An Extraordinary Artist

http://www.johnsimpkins.com/

Deeply Troubled Exquisitely Beautiful Times

A Little Mid-Week Toko-pa

“Because we often think of vulnerability as a negative trait which leaves us exposed to harm, I thought we could do with a new word which acknowledges its power: vulnerabravery. Instead of putting up our defences when we meet with conflict, vulnerabravery is the conscious choice to keep our heart open so that we might discover what’s hidden within it. It is a great paradox that when we let ourselves be undefended we find our true strength.”

Toko-pa Turner, Excerpt From: “Belonging” (belongingbook.com)

Artwork from The Muse Tarot by Chris-Anne (themusetarot.com)

Dreamy Draw Mountaintime In The Time of Covid-19

Crones Don't Whine

“To be a crone you need to let go of what should have been, could have been, might have been. You need to silence the whining in your head before it comes out of your mouth. Whining makes you unable to live in the present, or be good company for anyone – even your self. Whiners assume they were and are entitled to a different life from the one they have. Whiners do not see that everyone has had a share of the bad things that happen to people. Ungrateful for what they do have, whiners canot enjoy the present.”

Jean Shinoda Bolen

As Mother's Day Approaches

Maya Angelou on Mothers

“I think of mother often,” Maya Angelou told ABC News’ Diane Sawyer. “I think of myself as mother. I think of men as mother — some men. My son has mothered his son, fathered his son. I don’t think you have to be a woman to mother.”

With these sentiments in mind, Angelou, arguably America’s most famous poet, wrote a book in honor of mothers, “Mother: A Cradle to Hold Me.”

“Yes. It is true. I was created in you,” she read from the book. “It is also true that you were created for me. I own your voice. It was shaped and tuned to sooth me. Your arms were molded into a cradle to hold me, to rock me. The scent of your body was the air perfumed for me to breathe.”

Angelou said a mother did not indulge but loved unconditionally in the deepest possible of ways.

“Love may be the matter that keeps the stars in the firmament. It may be. Love allows you to be tough and tender,” she said. “Love. It does not say you can get away with this and I’ll turn my — because you’re so cute — I’ll turn my back, to something that may harm you later on. No. Love affords you the ability to be courageous.”

In the book that made her famous, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” Angelou wrote, “My mother’s beauty literally assailed me. Her smile widened her mouth beyond her cheeks, beyond her years, and seemingly through the walls to the street outside.”

Her mother, she said, was her everything.

Yet her glamorous mother could not handle her small children, and Angelou’s grandmother raised her until she was in her teens. Rather than focus on her wounds, Angelou said she used “the scar to sharpen my pen to write a poem.”

When Angelou was 21 and a young mother, she was holding down two jobs and living on her own. One day, she went to her mother’s house and received some unexpected praise.

“She looked at me and she said, ‘Baby, you know at this minute I want to tell you something.’ She has fox furs on, silver fox furs, and diamond earrings,” Angelou said. “She said, ‘I think you’re the greatest woman I’ve ever met.’ She said, ‘There is of course Eleanor Roosevelt, Mary McLeod Bethune, and my mother. But you’re in that category.'”

“And I thought, ‘Suppose she’s right? Suppose I really am somebody?’ She used to say she was too mean to lie. And she was very intelligent. But maybe it’s about time for me to stop smoking and stop cursing, ’cause I may be somebody.”

Angelou was working on a cable car at the time, and was far from the famous woman she would become, but her mother’s words gave her a sense of her future.

“I have learned enough now, to know I have learned nearly nothing,” she read in another excerpt from her new book. “Only stay when mothers are being honored. Let me thank you, that my selfishness, ignorance and mockery did not bring you to describe me like a broken doll, which had lost its favor. I thank you that you still find something in me to cherish, to admire and to love.”

“I thank you, mother. I love you.”

Perpetual Positivity Syndrome

Perpetual Positivity Syndrome (PPS) is the addictive need to default to positivity under any and all circumstances. One of the most common obstructions to awakening on the healing path, it prevents a maturation in the deep within because sufferers refuse to be present for all that is. Symptoms include: a constant need to find the light in every situation, a tendency to forget or “rise above” the negative aspects of their partners, an inability to fully support and hold the space for another’s suffering, and a turning away from the painstaking work demanded by life’s challenges. Instead of forging a grounded, discerning optimism in the grit and grime of daily life—they jump to the light, while averting the shadows that inform it. They habitually bliss-trip, when lessons are waiting in the wings to be integrated and embodied. 

Those who suffer with PPS are often of the illusory view that they had perfect childhoods or that they have moved beyond the shadow. In most cases, their obsessive clinging to the “positive” is rooted in their own unresolved emotional material: pain and anger that will only come back to haunt them. At the end of the day, there can be no light without shadow, and no substitute for hard-earned transformation.

I get that we prefer it to be happy and positive, but that’s just not where much of humanity is. Many of us are overwhelmed with pain, undigested sadness, unexpressed anger, unseen truths. So, we have two choices: We can continue to pretend it’s not there, cover it over, shame and shun it in ourselves and others, distract and detach whenever possible. Or, we can face it heart-on, own it within ourselves, look for it in others with compassion, create a culture that is focused on authenticity and healthy emotional release. If we continue to push it all down, we are both creating illness, and delaying our collective expansion. But if we can just own the shadow, express it, release it, love each other through it—we can finally graduate from the School of Heart Knocks and begin to enjoy this magnificent life as we were intended. Pretending the pain isn’t there just embeds it further. Let’s illuminate it instead."

Jeff Brown

Grounded Spirituality

Today's Notes From Brene Brown

To not have the conversation because it makes you uncomfortable is the definition of privilege. We have to be able to choose courage over comfort. There is no courage without vulnerability.

Vulnerability = uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. We can’t engineer the discomfort out of vulnerability.

Cultures where perfectionism and armor are rewarded, even necessary, don’t allow for the tough, vulnerable conversations.

It’s so much easier to cause pain than to feel pain. Feel all your feels lest you download your shit out on other people.

Trust doesn’t come before vulnerability! It’s a stacking over time of vulnerability and trust. Your story is a privilege to hear. You share it with people who earn the right to hear it, who deserve to hear it. Vulnerability without boundaries is not vulnerability.

Vulnerability is disclosure. You don’t measure it by the amount of disclosure. You measure it by the amount of courage to show up and be seen when you can’t measure the outcome.

We can’t go it alone. We’re neurobiologically hardwired for connection with other people. 

💛