I Follow My Heart...

I read a quote somewhere....but I don't know who the author is.  It said: " I follow my heart, literally.  My heart gives me directions via morse code hidden in its beats, and I follow them."

This accurately describes what I have done.  Followed it wherever it led, whether it lead to a dead end or to the stars!  Followed it through obstacles, walked on hot coals for it, cried for it.  But wherever it led me I learned things - things that helped me move to a brighter path.

The heart - the battery that keeps us up and doing.  We must care for it... so we live another day.

New Card Inspired by Occupy Wall Street..Protesting in Proxy

The card was inspired by the Occupy movement, but has a bit of "cattitude"..What if you wanted to go to the protest but wanted to go anonymously?  Other than wear a Guy Fauks mask, what would you do?  You would send someone in your place--if you could rouse him from his nap...

Thus, a favorite cat is wearing the mask and thinking about going to the protest...but you realize cats can think...and think..and think...fall asleep and think again.  At any rate, it is in the works!  The cat saw "V is for Vendetta" and is really getting into wearing the mask around the house...

Proves you never know...

The card I mentioned yesterday was purchased yesterday by the person who gave it a heart.  She also thanked me and said the card inspired her!

"Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom." --Marcel Proust

New Card for Any 12 Step Program...or Just to Say Sorry...

I was inspired to create this card as I planned to present it to a local store that sells items related to recovery as well as other items.  It was fun making the little man and I was pleased with the results.  The first person who looked at it on Etsy gave it a heart and that made me happy.  Sometimes it is the little things that make all this creating fun and rewarding!  Every day create something!  Every day learn something! Grow!

A quote by Anne Morrow Lindbergh..

"It takes as much courage to have tried and failed as it does to have tried and succeeded."

We need to re-think the meaning of success as well.  Basically, to be a success as a human being is to have lived your best possible life, meaning being the best possible human being you can be, given all of your gifts and unique challenges..

Too often we define success only in the marketplace...forgetting that "at the end of the day" what will count is our effect on other people and our relationships with them.

Effort put into love is never wasted, and successes are not always immediately visible. Patience...patience..





 

Time To Revisit Gift From the Sea by A.M. Lindbergh

Taking out an older book to read it again was a good idea this time!  The book, "Gift From the Sea" by Anne Morrow Lindbergh just seemed to jump off the shelf at me the other afternoon.  It was too hot to sit outside to read so I just sat on my office chair with a cold drink and read it once again...

The author, who published the book in 1955, stresses how important it is for a woman to have time alone to find her center.  She, like women today, found that women "spill themselves away", giving all they have to give to family, friends and community.  So she decided to spend a couple of solitary  weeks on an island, SIMPLIFY, and get to the center of who she was at that time.  

As I read it, I felt I was there, on the island, connecting with the author's very soul. She says, " I believe that true identity is found in creative activity springing from within.It is found, paradoxically, when one loses oneself.  One must lose one's life to find it. Woman can best befriend herself by losing herself in some kind of creative activity of her own.  Here she will be able to refind her strength.."


She reminds us that we need to be alone, and quiet, to get to the core of who we are.  We need to turn off all media, all distractions, and just "be" and "listen"...We need to "cut out distractions"...She says " One learns first of all in beach living the art of shedding; how little one can get along with, not how much..one needs less in the sun. But one needs less anyway, one finds suddenly.." 


Please, dear reader, pick up this book and spend an afternoon digesting it.  Eventhough it was written years ago, it is valid to tears for us today--now more than then, because of the overwhelming distractions of modern times!  Read for yourself!  If you don't buy a new book, get an older copy from a used book store.

Approval and Acceptance...

"Do not look for approval 

except 


for the consciousness of doing your best."


_Bernard Baruch

Most of us look for acceptance and approval more than we look to the place where it should reside--within ourselves. Why is the other guy's opinion more valid than our own?  

I watched the first couple of episodes about Fergie's struggle with herself and the acceptance and approval theme kept coming up.  It was something most of us could relate to...royalty or not.

Others will not know we are insecure unless we tell them or show them.  They are more worried about how we perceive them than about how they are perceiving us. 

So...be as calm as possible.  Speak your own truth from your core values and don't compromise who you are.  And that is what people will feel and see...