Plaster of Paris

When my mind and heart are at peace, my productivity is incredible. Another great lesson.

This week, I’ve been breaking free from my self-imposed hermit status and taking meetings and dates for cocktails. Life is calm and sweet and I can do things like meet with new colleagues and engage new friends. I feel like I’m getting things done, and done well.

Valentine’s Day looms, and it’s promising to be festive and exhausting with two back-to-back shows in Toronto for Les Coquettes, followed by an excursion to Owen Sound where we will perform at a fundraiser for the Tom Thompson Gallery. As I spend my days shopping online for gorgeous things that are worthy of such a high-profile event, I marvel at how exciting my work and life are.

I see so much promise in the coming year, and the secret is my state of mind. Mine alone, really. If I stay focused, open, calm and awake, I feel like I’m prepared for anything. I am better at everything I set out to do – including parenting and love.

“How can I give more?” This is what I keep asking myself. How can I be better? Do more meaningful work? Reach more people? Offer more? Humility is teaching me that by embracing this trait, so difficult for a lion sometimes, I am opening my arms to abundance. This phase of my life feels familiar…

I liken it to really understanding Judy Blume. I read all the books before puberty hit. I was prepared for the change, and I understood the biology inherent. However, it wasn’t until I was in the midst of growing, budding, and ripening that I really, truly understood what she’d been writing about.

I’ve heard so much about gratitude and grace. I think I understand it now, in a way I never have before. I feel like anyone who has had a profound revelation. I speak about it with a fervor and feel as though in some way I’ve been saved. Not by God. Not by Jesus. Not by Allah. Not even by The Mother. By my own inner light, and my own willingness to be better. That is what I think of when people speak of the Divine – the radiance in each of us that pushes us to seek deeper meaning and purpose. I suppose that could be God, couldn’t it? Perhaps that’s where all of this “made in God’s image” talk comes from? Maybe “giving yourself over to a higher power” simply means abandoning your old cycle of fear and anger and opening up to grace and humility. You have no guarantee that this will save you from hurt, but I think a heart without armor has a greater capacity to heal through anything.

At some point, the cast has to come off for the muscles to ever work properly again.

Thanks for all of the signatures. The colorful graffiti will be saved in an old shoe box, and I’ll look at it from time to time. Now, rather than adorn a temporary, bumpy shell, your love and well wishes will go straight to the source and the messages will be loud and clear.

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