Deck: Tarot of the Holy Spectrum, Infinity Edition
This Cancer new moon has invited me to ease back into this space gently. The first half of 2023 has been wildly expansive, contractive, integrative for me.
For the last three years I’ve been asking for clarity—funny to me now, because I see how I wanted it all to be instantaneous. I see now that I had to “live the questions” in order to receive the clarity for which I so desperately hungered.
At the same time that so much in my world is crystalizing, there are new questions to live. New forks in the road. New uncertainties, new things to be mystified by.
I also see that this it’s what it’s like to live wildly—answers often lead to more questions. And this is as it should be.
In light of all this I have so much to share with all of you, so much I desire to create and offer and alchemize.
But I am going at the pace of my heart and my body (often to the great chagrin of my mind.)
What I’d like to share with you today are some contemplations on creative grief, which came up during one of The Fool’s Portal meetups.
(By the way, the first iteration of The Fool’s Portal exceeded my wildest dreams and humbled me with gratitude. The container was and is SO SPECIAL and I am currently integrating the experience so I know how it wants to evolve. This first round was basically me (and the incredible initiates) discovering what it even is—and let me tell you, what a profound gift. More on that soon!
Read on for a quick announcement and some musings on creative grief!
Announcing The Glitch Witch podcast
I am SO delighted to share with you that The Glitch Witch podcast is now live (available on all major platforms!) I’ve been wanting to start a witchy podcast for FOREVER but I never had clarity on what it wanted to be. Good thing I gave it the time & space it needed to brew, because when it dropped in I just knew.
In similar news, I’ve “rebranded” my public persona, my brand if you will, and you’ll now find me as The Glitch Witch across all platforms (including my website which is now http://www.theglitchwitch.com.
This major change is part of the clarity I mentioned above, and you can hear about some of it in the first episode of the podcast.
If you like what you hear it will be a MAJOR help for the show’s visibility if you can rate and review. Thank you thank you thank you
On the Complexity of Creative Grief
photo by Raph Howald on Unsplash
In my work, I talk a lot about trusting your process, following your creative impulses, and allowing your natural rhythms to guide your creative expression.
I stand by this teaching, and also…
Sometimes we experience grief in our process because we know if we could truly follow all our impulses, our lives would look very different.
For example, we may not be in jobs that bore us—or perhaps, we’d work MUCH fewer hours in a day than what is required of us.
We would have more time and energy to devote to our true passions and interests.
But because we don’t currently live in a world set up to support the uniquely impulsive nature of our creative selves, we find that the requirements of “survival” often ask us to bypass and override our natural impulses and energetic capacity.
There is very real grief here because oftentimes, the resulting exhaustion and overwhelm, the forcing and pushing required to simply exist, come in when we are overextending ourselves. Then we try to give even more of ourselves or create in our limited “spare time”, which can sometimes feel nonexistent.
It’s frustrating and painful to feel like we could (and would) spend our time so differently if we have more choice.
It can feel really good and necessary to throw a little rage party (scream, stomp, cry) and express all that grief and anger about all you can’t change about this moment.
But then what?
Is the answer just “don’t create at all because I’m already overextended?”
I like to believe not.
When we were talking about this dilemma inside The Fool’s Portal, one of the initiates said,
“Find the cracks.”
And this idea really seeded in me.
What are the smallest (even tiniest) ways you know you do have a choice?
Can you operate differently and lovingly even within those limitations?
You can accept the often-restrictive nature of your present reality and also choose differently where possible.
The image I got was a plant growing up through a crack in the sidewalk.
Even concrete is not impervious to the ravages of wildness.
I pulled a card to illuminate these ideas and the card that emerged was Justice (shown above.)
I love it because Justice asks us to see the truth of what really is—and then it invites us deeper, to see the myriad prismatic truths and realities within the truth.
Justice doesn’t bypass painful realities but it also reveals that multiple realities are available to us at once.
This is the paradox.
So.
Practice loving and nurturing your process in the small ways you are able.
Disentangle from extractive and exploitative ideals wherever you can.
Show up as an act of devotion, offering even the smallest amounts of time in service to your wild creative heart.
These acts of relentless showing up, no matter how small, are how the system is dismantled: one wild weed at a time.
This is how castles become ruins.
Until next time.
Stay weird,
Lisa