MELISSAFERNANDEZ.CO
  • Home
  • About
    • Melissa
    • Featured
  • Calendar
  • Offerings
    • Courses >
      • SoulCollage®
      • Art As Oracle
    • Scar Clan Book Circle
  • Shop
  • Contact
  • The Journeyzine

Friday Afterthoughts: We Stand Still.

3/20/2020

0 Comments

 
Picture
[Pictured above] The new norm, unfortunately. I sense that this is temporary. This is a past due Wake-Up call and it's needed more than ever right now. And I’m not saying this because I am dismissing the actual hard and painful stuff happening to our fellow humans right now, I am saying this because I’m feeling and experiencing that hard, painful stuff.

I honestly didn't want to add to the overwhelm. Every post out there is demanding the next best ten things you "should" be doing and even all the helpful information suddenly became a burden.  Way too much. For us sensitive, big feelers, and those in soul recovery, you may be feeling overloaded and experiencing energy exhaustion.  Our anxiety is through the roof, our biggest fears come to life. And, many are having to be out in the world, working, exceeding their energy reserves to keep the world turning. Bless them. Bless them. May they be protected, replenished and well. 

I wrote some poetry. With tears and ink. One early morning when all was quiet, except for some bird chatter outside my window. With steaming coffee, seeking solace, I wrote some words.


We stand still.
Time feels different. The air is empty, but soft.
When the realization is that the clocks have not been the observers,
because they've been reciting predictions under a subtle breath.
Everything seems irrelevant, but Life seems crucial,
Almost important enough to be held sacred.
Some just noticing.
Others, ready to create art, new paradigms and brilliant songs of renewal.

We stand still.
We can't see, but we sense the earthquakes in our bodies.
And overflowing channels of worry and anxiety burst like little
volcanoes in our minds.
We pretend.
We keep using sanitizer.
To keep clear all the things we've allowed to happen up until now.
Soiled hands of yesterday's habits.

We stand still.
Because we are too cloudy of information and feel the dizziness
of a life out of control about to swallow us whole.
Pausing only happens to machines, not humans. It is a function
in need of repair. 
All the laundry is hung and we try to read for five minutes before
our attention caves and we reach for the next bit
of distraction, the next spoonful of poison.
Because we find it hard to 
Stand Still.

To be continued. Catch up with me on instagram!
0 Comments

Friday Afterthoughts: Grief & Hope

1/17/2020

0 Comments

 
Picture
One) Hawk. Always inviting me. Same spot every time. Bidding me a good day of clarity and high vision.

Two) It's not as cold as he said it might be. This sweater us fuzzing up where the most movement happens: under my arms, along the sides of my chest/breasts. But, I love this grungy sweater.

Three) About the sweater. This ragged sweater is a she-shed companion, especially in the winter when the shed is doing it's best to keep out the December chill and my little heater is pumping away. I feel like Mr. Rogers when I change into it before working out in the shed.

Four) This tea, I love it so much. Lavender Earl Grey with a splash of vanilla cream.

Five) I finally light the candle. I ask St. Jude and make a sweet-grass offering.

Six) I miss her. I wish things were different and we were still friends. The kind that would spend hours on the phone or exchange ideas over Skype while sipping on our favorite teas. She was my Best Friend. I think of her often and winter always brings on the bittersweet memories. I will always love her and consider her my soul-kin. I told her I would never give up on her, our friendship. It takes so much out of me to allow the death of our relationship. This will be something I will grieve over from time to time. But, still...Love.

Seven) Hope. All I got right now.

Eight) Not too much incense. I only burn half the stick. 

Nine) Writing. I'm counting on the words to set me free. They always do.

Ten) A birthday reservation at our favorite restaurant. Every year since I met him. 

Eleven) Coyote. Still.

Twelve) She said laughter can lift us out of our darkness.

Thirteen) Grief. Taking it slow for now. I am a soul in recovery...for life. 

​Fourteen) This quote:
   All you need to do to create is: stand out of the way." --Dr. Clarissa P. Estés
0 Comments

Notes on Painting and Emerging

2/16/2017

 
I create as a way to navigate my life's journey.  This is my personal and spiritual practice.  In fact, all this other "living business" filters through my creativity.  Each time I find myself at the art-table, I am gazing into a mirror.  I trust it...deeply.  I trust it to show me the way, to reveal the higher road or to knock me down when surrender is a really good option.  

Creating helps me:
reflect, investigate, map, assess, release, reconnect, commune, heal.


Some day soon I hope to share more about my journey as an energy practitioner.  There is a simple explanation as to why I am open to this way of walking in this world; this open communication to these energetic multi-realms.  It was an initiation that didn't look like one and to tell you the truth, there are many that continue to present themselves as doorways in which I must step through.  The simple explanation is: trauma broke me open and the need to survive became my lessons.  I became hypersensitive; a sensing soul to all those subtle energies, that eventually became my guides.  My soul was cast and over the years I've been shamanic-ally pulling back the layers revealing the tightly knitted web that gently houses my essence. It's the part of me, and the part in you that is untouched, sacred, holy, pure, eternal. Art making is a way home to this.  A way back, centered into this realization.

The image below is a captured moment of my creative process.  I call this the crap-painting stage.  I say it with a frustrated tone as well.  I call it this because when I am face-to-face with the things I perceive to be awful, ugly, dark, shadowy (within myself) it manifests onto the canvas.  I am not saying this is "THE" process for everyone, I am just sharing my process here. 

How can I say there are these damaged parts and pieces of myself, you might be thinking.  

And, I'm responding with yes, of course there are these unmet pieces of me, sometimes hidden in the shadows.  

Most of the time, I don't even have a clue what they might be because I'm too busy projecting them.  And, I haven't met anyone who doesn't do this (jus-sayin).  This is just one way to notice them and bring some conscious light to them.  I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing, unless you are not willing to look at your part in it.  Which, again, isn't easy.  I know...I know.

This is a stage in art-making or life-making that is formless, unknown, in between.  It's the grit and grind before the smooth and shine.  This place always feels challenging.  I have no control and I feel so powerless.  I don't know what to make of it.  I'd rather throw it out and start over.  I want to quit and deem myself a sucky-artist.  Never having to take responsibility for my own expansion again.

Ever experience this?

Well, dear tender-heart...please stay with me here, 


What's happening here is: I've forgotten to see the beauty in the cycle or in my creative process.  My vision became blurred by the illusion of perfection, And perfection cuts us from many different angles,  For example: the false illusion to a permanent happiness or worse, a great fear that we won't be accepted, loved or seen.

This is some huge, deep work.  I know this, because this is my current work. But, there is hopeful movement making its way through.  It's all such a journey to be taken in and held with reverence and grace.  Hold that so-called "ugly" art with compassion because it's just the early stages of becoming or emerging.  

​Just like you.  
Picture

The ends are beginning to fray and fall away

12/16/2014

0 Comments

 
This is the process that unveils right before my new wakened moment.  I write tonight, because friends began to worry about my somewhat last two "sorrowful" posts.  Beloveds, please know I am doing just fine.  The over-culture has taught so many of us that sadness is "bad".  Lots of us take on the colder, wintery months as if we are going to the dentist to have two root canals in one sitting: anxiety and stress.  We tend to over-work and strain our bodies, minds and emotions for the sake of the holidays and to try and keep it all together on the outside.  Maybe the "holiday-thing" can distract us from experiencing the pain, despair and loneliness, but what if it is longing to be heard, expressed and witnessed.  Perhaps it needs a hug too.  Heartache is heartache and feeling it is not fun, but I think it's necessary to allow the feelings for there is healing in this too.  At least, this is what I have been working with lately, I've been feeling it all lately.  It's been hard and honestly, I have been so sad, yet I have also challenged myself to sit in it without trying to change or fix it.  It just "is" and I'll leave it at that because I sense something bigger is going on.  In time it might be something that shapes, makes, and carves me.
#journeycard
#journeycard, week 50 | Down, but not out

Only to observe...

One rainy day, as I patiently sat in the parking lot of my favorite cafe for a coffee date with a dear friend, I began to experience a wave of an overwhelming sense of deep sadness.  Although, I had an idea of what it might be I was unsure because I had distanced myself from the pain.  As I allowed the pain to surface, I realized that I was "grieving" the loss of a dear friendship that shifted suddenly.  No fault, no bad-guy, just an abrupt end with a beginning to new open space...different space.  Unfamiliar, but it might be in need of newness, it might have been yearning for a breath of air.  I sat there running all types of quick solutions in my mind to rid the ache: go sit in the cafe and order a coffee and sugary sweet.  Maybe, go browse the nearby shops.  Maybe, lose my thoughts with some social media distraction, etc.  Instead, I sat there and allowed the sadness without judging or formulating, only observing. 

When there are no words

Nature gives us the gift of reflection during the wintery months.  She asks us to go within and experience our human-ness a bit.  As I allow myself to go deeper, I realize that at the core...there is an eternal flame that is pointing me home and reassuring me that there is balance to look forward to.  Even though it sometimes is agonizing- sadness is okay when felt with awareness and a soul knowing that impermanence is wisdom.  As I travel into the winter season of my soul, the piercing cold stings...reminds...pricks life right back into my body and asks to be sat with and be seen.  I honor the dark.  I honor grief.  I honor the silence in a room full of people.  I will embrace the discomfort when there are no words because I understand the germination phase of our life-filled growing seeds that are nestled in the deep dark while their rebirth is drawing near.
"It's okay, love...come sit with me and together let's gaze into the reassuring sky and take in all it's definite glimmering starlight.  Come, let's do that for a bit.  We're going to be okay" 
Picture
0 Comments

The gold in the dark

12/8/2014

0 Comments

 
Picture
This I promise you: I am as human as ever.  I foil in the dredge of life like so many others.  I feel my hand tremble when I reach for the light in my darkest hours.  This I promise you: I will do my best, but I must let you that I have been wounded, broken open, scarred, charred, chipped at, dismantled, scraped to bone.  This I promise you:  I will embrace my past and see the million glimmering jewels I have been gifted from it all.  It shines beautifully, like a  sky in midnight blue and silver.  I tell you, I have failed, I have been wronged and I have wronged others, my hurt- hurt others.  I've laid on the cold tile floor of a small studio apartment while my three year old daughter slept in the bed next to me as I cried into a pillow a mournful cry that was never mentioned to anyone...until now. 

There have been these moments:  utter despair, where I have questioned the unanswerable, where I have flung my arms towards the heavens, cursing the Creator.  I promise you I have traveled soul deep into healing, but sometimes I slip back into old beliefs or step into the familiar narrowness of an older version of myself.  There have been nights of worry, anxiety, body-numbing boredom and overeating.  Days spent hidden inside for fear I might be too ugly for the world to see.  But, because of these experiences I can promise you that I'll hold you close through the all wrecked and done moments, through the stale nights and failed attempts of trying to be "good" for others.  I promise, I will look you in the eyes and meet you with the softest, untouched place in my heart that is always pure and aglow.  I promise you that there is such a place as the "untouched pure and aglow".  No matter how much pain our fragile bodies have endured, no matter how many wounds, hurts or how many ashes you rose up from...that holy place exists.  Within.

I confess that it hasn't been easy and that I don't have it all figured out, but I am in a knowing place that having it all figured out is further away from myself, further away from what lies at the core of my being.  When I look to the earthly nest, I see the trees in their bare, and in their dark.  They are leafless and naked, but they are still reaching for the heavens.  They believe and they "know".  I promise you:  there is gold
in all of this dark.
Picture
0 Comments

Seeing through the shadows

12/2/2014

0 Comments

 
A year later, I find myself at the keyboard attempting to write a post.  I am slowly making my way out of my hermit year.  A year in grey.  A year communing with the wild one that dwells in a moistened, cool cavern.  A dip.  A smooth curve in between the valleys where water runs, but one cannot see...only feel.  I've been feeling my way through.  Trying to peer into the deepest dark, scanning for some kind of visual.  They were hard to make out so I had to enter through a slip in the rocks and TRUST.  I found my way through deep breaths, aching memories, painful decisions, moments of releasing. The refinement process pierced my 36 year old way of being, thinking, doing, and responding.  I think I am seeing through the shadows now and catching glimmers of light.  Thank you dark, thank you grey, thank you light for your rich defining medicine.
Picture
An epiphany tingled my body while witnessing my kids learn about themselves through a series of liking vs. disliking.  They will go on and on about someone, something, or some situation they may find themselves in and harp on it until they reach a place of final decision.  It can sometimes be negative.  And even in that...lies so many choices and perspectives.  I sort of laughed to myself, when I thought of how often I do this too.  There may be some of you who find this process familiar.  Are we too afraid to even look at it differently?  For example: is there another way to realize you are being judgmental without experiencing it firsthand?  I find the more I distance myself from these ideas the more I can observe a pattern or particular process from a place of wholeness.  This allows more wisdom.  So, I fumbled around with this new piece of knowing this year and had several real-life test-runs.

One of the deepest places I traveled to this past year; one that allowed my self-compassion to flood in was:
The Impermanence of My Perspectives and The Faulty Ground where Stand: My Beliefs.
Much can be rewritten or redefined at any given moment.  It's the reflection and awareness of the process that keeps me going, it keeps me afloat, it lulls me into calm and softness.  It stretches my muscles and expands my spirit.  It also kept me awake at night, showed up in my art, scraped off that old dead skin to the point of tenderness.  I must admit it did hurt a little. 
Picture
As I enter the darker places this season, I will do my best to remember the life that grows in it's darkness.  I will allow myself to feel, to miss, to grieve, to release without knowing why, to experience a good dose of loneliness as a reminder that this is not a "bad" thing that goes away with avoidance.  The cycles carry me through, like meeting a wise woman that knows the way when I'm lost in the forest.  I will meet my most softest and compassionate self and she'll hold me close and gently no matter the shades of dark.
Picture
To be sure, I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses. - Friedrich Nietzsche
0 Comments
    Welcome to my Virtual Journal.  ​Here you will find #fieldnotes of a Medial Woman. I write unabashedly imperfect, mostly short, even one-line word play. I share story. I share- first, my process. I view my life-living as a grand experiment and I am taking notes, mapping a trail by moments, stories and synchronicities.

    I write about...

    All
    Art
    Art Journal
    Art Trade
    Creative Living
    Cycles Of Life
    Darkness
    Expressive Tales
    Friday Afterthoughts
    Gentle Revival
    Healing Art
    Holistic
    Intuition
    Intuitive Art
    Journey
    Messy Art
    Mixed Media
    Nature
    Poetry
    Process
    Spirit
    Story
    Studio Sessions
    Tarot
    Video
    Visual Journal
    Workshop

    RSS Feed

Services

Reiki Sessions
Yoga Nidra Guidance
Dream Exploration

About

Melissa
Sacred Acknowledgement

Support

Privacy Policy
Terms and Conditions
​
Contact
​© COPYRIGHT 2020. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
WILD EARTH SPIRIT, CREATIVE HEALING ARTS LLC.
  • Home
  • About
    • Melissa
    • Featured
  • Calendar
  • Offerings
    • Courses >
      • SoulCollage®
      • Art As Oracle
    • Scar Clan Book Circle
  • Shop
  • Contact
  • The Journeyzine