Opossums & Woodpeckers

L—,

I was just thinking about you because of what I've been thinking through / up to this morning and how it segways with our visit last night. So I thought I'd walk you through some of my brain stuff this morning, so as to help provide you with more intel for your exploratory journey :)

So first, I love animals and since I was a kid I've generally preferred them to humans. The way I was talking about plants last night, and how they'll show up and say 'hey!' and that if you start interacting with them, you'll learn stuff from them, well the same is true for animals.

And they can show up in all manner of forms. Sometimes it's literal (like the rabbit that came to live in our backyard after Pepper died who has been a real balm to my soul! Rabbits are the animals I have the oldest spiritual relationship with), and sometimes it's figurative (like seeing an image of an animal anywhere out in the world that somehow catches your eye).

And so if we approach these appearances with the same curiosity that we do the plants and contemplate what we know about those animals (who they are: ie: where they live, what their behaviors are, etc) and seek more information about them, then we can learn from them.

So, for the last couple of years, I've been leaning heavily into the possum and its characteristics, but this morning, I was thinking through some insecurities / challenges and it led to me thinking about behaviors I've embodied that I've related to the possum that are no longer serving me well. And, to keep this story short, I realized that the main reason I was feeling limited by those attributes that I've been embodying from the possum, is because I'd only taken aspects of possum traits, not the wisdom of the whole creature. - I'd reduced it to my own narrow view (which I was also using as a device for shielding myself from feelings of discomfort and insecurity in both my internal landscape and outer social environment).

This realization helped me in a couple of ways. First of all, I've not been at all fair to possums. I've typecast and stereotyped them and used those stereotypes as defense mechanisms instead of working through my feelings of discomfort and insecurity. I need to do some inside work on myself to deal with those feelings. I also need to humbly re-approach the concept of 'possum' and learn from the whole animal... not just the parts I [unconsciously] handpicked for my own [maladaptive] benefit.

Which is how I found myself on my computer this morning doing a couple of searches. First of all, refamiliarizing myself with possums and their behaviors, adaptabilities, etc... not just what I've painted them to be in my own mind. Secondly, contemplating that maybe it's time to start working with another animal as well. 

While considering what animal that might be, I started searching through a stack of animal illustrations I have. This activity didn't yield the answer directly (it's not like I was flipping through and then came across THE animal)... no, instead it allowed me a chance to free up my subconscious (I often like handling things in this manner... sorting, etc, as a means of letting subconscious thoughts poke through) and suddenly I knew exactly what animal I was curious to explore next.

Woodpeckers have been calling my attention for almost two years now, and it's only increased in frequency this summer. I hear the flickers outside all the time and I love hearing their calls! I love knowing when one is nearby and spotting them when I'm out on my walks. On a walk a few days ago a flicker flew by and straight-up landed on the side of a telephone poll and I marveled to myself 'how is that even possible?!' It seems too amazing... to come in at full flight speed and just land on the side of something so seemingly hard and solid. How??

So these contemplations and thoughts were what led me to the internet to brush up on what I know about possum behaviors (with a new humility of spirit... really being in a place to receive instead of putting my own agenda out there) and also to ask "how do woodpeckers land on the sides of trees."

Thus, this begins my journey of working with woodpeckers... I've already been noticing them for sometime. Then I had that curious question last week. Today when I was struggling with human/emotional/thought-pattern stuff, and I did my usual routine [ritual] of handling some illustrations in my hands, looking at them and contemplating them as a means of letting my subconscious speak up, it all came together... when I thought of the woodpecker, that curious question from the other day came back to me, and thus began my exploration :)

Other options available to me: I may watch some woodpecker videos on Youtube. It's a readily accessible place to observe animals in a concentrated form of study that would take a long time to track down in the wild. But this is supplemented with continuing to observe and listen to the flickers every single time I can in my daily life.

Also, I don't try to start from scratch (I'm not this strong yet at my practice) with figuring out what traits each of these animals has... I usually start with a quick google search about what symbolism others find in an animal and see what jives with me (some of it's esoteric bunk and doesn't seem to come out of anywhere but makebelieve, but some of it I read and I'm like 'yep, that jives with me from what I know about these animals from my own observations). - So, this morning when a google search suggested that a woodpecker "stands for strength, opportunity, wisdom, resilience, kindness, and determination. Never one to give up, it sees value in the most hopeless of things, including a dead tree and makes remarkable good come out of it." That gave me something I could start working with... I can see those traits myself (except for kindness, at this point I can't see what about a woodpecker's behavior could be interpreted that way), but the others I can see in the woodpecker's behavior).

AND, since those are traits I feel like I could use help with in strengthening my own character... I think it will be a good match for this next season as I reconcile with the possum and get to know the woodpecker better.

As I said last night, it's just recognizing that the plants and animals are our neighbors and then being curious and getting to know them (instead of othering them and placing ourselves above them).

ALSO, as one last nugget, I'll leave you with this tie-in. We talked briefly about ancestry and so that's also an element I contemplate and consider in different ways at different times. One way that I integrate that is that I remind myself that my ancestors in the British Isles would have been surrounded by different (yet similar) plant and animal neighbors than I am here. So again, I let myself be curious and I searched 'woodpeckers of the united kingdom' and in doing so, I learned that there's a gorgeous green woodpecker over there, in addition to a couple of other lovely varieties! 

So I focus on being part of my local community by getting to know the plants and animals here. And I focus on being part of the global community by remembering that there's more out there than what's right in my face. It opens me up to more wonder (green woodpeckers!) and also to more need (the conservation efforts and struggles over there don't look so different from those here). It's a specific way that I can dial into caring for my non-human neighbors here and abroad - and it reminds me that I'm part of something bigger (and also not the center of the universe).

(Can you imagine if we all gave our time and attention to our adopted land and our lands of origin... which for me I count both as Texas and the British Isles... because they are the lands of my recent and distant ancestors)... how much healing that would bring to the planet and our relationship with it??)

So these are my thoughts of this morning and I wanted to share them with you in hopes that they can help light your path.

I'm so excited and hopeful for you for this grand adventure. Stay curious and open, my friend, and great things will find you! :)

A Prayer for a Better World

Every day I get up and work on building my skills as an artist. I’m a born communicator - my father will tell you I came into this world already talking. All my life I’ve communicated verbally, but the endlessly missed piece that I longed for was the ability to communicate visually too. I’ve been working towards that goal for the last couple of years, taking classes as I’m able, learning from books, and practicing on my own.

Now I’m living the long-held dream of waking up every day and going to work in my home studio (in a corner of my bedroom). I sit down at my desk and show up for myself and my dream of being an artist. I’m taking classes to bolster my development and am learning how to build daily routines and ongoing practices as a working artist.

Especially in these last couple of weeks this discipline has been fueled by the faith I have that I can make some difference in the world with these skills someday. I feel acutely that it is my task to work hard at building my skills as an illustrator for some future, not yet known, purpose - so I work on drawing exercises day after day.

But underneath the faith there have been feelings of desperation and hopelessness. In feeling hopeless about current events, I desperately sought the only solace and hope I could find - which was to pour myself into my art practice for some future purpose I can’t see but believe to be there. But a shift in perspective, thanks to a visit with a friend, helped me replace those undercurrents of desperation with hope.

She shared a quote with me from one of her colleagues:

“The work we do is a prayer for a better world.”

I already had strong faith in the pursuance of my work - that was unwavering. But now, instead of fueling that faith with desperation about all that I cannot control and hopelessness about all that I fear, I will seek to fuel my faith with hope. Instead of desperation I will center myself in the contemplative practice of imagining a better world and the role I can have in building it. The work will look the same - showing up at my desk day after day, building skills and workshopping concepts - but the energy behind it will be one that is of growth and hope instead of mere survival.

Is your work* a prayer for a better world? I’d love to hear more about how your work intersects with your hope for the future.

*In case this needs to be explicitly stated, your work is anything that you value and devote yourself to routinely, whether paid or not. My work as an artist is unpaid, but no less needed or valuable. The same may be true for you too.

Brain Ruts

A couple of weeks ago I was suddenly aware that I’ve been stuck for a while in negative thought patterns. I wasn’t sure when or how they started, but I realized they’d been around long enough to turn into brain ruts. Did you know that when your brain does something enough times in a row that it starts becoming entrenched? The brain is just looking to create the most efficient superhighway for the transmission of information by prioritizing commonly used pathways. The problem with this, however, is that it can become determinant. One day, if you’re lucky, you wake up to yourself and realize ‘I haven’t always been this person. I don’t want to do this anymore’ and you change your ways.

At some point, I went down a negative neural pathway in my brain. My brain made a note of it, maybe put up a guide sign so that future hikers could find the new path. The guide sign was effective and more and more thoughts tromped down that path until it became a rut and the previous path towards positivity became fully grown over!

Having realized I’ve been wearing down this path for some time now, and that it’s absolutely not the person I used to know myself to be, I resolved to climb out of the rut. Trying to work one’s way out of a well-entrenched brain-rut is hard enough because the path is worn deep. But it’s made more difficult because the only way out is to consciously and sustainedly choose the positive path for a long period of time instead of the time-worn negative one. The new path is hard to find and feels woefully unfamiliar. The thoughts long to meander along the cleared and tended path that’s already so freely available. Instead I must consciously choose to reject the easy path and guide them towards the jungle instead. There was a path there once, I remember it, but all feels unfamiliar to me now. Like trying to work an atrophied muscle, it takes concentration, willpower, and effort to stick with it and resist the lazy way out.

It’s hard to monitor our own thinking all the time, so we don’t notice when we make these diversions. What starts as a small diversion into unfamiliar territory can grow to become a place where we build a home and take up residence. I’ll never know when I took my first step down the darker path, but since I can’t remember a time when I haven’t been afraid or anxious about something, I now realize I was a prime candidate for heading down this road at some point. Passivity also played a role, simply because I didn’t realize the toll that these last four years have taken on me. The fear-mongering used by my country’s leader (and his opponents) no doubt encouraged these ruts to form as I grew increasingly hopeless about the world around me.

But I’m awake, aware and active now. I see that I’ve been residing in negativity and hopelessness. I see the effects of my thought-habits and the effects on the rhetoric around me. I see how I’m not the only one who’s grown glum and despairing and now recognize similar behaviors in some of my friends. Like frogs in a pot come to boil wondering when someone turned on the heat - when did we all get cooked?

Empowered with this self-realization, I’ve been actively working on exercising my atrophied positivity muscles as I rebuild a path to hope and optimism. When I have a negative thought, I reframe it. I’m practicing counting my blessings as a spiritual weight-lifting discipline. When I can’t find my way out of hopelessness or discouragement, I’m seeking others who can share some perspective.

In a recent visit with a friend, she told me about a character in The Hunger Games (which I definitely have not read. I can’t stomach dystopian vibes, I do a fine enough job of creating dystopian worlds on my own with my rogue imagination) - but I’m told there’s a character who has been brainwashed to hate, mistrust, and kill Katniss (whom he once loved). As he’s working to overcome his brainwashing, he uses his relationship with her as a compass to help him navigate his thoughts and learn what and how to trust again.

“My brain is telling me _____, is that true?” The recovering brainwashed character asks these questions of Katniss just as I ask these questions of my friend. “My brain is telling me there’s no hope for the future, is that true?” I will keep asking these questions as part of my deconstruction of the negative brain ruts and my reconstruction of the positive path.

What about you? Are there areas of negativity or hopelessness that need your attention? How can you reframe those thoughts - even if you don’t feel the positivity yet - and start building a path towards feeling positivity again someday? Who is the trusted friend in your life who can help you see the light when all you see is darkness?

Imagination for Good

Dear Friends,

I’ve been struggling with hopelessness - and I imagine I’m not alone. I can hardly conceive the reality of everything that’s going on in the United States right now (and globally), and all that has transpired during the last four years of our current U.S. presidency. I’m at a loss for words, for sense-making, and, most recently, hope. The future has felt increasingly bleak and I’ve felt overwhelmed by it all.

Thankfully, I have a few intimate friends that are safe to be completely myself with. I can be honest about my feelings of fear, despair, and hopelessness - and I can ask for help with shifting my perspective. I called one of those friends today and our conversation did much to help nudge me back on a healthy track. I decided to take to the keyboard to synthesize a few of the takeaways that I will be leaning into extra hard - and decided to share them here for anyone else who needs some community support as well.

In chapter 20 of Anne of Green Gables, Anne (who is well-known for her vibrant imagination) is going on about ghosts and ghouls to her conservative, religious caregiver, Marilla. Marilla replies thusly:

"Anne Shirley," interrupted Marilla firmly, "I never want to hear you talking in this fashion again. I've had my doubts about that imagination of yours right along, and if this is going to be the outcome of it, I won't countenance any such doings. You'll go right over to Barry's, and you'll go through that spruce grove, just for a lesson and a warning to you. And never let me hear a word out of your head about haunted woods again."

Anne might plead and cry as she liked--and did, for her terror was very real. Her imagination had run away with her and she held the spruce grove in mortal dread after nightfall. But Marilla was inexorable. She marched the shrinking ghostseer down to the spring and ordered her to proceed straightaway over the bridge and into the dusky retreats of wailing ladies and headless specters beyond.

"Oh, Marilla, how can you be so cruel?" sobbed Anne. "What would you feel like if a white thing did snatch me up and carry me off?"

"I'll risk it," said Marilla unfeelingly. "You know I always mean what I say. I'll cure you of imagining ghosts into places. March, now."

Anne marched. That is, she stumbled over the bridge and went shuddering up the horrible dim path beyond. Anne never forgot that walk. Bitterly did she repent the license she had given to her imagination. The goblins of her fancy lurked in every shadow about her, reaching out their cold, fleshless hands to grasp the terrified small girl who had called them into being.

The chapter is appropriately titled: A Good Imagination Gone Wrong - and it seems that’s exactly what has happened with mine.

My friend heard all of my fears - global, national, local, and personal - all of my doubts about the future and finding a way forward and she helped me see that my imagination was wielding me (instead of me wielding it). She likened it to riding a galloping horse: it’s very thrilling if you’ve got the reigns and are in control, but quite terrifying if you do not and you’re on the back of a runaway horse instead.

She reminded me that imagination is one of humanity’s superpowers - that nothing has ever been done, in the whole history of the world, without imagination. She encouraged me to put my imagination into hope for a better world. In moving into that space in my mind, I can envision a way forward. I take hold of the reigns and become re-empowered to effect change around me and become part of shaping the future.

My imagination is already constructing a story and although it’s been a hopeless one, the point is that I’m very practiced at doing imaginative work. She encouraged me to lean into that strength, flip the narrative, and then dwell there in the imagined future (where justice and peace prevail). She cautioned me against dwelling in the space of “how to get there.” To dwell in the ‘getting there’ space would contribute to ongoing exhaustion and burnout because it is a space of heavy emotional work. By dwelling in the hoped-for future space, I can gain fuel and emotional sustenance to power the work that must be done.

I’m not sure if I’m explaining it very well so that it can resonate with you, reader, as it did with me - so allow me to try this analogy. It’s the difference between where we build our homes and where we go to work. I can take up residence and be nurtured by a hopeful vision for the future. There are gardens there and nourishing sustenance, and places to rest and be restored. Each day I leave that home to go to work. The work is essential, necessary, valuable, stressful, challenging and, well, work. - but I don’t dwell there. If I did I wouldn’t be able to keep showing up day after day.

By encouraging me to take my imagination by the reigns and envision the world I hope to live in, my friend helped me step from powerless to superpowered.

Because I’ve felt overwhelmed (and therefore disempowered), I’ve not known where I fit in or what my unique role could be to help build a world of justice and peace. But each day I spend hours working to build my skills as an artist. The one thing I’ve found hope in is art. I don’t know yet how my art can make a difference, but I’ve been fueled by my faith that it will. I pay attention to others (artists, craftsmen, small-presses, comedians, vloggers) and watch how they take their skills and hobbies and transmute them into building blocks for justice and inclusivity. This is where I’ve found hope so far.

Now, I will put my imagination into hope for a better world. In doing so, I bet clarity will follow and I’ll get some ideas for how I can contribute towards building that future. Using my imagination for good is foundational work. By starting with this shifted mindset, the other pieces will follow and I will be able to approach my art practice from a place of curiosity about what’s possible instead of a place of desperation as I struggle to make sense of things and cope.

If you’ve been feeling hopeless or overwhelmed, I encourage you to check-in with yourself and see if you’ve lost the reigns of your imagination. Sometimes it can be hard to see that in ourselves - monitoring our own thoughts can be a challenge if we’re embedded in them. If that’s you, I hope you can find someone safe to talk to who can help you reign that runaway horse back in. But even more than that, I hope that you can imagine things that you can feel excited about. Excitement is an excellent fuel for hope.