Monday, October 30, 2017

Creating Community

Reflections on the upcoming ten year anniversary of quitting my day job to become a full time artist November 1st~

Over the years when I have sat down to try to get on paper what my "business plan" is, it always seemed incomplete to just write down monetary figures and projections of where I would be at the end of the year, 5 years, 10 years, etc. It was when I incorporated a more esoteric angle of what I wanted my business to be, that's when things started to shift for me in my "professional" life. In all of the guided journeys that I have been on, meditations and inner reflections, it all comes down to creating community. Creating a space where people feel safe, a place where people come to be nurtured, body and soul. That's where the idea of a Healing Arts Center originated.

Several years ago my friend Tami Brancamp and I partnered on a couple of workshops where we facilitate the creation of an I AM statement and then make a mosaic representation of that statement. Through guided meditation and brainstorming exercises, Tami helped us to come up with a series of words that were a reflection of how we want to show up in the world, but more importantly a statement that would be a daily reminder of who we are at our core. The words that I came up with were: Community, Create, Inspire, Peace, Humble, Divine and Light. You can see my finished mosaic in the picture below. It is a scary thing to do- to create a statement that might not feel true at that moment and for me still feels like I'm not quite there. Community has been a common theme in my journey and Create is easy. Inspire has worked it's way in with those two. The last ones were the difficult part. I'm not always so humble and peaceful- I'm working on not rushing to judgement, not being so opinionated and being able to recognize my own Divine Light. I beat myself up in my head for the things I have said, things I didn't say, making up stories about what other people might be thinking about my transgressions. I get irritated when I witness other people not give someone the benefit of the doubt, yet I'm guilty of that more often that I'd like to admit. I'm tough on myself, tough on the ones I love the most and I say f*ck probably a little to much in my everyday talk. I guess where I'm going with this is that I'm definitely a work in progress. We all have insecurities. We all question if we are on the right path. We want to know that we are fulfilling some sort of higher purpose while we are in these earthsuits.



My vision was to create a place of community. A place to feel safe. A place of creativity. A place that people can come to nurture their souls. On this ten year anniversary of the beginning of my journey to serve, I feel like I can say that I have created that place at Copper Cat Studio. I know that it will grow and evolve, but I also feel like I have arrived. And that abundance thing? It happens when you aren't focused on that being the most important outcome, but rather a higher purpose of serving one another.

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