September 2021: Crystallizing my ideas and putting myself first
I loved playing my guitar in my Claybury Woods, Ilford theatre again, with an audience of magpie, woodpecker, pigeon and tree seeds twirling to the ground. Regarding my shoulder birsitis, I felt excited to be able to curl my fingers onto the E and A strings of my violin instead of them laying flat on the fingerboard; indeed I had days when I was so immensely grateful that I was no longer in significant pain. Being solidly back in the groove of my piano and double bass practises helped to melt my upper body, too.
As a 46th birthday present to myself, I made a little purple book called, Affirmations, Intentions, Visions, Truths and Dreams for my 46th Year; a way for me to light a candle each day, once a week or whenever I feel overwhelmed by life and / or information, to ground me and remind me that I now have a sense of direction. I also made a commitment to prioritize activities that will hopefully contribute to my future happiness (not something I’m used to). I’m more laid back now I’m experiencing whole days when I’m not slagging myself or my work off and am limiting my moaning. Whenever things start going well, however, my addiction to expressing love and compassion to those who have hurt me resurfaces, which puts extra stress I don’t need on my body.
A dream of mine is to live off-grid with cat(s) and Trevor my tortoise in a tiny house; ideally in a cold part of America or Europe. I found out that I could potentially get a ground-based tiny house for $5000 or buy one from a previous owner. An American lady called Ariel McGlothlin is doing something similar, so I shall definitely check her out.
The world of my mixed media art within which my imagination takes me places I feel unable to go physically due to my OCD and COVID-19, continues to expand: During a mindful self-compassion meditation I created Winter Woods out of white wax, acrylic and pencil which was unexpectedly popular, and I had fun experimenting with the peeling effect of layering watercolour and acrylic. Then I made digital flowers emerge out of patterned backgrounds. I was over the moon with the quality job Clothes2Order did of printing my digital art design, White Flowers onto a black cotton t-shirt that my friend David R. Aldridge and other of my Instagram followers deemed “brilliant” and “marketable.”
woman with a back tattoo by Gemma Boyd
I felt like a millionaire surrounded by all of my ‘tidied up’ garden plants, and loved the creamy yellow dahlia bloom, my big juicy Concord grapes I used for juice, and blue and pink star-like flowers with furry stems I grew on my allotments this year.
Much of what I heard at the online Collective Trauma Summit 2021 was deeply transformative. The convener of the summit, Thomas Hübl (whose work integrates the core insights of the great wisdom traditions and mysticism with the discoveries of science) and many of the other trauma experts, value the role of the art modalities in the healing of trauma. This inspirited me and I’m hoping that Thomas’s The Pocket Project can assist me with my burning desire to provide creative workshops for adult survivors of incest.