I Found My Way Home...

Be it ever so humble there's no place like home...

The front porch at Dragonfly Cottage

Dear Ones,

The last couple of weeks have been an intense and scary roller-coaster ride around and through the bi polar pathways that start in my brain and run through my life. I sat down two nights ago trying to figure out what had been going on and I realized something that was so important I don't know  how I could have missed it, but one thing that I know for sure is that bi polar or not I will always find my way home. Home to myself, home to that which is real and true for me, and this is what I discovered...

There are many ways to create a life and a business today and all are good and have value for those who fit with the current paradigms. I do not fit. I have written here that we -- those of use whose life must needs be lived outside the box -- need to learn how to be comfortable with fitting out rather than fitting in. I was trying desperately to fit in, and it's just not me. To that end I removed the last 2 blog entries about writing and teaching because they came from a place that while authentic at one time no longer work for me. I can cook them up but I could not continually dish them out. I am not that intense, over the top wild writer anymore and, as I read it, I must say, I was a bit unnerved. I don't know where that came from. I am a very good teacher, I taught my writing classes for over thirty years and had waiting lists to get in my classes. We went deep, for sure, but I am a much gentler soul than that, and as time has gone by I get softer, and gentler, and quieter. I cannot work with people one on one. I left the world for a reason when I decided that Dragonfly Cottage would be my home, my sanctuary, where I would create a life that would be the safe haven that I need, but also I want, in my deepest heart, to help others find their way home, to themselves, to what is true and real for them even if no one else understands it. It is what I am doing here. It is what I want to share with you.

Tanner and Sampson just waking up -- on my chest!

Yesterday morning I woke up, as I always do, snuggled in with my 3 pugs, and Sam and Tanner were right on top of me, firmly planted on my chest and tummy, two sleepy pug boys, my sweet loves. I am a simple woman, my animals, my garden, my writing, my art, solitude and silence, prayer and meditation, reading, and sending love notes out to the world through my blog and the books I want to write and the podcasts that I am now doing, this is the way I want to live my life, this is what I have to offer, and yes, I have to find a way to create income to live on but it has to be my way, a way that can sustain me in a quiet gentle way that does not set off solar flares that awaken the sleeping dragon inside of me. I have so much that I want to give, so much that I can give, and yesterday I started doing just that. I am creating my own paradigm for how I can live my life, tend it gently using the gifts and talents and elements of my life that I have that keep me at peace and help me create what is real and true for me now, and what I think, I hope, will reach others and be something that might help them as well. I want to help you, dear readers, to feel less alone. I want to help you see that if I could find and create a life that works for me you too can find and create one that works for you even if no one else in the world understands it. I want to create safe space for you in my books, and perhaps there will be a community online, I'm not sure, it is a possibility, but first there is so much more that I have to create. I am doing this for me, and I am doing it for you. If what I have to offer can be a help, a comfort, for you, I will be blessed a thousand fold, and my life will have purpose and meaning.

I will also be working on my novel as well as my book about the 100 Ladies. I will be creating art to sell, not only the drawings that I have been doing that I will use to create merchandise to sell but in this beautiful, peaceful place I am finding my way into I am finally returning to my fiber art as well. So much of me has been taken up trying to do things that I thought I was supposed to do that I dropped the thread that connected me to all that I loved to do. I will be weaving and hand-spinning yarn and doing free form crochet and upcycled art, nature art, and more. Soon I will be re-opening my etsy shop, maybe by the end of the summer when I have had time to create enough to fill it. Oh my, it feels good to have found my way home to my true self and the life that I have known all along was the one I was meant to create.

Tall blue salvia opening up in the green cottage garden...

In the next few months much of my life will be spent in the garden. Just now I have a number of plants to plant, and a great many bulbs, hundreds of gladiolas and a great many lilies. Two boysenberry bushes arrived yesterday and I can't wait to plant them in my studio garden on my deck where herbs, roses, fig and berry bushes, and so much more are growing. I look out these windows here where I am writing on so much beauty, the bright flamingo pink deck overflowing with new little plants shooting up, a host of wild birds at 3 feeders, two, just on the other side of these windows so close that I can almost reach out and touch the tiny birds that come to these two, the chickadees and the nuthatches, rosy finches, and even downy woodpeckers, and so many more. All of the things that I have wanted to do, that I came here to do, are the things that hold the keys to creating the income that I need to create. A flood of relief came over me and I cried. The weight of the world had been lifted off my shoulders.

Finally, yesterday I set up the PDF for the book I will definitely publish and I can say that with confidence because it is just this, the book of my heart, coming out of the world that I have created. The pages are a warm rosy pink, each 8x8" page outlined, a little box to live within, to write my stories, share my art and photographs, and mostly, in sharing my life here at Dragonfly Cottage, I hope to help you see that if you haven't already you can create the life that is one where you can sink into with ease and relief, grace and peace. There is so much I want to share with you and I have to do it in the way that I know best how to do it. It is not unlike The Contemplative Way, the quarterly journal that I published on all blue paper under the auspices of The Blue Hibiscus Press.

This may end up being a quarterly journal too and it will be full of notes and quotes, resources and stories of animals and gardens, of one woman finding her way through the maze of life as a bi polar woman to a sanctuary that she created, that I created, to be able to share the gifts that I do have. We all can do this. I want to invite you into the cottage in the way that I can. I want to welcome you to my home through the pages of this book, the first in a series. Yes, that's just it, it is the first book in a series and I am so excited to bring it to you. Would you like to share this journey with me and be guided gently into a life where you, too, can find your peace? I hope you will come with me. Oh, dear ones, I hope you do. There will be journal exercises -- gentle ones -- and so much more. I want to reach out to you and offer you all that I have to give, all that is inside of me. It is time. Oh yes dear ones, it is time.

From this beautiful place, this gentle place of peace and calm, I send you so much love. I offer you my heart, like an open book. The pendulum had to swing wildly in every direction until, dazed, confused, afraid, and hurting, through prayer, meditation, silence and solitude I was able to come home to myself. It is only from this place that I truly have anything to offer, and I am ready to offer it to you.

I wish for you many blessings. I send you so much love...