Let Go and Dream

18 Jun 2014 Leave a comment

by Camille in My Thoughts Exactly Tags: , , , , , , ,

Music for the Day – Dreams by Stevie Nicks

Link to Music/Lyrics – http://www.songlyrics.com/stevie-nicks/dreams-lyrics/

Sometimes, in our lives we feel we have lost the dream we once imagined. We start off with these visions of where our lives should go and dreams of the most amazing events happening in our life.

Then we reach a certain age, and look back wondering what happened to the dreams and visions of that young girl who entered this life full of expectations of how things would be. I remember that girl – scared and fearful that the man she chose to share her life with would leave realizing that she wasn’t so great after all and that it was just an illusion.

I have reached that age when the children are grown and living their own lives. And I still have those dreams that remain strong and very real. You see, I just put them on hold for a while. I am still young enough to make them a reality and old enough to recognize how it plays out according to my own self-limitations, and no other.

I am pursuing the dream of writing, working on the dream of painting, and envisioning the dream of playing music. It’s all there – inside of me just waiting to blossom into what I had dreamed.

Many obstacles in my life have provided that which comes to life in my writing and painting. Poetry is just becoming another avenue of expression. The music? I’m thinking getting another guitar and re-acquainting myself with an instrument that saved my life in my early teens, besides the piano.

One thing that I have learned is that challenges and “players” will come and go, but those visions and dreams remain. I kept them to myself, but now, I feel the freedom to let go, throw them in the air, and see where they land! I cannot depend on any one person or event to make it happen for me. That is up to me, and I am on the edge of letting loose. I will jump and fly, landing where I land with the old expectations of the girl of so long ago with one difference – she has moved out of that scared feeling and taking the courage to step out.

I really do not know where this will take me, but I am open to the possibilities. I am open to embracing all of the amazingness of me! I am open to embracing where I am taken regardless of the path to get there, because I depend on me, and me alone, to make this happen.

Oh, that man I shared my life with that I was afraid would discover the truth about me and would leave. Well, 40 years later, he is still here. He knows the truth about me, and yet, he still holds on. Amazing!

She is all these and more!

18 Mar 2014 2 Comments

by Camille in My Thoughts Exactly Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Music of the Day – Dreams by Stevie Nicks

Link to lyrics – http://www.metrolyrics.com/dreams-lyrics-fleetwood-mac.html

Stuck in my own mind of visions of the girl I left behind so long ago.  She was put into a box, safe and secure, locked up for eternity, I thought.  But she cried and pleaded, the longer she was locked up.  She would not quiet her inner storm – longing to be free and become what she was meant to become.

And so, She wants her freedom – I will not deny that any longer!  Instead, I unlock the lock, open the box, and let her free.  She comes out shyly at first, wary of the world of which she is so unsure.  Is it safe?  At the first sign of trouble, she quickly re-enters her box of confinement – missing the known safety and unsure of what she may experience out there.  Out there, where the big, bad monsters conjured in her mind for so long could exist.

She opens her heart and with timid baby steps, she ventures to the unknown.  There is pain, but not like she felt in her prison.  This pain is something that can be held, examined, used for another time. She feels a burning within her – a shivering deep within.

She does not go back into the box.  Instead, she squats on the ground, waiting just as her primal Mother before her. Anticipating something – she knows not what it is.

Suddenly, an opening and her wings burst forth.  She feels the fire of longing and passion beneath her feet.  She stands – opens her arms, her wings.  And out of the fire, she soars – the phoenix rising from the ashes.  She flies into the air and the storm clouds head on – no fear.

Thunder causes her to tilt her wings, lowering back to the ground.  She lands on the mountaintop and waits, in silent knowing, that her time is now.  The rain comes but does not destroy her feathered wings – she is cleansed from the old fears and the old somber warnings. She knows – she understands – she accepts – she embraces.

She is no longer a prisoner – she is free! Free to be wild and true!  Free to become the magnificence of phoenix, yet this time is different.  She will not consume herself again.  This time she walks, flies, soars, swims, runs, and plays.  She is

            C – Coyote

coyote

            R – Raven

raven soaring

            O – Owl

Owl

            W – Wolf

wolf

She is all these and more!

I Want You to Stay

30 Jan 2014 Leave a comment

by Camille in My Thoughts Exactly Tags: , , , , , , ,

Music Muse of the Day – Stay by Rhianna

Link to song with lyrics – http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/rihanna/stay.html

Since I made the commitment to do this each day, there have been some days when a random song from my play list that at first just doesn’t make sense.  Today is no exception.  As I listened to the song with the lyrics, I realized that my emotions greatly reflected the song.  Of course, Rhianna’s intention is clearly about a lover.  Mine?  It’s that connection to passions in my life that would be so easy to walk away from, but I would be lost without them.  If I walked away from those passions and dreams forever, a huge piece of me would die.  They live in my shadow self – that part of me that was put on a shelf so long ago, and yet remains waiting to become a part of my life once again.

I facilitate a monthly women’s group called Wild Women, and we have been studying Women Who Run with the Wolves by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes.  This past week was our January meeting.  The chapter was Chapter 8 about the baits and traps that keep us from realizing our passions.  The story was The Red Shoes.  In the story, a little girl desires red shoes but is too poor to purchase them, so she makes her own.  She is taken in by a wealthy old woman who burns her red shoes because they are not good enough for her new way of life – her new gilded cage.  The little girl gets a replacement pair of red shoes – all shiny and bright, but they are poisonous and make her dance and dance without rest until she finally cuts off her feet to be free. 

The handmade red shoes were her dreams and passions, and when she became trapped in that gilded cage of what the world said was right and perfect, she lost those red shoes only to miss them so much that she eagerly took replacements that were dangerous and caused her to become someone she was not – someone that society said she should be.  When she realized the futility of being someone that was not her true self, instead of finding a way out of it, she cut her own feet off becoming a shell of what she was. 

We all have walked away from dreams and passions for one reason or another only to replace them with what society says we should be and do.  I have, but in realizing the dreams and passions turned away, I call them back.  As I call them back, I ask them to “show me something!”  They say, “If you dare, come a little closer.”  I move closer knowing that there is a danger there that might lead me to a place that is quite different from who and what I have been for a very long time.  And yet, I know that I cannot turn away.  I know that my life depends on reconnecting with that passion and dream. 

This stanza speaks to all of us who are not living as we know we should.

It’s not much of a life you’re living
It’s not just something you take–it’s given

We have been given these incredible gifts and talents, and without nurturing them and allowing them to have a life, we have no life.  She says in the song:

Funny you’re the broken one but I’m the only one who needed saving
‘Cause when you never see the light it’s hard to know which one of us is caving.

Who is the broken one?  Our shadow selves – that part of us that is connected to the gifts and talents and the dreams that are waiting to come back out – the red shoes.  I want my red shoes to stay.  I know that I cannot live without them.  To my shadow self and my dreams so long ago put away, I want you to stay!