looking forward from the past

artist, astrology, creativity, new-wave, punk, rock-n-roll, writing, , , , , , 21 Comments

The Artist’s Way is a book on recovering the artist self by Julia Cameron.

Yesterday, I posted an assignment from The Artist’s Way in which I imagined myself as an 80 year-old – and all the activities I did from when I was 50 to 80. (Today I am 49). Then I wrote a letter to myself from the 80 year old me.

Today’s assignment is this:

Time Travel

Eight year old self to current self – What did you like to do? What were your favorite things?

When I was eight, my favorite things were listening to music, drawing, writing, climbing trees, walking in the woods, and reading. I absolutely knew I wanted to be an author (author was the word I used when I was eight), a teacher, and an artist. I discovered astrology when I was eight as well.

I imagined I would have a handsome husband and live in a perfect giant Laura-Ashley-esque house and have thick Laura-Ashley-meets-Ann-of-Green-Gables-auburn-hair and have four equally Laura-Ashley-esque beautiful children.  Ha ha!

I wanted to try dancing.

I hoped I would be beautiful someday.

Letter to my current self from my eight your-old self

Dear Holly,

Please remember all the fun things I like to do. I hope you will remember – ’cause right now things are hard for me. My sisters are so mean – telling me every day that I am fat and ugly and clumsy, and that I will never be loved.

So far, they are sort of right. I mean, I am pretty lonely and hope things will be better when I grow up. Will you send me love from the future? I know you already do.

I have so much fun when I can get away from everyone and can read or play in the woods. Or listen to music. I love listening to music.

I am in love with Mike Nesmith and Davey Jones form the Monkees. And Paul McCartney. And Luke Skywalker. Blondie and Pat Benatar are cool. It’s so much fun to sing and dance to them. And I love the Cars, too.

I discovered astrology while hiding in the basement. I feel like I understand what is happening to me a little bit better now.

I really wish you could play with me.

I wrote a book! It’s about dragons – and it rhymes! I drew pictures, too!

Come play with me!

Sincerely,

Holly (8 years old)

PS – I got all A’s in school again this year.

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Holly hails from an illustrious lineage of fortune tellers, yogis, folk healers, troubadours and poets of the fine and mystical arts. Shape-shifting Tantric Siren of the Lunar Mysteries, she surfs the ebbs and flows of the multiverse on the Pure Sound of Creation. Her alchemy is Sacred Folly — revolutionary transformation through Love, deep play, Beauty, and music.

21 thoughts on “looking forward from the past”

  1. In the end, of now,3+ years of hardcore Brainspotting? Full-on worth it. It totally skipped my Astro Mind being so focused in it then, though I was think in the middle of my Chiron Return. That said, I did the prep work, as it feels like you are currently doing, Holly. It only banes well for my Saturn Return, 7 years from then. Rather than being blind-sided crushed, I foresee another amplification,Most likely an intense one requiring decisive Yesses and no’s, though, nonetheless, more than workable with my “Don’t waste trouble” way of being engaging by nosing right in to what comes my way, I engage. I duck. I slip. I embrace, etc etc ad infinitum, ad nauseum…I like that I feel I am ready for this next “Astro Session” cycle towards my Saturn Return. Good stuff.

    Thanks for the prompt, Holly. Quite a grand one I feel.

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    1. I’m full-on glad you and Paula are doing what you are doing during your Chiron Return, to beautifully amend the soil to naturalize between the then and now of the what-can-be naturalized garden of your Saturn Return. Lots of life to be lived between now and then, though this post expresses that kind of conscious Astro prep and eff-a-bunch-of-that-Astro-prep where you transcend your Natal Chart plus Transits… and start Winston Churchhilling the Astro. “Nope, not stopping at every barking dog. I have priorities.” “)

      Go You, and Go You Guys!

      P.s. I;ve even thinking about that… TBD

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      2. I love it! Yes, playing in the garden of what-if and what-can-be. And, having an awareness of energies and challenges coming along is great – the choice is how to move and dance with it.

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    2. I am so glad you got so much from the prompt. And wow, yes, any integration of the parts of our selves that need us and that we need to fully experience being human is worth it and important. Skimming the surface is not always the best strategy – and for me – with four planets in Scorpio and my Saturn in Taurus – i am not sure it’s possible. As Ben Orr from the Cars (so sexily) sang – “It doesn’t matter where you’ve been / as long as it was deep . . . yeah!”

      Speaking of astro sessions – I was thinking of having an inner child meditation for the Cancer lunation.

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      1. Thanks much, Holly. Parts is Parts, and in Brainspotting that’s what it’s all about. Each and every trauma potentially forms another Part, or not, when we stand strong with healthy boundaries. I find that’s most likely why most trauma to be resolved is from childhood. Not all certainly, though the lion’s share. I feel it’s not primarily from abuse, Moreno simply from trauma, and as a kid, healthy boundaries may not yet have been formed — especially if precluded by the often Mntor/Tormentor M.O. of abuse.

        Inner child meditation for the Cancer lunation. I’d be interested if Inner Chidren, or Inner Basement Children, as after Brainspotting, I no longer buy the Inner Child as being singular. The concept of purity and potential of “The Inner Child” is there, though I find now that that singular expression tips me to raise an eyebrow as I know distinguish a whole community of Inner Children to be continually discovered… without causing a stop-and-pause gig. 🙂

        All that said, Just so you have my initial ironed out un-Bent. ;). Ttell me about what YOU’RE thinking/feeling about the Cancer lunation Inner Child meditation.

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  2. Excellent post! “Vulnerability is the birthplace of courage.” ~ Brene Brown
    To which I will add, “Immersion with presence and focus brings ablution.” ~ Jordan Hoggard

    I feel those both wonderfully apply here with your post.

    When I was 8, it was the 1st year of my life I had control of my bladder. 13 and 18 hours surgeries at the Mayo Clinic when I was 4 1/2 and 5 1/2 had finally jump-started my body to “finish” making my bladder. Born with no sphincter tissue at the base to be able to hold it and consciously go to the bathroom, well, that was not good at all. The surgeries stifled me. My StepMom commented, maybe 10 years ago, “I feel what those must have done to you. You were such a bright one, yet something huge was holding you back. I get that.”

    You see, it wasn’t if I was going to pee in the bed, it was whether I was to wake up in it warm, having just gone, or wake up and it was cold meaning it happened in my sleep and I slept in it. Frustration. Shame. No matter how hard I tried to learn how to “potty train”, and never quit trying, I couldn’t. Without sphincter tissue at the base of the bladder, I literally didn’t have the tools.

    Looking back during 3+ years of bi-weekly and monthly Brainspotting from 2015 to 2018, I found that little boy, me at 4 1/2, 5 1/2, and before and after. At about 2 years in I found him, found that little boy floating in his world only comprised of an ocean of urine, with no land masses made and the ocean self-created. We worked with that. Once I pulled him out when he was ready, on his terms, we sat. I mentally oiled him so his whole body, acclimated to urine, wouldn’t chafe… didn’t want to just displace the issue by taking him out of the frying pan into the fire of another NEW pain. It took a couple of months, he would wander in every several sessions, a little more ready to speak, had to get comfortable with me… as of course I had abandoned him when he peeled off in the multi-year trauma to protect ME. It was complicit and consensual, though in that trauma way that is not anything but pain at the onset.

    His message? When we were sitting there in my mind in a session, and he looked up at me with nodding eyes, and I expressed, “Ok, do you have a message for me?” He nodded and, “I don’t dissolve, and from what I hear from you on those mountains, you don’t either.”

    Smiling. Nodding. I cherish that moment and the moments of Silence Together just being next to one another with him as he acclimated to not being the only one in his world and began to open, and I saw through him again clearly what I felt back then, literally fluidly felt. He had been there for 46-47 years. And, he’s the one that came to me in 1999-2000 on the top of Mt Democrat to message me that I’ve written about. He’s an ally now. When he was acclimated to the point to integrate, I asked him, “I feel trepidation about you integrating and disappearing. Your integration feels different than other traumas, like you have a more specific program of where you need to integrate.” He responded, having matured through the silent sessions together, “Thank for listening to what I haven’t said that is in yourself. You’ve listened with your feelings and with mine in mind. You’re right about specifics. I’ve lived in liquid too long to think it positive to change that part. So, I’ll go live in your heart. I think it might need some help. And, it’s liquid, so I can adapt to a different liquid, one that pulses life and not your shame. Now not yellow and red instead. Yup, that’s where I’ll go. I’m going to go live in your heart. I think it needs some help.” I nodded and, “Thank you. I’m good with that.” Big ole chuckle smile from him and, “Good. See you later,” as he slipped in to a more direct ally place than dissolved to integrate by cascading though to amplify all my energies like the other Parts I found found had typically done.

    Holly and Timothy. Thanks for your early age 8 candor stories. I’m pleased to share this here.

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    1. Oh Jordan, thank you so much for sharing your story. I could see your little child self – “At about 2 years in I found him, found that little boy floating in his world only comprised of an ocean of urine, with no land masses made and the ocean self-created. We worked with that. Once I pulled him out when he was ready, on his terms, we sat. I mentally oiled him so his whole body, acclimated to urine, wouldn’t chafe… didn’t want to just displace the issue by taking him out of the frying pan into the fire of another NEW pain.”

      But boy, was your child self wise. “You’ve listened with your feelings and with mine in mind. You’re right about specifics. I’ve lived in liquid too long to think it positive to change that part. So, I’ll go live in your heart. I think it might need some help . . . ”

      So much kindness.

      I am so glad you took the time to be with your child self. Oh, so good!

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      1. Thank you, Holly. That’s what Brainspotting is all about. It elucidates your Parts (“Part” is the term of Art in that system), and brings them to the fore on their terms 1st, and then of course on yours, though they are you, so their terms typically set the playing field. I started calling it Healthy MPD, positive multiple personalities that are each most often behind EVERY time we get triggered. There’s an inter-leave when getting triggered. And, when you learn to duck Projective Identity and Psychological Projection when NOTICING and RESONATING with each Part.. you come to a place… LOL most time. 😉 … where you say, “Thank You for triggering me,” to people, so you can address the opportunity of how someone triggered you without shit spattering all over them because they … touched that place with a present tense molecular mirror… where THEY are not the cause… though, they gifted you with the opportunity to address your own, unseen one, unfelt until then — re-occurring or new.

        Oh… By the way. My mailbox was FULL-ON FECUND FRUITFUL TODAY. WHAT A JOYOUS SURPRISE. Thank You Both! No more about that here. I am responding with physical Art card in kind. STUNNING card. Wonderful oil and gold leaf painting!

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      1. 🙂 That Part… lol ALLOWS me, too, now… WHENEVER I NEED TO. Not much, though no strips on that. When it occurs, I cherish it. … instead of when he was the SAME PART being different to express to me on the mountain, “STOP CRYING, DOOD! DAFUQIN NOW! YOU’RE WASTING WATER,” version of his wise self on the mountain that helped me get through. 🙂

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  3. That’s a long span. I’m 13 years old than you. When I was 8 years old I was dealing with a very rare disease that almost crippled me. 54 years later I’m just dealing with life, the universe and everything. I’ve done most everything I wanted to do, and I doming the things I can do today. So besides the hardships of life during a pandemic, life is good.

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