Actually, I'm a lot more than a little behind. June went by in a flash, and I am several weeks behind in emails, and not caught up on shipping. If you are waiting for an email from me or a shipment. Hang tight. I'm dancing as fast as I can.
xoxo - Chel
whenever her crown was worn.
Today''s Illustration Friday theme is "WORN."
Sometimes it's tough to be queen!
Hope you are all having a good weekend!
I think, because of the www.AlsoMyHealing.com blog, and www.ChelWhispers.com blog, I am getting more questions that I am used to about "who I am" "what I believe" and also, a wonderful amount of positive email, especially about the www.AlsoMyHealing.com blog. One person even said that they felt I was a hero.
I aint no hero, that's for sure. I'm just a regular gal who is trying to make it through the day, day by day.
IF you want to learn a little more about me this is a reprint from something I wrote several years ago, for a public speaking class (of all things) that I was taking. Our assignment was to tell the class who we were, within a certain amount of time. So, here's what I wrote - and I still think it does a pretty good job of summing up my philosophy of my life:
Generally speaking, I am the kind of cookie who crumbles, not the smart kind. Still, the smartest things I have ever done have been admitting that I was powerless, and then sharing with others, all of life’s joy and pain. Not holding it in as if it were mine alone. Yeah, I am a cookie who crumbles, but life has graced me with the knowledge that even the crumbs are sweet.
For years, when people would hear my stories, they would respond by telling me, "Chelise, you are so strong." But I never believed this. I always thought they were wrong. I can see now, what they were talking about. It’s the fact that when life is a roller coaster, I have a tendency to wrap my arms around the people and places and things that I love, and hold on.
My mother once wrote a poem, and in one stanza she vowed to "bring beauty up." I hope she knew, before she died, that she had accomplished exactly that. Like all parents, fostering the miracle of life - bringing beauty up, is exactly what my mother did, when she raised my brother and me.
I think it was Albert Einstein who once said, I don’t know one million of one percent of anything, and this is definitely true for me. I am a veritable plethora of misunderstanding, every day that I get up and walk out my door. But who can argue with the fact that as long as you are still breathing, you still have the chance to learn more? We are all like Michelangelo, who, after painting the Sistine Chapel, said, “I am still learning.”
As I stumble around out here, there are a few things which make the journey more beautiful. I may not know much, but these are the things I do believe:
I believe in sunny days, and I believe the rain washes the world clean. I believe in preserving forest and rivers, natural places, spaces that are wide open and free. I believe in redemption and healing. I think you can find them by eating applesauce, or reading the Tao out loud. Or sometimes, simply by realizing that you have made your mother proud.
I believe in the sacred wisdom of Buddha and Krishna and Kali. I believe that Christ was a prophet in our time. But I also have some problems with organized religion, I think there is reason why the terms rampant insanity and Christianity rhyme.
I believe there is at least one angel sitting in every tree, and that when you learn to see them, all of life opens up and becomes the most lovely kind of poetry. So I believe in reading poems to your children, and helping them with their writing. I think parents waste their time when lecturing their kids about coloring inside the lines, or minor indiscretions, like nail biting.
I think the Bible is full of wisdom, and I do believe that for everything, there is a season. I believe we all suffer periods of sadness, rage, and, grief that seems unbearable. But I think that if you focus on why me, you are way too caught up in searching for an insignificant reason.
I don’t think that grief needs a reason to be. And in truth, when it comes to my own grief, the word unbearable, has never applied to me.
I think it is something wonderful, and a miracle in addition, this gift we all get called the human condition. Who could ask for anything more?
I know that airplanes can be guided like bombs and fly into buildings. But I know too, that heroes will follow. I think everyone on this earth should be wary of blind patriotism, I find the military concept of necessary losses, awfully hard to swallow.
I believe the Rolling Stones were right when they said you can’t always get what you want. And I think they were on to something, when they suggested that sometimes, you just have to let it bleed. But unlike the former song, my experience has been you don’t even have to try, you still get what you need.
So I believe in music, reggae, rock, hip hop and the soul soothing that comes from listening to a slow country ballad. I believe that art is everything we are, it can show you the way we are distinctly separate, and also that we are one huge collective we.
I’ll tell you all this, these few things I know. But I’ll also say I’m wary of the word believe, I worry about assumptions, I try not to espouse rigid philosophy.
I know that the ones we love sometimes leave us. That even what seems permanent, gets annoyed by assumed permanency, and responds by going astray. But I also believe in reconciliation, and the fact that we are all energy. I believe in quantum physics, because physics will tell you that energy never really, goes away.
So mourning, like joy, and pain, and sometimes lovers too, will indeed come and go.
But just like the sunrise, all of it, is as it should be.
It’s not much, but it’s enough to get me by.
This much, I know.
To bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way yourself once in a while. ~Josh Billings
Happy Father's Day, Dad.
Thank you for being creative, for being an artist, for being a writer. Thank you for showing me that self-made is something that is possible and worthwhile. Thank you for showing me that creativity in any form is a worthy endeavor.
I saw. I paid attention. They were good lessons.
Thank you.
I love the picture above. My brother looks just like like my fabulous little nephew (his son) Adin, and oh my, something was making me giggle, wasn't it?
I don't know who the littlest boy is, in this picture, but I love that my brother and I have matching windbreakers on. And that my father is quite intent on making that cow be his friend. But what I like the very most about this picture (it makes me cry a little) is that beautiful smile on my mother's face.
My Dad, early 70s, standng next to our prized "Art Car" - a 1957 Chevy station wagon, that my parents collaged top to bottom.
Here I am atop my father's shoulders. We were at some kind of street festival. There are so many things I love about this picture. Where to start? My faux fur jacket? My fathers shirt (!), or the fact that when he put me up on his shoulders, he took off that silly bowler hat, and put it on my head. And I'll just bet I was proud to be wearing it.
Happy Father's Day Day.
I Love You.
xoxo - Chel
I've already started this morning with my brain going one way, and then another. I can relate to this week's Illustrated Friday Theme - Drifting.
Happy Friday everyone! May all your drifting lead to lovely places.
When doodling, it is the head, hands, and feet that I have trouble with.
Sigh.
Jst like real life.
'Did you hear about the dyslexic agnostic insomniac who stays up all night wondering if there really is a Dog?' - Unknown
This afternoon, my incredible God Daughter Alyssa participated in Oakland's Open Studios. She's a photographer, and my GOD she is talented. She is just incredibly talented. She creates these extraordinarily sensuous photos, that somehow remain innocent, becaus she knows just where to place an errant puzzle piece or penny. I"m so proud of her.
Afterwards we had dinner at her mom's house, my best friend Jenna. Jenna is recovering from a lumpectomy and is getting ready to begin radiation treatments. It's invasive Breast Cancer but it doesn't look like any of those nasty cells got into her lymph nodes, so we are all holding our breath and breathing at the same time. Isn't it funny how life is like that?
I doodled away while I hung out at her house. Here's my silly little girls:
I think I was preoccupied with women and strength. What do you think? :D
I'm writing again. I have a memoir that I am working on, but the writing got jumbled up in the midst of my breakdowns, so I am moving a bit slower on that one, but still, I have it and I am having fun with it.
I don't how exactly this fiction piece cam to me - but, as can be the case with writing, a story kept developing in my head and it knocked around in there begging to be told. The first draft title is All of Me.
Some of it I wrote at home, some at the hospital.
It's ready for readers. If you are interested, let me know. Here's a preview and a little graphic cover I made to go with it, for now. It seemed to fit - again, if you are interested in reading it or reading more as it is uploaded, let me know and I'll send you more info or put you on a mailing list to be alerted when a new chapter has been uploaded:
~ ~ ~
All of Me
Shauna Sover is a loner, but not by choice. She believes that everyone she has ever loved has left
her. Her sole comfort is a confusion
about whether she ever really loved any of them anyway. She holds closely to herself in a world that
calls out for recklessness, and when she gives in, she pays the ultimate price.
In All of Me, Shauna learns that every price has its reward, and every reward has its price. Purgatory is the space-in-between, the place where you can finally determine the true value of your choices and mishaps.
The space in-between is where Shauna finds herself, never
even having realized she was lost.
Knowing small pieces of who are you are, is rare. Finding your way to the
This is Shauna’s journey.
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