Now is the Time

by Isabella Vickers

As Managing Editor of our beloved magazine, I have the distinct pleasure of recapping this amazing month here at Cosmic Cowgirls Magazine! We’ve been exploring Wonder and Identity. What is Wonder? What does it mean to Wonder? What is Identity? How do you describe who you are? How do the very stories that we’ve been told and the stories we tell about who we are inform our truths? How does our relationship to our own perception of who we are change over time? And how do we consider all this through the lens of Wonder? For your enjoyment, I’ve brought together a brief summary of the nine articles we’ve been proud to publish this month. Each description is followed by a direct link so you can read or re-read these enlivening posts. As conclusion, I offer my poem, “Now is the Time” inviting you to be who you are!

Chief Laughing Cloud, aka Shiloh Sophia, begins each day with the question “I wonder what the thought is that I haven’t thought yet.” She shared with us: “It is how I get ACCESS to my own information. How I enter the part of my conscious and unconscious self to get TO the very places I know need to be illumined to have a wonder-filled life,” and then she took her readers on a wonder-filled journey of curiosity and inquiry, including a Wonder Meditation to help us create a pathway to activate wonder. Read more here.

Personal Genius Manifesting Early for the Notorious Author

Next our notorious writer, Laura Toller Gardner challenged us to explore our “Other G-Spot” or Personal Genius with insight and suggestions for considering our creation mythos, curating our lives, and enjoying sexy sovereignty! She posed probing questions such as: “What is my unique equation: (Passion + Talent) x Divine Desire = Personal Genius?” and “What is one area of my life that if I intentionally curated would make me exponentially happier and full-filled?” Wow! And this was only the second article of the month! Read more here.

Treasures of Glitteracy from the studio of the Bejewelled Baroness(a.k.a. Glitter W.A.S.P.)

In her famous glittery and empowering way, the fabulous Glitter W.A.S.P., aka, Bejewelled Baroness, aka Elizabeth Gibbons introduced us to four inspiring artists: Kelly Morgen, Marie Howell, Jennifer Mantle, and Susan Risse. Each of these women claim the identity of artist and live in Wonder! They are inspired by life and the things around them to create gorgeous works of art. They have definitely discovered their Personal Geniuses! Read more here.

Scrapbook page by Michelle Fairchild

In her uniquely brilliant way, writer Michelle Fairchild, approached identity through wondering “Who am I really?” She shared how Cosmic Cowgirls courses have supported her journey of wonder into her legendary story and considered the WOW of Wondering through the eyes of a child. She also gave us the gift of writer Mary Schilder’s delving poem “Who Are You? which encouraged us to consider the very qualities and input that create our identities. Read more here.

Sophie Rose © Mary Schilder

With stunning clarity, writer and poet Ti Klingler’s column invited us to ponder the cycles of creativity and treated us to another poem by Mary Schilder, “Full Moon Coming.” Ti stated: “Sometimes the only difference between a downward spiral and a creative cycle is the way you frame and express it.” As we contemplate Identity, this can also be true for our sense of self. If we apply a generous dose of Wonder to those parts of ourselves, those places in our lives that are hard to face, what might we learn? Mary’s poem described a time for restoration, a time for opening up to love of self and others. Read more here.

Light © Steph Cowling

With courageous inquiry and wonder, writer Steph Cowling, asked us to reflect on who we are aspiring to be, and “how are the ways you currently understand yourself intimately linked with your past understanding of your self?” This is not an easy question? It’s easy to get comfortable in a place and in ourselves. But how can we recognize change and honor growth? And when is it time to let go of pieces and stories that no longer fit? Steph’s story and questions encourage our brave honesty. Read more here.

Writer Mary MacDonald, aka Stella Mac, also embarked on a courageous journey of wondering when she wrote about the Shadow, The Dark Side, or “who I really am, deep down where no one is looking?” Mary posed that the Shadow has gotten a bad rap and she advocated that the “sunny side of the Shadow is where the truth sometimes resides.” Her article takes a candid look at the ways the “dark” sides of ourselves often have our best interest at heart and important wisdom to share with us. Read more here.

Our esteemed advice columnist, Grassroots Rose, gives straightforward counsel on keeping and letting go of the fruits of our creative expression. She claims “Each of those paintings is a picture of you in some way, a truer picture than a camera or a mirror could ever give.” And asks “If each of your paintings is really you, how does that change where you’ll put them? Are you tucking yourself away or letting the world see you?” Only in Cosmic Cowgirls Magazine will you be instructed to invite your paintings to breakfast and “ask if they want to visit other folks’ walls!” Read more here.

Unlock Yourself © Jenafer Joy

In the debut of her new column “Musings from the Storytender’s Fire,” writer Jenafer Joy wonders about the identities of those drawn by the Red Thread into this moment together. She also reflects on some core qualities and values at the foundation of Cosmic Cowgirls: inquiry, witness, revolution, legend, and expression. She asks: “What symbol, what word, what poetry, could you share in this moment to unlock yourself?” Read more here.

Like I said, it has been an incredible month of inquiry and inspiration, witnessing and expression! As I sat in Wonder and considered Identity, a poem arrived last week with such a powerful rush it left me trembling. Although the immediacy was breath-taking, clearly it had been percolating for some time, and I’ve realized it is the voice of the painting currently in progress on my easel. The synchronicity is stunning, and it is clearly for ALL of us — it is time to BE WHO WE ARE and stand in the truth and full expression of that Light.

Now is the Time

by Isabella Vickers

Shining Her Light, in progress © Isabella Vickers

I believe in Beauty
the beauty of women
the power of the Feminine.

I believe in the strength of vulnerability
to stand in the tenderness
of one’s own beauty
–not protecting
protected
apologizing
qualifying

Just standing

Standing
in the quietude of being
of being beheld
of being loved
of being honored.

Not doing anything
in response, only
receiving.

Standing in the truth
of our own unique and
brilliant light. Accepting
the sparkle. Trusting
the shine. Believing
this truth.

Oh sure, there are other things
we’ve been told or shown and
until now we have accepted
these false things
as truth.

Until now.
until now.^[1]

Now, more than ever

We must stand
in our light, shine
our beauty with the fierce gentleness
and tender strength of
great wisdom.

Now, more than ever

We must reflect and
kindle the light
of our sisters, our daughters, our mothers
and remind them
of their brilliance
and hear and receive their reminders
of our own.

We must know there is room
for ALL of us, for all
of our light.

The world is full
of darkness;
The darkness around us
is deep.^[2]
and Now, more than ever
we must shine
our full Lights,
wear our full Beauty,
Love our full Hearts.

Now is not the time for turning back,
for learned and practiced
humbleness.

Now is not the time for jealousy
or intimidation.

Hold hands, join hearts
Sing the songs
dance the dances
paint the paintings
plant the gardens
tell the stories
to change the world.

Now, more than ever
it is time to shine.

The world — our world –
needs Light, needs
Beauty, needs to hear
our voices rising up
in Love and Joy.

And we can do something
right here, right now
about that –

Shine your Light.

Listen to your Heart.

Be the Beauty you are.

Now is not the time
for hesitation.

Pick up your brush
Take up your pen
Lift up your voice
Put on your shoes, or
Take off your shoes
Roll up your sleeves
Pick up your shovel

Open your hearts
Open your eyes
Open your ears
Open your minds

Experience the Light and Love
and Beauty
right there inside
you, right there
next to you –
your sister, your daughter, your mother.

Be the Beauty you are.

Shine your Light.

Now is the time.

_____________________________

FOOTNOTES
¹From the poem Enough by David Whyte. Return to Now is the Time. (You can read Enough on my Inspiration page.)
²From the poem A Ritual to Read to Each Other by William Stafford. Return to Now is the Time. (You can read Ritual on my Inspiration page.)

_____________________________________

Isabella Vickers is an artist, teacher, and writer. She is passionate, curious, and actively living a creative life with her poet husband and dancing daughter. She also practices as a Jungian-oriented psychotherapist in Oregon’s beautiful Willamette Valley where she utilizes creative and expressive arts to facilitate growth and healing. She offers Creative Bliss Art Retreats and Blossoming into Fullness Women’s Creative Groups. She and her husband, also a psychotherapist, offer Co-facilitated Couples Therapy: An innovative journey through the mysteries of dialogue, both within each individual and between, to cultivate the sacred ground of relationship. Isabella is the Managing Editor of Cosmic Cowgirls Magazine where she writes the column “Dare to Bloom.” You can see her art at: www.IsabellaVickers.com, learn more about her therapy work at: www.LivingAirDialogue.com, and follow her column right here on www.CosmicCowgirlsMagazine.com.

Lessons in Painting & Community

Lessons in Painting & Community
by Isabella Vickers

What stories do we tell ourselves in order to stay safe? And when we tell ourselves those stories again and again, do they protect us or actually create separation and distance by keeping us outside the circle of belonging? Deep relationship requires risks. Community requires participation.

We’ve all heard about those remarkable communities that exist “somewhere out there” where the combined energy is phenomenal AND each member is individually valued and held with love and genuine support. But many of us carry the belief (and tell the stories) that those communities rarely, if ever, exist in reality.

I arrived last week at the Cosmic Cowgirls Studio for the graduation weekend of our Color of Woman Training. I felt honored and blessed to have been part of such an outstanding inaugural group of women. AND while I believe in the mission of Cosmic Cowgirls, I was thoroughly convinced of the stories I’d been telling myself in preparation for the end of our journey: “Real community does not transcend distance. The only sustainable community is local, and I will have to do this alone.” In theory I believed in the Red Thread Circle we had created and flourished within for the last amazing nine months. But in practice, I had no expectations or experiences to support moving forward together; I was certain that this was to be the end of our incredible community, that we would each go forward on our own. I was preparing myself for the trauma of separation by creating emotional distance.

Because the joy of deep connection is matched by the intolerable pain of separation, we tell ourselves stories to minimize the traumatic impact of being alone again. We manufacture truths that ease the pain instead of creating plans for overcoming it. Staying connected takes a different kind of attention, a different kind of energy, and risk. Risk that the stories might be true. It’s easier and safer to stay small, until it’s not, and the day comes “when the risk to remain tight in a bud [is] more painful than the risk it [takes]to blossom.” ~ Anais Nin

Each time I’ve come together with my Color of Woman sisters and teachers, the experience has been life-changing. Of that I have been certain. And each time we’ve parted, the separation has been excruciating. The synergy of our connection, our community, is beyond anything ANY of us have ever experienced. When we’re in that field, individual and combined transformation happens within the context of community. And yet, it is so challenging to maintain that connection when we have to go our separate ways and live our daily lives. Figuring out how to stay connected and have day jobs and families, as well as our own creative practices makes telling ourselves stories so much easier. These stories attempt to provide safety, to help us avoid pain and risk, because there is always risk involved.

This weekend I finally realized that was I was having the repeated experience of intense connection, followed by going home and in very short time convincing myself it wasn’t really that intense and deeply meaningful at all; I had imagined it; it was something that existed only in that particular time and space and was not sustainable. That was the key. When I realized the stories all protected me from the terrible risk — even truth — of unsustainability, I understood. Sustainability is vitally important, and yet, so difficult. We all have lots of experience with that –the myriad reasons we can’t sustain something no matter how important it seemed initially. It’s too hard — that’s why so many of us slump after the first of the year when our resolutions have fallen by the wayside, our exercise and nutritional plans have become diluted, our creative practices interrupted.

This time I won’t be telling myself the same old stories of separation and distance. This time I’ve made plans and set actions in motion to face the risk and move through the pain. I have seen the world from this place. I have seen myself in this place. I have changed. I have crossed over.

What stories do you tell yourself? Do those stories create safety or do they actually create distance? Rather than avoiding the pain of separation, how can you create sustainable connection?

The next Color of Woman begins May 1. Click HERE to learn more.

 

Color of Woman Inaugural Class at Cosmic Cowgirls Studio

_____________________________________

Isabella Vickers is an artist, teacher, and writer. She is passionate, curious, and actively living a creative life with her poet husband and dancing daughter. She also practices as a Jungian-oriented psychotherapist in Oregon’s beautiful Willamette Valley where she utilizes creative and expressive arts to facilitate growth and healing. She offers Creative Bliss Art Retreats and Blossoming into Fullness Women’s Creative Groups. She and her husband, also a psychotherapist, offer Co-facilitated Couples Therapy: An innovative journey through the mysteries of dialogue, both within each individual and between, to cultivate the sacred ground of relationship. Isabella is the Managing Editor of Cosmic Cowgirls Magazine where she writes the column “Dare to Bloom.” You can see her art at: www.IsabellaVickers.com, learn more about her therapy work at: www.LivingAirDialogue.com, and follow her column right here on www.CosmicCowgirlsMagazine.com.

Stepping through the Gateway

It is my distinct pleasure to feature Cosmic Cowgirl and Color of Woman colleague, Havi Mandell. Havi is one of those extraordinary people you just know is very special the first time you meet her. She beams grace and wisdom in everything she does, and her beauty and spirit are boundless. Havi is dedicated to her work, professionally and personally, and it both impressive and inspiring. I could go on and on, but I’ll let Havi tell her own story! Welcome, my friend.

Stepping through the Gateway
By Havi Mandell

Painting in progress by Havi Mandell

My battle with depression pushed me (it truly felt like life or death) on a healing quest. I immersed in therapies and spiritual practices to help re-member my being into aliveness. I had been so cut off that I could go outside in the winter snow in my bare feet without being bothered by the cold. That disconnection, that frozenness, began to thaw and I began to heal and feel. This was not always an easy thing. As a teacher, Dr. Jack McIntyre, said, “It isn’t the frostbite that hurts, it’s the thawing”. I started to come alive and felt embodied with a new sense of passion and communion with myself and the world around me. I never knew a body could feel so much.

I happened onto Shiloh Sophia McCloud’s website after reading one of her poems and I could feel a burbling up of excitement. I stepped off the edge and did the Legendary Life course and was amazed that, most of all, I could paint BIG, a whole 30” x 40” canvas of Legendary Me.  Woo hoo!!

Our Lady of Rebirth by Havi Mandell

I can’t tell you why I started the Color of Woman course, I just knew if felt important. At our first gathering, I watched Shiloh freely and flowingly create a beautiful painting without planning and trying to make it just right…and the painting was glorious!  Being in a room of other artists, the energy was contagious, and things flowed on to my canvas that amazed me. At the end of the gathering, I kept looking at my painting, astounded. I did that?!  Where did she come from? Where did that live within me? I wanted to learn to share this teaching and, after watching Shiloh, I committed to painting one painting a week for at least one month with as much freedom and flow as I could muster. A couple of times it was scary and my inner critic had an f’g field day. But, I kept going, after all, I made a promise to myself. I went from the painstaking process of my Legendary Life painting experience (aackk…too much paint on her face, how do I make her eyes the same size, how do I give this the meaning I want…???) to enjoying not knowing quite where things were going, loving the accidental beauty of paint dripping on canvas and the hidden painting that stepped out to the canvas, seemingly magically. Do I still have angst along the way? Oh yeah. But, I trust that something surprisingly wonderful will emerge if I just get out of the way and play and ask and listen and I’m excited with the dialogue between me and the women who come to life on my canvas.  When I look around me now, I pay attention to a certain look on someone’s face, the play of light and shadow, and most of all the visions that pop in over morning coffee or watching The Daily Show or contemplating the moment. Everything feels like art now, everything.  I have stepped through the gateway from healing to living as an Artist. Color of Woman, my experience with my teachers and tribe students, was a turning point for me. I am actually selling my art, getting together painting and giclees to be exhibited, and creating a website dedicated to my art and, using Shiloh’s amazing techniques, embarking on helping others step through their gateways.  My life is a work of art ever unfolding.

Believe in Magic by Havi Mandell

Creativity flows the music of the soul

Awakening the songs of the spirit lived through the body

Harmonizing life and love, being and becoming

Each heartbeat drums the rhythm of the soul to life

Each brush stroke caresses magic on to the canvas

Each movement a dance of embodied spirit

When I live my Divine Spark of Creativity

I am one with Creator,

Creation

and all creation that is

__________________________________________________

Rev. Havi Mandell, Ph.D., is a Shaman Muse for the Soul and HeARTrageous Artist. Havi paints from the magical, wounded, emerging and sparkly places in her heart, painting out loud and in full living, flower child color, blossoming new stories on canvas. Beyond painting, her passion is inspire the depths and heights of the wild creative soul, clearing away self-limiting beliefs and energetic blocks so that the essential self radiates from within and is expressed fully. Fear and limitation can be replaced with beauty and possibility. Her intention is to touch and awaken that magical, wild, creative Soul Essence within us, and create the space, guidance, and light-hearted healing muse energy to invite that Essence out to play and shine in the world. Shiloh Sophia McCloud has been the quintessential muse and inspiration for Havi’s new life as a HeARTIST.

Havi has presented classes and workshops on creativity, joy, and mind-body-spirit healing across the country and has passionately and joyfully enjoyed over 25 years experience empowering individuals, couples and groups. Her healing website is www.soulblissings.com, her blog is www.heartoftheearthstudio.wordpress.com and stay tuned for her website: www.HeARTrageousLife.com.

_____________________________________

Isabella Vickers is an artist and a writer. She is passionate, curious, and actively living a creative life with her poet husband and dancing daughter. She also practices as a Jungian-oriented psychotherapist in Oregon’s beautiful Willamette Valley where she utilizes creative and expressive arts to facilitate growth and healing. She offers Creative Bliss Art Retreats and Blossoming into Fullness Women’s Creative Groups. She and her husband, also a psychotherapist, offer Co-facilitated Couples Therapy: An innovative journey through the mysteries of dialogue, both within each individual and between, to cultivate the sacred ground of relationship. Isabella is the Managing Editor of Cosmic Cowgirls Magazine where she writes the column “Dare to Bloom.” You can see her art at: www.IsabellaVickers.com, learn more about her therapy work at: www.LivingAirDialogue.com, and follow her column right here on www.Cosmic Cowgirls Magazine.com.

Hidden Below

Hidden Below
by Isabella Vickers

Do you have a feeling there is something waiting within you? A glimmering truth, a deeper knowing, a truer calling? Do you move through your days with love and joy and yet still feel like there’s something more? Something deeper, greater, grander or maybe even smaller, shyer, quieter that longs to come into the light? Is there some part of you that really believes we all have gifts and talents to be developed and shared, even enjoyed…and yet it doesn’t feel as true for you as you know it is for others? As if somehow the other aspects of your life are more important, more valid, more necessary than developing your gifts or following your longings.

You have a gift that only you can give the world
—that’s the whole reason you’re on the planet…
the miracle of your existence calls for celebration every day.
~ Oprah Winfrey

What if this is really, truly true? Not just about others. About YOU, about each of us? What if you were to wake up every day knowing that you have a gift to give — your raison d’être– and move forward into your day with the joy of believing it and living it? How would it change things? What if you begin believing this, about your own true self, today? How will this moment change? The week? This year? Your life.

Isn’t it surprising the ability we have to “know” something, to even  believe it, and yet hold ourselves, in our most active practices, apart from that knowing, that truth?! Imagine if we were to believe in our own worth and value and gifts the easy way we believe in our children’s, or our best friend’s? How might that change things? And what if it’s okay to just start now with listening, and keep on listening to that truer calling and allowing it to draw you forward to the person you already are? What if you take one small step at a time toward expressing that glimmering truth? The time is always now and it’s never too late to begin.

Hidden below
beneath the shiny
under the improvements

Hidden below
beyond the busyness
behind the more

There in the stillness
the darkness

Hidden below
past the urgent
and the important

Is the smooth grey-silver stone
of glimmering truth

waiting

It’s been there
all along.

Hidden below.

_____________________________________

Isabella Vickers is an artist and a writer. She is passionate, curious, and actively living a creative life with her poet husband and dancing daughter. She also practices as a Jungian-oriented psychotherapist in Oregon’s beautiful Willamette Valley where she utilizes creative and expressive arts to facilitate growth and healing. She offers Creative Bliss Art Retreats and Blossoming into Fullness Women’s Creative Groups. She and her husband, also a psychotherapist, offer Co-facilitated Couples Therapy: An innovative journey through the mysteries of dialogue, both within each individual and between, to cultivate the sacred ground of relationship. Isabella is the Managing Editor of Cosmic Cowgirls Magazine where she writes the column “Dare to Bloom.” You can see her art at: www.IsabellaVickers.com, learn more about her therapy work at: www.LivingAirDialogue.com, and follow her column right here on www.Cosmic Cowgirls Magazine.com.

Inhabiting Joy

Inhabiting Joy
by Isabella Vickers

We cannot cure the world of sorrows,
but we can choose to live in joy.
~Joseph Campbell

Have you chosen your theme for 2012? What will this wild new year hold for you? What will you bring to it? Where does your joy live and what happens when you choose to live in joy?

When I first read the words above by Joseph Campbell, I cried. It felt like permission. Great big permission to embrace my natural response. I never deny that there are sorrows, and have experienced plenty, but there is a moment at the beginning of each day, a pause, a stillness that pulls me into joy. Sometimes I’ve felt apologetic, as if I’m somehow not taking the sorrows seriously enough, that I should join the grief. Yet, again and again, I discover light amidst the darkness. I believe in the light. I believe that following the light will lead us through the darkness, and it has time and again. But somehow reading Campbell’s words, gave me permission to live there, to really inhabit joy. So I’ve chosen that for my theme this year – Inhabiting Joy.

I’m excited about what that will mean, and how it will unfold. I’m excited about stepping fully into it and owning it. And I’m curious why I needed permission. There’s an important lesson there for me, and I believe that inhabiting joy will also lead to my ability to give myself more permission to live, believe, and truly inhabit the things that come from deep within, no matter whether they match what’s outside or not.

The more light you allow within you,
the brighter the world you live in will be.
~ Shakti Gawain

It’s incredible to me the way lessons deepen with time, and how I can hold a belief and even believe I’m embodying that belief, only to discover there’s some part of me that doesn’t really accept it, much less believe it. I love those discoveries! (Yes, it means more exploration and sometimes very hard work, but the results are often life changing! See?! Here’s me choosing joy!) When we can pause and look at the things we hold true “out there” and yet somehow don’t quite feel worthy of ourselves – now those are the places of real growth! So I’m asking myself, “How can I fully inhabit my joy? How do I hold its truth alongside sorrow—my own and the world’s?” I don’t have the answers yet, but this is my year of taking responsibility for allowing my inner light to brighten the world. For truly believing that we can each choose to live in joy. And that our collective light makes a difference.

If we want joy to be the story of our years joy must be the story of our days. Joy must be a daily choice, a habit, a promise we make to ourselves.
Joy must be the way we travel.
~ M.H. Clark

Of course, there will be people who don’t share this attitude, accept this story, or take permission. And the gravity of my joy will draw them to me. It happens that way. It’s good for both of us. I hope that we will each approach the other with openness and curiosity, as well as respect. Just as we can choose to live in joy, we can choose to live in our sorrow or anger or disappointment. I respect that. It’s not an easy choice to make, and sometimes we need to hang out in each place a while to really experience it before we’re ready to move on. I believe in that too. And I believe in the phenomenon – some call it the hundredth monkey, the millionth circle, the tipping point – that big things change when enough individuals change. On Tuesday, here at Cosmic Cowgirls Magazine, Michelle Fairchild wrote in her column, We Are All Meant to Shine, about Orly Wahba, and her work Life Vest Inside. Orly and that project are a perfect example of living in joy, choosing to believe that kindness changes things.

What are you choosing to believe? And how does that change your life and the lives of those around you? Even the world? How are you choosing to travel through your days, and what story are you telling? And what permission do you need to give yourself to live more authentically you?

For me, 2012 is all about Inhabiting Joy. It is my transportation, my story, and my promise.

Let joy be unconfined!
~ Lord Byron

_______________________________________________

Isabella Vickers is an artist and a writer. She is passionate, curious, and actively living a creative life with her poet husband and dancing daughter. She also practices as a Jungian-oriented psychotherapist in Oregon’s beautiful Willamette Valley where she utilizes creative and expressive arts to facilitate growth and healing. She and her husband, also a psychotherapist, offer Co-facilitated Couples Therapy: An innovative journey through the mysteries of dialogue, both within each individual and between, to cultivate the sacred ground of relationship. For more information visit: www.LivingAirDialogue.com. To read more about her journey as an artist visit: www.IsabellaVickers.com.

Quotes from Joy, written and compiled by M.H. Clark. Please check your local bookstore for this inspirational book.

Bold Gratitude

Bold Gratitude
By Isabella Vickers

Autumn Splendor

Especially at this time of the year surrounded by the glory of Autumn’s splendor, Harvest’s bounty, and Nature’s changing light, I am filled with Gratitude. Something about the combination of these “ordinary” things this year, this season, keeps bringing me to stillness and wonder, and I am continually pausing mid-stride, mid-sentence, even mid-breath to gaze in amazement. I’ve always paid attention to these things, but more than ever before I am consciously experiencing the beauty all around me, allowing it to fill my heart, my mind, and my body with gifts of color and light. I feel as if somehow the volume has been turned up on my senses and the frequencies have cleared. It’s amazing! And apparently I’m not the only one noticing – I’ve asked friends and family if Autumn seems especially spectacular this year, and most of them agree!

So I’ve started considering something: How do gratitude and creativity go together? How does expressing one’s gratitude influence one’s art? And how does one’s creativity influence one’s gratitude?

One of the interesting things I’ve discovered along the way is that practicing gratitude actually has a scientifically proven benefit to your brain activity! According to a new book called Train Your Brain to Get Happy by Aubele, Wenck & Reynolds, people who engaged in keeping lists of their gratitudes for thirty days changed the way their brains worked! Evidently, focusing on gratitude activates the “positive” areas of your brain, such as the thalamus and the medial prefrontal cortex, and the “negative” areas, such as the amygdala, are quieted. The activity in these areas of our brains controls the emotions we experience. And it doesn’t matter if the gratitude is for something current or well in the past. “It’s the mental act of re-experiencing pleasant memories and feeling grateful that evokes positive emotions and increases your ability to live in the moment, and to feel compassion.” (Aubele, Wenke & Reynolds)

The hydrangeas by my front door!

But what does it mean on a daily basis in the practice of living a creative life? I’ve been noticing that feeling grateful AND practicing my art enhance, enrich, enliven, and expand each other.  The more I practice one, the more grounded and connected I feel about the other. In other words, while I’m practicing my art, I feel deeply grateful for each element of color and image and texture, for the ability to engage in a sacred creative practice, and to live a creative life. And when I’m pausing in wonder and overflowing with gratitude for the richness of the season, I’m naturally considering many ways I can bring those feelings and experiences into my art.

And then the other day I heard an inner challenge I’d like to share with you: This is an ideal season to challenge ourselves to take it to the next level of artful gratitude and grateful art! Let’s practice Bold Gratitude!

bold |bōld|

adjective

1 (of a person, action, or idea) showing an ability to take risks; confident and courageous

2 (of a color or design) having a strong or vivid appearance

 gratitude |ˈgratəˌt(y)oōd|

noun

a feeling or expression of thankfulness and appreciation

Red maple in my yard!

According to these definitions then Bold Gratitude is the confident and courageous expressions of our feelings of gratitude through strong and vivid creative risks. Stepping into our creative selves, living more from our artful souls, and expressing our thankfulness and appreciation for our connections to all living things and especially communicating our gratitude to those we love and appreciate even through our creativity.

How can we do that? How will our creativity reflect a deeper, bolder sense of gratitude? How will our gratitude by illuminated and sweetened by our emboldened creativity? I’m enjoying the play of colors even more in my painting and the deliciousness of the season is filling my kitchen. Everywhere I’m noticing richer colors, deeper connections, and sweeter kisses. What about you?

_________________________________

Isabella Vickers is an artist and a writer. She is passionate, curious, and actively living a creative life with her poet husband and dancing daughter. She also practices as a Jungian-oriented psychotherapist in Oregon’s beautiful Willamette Valley where she utilizes creative and expressive arts to facilitate growth and healing. She and her husband, also a psychotherapist, offer Co-facilitated Couples Therapy: An innovative journey through the mysteries of dialogue, both within each individual and between, to cultivate the sacred ground of relationship. www.LivingAirDialogue.com

Your Blooming Life: Finding Water

Here at Cosmic Cowgirls Magazine and University, we’re ALL about community and tribe, gathering our circles and changing the world one moment, one legend, and one grand adventure at a time. Creative communities take all different forms–small, large, virtual, in-person, organized, organic, ongoing, and brief gatherings. Whatever the form, true community–your Tribe–is the place where you feel safe to really be yourself, where you are supported and recognized and witnessed. It is the circle that holds you as you are, as you dream of being, and as you are indeed becoming. It is an expansive, dynamic gathering of people who are courageous and bold and committed to each member being her fully amazing self. They know that each success opens doors and clears paths for others to follow and that together it is possible to truly make a difference.

Have you found your tribe? or are you part of a creative community? How does it feel to be surrounded by others who support and encourage you to fully be your creative self? If you are looking for your tribe, what does your ideal creative community look like and how does it feel? What qualities would help you know you’ve found the right place?

In my June column, I had the great delight to feature artist and Cosmic Cowgirl Tracie Hanson with her article Your Blooming Life: Tilling the Creative Soil. Tracie is living and breathing a creative life!  Not so long ago she made some big changes to create room for her artist self, and recently she has been engaged in finding and gathering her artist tribe.

Tracie has found her community and together they are passionately engaged in living creative lives. Here, she shares her journey and talks about what it means to her.

Finding Water by Tracie Hanson

Guest Artist Tracie Hanson

For the past two years, I’ve been steadily tending my creative garden.  I’ve laid in colorful beds of art journaling, added sprinkles of writing, and watched in awe as large paintings began to bloom forth.  Astonished as I was at this new growth, I was thirsty for something more.  I yearned for creative water.  The water, you see, is Tribe . . . companions on my artistic path.  After all, no one understands an artist quite like another artist.

I don’t live in a particularly artsy community, nor did I attend a school filled with fellow artists.  Yet I knew I’d find the water I was seeking.  It was a conscious decision I made the first time I joined an online art class . . . I went there with the primary intention to find artistic soul mates, and a little instruction would be good too!

And water I did find . . . lots of it!  Internet workshops, blogs and communities have led to both in-person friendships and meaningful online relationships.  The magic of technology granted me access to like-hearted artists around the globe – I’d never have found them otherwise.

I’m thrilled to have grown my own little creative sisterhood over these past couple of years.  There, we each give and receive the support so necessary for joyous artistic blossoming.  It’s there, I’ve found my water.  Where will you find yours?

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Tracie Hanson

Tracie Hanson is a mixed-media artist and creativity coach married to Derek, the love of her life.  The couple bounces between sunny Southern California and foggy Northern Cal with Derek’s two mid-sized growing “art goddesses” and a dog named  Flea.They are all teaching her much about art making and living juicy!     www.mybloominglife.com www.facebook.com/mybloominglife

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Isabella Vickers is an artist and a writer. She is passionate, curious, and actively living a creative life with her poet husband and dancing daughter. She also practices as a Jungian-oriented psychotherapist in Oregon’s beautiful Willamette Valley where she utilizes creative and expressive arts to facilitate growth and healing. She and her husband, also a psychotherapist, offer Co-facilitated Couples Therapy: An innovative journey through the mysteries of dialogue, both within each individual and between, to cultivate the sacred ground of relationship. www.LivingAirDialogue.com

Painting My Way Through

By Isabella Vickers

What happens when you’re faced with the pain of losing someone? What helps you to move through the overwhelming grief? It is never easy and when that loss is sudden and tragic it can be breathtaking, even emotionally paralyzing. Sometimes it helps to talk about it, and sometimes you just don’t have the words—because there simply are none.

A dear and close friend of mine died very recently in a tragic river accident. When I received the news of his death, I was literally stunned and devastated by the unexplainable tragedy. In the hours following the phone call, I felt shocked and confused, the tears flowed uncontrollably, and words seemed useless and so empty.

Even the River Cried - Isabella's coloring of Shiloh's drawing "Living Waters"

It was my family’s Sabbath, which we spend in shared creative space, so it wasn’t surprising when I eventually felt drawn to art to pull myself back together. In those moments art was truly the only thing that made any sense. I found my way to my Color of Woman Journal and opened to a page that began to give gentle image and form to my grief: Shiloh’s drawing “Living Waters.” Intuitively, I added tears and a dark cloud over the sun, and the more I colored, the calmer I felt. As my tears flowed onto the page and blended with the colors, my trembling subsided.

In the past I have trusted words and the silence between to get me through crushing emotions. I have journalled extensively, written creatively, and spent myriad hours talking. Although I have always been creatively inclined, even an artist at heart, my arts and crafts have usually expressed my joy. So, I initially didn’t trust my artistic expression to bring direct relief, because the few times I have allowed the dark and confusing emotions to emerge visually it has only made me feel worse. Still, writing and talking have always taken me directly through the pain, describing and naming the hardest and harshest truths.

For the first time in my life, I took my grief to my easel and a new canvas, and I literally and metaphorically painted my way through. Having completed many painting courses with Shiloh Sophia and Cosmic Cowgirls University, I turned to those steps and techniques. After some initial sketches that only increased my grief, I simply started with a background of a gray-blue environment that ultimately looked and felt as if the sky itself was crying.

It’s difficult to describe what happened next.

Finding Peace by Isabella Vickers

I considered stopping with the background. It felt so true, and yet instinctively, I knew that I needed to continue. As I waited for an image to emerge, a previous drawing came to mind that I had shared with my friend. The memory of his response brought me comfort, so I began to draw the outline of a face, then the flowing lines of a cloak. I didn’t know where I was going yet, but felt right.

The colors and shading of the cloak took form before the details of her face, and it seemed as if the heaviness of the cloak enveloped her. This echoed the heaviness I felt and again, I considered stopping here. Yet again, I knew I needed to continue. As I encountered the shape of her face and the gentleness of her expression, I felt a shifting inside, a gentle centering. As the highlights and shadows of her face gave her depth and brought her to life, I realized she was coming out from under her cloak and I too was beginning to emerge from the overwhelming grief. Eventually, when she seemed complete, something else seemed to be missing. I sat with her and listened to her pondering symbols for grief, for death, for love and for gratitude. I played only briefly with sketches of different symbols before Peace herself arrived, not flying away I had imagined, but landing where she is needed and perching there near the heart. a soft, gray mourning dove.

Coloring and painting my way through these days has given my grief a softness it would not have had if I had turned to my usual expression with words. I have described my painting process here and attempted to put words to my nonverbal emotional experience, but what happened during that unfolding, and in the painting that quickly followed, can only be described as Grace.

Love is Always the Key by Isabella Vickers

As a psychotherapist, I have trained, practiced, and facilitated expressive and creative arts personally and for many others. However, with the tools I am continuing to learn through my work with Shiloh, and specifically the recent Color of Woman training, I have been able to move through this experience with a grace I’ve never known before. My grieving process and my art practice have been profoundly transformed by this experience and I can only begin to imagine how it will effect my work with others.

How has art transformed your deepest emotional processes? How does the artwork of others hold and support your soulful experience?

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Links to Resources:

Cosmic Cowgirls University - There are many new and exciting courses in painting, writing, and creativity this Fall.

Color of Woman Journal and others by Shiloh Sophia McCloud – beautiful artwork and insightful writings to support and hold your process.

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Isabella Vickers is an artist and a writer. She is passionate, curious, and actively living a creative life with her poet husband and dancing daughter. She also practices as a Jungian-oriented psychotherapist in Oregon’s beautiful Willamette Valley where she utilizes creative and expressive arts to facilitate growth and healing. She and her husband, also a psychotherapist, offer Co-facilitated Couples Therapy: An innovative journey through the mysteries of dialogue, both within each individual and between, to cultivate the sacred ground of relationship. www.LivingAirDialogue.com

The Legendary Life of Ila O’Malley

It gives me great pleasure today to feature the story of my friend trish’s grandmother, Ila O’Malley. She most definitely lived her Creative Life as a Legend and inspired those around her both near and far, in her days and still. As you read trish’s recollections about her legendary grandmother, consider this: What kind of legend are you weaving with your creative life? What are the stories your daughters and granddaughters (your sons and grandsons) will tell about how you lived and touched their lives?

Ila Vain Weese O'Malley

Guest Writer: trish o’malley

My maternal grandmother, Ila O’Malley, was a formidable woman with many talents and a certainty of what she could do and what was folly.  I spent most of my days between the ages of 2 and 11 with a woman who was a respected leader in her community, incredible creator of beauty and fun and function, a great gardener, and a patient and loving caretaker of a rather complex child and her two teenage brothers.  How she spent her days was determined by the seasons.  In the winter she sewed on her White sewing machine that she had since it was released as the first electric model available or embroidered faces on the dolls she made and sold by the hundreds during the last decade of her life.  She knitted, cross-stitched, painted watercolors, arranged flowers, and was a crack designer (my Barbies had clothes Coco Chanel would have envied and my dance costumes would have attracted the admiration of Edith Head).

Ila's Homecoming Costumes on Kathryn & Sally O'Malley and friend

When the days grew longer and warmer, she spent less and less time in the house, tending the big garden and numerous flower beds or shelling peas and snapping beans under the shade of the walnut tree.  As I look back on it, I assume she did not like cleaning house or cooking.  She spent very little time doing either and I have often joked that I taught myself to cook as an act of self-defense.  My brother claims he became a vegetarian because of his early scarring from grandmother’s pot roast that honestly could have passed as something unlikely to be ingested by any living creature.  She did have me help her wax the hardwood floor in the living room of our simple two-story farmhouse.  And to be fair, she made the best and prettiest apple pies I have ever known and I am a serious foodie.

Ila & Floyd O'Malley on their farm

She had been a notable horsewoman who drove all sorts of conveyances well and was also a reasonable rider.  Ila was the first woman to learn to drive an automobile in the county.  And she appeared on the cover of a magazine in all her driving gear.  Raised as a “townie” of above average privilege, she chose to marry a farmer and move three miles outside of town.  Farm life suited her and Floyd suited her as well.  Conversation was always intelligent and lively in their home.  During the Depression, her sister told me she always had a pot of beans on the wood stove and would feed anyone who walked in the door.  Family rumor has it that in those days she actually liked to cook and did it well. All of my family were politically active and cultivated an openness to ideas beyond the familiar.  My mother said Ila was a somewhat stern and distant mother, but as a grandmother, she was available, loving and generally supportive.  I was a bit fanciful (no surprise there, huh?) and she seldom dampened my enthusiasm to be a judge, a dance teacher, Esther Williams (I am a lousy swimmer), or whatever.  And when she did feel it absolutely necessary to add a dose of reality, she said, “Tricia, that idea will never grow corn.”

trish "Tricia Ann" o'malley, at the farm she loved, 1965

My early life on a farm and as a part of a small community has long felt like a blessing and it is largely because I spent my time with a woman who could make an automobile into a swan with chicken wire and tissue paper for the town Homecoming parade, then move from our garage to a nearby barn and build a swimming hole on the next float using flimsy blue dry cleaning bags and giant sunflowers, then come home and sew a gown for my uncle who would ride the riverboat gambler float as Mae West.  She inspired others to believe it was possible to do things no one believed could happen and soon they would all be looking back at events that were fun and memorable.  The sleepy little town was a destination for tourists during these events and a place of pride for its residents.  Lest you get the wrong idea, she did not do it alone.  Her sister and one of her daughters (my mother was not usually home with us), were movers and shakers in their own right, but Ila was truly a force to be reckoned with.  She transformed a skinny little acrobat into a Siamese cat, a mouse, a life-sized Raggedy Ann, a gypsy, a vacquero atop a pony with handmade fabric roses in his mane and tail.  She sat and watched me do the same acrobatic and dance routines hundreds of times almost always offering insightful comments for improvement and encouragement.  When, as a precocious ten-year-old, I chose Jimi Hendrix’s Foxy Lady for one of my self-choreographed dances, she did not complain despite listening to it countless times.  I cannot imagine she loved my choice either.

Ila was a cancer survivor who spent over fifteen years with a colostomy that was at its best an embarrassing inconvenience and at its worse an incredibly painful and messy ordeal.  She nursed her husband through a peaceful death at home.  She loved all of her family of characters, misfits, and geniuses who never “made much of themselves.”  She worked the polls at every election, chaired committees, carried me along to visit shut-ins who answered their doors squinting at the unfamiliar sunlight.  Ila knew about every gadget and piece of furniture anyone ever collected or sold and she knew how to do everything useful in a home and its immediate environs from canning and preserving to huck weaving to darning socks.  Driving a tractor did not elude her either.

Ila O'Malley, 1974

When she fell on some frost emptying the slop bucket in the pasture, she drug herself back to the house, eventually finding a lawn chair as an aid and calmly directing a scared 7-year-old to call my aunt at work and get her warm while we waited for help to arrive without uttering complaints.  She loved to be in the garden and her iris and rubrum lilies were so notable she took herself out of flower competitions after winning grand prizes for too may years in a row (according to her).  She served as a judge for over a decade afterwards at the county fair and several other flower shows.

She did it all in a dress.  It was only in the last year or so of her life that she ever donned a pantsuit and I don’t think she did it for any reason except to get her sister and her daughter to quit giving a hard time about being out in the garden weeding when the wind picked up and blew her dress over her head exposing her to the highway that ran in front of the house.  It is certainly true that waistbands are not the friend of a colostomy, yet I like to imagine that grandma, like myself, preferred to have her parts airing out in the breeze as often as possible.  I admire Ila Vain Weese O’Malley for her self-confidence – the can-do she had so such an overflowing abundance of that she extended it to others.  I am still inspired by her generosity, her diverse talents, her leadership, her bemused smile, quick and sharp wit, and genuine laugh.  Thanks, Gram.  So glad to have known you. This morning I still miss you though you have been dead nearly 40 years; you are alive in the best parts of me.

Ila O'Malley, Florida 1959

Well Dear Reader, how has Ila’s legend and trish’s memories of her grandmother touched your heart and could it maybe even change your day? Here on Cosmic Cowgirls Magazine, we’ve been sharing stories and asking lots of questions!! Last week Steph and Shiloh asked How can you Risk to Get Happy or Dare to be Yourself? Each and every moment is another opportunity to choose to live the fullness of your legendary creative life! We’d love to hear about it!

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trish o'malley

trish o’malley is a cosmic cowgirl, kitchen witch, dakini, energetic maven, ritualist and aromatherapist who lives on the edge of the Mojave Desert in the mountains of southern California where she sleeps under a big mother oak tree and bathes under the open sky whenever the weather allows.  Her most constant companion there is a raven who either guards that tree or perches in it so she can more easily defecate on trish as she sleeps.  trish grew up on an Illinois farm where she enjoyed acrobatics and riding her ponies, sometimes combining the two loves in hopes of joining the circus when she wasn’t imagining herself as the first female Supreme Court justice.  She did neither.  A former bookseller, executive director of nonprofits, sex educator and intimacy coach, cook, baker and bartender, and snow coach driver and tour guide in Yellowstone National Park; she now blends concoctions, raises awareness about conscious food choices, holds community Equinox and Solstice gatherings, writes for a local magazine and offers journey massage.  Currently, she is recovering from painting on canvas for the first time and hopes to complete her legendary self-portrait soon.

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Isabella Vickers is an artist-writer, muse-therapist, midwifing-mother, and gypsy-lover. She is passionately curious and committed to living a creative life. She practices as a Jungian-oriented psychotherapist in Oregon’s beautiful Willamette Valley where she utilizes creative and expressive arts to facilitate growth and healing. She offers Blossoming into Fullness: A creative group experience for women, and she and her husband and practice partner offer Co-facilitated Couples Therapy: An innovative journey through the mysteries of dialogue, both within each individual and between, to cultivate the sacred ground of relationship. www.LivingAirDialogue.com

How do you say YES to your fullest Life?

By Isabella Vickers

When Life comes knocking, how do you answer? Do you rush to the door, throw it open and greet Life with arms wide open? Or do you quietly peek through the window wondering who it is and hoping you won’t be seen? Do you ever pretend you’re not home? Or maybe you sit out on the steps waiting for Life to arrive?

I’ve been thinking about this and writing about this and imagining and drawing about this. What choices do I make when Life comes to my door? How do I step forward and into the fullness of my Life? I’ve been wondering, if I invite Life to tea, will she come? What do I want to serve and how do I want to dress? Some days it’s all Dancing Leaves Green Tea and soft linen clothes and other days it’s Ginger Peach and juicy, bold colors. But what if I choose the wrong combination? What if it rains that day? Sometimes I get caught up in the choosing and the details, and I don’t actually send the invitation or make the tea, much less set the table and sit down for a long talk! But lately, the summer days are beckoning me to deeper and juicier places in my psyche. As the sun heats up, my imagination runs wild with images of lush gardens and swirling skirts, flowers in my hair and Life laughing joyfully as we sing and sip cool, fresh coconut water.

The Healing, by Shiloh Sophia McCloud

Do you ever get caught up in trying to figure out what you really want to do? Somewhere inside me there is this voice that keeps telling me I need to make a decision about which art to practice, which book to write, which project to work on next. Sometimes I go back and forth so much that I end up feeling miserable about my inability to actually do the very things I love. I’m concluding now that sometimes it is about choosing and sometimes it’s about deciding to do it all, doing everything I love to do.

So what does that look like? How does it feel in practice? Sometimes I feel frustrated that what seems so attainable in theory feels nearly unreachable in practice. But this time, rather than waiting until I figure it all out and have the perfect and manageable plan, I’m just going to start right now. Every little bit makes a difference. Living a creative, artful life means that you actually live it, not that you just dream about living that way. Starting now, I’m accepting every little bit and receiving the great big things too. Some whole days will be blissfully spent with abundant creative expression, and other days may only have moments. But what I also know is that it’s an attitude. You know the way the barista swirls the foamy milk into a leaf or a heart on your latte, or the flourishing sweep of hands as the checker bags your groceries? That’s living artfully! That’s bringing creative expression to the moment. Singing while doing the laundry, and dancing while vacuuming. Everyday can be filled with joyful creative expression, and the best part is — I can choose it in each and every moment. And even if the last three hours were spent straightening out the accounting or running errands, I can choose fresh and new in this moment to add flair and flourish, to delight in a simple sketch or a few poetic words. This moment might just lead to another and then another…

What does your fullest Life feel like? What does it look like–in theory and in practice? It doesn’t really mean that you’re running as fast as you can to do it all for everyone. Not really, we know that doesn’t create happiness or meaning, it just creates busy-ness. As creative beings, we need some time for stillness and reflection, some time for imagination, and some time for joyful dancing and singing. These things nourish and nurture our creative expressions, and creative expression cultivates more creative expression. And that is what my fullest Life looks like and feels like!

Photo by Michael Skott, Under a Paper Moon Blogspot

When Life comes knocking at my door (accepting my invitation to tea), I’ll be waiting, with the threshold decorated and the table set. The tea is ready and the sweets couldn’t be sweeter. My ideas are bubbling over and my imagination is running wild. Maybe, I’ll go meet her down the street and walk with her up the steps pointing out my favorite blooming flowers on the way!

What will you do? How will you greet the fullness of your creative Life?

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Isabella Vickers is an artist-writer, muse-therapist, midwifing-mother, and gypsy-lover. She practices as a Jungian-oriented psychotherapist in Oregon’s beautiful Willamette Valley where she utilizes creative and expressive arts to facilitate growth and healing. She offers Blossoming into Fullness: A creative group experience for women, and she and her husband and practice partner offer Co-facilitated Couples Therapy: An innovative journey through the mysteries of dialogue, both within each individual and between, to cultivate the sacred ground of relationship. www.LivingAirDialogue.com