As Taylor Swift would say...."The haters gonna hate!"

Recently, on a fairly uneventful day, I haphazardly discovered I've been the focus of someone else's hatred and determined attempts to sabotage a loving relationship  I have with a member of my family.
This revelation felt weird, confusing and disturbing.
Energy of the most negative type had been directed my way for nearly three years while I was blissfully oblivious!
Without foundation or reasonable cause this person wanted to damage me and damage a person they claimed to care about.
This left me feeling a strange mix of emotions.
On one hand I was saddened at the apparent desperateness of the individual orchestrating the hate campaign, and on the other hand I felt angry that a fellow human being could choose to instigate such a toxic plan based on their own insecurity.
I'm still a bit perplexed, and I don't expect I'll ever fully be able to understand their motives.
However, the ramifications of their master plan being exposed to my family and close circle of friends means that the lovely family member who had the strength to confide in me can now get even more love and support to prevent this sort of thing ever happening again.
Despite the attempts this person made to hurt me and my loved one, I don't hate them.  I feel sad they thought this was an acceptable thing to do, and I hope they can find a way to live a life based on being responsible for their own happiness and not continue to have expectations that their life is dependent on the input of others.
"Do not let the behaviour of others destroy your inner peace."- Dalai Lama

The risks of retrospective gratitude.

If only we could truly be glad for what we have in this moment, right now.  Retrospective gratitude is to me the saddest and heaviest of emotions.
Reflecting back brings a rush of warmth and joy, only to be followed by a heavy hearted sadness when the realisation hits that that time is no more - it can't be brought back - it's gone forever.
Only in my mind can I  re-create those memories, there's no tangible way to grab it back and haul it into my life today!  Try though I might, even when I concentrated my efforts on remembering the minutiae detail, the lead weight in my chest drags me back to face the harsh truth; no matter how good my memory is; that place and time is fading deeper into a sentence, a page, a chapter in my history.
That elusive past.
So today I must stay focused on the reality of the quality of my life. The peaks and troughs are an inevitable part of being human. But if the main thread running through my life is strong, with only a few frayed fibres on the edges then I have little to concern myself with.
But then there's the battle with my self indulgent head. It teases me with flashes of significant experiences in a less than illustrious life, and in that moment I'm giving too much attention to the frayed, tattered, irrelevant fibres and I need to return my attention to the core strength of the thread holding my life together.
My husband, my family, my friends; bearers of so much love and loyalty that I am truly cushioned and protected from the more negative aspects of the world.
I have so much to be grateful for!
Right now find one thing in your life to be grateful for and feel that gratitude in your body and mind!
"It is strange how we hold on to the pieces of the past while we wait for our futures." - Ally Condie

Let your art flow!

When an artist is crippled by the need for perfection, disabled by their own doubts and criticism that the work they're crafting and shaping from their heart is in some way deficient, a potentially debilitating situation can ensue.
A self perpetuating downward spiral can lead to that place; the loneliest of places called, contempt for oneself.
In the early stages of creating, you start to produce your art because in that moment you were inspired.  Pay attention to that sense of creative clarity that evokes a tingle of excitement in your belly, a buzzing in your head as the mind and body work harmoniously together.  
If this resonates with you - whatever your art - you must work on letting your heart win over the battle with your head, and return to that beautiful union between your emotional, intuitive, creative bodymind and the more critical, analytical headmind.  However, we must be careful not to condemn the headmind because when it's working with the bodymind the results can be tremendous.  Artists know that their best work is produced when they have a feeling about a particular piece they want to produce and they use the headmind constructively to put that idea together - bliss!
Meditation, mindfulness, yoga, whatever it is that helps quieten down the chatty headmind - do it! Do it so that you can maintain that peaceful core both in your body and mind, and then your most wonderful creations will flow from you.  Happy creating everyone!
With love, Kathleen x

"Rational thoughts never drive people's creativity the way emotions do." - Neil deGrasse Tyson
"Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties." - Erich Fromm