me to feel angry, about a whole lot of things.
All that means I'm also still napping, which I'm trying to be less judgmental about having identified my impatience for my need to rest as a way I'm mean to myself! Some things, like having a 45 minute conversation about what it was like at my job this time last year as part of the process to review my eligibility for unemployment benefits, will leave me feeling worn out for a day or two. I am keeping in mind and trying to celebrate that it is an improvement over a week's fugue-state after challenging tasks like that.
The good news about sticking with the hard work is that it is helping things out; I am getting unemployment benefits now that I've been released to some kind of work and am actively searching. I'm going to be applying for a couple of programs that help you establish your own business, which I'm qualifying for since my physician has advised me not to return to my old career. Teaching classes here and there is going to be hectic and costly in regards to time spent commuting and fuel. CK has been brainstorming ideas for me to set up a solo teaching practice, with a class or workshop at a studio here and there.
I've also just started an Etsy shop. It isn't "open" yet because I need to face down my block over photographing artwork to post. In addition to pieces listed, I'll also be taking custom work. This winter I experienced a huge shift it what I was creating and am really excited by the direction I'm heading it, but I've avoiding photography for some fear of failure.
I'm planning to take an introduction to matting and framing artwork class at the Multnomah Arts Center next month. I plan to use at least one of my own pieces of artwork since I have so many questions on how to mat them. I know it will get me over the fear of using the mat cutter I bought a few months ago!
Since I've been doing so much with making art, I've started a new blog, ZenZada. We're also going to include stories about our life (mostly raccoon adventures thus far), reviews of places we stay when we travel, vegan/GF travel tips, and other lifestyle things like that. I started it in part to have a place to write about my co-creative art project with a Portland artist.
Vegan Nosh continues to move along, I've been doing a series of experiments with vegan burger recipes and posting about them. Since we found out CK cannot have gluten, I've been doing more experimenting and cooking at home, which is really better for us in so many ways.