Creating is hard

I'm just sitting here avoiding my creation again...
so i figured I'd write to you because these letters have way of getting me back in my groove...
It's launch week for the River Rafting Retreat, and I swear, for the past three days I've been unable to move (probably assisted with starting my moon). So I popped open an old book. Do you ever do that: wait for books to call to you? 

This week I picked up one of my favorite reads by Marion Woodman, Leaving My Father's House. Not because it's some fun mystery novel that brings me joy to read, rather because the topics are triggering and eye opening to say the least... The book is based on leaving patriarchal consciousness and actually tells the memoirs of 3 separate women tied into the Grim's Fairy Tale of Allerleighrau. (if you've been in any of live my courses, or on my subscribers list for sometime, you know Allerleighrau is one of my favorite fairy tales when describing the process of coming back into feminine consciousness.) 

I love a good memoir, as much as I love the tale of Allerleighrau.

My third love of a great read threaded into this books' seeds: the memoirs are depicted through tracking their dreams. Dream Analysis is like this Mario Cart race of characters and symbolism yanked from the roots of your truth and subconscious. Beyond what the eyes can see. A mirror machine that plugs you into a mind matrix of metaphor that also lives in this black abyss of the collective unconscious. Next thing you know, through the subconscious and symbols, the book is talking directly about you.

There's not a single experience you've lived that at least one other person, since the dawn of time, have also lived, and this collective experience lives in the collective unconscious. And this is why we relate on such an archetypal level through symbols and myth. 

So anyway, here I was, reading a story from this women in this book written in the 80s, and there I was, back in my own childhood again...

Awakening to my own experience of why creating is so hard for me today.

You see, this women grew up with an abusive brother. Being invisible became her safe place.  

She goes on to say "while invisibility became my escape, it did not solve the problem. If you are 'not there' (without an identity) how can you begin to create something that is?"

Oof. I'll be honest with you, invisibility is my safe place too. And as I prepare to leave tomorrow for this Women's River Rafting Retreat, instead of preparing, I've been isolating and self sabotaging.

How is this connected to the words of the book? 

Well, invisibility kept her from being recognized for her own unique gifts.  She got really smart in the mind through academia & university in adulthood (creating a big knowledge ego) but was severely disconnected from her body. "Spending too much time in the mind became punishment for the dreamer inside" and until she separated her own inner masculine from that of her abusive brother, "every attempt at a creative act would end in partial failure."

...and here I was self-sabatoging my unique gift of bringing women together on this unique retreat. Paralyzed in my own mind. 

It's really hard to lead when your default coping mechanism is invisibility. 

It's really hard to lead when one requirement is to be seen.

It's really hard to lead when your default coping mechanism is no identity.

Identity lives in your expression. And expression is another word for who you are as the creator of your unique creations. 

It was time to get off the couch, and finish preparing for what I committed to execute. Execution lives in the energetics of the masculine, and as my own masculine took on the role of my abusive brother, here it was again: abusing my creation. 

So, I got off my ass and finished preparing for this retreat. But not before I went to the creek and sang to the waters to sooth the little girl in me that didn't feel it was safe to have an identity. 

Or to express her creativity without the repercussion of a sibling's rivalry...

No more being invisible - IT'S TIME TO LEAD, Ladies!!

Can you relate, Glenny?

Have you ever suppressed anything within you that wanted to be expressed??

And I mean anything.. including your safety?

All those emotions are a part of your identity. All bottled up inside, as if they are not worthy. 

When has the body reacted, while you retracted? 

The author of this memoir goes onto say, "I had neglected to take into consideration the energy of the body as a vital part of the totality of the Self. I also failed to take into account powerful emotions such as anger, hatred, and revenge, which I had bottled up in my body and which had to be released before I could hope to invoke their more creative opposites: compassion, love, and forgiveness."

What stops you from creating? And how do you reconnect to the creator inside that really just wants to shine and thrive??