Do Your Thing - and then Share it!

Here's the thing I want to tell you today:
that working in an art journal can be transformative.
If you gather some materials - collage papers, juicy markers, ink pads for color, spray mount to put it all together, then spread all this out around you and just start tearing and cutting and playing.
Then you will find something.
The act of creation really is a sort of high - it creates a way for your inner essence to escape and find expression.
I can't tell you how many people in my workshops found this a freeing and amazing process.
They had learned decades before that to color outside the lines is wrong.
It stifled and restricted their belief in their own creative energy.
Go ahead and color all over the lines!
Make a mess - let that inner critic go, and just laugh at it's negativity.
Once at a workshop, we created a journaling wall - I unrolled a large white roll of paper, hung in on the wall, piles up paper and pens and let anyone who wanted go to town.
I never had the chance to take photos of it, so I guess I will just have to do this again at the next workshop I teach.
It took the whole weekend (it was a 3 day weekend women's retreat) but after the three days, the paper was full of amazing self expression - enlightening and encouraging to everyone who took the time to read it.
We really are all in this together, and if we learn to share it all, it is much easier to make it through.



"There are many who are living far below their possibilities because they are continually handing over their individualities to others." --Ralph Waldo Emerson