Appreciating Beauty in the Unfinished

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Originally sent out on October 22, 2023

Dear Friends,

This Work in Progress is only about 1/2 finished. I love it, and designed it so that I could do one square per painting session, creating a Mindfulness Mandala in each blue square and a botanical image in the other squares. I haven’t worked on it in weeks, but I noticed that even though it is unfinished, it has its own beauty right there, right now.

Well, this painting is a metaphor for me right here, right now. I’ve just come home from a “Heart of the Wounded Healer” training with Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, and I am wiped! There was so much left unfinished before I left home on Oct. 7 to drive to the training in Loveland, Colorado (outside of Denver), especially regarding my new book WILDFLOWER SEEDS: THE BEAUTIES OF A REFLECTIVE LIFE (available through amazon). Then there’s sending my 28 pages of notes to those whom I’ve promised, an immense amount of mess and clutter that somehow appeared in the house in my absence, and enough paperwork to burn for a week if I were to indulge my impulse and set a match to it all! Not to mention the phone calls.

Yet my dear body can’t perform on command, and is insisting on resting from the increased stress caused by the total of almost 6 days of driving plus all of the deep work involved in the training. This year we worked on removing our inner Shadows; i.e., all that occludes the Light shining through us. We worked on sexuality, gender, difficult people, and several other topics. It was very deep, with trancework plus dyads where we shared our insights with one other person, then full room comments and discussions with all 100 or so of us.

So I’m reminding myself that life, my life, your life, is good and has much beauty, even if we can’t rush to finish the projects we committed to. Even if we can’t accomplish what we can already imagine as our next creative project, Autumn is so beautiful, my messy home has the people and love that I crave, and all the piles on my desk promise new adventures. Eventually! Including learning to take better photos that don’t have this much glare in them!

With much love and many blessings,

Cat