Happy New Year, friends! I offer fulfilling wishes and earnest hopes for wellbeing for people in the northern and western worlds as they are finding their way through the the cold, dark passages of winter. I honor your challenges and also your ways to experiences of joy and warmth in the heart and soul. For Pearls in more southern, eastern, or other warmth-based, blossoming, and fruiting places of spring or summer, with the ease of good weather and a sense of greater freedom, I celebrate with you the very welcome goodness that you may be enjoying now! I never take for granted what will arise for "Pearls" in the celebrations for renewal that many take up at this time of year. Some Pearls can rise to many joyous and hopeful occasions, and others can feel weighed down just as they did any other time of the year. For those friends, I hope that we here, and others elsewhere can offer some understanding and soul-strength patterning that can bolster their journey in 2022. I enter the coming year with a sense of renewed strengths and also some vulnerabilities. New Year's time in wintry places is often like this for many different people. It's a good thing to remind ourselves newly, at times of celebrations of yearly renewal and spirit refreshing, that having positive hopes for the future and also, at the same time, some reservations, anxieties, and even deep fears about it are all partly a normal process in the human soul condition. We set our intentions for the good and the positive yet our soul knows that we'll be challenged to grow, change, or experience some suffering along the way, as usual to being human, and we can be kind and compassionate to ourselves about feeling vulnerable and a little reticent. Remember, getting too caught in thinking far ahead before we've even got the next few steps of the coming weeks figured out can cause us to become out of tune with ourselves and the rhythms of nature, and we can bleed our energies too thin. Better to set some wishes and even some plans in the short term, mid-term, and long-term for the year, then start from the beginning, one calm, mindful step at at time (or for the really young adults or for others whose lives have become too pedantic, maybe a few buzzed-up but rhythmical hip-hop steps at a time). New Year's celebrations have for a long time, and in many places and traditions, been meant as times of enthusiasm, hope, stating wishes, and also offering gratitudes to others and to higher forces for our well-being. It is also a time of setting intentions for positive growth and goodness with others in the coming year. I hope you remember to do some of this 'ritual' for yourself as well. I feel this enthusiasm this year, as well as the deeper, inner humility that naturally accompanies most people as we wade into the unknown of a new round of earthly seasons, once again. So, here are some of my offerings for people coming to this FB page to learn and share more about creating support and community for adult children of divorce through the indications of anthroposophy and the "The Pearl and the Hut" book series: Firstly, blessings to dear "Pearls" and their loved ones far and near, and especially those who might be finding it hard to feel the love just now. (Pearls is the name I use in the book to describe people who grew up and continue to live in the influences of parents who divorced or split up their relationship). I get how this time of the year can feel alone and cold inwardly at times for Pearls who live in northern climates this time of the year, and also for those who live elsewhere but for whom the social experience of society just feels coolly unwelcoming to Pearls sometimes in their vulnerability. Secondly, I humbly pray for you to have a sense renewed hope, of inner warmth and acceptance, and for strength, inner gentleness, and also the humble courage to be able to reach out and ask someone safe for connection if you feel sad, anxious, or depressed. I know so many people who know how alienating life can feel for a Pearl sometimes and so many of us who went through some of the hardest experiences of that want you to know that we got through it and found loving connections. And we know that it can be an ongoing process - but we're here in moral and spiritual support for you to know that you can do it! Lastly, I am grateful for the universal soul-spirit family that we are working slowly and carefully to create for each other. I am grateful for many on social media and also in person who have enlivened a particular kind of warmth and love with me for twelve years since my beloved partner Nick passed! It is a certain kind of universal love that I am working to help others to experience now, a love that can help transform loneliness, alienation or grief into personal relationship love and family love. It's not simplistic, that's why I wrote two books about it to help, but it can truly help if you're willing. Thus, I reverently set the intention for the best process for all friends in their work toward wholeness and a good mental health and heart journey this year. May a higher force keep truth front and centre in all that you do, as well as bring you strength and integrity to find balance in all that is to come. _______________________________________________________________________________ What's the image below all about? I try not to bring too much about my own process because I intend this forum to be about the universally human themes of many Pearls from all different backgrounds, but since this site is in renewal and new to many people and it's a new time in which I am offering these new books, I thought I'd share how I'm coming into 2022. I have been in a deep, creative expressive arts process this wintry, darkest time of the year. I wish that I could show you here some of the artwork coming out of each night but this is personal process work, something I've not had such a deep ability to do for some time as my focus needed to stay so dedicated to the therapeutic book series on "The Pearl and the Hut". I will keep most of this personal process art away from Facebook and other social media, though I will share more on the website for the book at: www.anthropearl.com. (I have put a significant amount of personal sharing out to others in the last twelve years, unconditionally, and have experienced a great deal of moral support and love from Pearl friends and anthroposophical workers here and around the world - which I am deeply grateful for. So many people worldwide have wanted to support an initiative to help children and adult children of divorce, in freedom, through anthroposophical soul-psyche indications and practices.) Creating expressive artwork that is revealed to the artist within us during this time of the year, and when a Pearl has a chance to have their process guided and "held" well, is not expected to be the beauteous, fully balanced artwork for pleasure and enjoyment that some people love to see in a gallery or anywhere else. When we start this work, we may not even think that we have any kind of an inner artist and some might not be sure that they even care about art. It can however be a very truthful, real process of connecting with the love of one's inner being, since the art is evoked out of conscious and unconscious processing that has been long known to offer therapeutic assistance to people experiencing stress. It can be a deeply welcome experience to get a sense of inner-self knowing. I am always grateful to be guided well in such a process of remembering the core love that I am and always will be, and which is in all human beings when they chose to find that essential nature in themselves. A good creative expressive art process for healing needs to be offered in a way that the person feels supported to experiment with color and images that show up on their page according to feelings arising in a story or certain prompts, without judgment and in freedom - meaning that the facilitator guides the process but leaves you free with what you come up with. It is best if it is offered in a steady habit life rhythm, such as the same amount of time to work on the art at the same time every day or week for a stated period of time. The person doing the process is encouraged not to worry if they take a few tries to get into it, or if their rhythm goes awry one or two days in the process. The point is to honor yourself and what you're giving to yourself and come back, come back, come back... _______________________________________________________________________________ I'll be offering these kinds of mindful, rhythmical, and gently guided processes in 2022 on-line for people wanting to work through some of the content of the "Pearl and the Hut" books. (These can not be set up as formal therapy because of different legal and professional standards concerns in different countries, states, and provinces. Still, the courses can offer support and hands-on psychoeducation activities around "The Pearl and the Hut" books and also about general creative expressive arts processes that you can take up for yourself or with a friend or a therapist. Author and course facilitator backgrounder: I offer online courses based on my master's in transpersonal clinical psychology degree work, and my background and experience in transpersonal clinical counseling in western Canada, as well my training and experience as a qualified Waldorf teacher and as a former public school and alternative school teacher in schools using significant arts and nature integration for learning. (Waldorf primary schools and high schools are fully arts and nature integrated, with a strong, social-integration pedagogical philosophy centred in the head, heart, and hands. I also have extensive background in theatre, singing and now songwriting, and dance-movement arts, including Five Rhythms dance, as well experience as a playwright. I'll also be inviting other Pearl friends and other healers here to share what they can to the culture of Pearls striving to keep whole and heart-healed. I guide people through mindful and socially sensitive psychoeducational experiences as an Anthroposophical soul-psyche indications student for 20 years and as a qualified specialist in creative expressive arts therapy. As a registered clinical counselor, I frequently use these arts processes along with many integrated Anthroposophical arts indications and practices with clients in my private counselling practice. _______________________________________________________________________________ In this coming year of 2022, Jupiter will be in Pisces and that will be a good time for much good, practical, and dedicated soul-psyche work and development. A trained therapeutic arts facilitator in your region, or an expressive arts counselor there can help you to connect with a sense of self and the expression of a deeper, innate love that is inside of everyone despite painful or challenging family circumstances. Many people have had existential questions about meaning in life during Covid and the coming year will be a good time for feeling some meaningful, soul connection. It could also be a danger time for some who can fall into unhealthy escapist activities so I am hoping and putting out the feelers for a wide community of supporters to come together over time to offer heartfelt boosting for Pearls that might keep them away from too much in the way of dangerous other activities. Many Pearls, we know, can toy on the dangerous side. I explain some of this in detail in "The Pearl and the Hut" books. We also know how much of a set-back, or even for some a deadly encounter, that can mean. We've lost a lot of Pearls to fentanyl overdoses and homelessness deaths for lack of the right supports coming their way at the right times. Others are doing prison time and others still are going through painful divorces themselves, sometimes more than once and some are falling into unhealthy relations with their own children. I know there is only so much that can be done on social media, and yet, we've also seen that a great deal of good can come about here also. Whoever you might turn to in the coming year for such help, make sure that they are allowing you the freedom to choose your own path. Honest soul-spiritual supporters are the ones that don't try to make you be like them or limit you to only their agenda or make you feel caught or overpowered. And, as Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy indicates as essential to our times now, make sure they have a real sense of warmth in them. People who act "too cool" are not the best kind of supporters for Pearls facing parental or family alienation. Being heart-vulnerable can lead us toward such seemingly easy-going and exciting people who make it all seem so loose and fun and hands-off, yet they are often not very stabilizing supportive types when we're in our most painful or heavy moments. Online, it's not always easy for someone offering ideas or suggestions to get an immediate understanding of the person seeking more knowledge, so I urge you to speak up for what you really know you need if you feel that someone is pushing you to do something you don't want to do. People can encourage you to try things or seek to learn things, but they should never give a sense that they are pushing you to do something that if you don't, you'll just be a failure or left out. No one should say they're helping you by controlling you to feel that you'll be made wrong or lesser if there are things you don't want to do or know. Pearl intuition is a great protector sometimes. I'll end for now, but here, if you're interested: The image below is not from the processing that I've been doing this last two weeks, though I did get some work done on it in that time. It is painting number five from the illustrated fairytale series of paintings from "The Pearl and the Hut" book. It is in "process", meaning it is not at all finished. I hope to finish it in the next two months or so, with guidance. I have been learning very basic skilled craft painting technique for which I am grateful - something I've always wanted to have skill and understanding around, especially in alone times in my "hut" when I need to bring the intensity of outer life down to a manageable quiet or tempo. In this part of the adult fairytale for Pearls, the young prince and princess, a brother and a sister, who were whisked away from the palace where the battle broke out between their parents, have arrived to the safe place in the forest home. There, with the loving couple they'll stay with for a number of years, the woman offers them warmth, unconditional love and help. This is the woman bringing warmed goat's milk to the children before they go to bed. the fairytale, as all fairytales are, is from another time and some people might not want goat's milk or any milk before bed, but some do find it helpful for sleep. Others sometimes use health supplements that are based from elements of milk like "tryptophan" to help a person's system calm down before sleep. I am not qualified to advise you to use supplements, though I worked in several health food stores over periods of time in my life and my husband was, among other things, a certified holistic, nutritional consultant and registered herbalist. As a result, I know that certain health supplements did work for us at times. Blessings on your New Year's processes friends! — feeling peaceful.
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