Go Your Own Way

Art keeps mending, healing, growing, and lifting this heart!  Learning to go my own way… <3 Thanks again to Tamara LaPorte for the awesome (and free) art, heart, & healing course!!  I’m finally up to the whimsy girls part of week 2.  I made 2 different paintings as a result.  I didn’t think I was really doing the “assignment” with either!  The first one was for my cousin’s baby on the way and the second one was just what emerged on a Florida trip to visit my dad.  Now, I realize that both kind of met the “assignment” to re-create what we would wish for our childhood selves. 🙂

The one above was inspired by my cousin’s daughter, Ava (who has strawberry blonde/red hair and big nutmeg eyes), and her baby sister on the way, Emma Skye (who I have no idea what she will look like so I gave her my cousin’s features for blue eyes and blonde hair like her momma).  Then, I added lots of happy wishes for the girls/friends/sisters.  I see now that these are all wishes I’ve made for myself as well.  I thought it would have been nice to have a sister.  I have a brother that I adore… I just would have loved to have both. 🙂  Thankfully, as an adult, I’ve been blessed to have most of them come true. <3  I’ve seen several shooting stars this week and enjoyed fireflies for the past 3 months.  I’ve picked loads of “yumberries”, which is what my sons call blackberries, and made lots of jam.  I have enjoyed wild flowers in the fields and brought some in for vases and even pressed flowers to add to art.  I have a few true forever friends that live near and far, and I have met many more kindred spirits online this year!  I have known plenty of heartache, abuse, loss, pity, guilt, and grief, but I am choosing to dance in the rain and rejoice in rainbows.

The above “Free Island Girl” has become one of my very favorite creations thus far.  I painted it on old newspaper so the printed words were left from that… such as “sea of faithful”, which was describing a picture of a crowd of people with the pope that I painted over on the bottom.  Since I was in the Florida Keys (islands) visiting my Dad (where I went to high school long ago), I decided to sketch and paint an island girl (with the few paints I brought with me and borrowing many of my kids’ markers!).  The handwritten words were inspired by recent conversations with both my husband and my dad as well as the personal growth and choices I’ve been experiencing this year.  I realize now that they also represent my wishes for myself, both as a child and now.  In the course video, Tam described one of her struggles as a kid that she had few friends.  One of my biggest struggles has been learning to be true to myself instead of trying to be popular or having lots of friends.  So the words, “Live Free” on the sail and more detailed “live free of expectations, conditioning, comparisons, judgement, fear, attachment” in the water, really represent a constant wish and reminder for myself to try to live that way (both free of others’ thoughts about me and to respectfully give others the same freedoms when I interact with them – learning to change my own thoughts and preconceptions and assumptions!).  I wrote over the printed words “personal journal” from the newspaper to make it “personal journey” and left the printed word “strong” as well.  The song, “I’m Free”, kept playing in my head as I painted so I wrote in a bit of the chorus and that became the bird’s song. 🙂  The song “Go Your Own Way” kept playing in my head the evening after I had mostly completed this piece, and it seemed like just the right thing to finish it off with (upper left above sail) to sum up the message I wanted to remind myself of.  Those 4 words seem to capture the message, ideas, symbolism, and inspiration in this piece beautifully.

I’m learning that going my own way doesn’t mean I have to go alone!  Thanks to my husband, who first inspired this change in me 14 years ago.  And thanks now, to so many friends and fellow artists, I’m realizing more and more that I can be (and discover!) myself and still have friends and be loved and accepted.  I’m finally feeling free of the need to “fit in” with any particular group(s) and realizing that it’s more about finding the right people to love one another the way we are and celebrate differences and unique qualities.

Of course, it feels great to see new “likes” on the Loving Road facebook page, but I’m not willing to sell my soul to get them.  I want to find and share my authentic voice, not copy anyone else’s or choose what I create based on what I think will be most popular or sell.  I’m learning to trust myself and the inspiration as it comes and the creative process.  I’m extremely thankful for the sweet souls that encourage me on this path by being true to themselves, sharing their thoughts, struggles, lessons, and celebrations, and inspiring me to do the same.

Go Your Own Way!  Maybe our paths will continue to cross and we might dance together.  <3 🙂

PS – After writing this post, my husband and I watched parts 1-3 of Inner Worlds, Outer Worlds (before getting too tired to watch part 4 saving it for another time), which made me reconsider some of these ideas!  These 5 words stuck with me to ponder:  trust mystery within dance harmony.

Seeking to trust the mystery, to look within, to dance in harmony with others, nature, existence, creation, life.

Perhaps I’ll be adding the following words to the live free painting somewhere: “trust the divine within yourself (and others!)

Namaste.  {By the way, I had to look up what Namaste actually meant one day years ago after a yoga class and this was the best explanation I found: Namaste – The gesture is an acknowledgement of the soul in one by the soul in another. In Sanskrit the word is namah + te = namaste which means “I bow to you” – my greetings to you. “The spirit in me respects the spirit in you.”}