How do you go back to normal?

How do you go back to normal when a piece of you has changed so irrevocably? When an integral part of you has shifted, altered, rearranged itself? How do you go back to normal when you are so forcefully and willingly propelled into a new state of being?

I can hear voices in my head saying, you don't. You don't go back, never go back! What if, though, in your journey of change, in your journey of being propelled forward into new ways of self-expression, new forms of bravery, new ways of being in the world, you find that you still have to have your foot stuck back in the old normal? Then what?

I hope you aren't looking to me for an answer because I do not have one. I just spent 5 days from 9 am until just after 4 pm in a Voice and Sound elective for my Uni degree. We explored the psychology of voice and sound, we were trained in how to breathe effectively, we were invited to explore our voice and the different sounds it makes and look at how we make those sounds. We looked at how anxiety can show up in a voice, how depression can be heard, in my own experience being the therapist I discovered what contained or repressed anger sounds like in a voice and what it sounds like when someone is carrying a heavy, heavy burden. It has been such an amazing and interesting journey. I was not ready for it to end.

Yet end it had to. Back to the old way of life I had to go even though I was so deeply and irrevocably changed by the experience. It felt cloying and sluggish to have to go back to doing Medical Transcription when I feel so ready now to step into my life as a therapist. I feel like I found my therapeutic voice and I am ready to use it!

At the end of the 5-day intensive we were to prepare a piece that allowed us to fully express ourselves using our voice and what we have learned. the piece was meant to be about us and our journey but also a story, a message that we wanted to share, something we wanted to tell people. I admit it, I was terrified - or in the words of ABBA "At first I was afraid, I was petrified..." I could not imagine how I was ever going to come up with something in such a short period of time. Then we found out we could sing an already established song or we could read a poem or a speech, a sonnet, whatever spoke to what we were trying to say, as long as we were being expressive.

 As soon as I heard that, I immediately thought of one of my most favourite songs, it was something I wanted to be brave enough to sing for people one day and it expressed a part of who I am. For me, the song speaks to being persecuted for who you are but also it speaks to the beat of our heart going on and that no matter what is done to us, we will go on, we will keep fighting, keep living, keep being our authentic selves.

The presentation was only meant to be 2 to 5 minutes though and this song goes for longer than that. Also, it's their words, their work, their voices and I had to put myself in there. I had to find my own expression. I was so dogged about having to sing the song that it took me until the -enth hour to make it my own. I can get so narrow visioned sometimes. After workshopping it with my teacher though, I realised 1- I didn't have to sing it, I could do it as the spoken word. 2- I didn't have to keep all their lyrics/words, I could put in my own, mix it and change it up and make sure it stayed within the 2 to 5-minute zone, which I did finally. I only practised speaking it once really and I didn't use all of my expression and before we finally went in to begin the expressions I knew I had to scream in one part. I mean really scream, I mean let-out-my-rage-and-pain kind of scream. That was scary enough in itself but to do it in front of 12 other humans? But if I was to honour the brief of what was being asked of me, I knew that was what I had to do, so I did! Holy hell I did.

I am not brave enough to show you, Dear Reader, the recording of my performance because it is confronting for me, to see what I look like. In my head I'm nowhere near as big as I am in reality so watching myself is painful and the thought of other people watching it, even more painful. I am going to keep it though because one day, I hope I will feel safe enough to share it, so show people where I was and then where I am. So let me just say it was pretty powerful, raw and expressive. It definitely met the brief and I even got a standing ovation and it changed me. It dislodged something in me that then fell away. It unclogged a blockage perhaps? I came away from this 5 days different and I can't necessarily put my finger on exactly what it is but there is something different here now in my body, in my being. 

On the way home from the intensive I heard a whispering in my mind. Keep the momentum going, it said. Don't go back to hiding yourself, it said. It's safe to be seen now, it said. It is safe to be heard now, it said. You must start practising, it said. Practising what? Practising speaking, using my voice. I am really good at expressing myself and speaking in the written word, not so much verbally. It's time for me to begin honing that skill, to begin practising that skill. So I made a commitment. I committed to doing Facebook lives! I'm going to start with the unrestricted people on my friend list and as I get used to it, as I explore my voice and what it wants to say I will then open it up to all the friends on my list and from there, from there one day I will do it in my business pages! This is the dream. The dream is that I can speak freely and without fear, that I will learn to steady my voice and my mind will stop going blank and will always know what to say and how to say it. So I'm going to start small but at least it is a start. That first baby step has been taken. I almost backed out. I almost didn't do it. I almost made an excuse and kept myself small and cowering in fear but then I did it. I took a breath and did it. I DID IT! I did my very first Facebook live and people watched it and they were so supportive and cheering me on, showing up for me to help me teach my brain that it's ok, I am safe. 

There is so much to unpack here and I do not want to make this post too long, so I will leave it here. Maybe I will return to it at some point, maybe I won't but for now... I DID IT.

I AM BRAVE
I AM FREE
I AM WHO I'M MEANT TO BE
THIS IS ME!

Drumming and om-ing for the health!

 Day three of my Voice & Sound elective and when I very first saw this elective and decided I wanted to do it, I was no imagining this. Not even in the slightest. Actually, I don't know what I was imaging if I am to be honest. I definitely love it though. It has never occurred to me before now just how important our voice is. From the moment we are born and we use our voice to have our needs met, through to when we are taught to suppress our voices when our parents shhhhhhhhhh us when we are crying, to bigger, deeper silencing that might happen through our lives. It never occurred to me how much we can know about a person just by listening to them speak. You can hear anxiety, depression, you can hear fear, you can hear when someone is used to not being heard, it is truly amazing.

Today, we sat around and had a drumming circle that evolved into an om circle.

I woke up at 3 am with a migraine. Knowing I had to be out of the house all day humaning, I got up and took some painkillers. It was still there when my alarm went off almost 4 hours later. I believe it was coming up from tense muscles I had just under my shoulder blade. I know this seems like a tangent from the topic but it's relevant. It's relevant because after the drumming circle and the om circle I realised, the pain had completely vanished from my head and almost entirely vanished from my back! 

I know we are all just made up of energy particles and that sound is also an energy particle but it still blows my mind that chanting om and by feeling the vibrations of the drums, it can lift acute pain. Imagine what doing that regularly could potentially do for chronic pain? Intriguing idea, no?

Vocal folds anyone?

Today was my first day of a 5-day intensive Voice and Sound elective for my Arts therapy uni degree. It has been amazing learning about the voice so far and how we can tell SO MUCH about a person just by the sound of the their voice. We can tell if they are shy, if they are used to not being heard, if they are unwell, if their vocal folds (also known as cords) are damaged, we can tell so, so much about a person just by listening to them speak. It is truly fascinating.

What was even more fascinating - and probably not for the feint of heart - was this video showing what happens to our vocal folds when we sing:

I watched in both horror and fascination and can't tell exactly how I feel about this video LOL. 

Interesting for me, I'm nowhere near as tired as I thought I would be after a full day out of my house, so that is a good thing. One day down, four more to go!

Practical Magic the book: A review of sorts.

I had the pleasure of seeing Practical Magic on the big screen when it first came out. I wasn't entirely sure what I was in for, I just knew it was about magic and that was enough for me. I fell in love. I think this is the very movie that made me love Sandra Bullock and want to watch all her movies.

There was so much about this movie I loved. The sisterhood. The them-against-the-world feel. The magic. The family bond. The final acceptance from those who previously ostracised them. I love this movie.

It wasn't until many years later that I found out it was based on a book and knew I had to read the book because books are always so much better... right? Life got in the way though and I never got around to reading the book until recently.

Did I mention that I truly love the movie? Well, if you do too and you haven't read the book, then I do not recommend reading the book. Usually, I agree that a book is better. That is not the case with this one. I was actually pretty disappointed with the book. It took me a really long time to get into it and I had to pack away Movie Sally and Movie Gilly and Movie Aunts. I can see the threads the moviemakers took from the book and I am actually truly grateful they created the movie the way they did. I may not have enjoyed the movie nearly as much if it had been truer to the book. 

That's not to say the book is entirely bad although I think part of my struggle was around how it was written. There was no single point of view and it flipped between POVs erratically and constantly. One minute you're reading as though you are in the experience of Sally and the very next sentence you've switched to the reading as though you are in the experience of Gillian. It's disconcerting to say the least. I do not enjoy this style of writing. It's almost like it is written in third person but then it's not. It's like the book can't decide whose POV to tell the story from and it can't decide if it's 1st person or 3rd person or somewhere in-between. There are even moments where it goes from present tense to past tense that left my head spinning.

I love the characters and their traits and personality quirks in the movie, it's what helps make the movie great. I do not enjoy the characters, their traits and personalities in the book. I love how covert the magic is in the movie. I do not enjoy the overtness of magic in the book or rather the way the book eludes to magic but denies its existence at every turn. Part of what I love about Practical Magic is that the characters Practice Magic. In the book, they do not. The Aunts are the only ones who overtly practice magic in the book. I missed the magic when reading the book. 

Once I packed away the characters I love so much and know so well from the movie though, I enjoyed the book more. By the end, I was rooting for the characters and wanting to see how it all turns out. I still just happen to think the movie writers wrote the story better. They chose Sally and told the story from her POV. It is just my preference, I think, that a story is told from one POV at a time and to have that POV be just one or two different characters. I will not read it again in this lifetime; however, I am glad I did read it. I am glad to know the story as it was originally told even if I prefer the Hollywood version of the story. I really enjoyed seeing the piece of writing here and there that was used in the movie or used for inspiration in the movie. I would love to read a book of the Hollywood version with the Hollywood characters and gain some more depth of the movie world, maybe I need to write that myself!

I did get the other two books in the series and reviews seem to like these better than Practical Magic so I'm looking forward to reading them. Perhaps Alice Hoffman's writing skills become more refined. The next one I'm reading is The Rules of Magic and is about the Aunts childhood, so I'm excited to read that. Then the third one is Magic Lesson's and is actually about Maria's life. So while they may be sequels, it seems like they get better each novel and I like the idea of reading backwards in time. 

In closing, if you like to read then I recommend reading the book if only to see how different it is yet still essentially the same as the movie. If you aren't a big fan of reading and you love the movie though, truly don't bother with the book. I wanted to read the book because I was hoping for more insight into Sally and Gillian from the movie. I got some insight into their minds but they aren't the same people from the movie, so it's not really what I was seeking. If you love the movie and you want to read the book though, I strongly suggest you bracket out the movie characters (to bracket out is to put aside, so do not take the movie characters with you into the book) and read the book with new eyes, with a clear mind and create new characters in your head because these characters are nothing like the movie characters.

In Joy!

Either you can or you don't

 Can you draw?

I think most people who read my blog agree that they can because most people who read my blog are linked into this via people who teach how to do art or they are via challenge blogs that are art journal based in some way. So I hope that most people who read my blog would say YES to this, if the only option is YES or NO. There's no qualifiers here. So no, yes but not well or yes but ... *insert qualifier*. Either you can draw or you think you can't.

For those who think they can't, I would challenge you. I would challenge your thought process. Is it that you can't, or is it that you don't?

Can you pick up an instrument that can make a mark on a piece of paper?

If the answer is yes, then you CAN draw. You just choose not to. 

I have often said the difference between an artist and someone who is not an artist is that an artist practices art. If you can put a mark on paper, you are an artist! If someone can tape a banana on a wall and call it art then you can draw one blue line in the middle of the page and call it art too.

Everyone can draw.

It's just that somewhere along the line, many of us were convinced by others that we couldn't and we internalised that until we believed it and it became a story we told everyone. I'm here to invite you not to believe every thought you have, especially not the thoughts that tell you that you can't do something.

I caught myself almost a decade ago now saying that I couldn't draw faces. I couldn't draw them, so I never tried because every time I tried they looked like a two-year-old had drawn them. Of course, they did! I hadn't sought the knowledge of how to draw a face. I just drew them and hoped for the best and sometimes I'd draw one and think oh hey, that was actually alright. I couldn't tell you why it looked better than all the others I drew but it did. 

So when I caught myself telling the story of how I couldn't, I decided to change the narrative. I went to YouTube and I searched how to draw a face and that led me on a journey where I learned different techniques and I learned about where, how, why, I learned the rules and then I practised. I practised these new skills that I had learned over, and over, and over again. I heard once that it takes 1000 times to become an expert at something, so that was my goal, to draw 1000 faces. I'm pretty sure I'm still not even halfway there. 

I wasn't interested in those hyper-realistic faces. I just wanted to draw a face and have it look like a decent face and not like Picasso had done it... unless of course I felt Picasso-esque that day. Today, I feel confident in drawing a face if asked. I learned the rules enough to break them and still have a face look good. I learned the rules and practised enough that I can draw a face with only a few details or with a lot and I'm happy enough with it. 

Why?

Because I did it. I picked up the mark-making instrument and I put it on the paper and I used it to practice drawing lines until the lines began to make sense. This, incidentally, is also why it irks me if someone tells me I'm so talented. No. Not even a little bit. It's not talent, it's skill. I worked HARD to reach the place I am at. It did not come naturally. I made it happen. So no, I'm not talented. I am skilled.

You just have to decide to DO art or you can decide NOT to do art. Whichever choice you make though, it doesn't mean you can't... it means you can or you won't. 

If you still think you can't draw, then do this exercise with me. Get a piece of paper and a mark-making instrument of some kind.

Now draw an elongated C, like this:

You already know where I'm going with this, don't you? And all you've done is drawn the letter C! Next, I want you to draw the number 66 and colour in the circle parts, like this:

All you've done is drawn the letter C and the number 66 and it's already looking like something, isn't it? Next, I want you to put two lines below the nose like this:

I don't know about you but that almost looks like Homer Simpson right there. That's not who we are drawing but it is someone most people will recognise. Next, you can draw a few more lines between those bottom lines, like so:

I can already tell who this is just by this, can you? Next we're going to add some hair, like this:

Surely you know who this is now? I hope so because when I did the jaw, I kind of stuffed it up a little. Part of me wanted to do it all again but I didn't. I have left it the way my hand drew it because I wanted to show that even when you stuff up, it can still look just fine. It also shows that a few slight changes and you can make so many different faces. So let's add the chin now:

Lastly the back of the neck:

You could even add a curved line along the bottom to represent a shirt but voila! Most people, if asked if they could guess who this famous person was, would say Einstein. Even with the bulgy chin. If you followed along at home and you previously thought you couldn't draw, look at what you did. You drew Einstein. If you can do that, imagine what else you could draw if you decided to commit to practising a little bit each day or each week. Imagine what you could do if you went looking on YouTube for free tutorials.

And now, imagine what you could do if every time you heard yourself think 'I can't...' you stopped and thought '... but what if I just try it anyway.'

In Joy!

Zodiac Digital Stamps

I am truly obsessed with digistamps. I like normal stamps but there's something about the crispness of a digital stamp that appeals to the illustrator in me. The part of me that likes evenly inked and crisp lines, the tidiness where there is no errant ink going where it shouldn't. The other thing I love about digistamps is that I can print them whatever size I want. I can have one take up an entire A4 piece of paper if I want, or I can have a variance of sizes to fit whatever project I want. I can also print them on whatever paper I want, which most of the time is my Copic blending paper so I can colour them in with Copics. In case you haven't been around my blog long, Copics are my number one favourite medium.

Probably my most favourite shop for digistamps is The Paper Shelter. No, I am not affiliated with them, I just LOVE their stamps!! They are so, so cute and sometimes super detailed and so much fun to colour and they aren't that expensive either. There are plenty of bundles to buy too that help cut down the cost.

They have just brought out an awesome bundle of stamps. The Zodiac bundle! Oh my lordeeeeee! I HAD to have them. Then, of course, I just had to print them out and colour them. Not sure what I'll use them for yet but they will be there and waiting. Perhaps I'll create Zodiac pages for my Book of Shadows and use them in that!

As with most of the digistamps, I tend to begin with the skin tones. I'm running out of ink and I do not have enough money to purchase the refills these days, so my choices are far more limited than they used to be but at least I do have the refills for some of my most favourite skin tone colours.

How cute are these?!!

The stamps tend to talk to me and let me know what to colour in next and what colours to use. Normally from the skin, I would go to the hair and eyes but for some reason, these guys insisted I do the background first and of course, what am I going to do with the background if not colour them according to the zodiac sign's driving element.

I almost forgot to capture a photo of it before I began on the hair, which was definitely next... unless of course you're Leo and the lion is demanding to be coloured before everyone else because look-at-me, look-at-me, I am amazing... isn't he though?! In fact, all the animals were pretty insistent they were done relatively first.

I kind of wanted to steer away from mundane hair. I love funky coloured hair! My hair is so dark, if I want pretty rainbow-like hair I have to bleach the ever-loving crap out of it, which only damaged my hair, so if ::I:: can't have rainbow hair, my digistamp girls will!

Here's all 12 of them with their skin, their hair and the background done and most of the animals done as well. Now it's just the fiddly little bits left, like clothing, jewellery and other things like rocks and accessories.

It actually took quite awhile to get all of these done to this point. Now all that is left is the zodiac symbols on most of them and the frame. As with the background, I'm going to do colours related to the dominant element for each sign, so earthy greens and browns, firey reds and oranges, watery aqua/teal colours and light blue airy colours.

Naturally, being that I am an Earth sign myself, I did the earthy ones first. I decided I would keep each frame in the same colours. It's a bit hard to see but there is also some Sakura glittery gelly roll around the inner edge of the frame in a series of dots. You can see it best on the Virgo one. Interesting to me, is that every single one of them have their symbol within the stamp EXCEPT Capricorn and Sagittarius. So with the Capricorn one I just added it to the background.

Capricorn. The best star sign obviously 😉

Taurus. Pretty good too, this is my Ascendant sign.

Virgo.

Next, I was called to do the water signs.

Cancer

Pisces

Scorpio

Then I went on to do the air signs:

Aquarius

Gemini

Libra

Then lastly, the fire signs:

Aries

Leo

Sagittarius

Then this is all of them together, all done. I love, love, love how they turned out! I am looking forward to doing them again someday and seeing how they turn out next time. For now, I think I will actually put them in my BOS.

Seeing as The Paper Shelter's theme for this week's challenge is 'colour in' I think I can add this to their challenge page even though they aren't on a card or in a journal spread and it's just the colour in process, kind of fits well, don't you think?

Your Next Stamp is also running a challenge. The theme is 'A burst of colour'. I feel like all these guys are definitely a burst of colour. They will be a burst of colour when I add them to my BOS that's for sure!

In Joy!

Social anxiety can be invisible too.

 

I love Natalie Dee, she gets it.

Hi, I am Samm and I have social anxiety.

I might look cool, calm and collected on the outside but inside my different I-positions (the different parts of Self) are a cacophony of screams and sobs and rocking. There's a war going on inside me and one side of that war is standing like Anxiety Girl telling me that I got this, I can do this, I'm fine, I'm safe, it's ok, nothing bad is going to happen. The other side is bawling their eyes out, holding their hands over their ears with their eyes scrunched tightly shut, curled up in a ball rocking back and forth, hiding under a blanket fort. That side used to be far louder and more in control than it is these days. I am grateful to acknowledge that my Anxiety Girl in her superheroine pose is definitely becoming stronger and rallying more internal cheerleaders around her to make sure I live my life and do things normal people take for granted.

Something that has intrigued me ever since I began my Bachelor degree in Arts Psychotherapy is how often my peers would tell me that they enjoyed my presentation, that I was so confident. It really juxtaposed my lived experience. It really spotlighted that we can never know what someone is feeling on the inside, what they are going through or dealing with internally, based on how they appear externally.

This is my truth.

As I walk out of my house and get into my car I feel the first twinges of 'butterflies', like pins and needles the size of fat fingers. I feel it in my stomach and around my chest and collarbone. I ground myself; I sink my roots right down into the Earth and draw on my Mother's womb energy. I keep chanting to myself I can do this, I'm fine, It's fine. I'm ok. It will be over soon. I notice my breathing is more shallow than usual and I try to take deep breaths. As I get into my car I let out a guttural, low exhalation and it feels good, it pushes the fat-fingered pins and needles out of my gut momentarily. So I do it a few times as I put on my seatbelt and turn on the car. I pull out of the driveway and that somehow allows my monkey mind to take over so I have to consciously keep reigning it in. There's an insistent jabbering in the back left of my brain telling me to turn around, to go home, you're running late, you hate being late, just turn around, don't go. Only, I'm not really running late. Yes, I did want to leave about 3 minutes earlier than I did but I am by no means running late.

Then there's another voice in my head at the front right saying, it's ok, you've got this, Baby Gurl may have said she doesn't care if you don't go, and maybe she really doesn't, but ultimately she will feel good to see you there, to see you showing up for her. #MummaRepresent

As I pull onto the long street heading toward the high school those fat-fingered pins and needles kick it up a notch. They are more like little mosquitoes of electricity zapping around through my body. I can feel my pulse like a ring around my upper neck threatening to choke me, to take my breath away but I keep going. I keep going because my Baby Gurl is going up on stage to receive an award for doing really well at school and she has her own anxiety about that and I am grateful to hear she has changed her wording and has been calling it excitement. I like to think I had something to do with that, when I told her that anxiety is just excitement of a different colour, it's just one step down from excitement so if you can step up that anxiety then perhaps it can become excitement. She's been talking herself into it and I love that. I love that so much and I really do hope that is my influence. Yet still, I know there is anxiety underlying the excitement, I know it because I feel it and if she can get up on the stage and receive her award - a thing she was begging me not to make her do a week ago - then I sure as shit can get over myself long enough to walk into that school and go watch her.

By the time I get out of the car my whole jaw is buzzing with electricity and my mouth has a metallic taste in it. My stomach is roiling and my shoulders feel so tense. I can barely catch my breath. My mouth is dry. I've lost a lot of my peripheral vision at this point. But can you tell? If you were observing me, could you tell any of this was going on inside me?

No.

No, you couldn't because I look just fine on the outside. I have some colour to my cheeks and my eyes might be a little wider than usual and perhaps I speak a little faster and I seem like I am out of breath (because I am) but only a very observant person who truly knows me would pick up on that stuff. On the outside I am fine. I am cool. I am calm. I am collected. I am confident. -- would you look at that, all words beginning with c. I am the 4 c's, the four seas, hmmm feels like an art journal spread there. I do love a good metaphor.

My daughter comes racing out the hall doors as I arrive. Was she waiting for me? Was she watching for me? How did she know I was walking up to the doors? I don't know but I'm glad she came out. She was a lifeline. She was an anchor. She was a reminder of why I was putting myself through this physiological and psychological torture. It is all for her. She is a billion times worth it because you know what, she was there ready and waiting for me. So it WAS important that I show up for her. She DID really want me there regardless of saying she didn't care. She did and I showed up for her.

"I have dry anxiety mouth," I say to her.

"Me too!" she says to me.

We hug and she walks me inside.

Julia Michaels sings it perfectly.

It didn't take long for my anxiety to ebb once I was seated and I no longer had to be seen, I could hide in my seat. I didn't have to do anything. I didn't have to get up and perform. I didn't have to go on stage. I didn't have to pretend to be socially capable or hide my social unacceptability (I'm not exactly a mainstream muggle).  So once I was seated, I grounded myself again and it was ok and I was almost out of the whole situation. School presentations are boring AF, by the way. I got to see my daughter on stage for a blip of time and the rest was trying not to fidget or go on my phone to pass the time. In the end, she came up and gave me a hug and then I got to go home.

That is just a taste of my anxiety. Any time I have to leave the house there is at least an element of this in me. It might only be some gentle butterfly whispers or it might be a roaring so loud in my ears that I can't hear people talking but it's always there. I wish it would go away. I wish I didn't have to feel it. I wish that in order to LIVE my life rather than just survive it, I didn't have to force myself to go through this all the time. But it is there. And I live with it. And it's invisible to the naked eye.

I share this for those out there who need to know they aren't alone. Those who need validation for their feelings. Those who need to hear that someone else gets it. I get it. I am right here with you. We just keep putting one foot in front of the other and taking as many deep breaths as we can and we get through it. I see you as you see me.

In Joy