With a Full Heart I Say Goodbye...

I promised that I would come back to a bit more reflection of the significance of my graduation and completion of my Marriage and Family Counseling Degree.  It's been 5 years since I started this journey.  While I thought it would look very different at the end of this road, I am astonished and humbled by the enormous changes that have occurred in my life in that same time.  Some of them a direct cause of my classes and clinical experiences, some completely unrelated to my counseling training, but none the less very connected to my learning and growing process. 

 You see you cant become a good counselor unless you are willing to take a deep hard look at your own "stuff." If you aren't willing to face your pain and secrets, how can you ask another to trust you with the same leap?  In 5 years I have gone from a Master's student, Doctoral Candidate, to a drop out, to back to a Masters student.  I became a mom.  I discovered my inner artist.  I grew brave in love, in heart, and in voice.  I learned how to confront people with things they dont want to see in themselves, and how to walk them through the darkest moments of their lives. 

 

I have cried with my clients, laughed, played, and held their hands as we took steps together towards the people they were meant to be.  What I didnt realize was at the same time, I was taking those same steps towards the person I was meant to be.  Art has been my therapy throughout this whole process and I have explored with my clients all the ways that it can release their soul's joy as well. 

While it may be sometime before I take my first job as a clinician, the growth I experienced and the lessons taken away have become invaluable to me.  I am forever grateful to every mother, child, father, grandparent, spouse, friend, that trusted me to hold their secrets and believed in me to always be honest and pure in intentions for their lives.  I will never forget their stories, their pain, and their joys.  Thank you.

"Window to My Soul" 2010 Art Journal Cover by Harmony

XO, HARMONY

Graduate School? Later Gator!!

Source: google.com via Emily on Pinterest

I am officially done with graduate school at the University of Florida Dept of Counselor Education!  No more Orange and Blue Fighting Gators for me!  Read more about my process of finishing my degree while becoming a mom HERE.  I want to tell you more about the experience over the last 5 years, the intensity of emotion and transformation of spirit I experienced as I learned to be a healer of relationships and enter into other people's deeply intense emotional space, but I am off with my family this afternoon to celebrate my accomplishment.  So until I have the time later to share those stories with you, I just want to celebrate with joy and spread the love with a SALE!  (plus I really need to save up for another video camera, if you missed the story of that death, click HERE).

New Print Available... "Family Love" 5X7

I have extended my summer sale through the weekend in my Etsy Shop and will be loading up every order with lots of extra goodies (you could find pinback buttons, magnets, extra prints, notecard sets, block prints, journal necklaces, so much more packed with your stuff!)  So use code: SUMMER SALE11 during checkout to get 20% off and get ready to have Christmas in Summer coming your way with a box full of surprises. 

XO, HARMONY

The Waiting is Over! My Spring has Arrived.

 New piece!  (click on pic to see details)

"Waiting for Spring" by Harmony 2011

11 X 17 Mixed Media on Wood

Available Here

I love being a mom and I also love being an artist.  Right now, I am also trying to squish in my predisposition and passion for the field of family counseling, which has rendered me feeling less than successful at all three.  I had all these ideas for what I was going to accomplish in my art-world this year, most of which have been shelved due to lack of time and energy.  I was adamant that I was going to really focus on keeping myself as strong and healthy as I possibly can for my second pregnancy (trying to avoid my family curse of the women becoming overweight after having multiple babies), but here I am 18 weeks into the process and I am already 3 lbs over the healthy target weight gain I had set for myself, trying very hard to keep my weight gain to 10lbs for the first 20 weeks.  I guess that means no more sugar and extra exercise for me for the next few weeks. (sigh...all i want to do is lay on the couch and eat carbs!).  In counseling, well, I get through it.  Some sessions are more exciting and creative than others.  I planned on really pushing myself during this clinical experience and trying to truly find my groove as a clinician, but often I find that I resorted to plain-old talk-based sessions and count down the minutes until our hour is over.  My three year old had finally decided that he had enough of mommy leaving and being left with a nanny, and so instead of his cheerful "bye-bye mommy!"and a kiss, he's now screaming, bawling, clinging to my leg as I squeeze out the door, "no, mommy, no mommy!"  Let me tell you leaving with a full heart of guilt and tears in my eyes really puts me in the right frame of mind to handle listening to other people's crises for the next 5 or so hours.  So after several weeks of floundering and telling myself it will get better, my winter of waiting has finally ended and it's like Spring has arrived with new life! - or more specifically, summer started ;) Public schools have let out for the summer, and while most other families are dealing with the headache of "what to do with the kids during the day while we work" sort of stuff, I am celebrating the release of my Oh So Helpful husband from his teaching job for almost 3 whole months (translates into the rest of my clinical internship semester).  Finally! I can take a few hours before going to work to paint, or run errands without a cranky 3 year old, and when I leave I get the happy go lucky "bye-bye" again, because how could you be sad when you get to hang out with your awesome Dad?!  Case in point... I got 4 whole hours to myself yesterday to paint and finally finished a piece I had started months ago.  (seen above)  It felt so good!  It is a larger painting with LOTS of mixed media incorporated, plaster, canvas scraps, vintage lace, fabric, acrylic paint, graphite, ink, stamping, carving, SO Textured and fun!  I also got to spend a sweet couple hours with a friend (I miss having friends in my days!) talking and planning some super fun artsy stuff together for the Fall Festival season.  I am starting to feel a bit less fragmented and more like myself with every passing day since my help arrived.  So the lesson in my story is, Moms, we can do it all but we wont feel very good about ourselves while we are doing it.  In fact, we might even lose parts of ourselves that make us feel whole.  Be good to yourself and your family, and take your breaks, simplify, remember that happy mommies means happy family. 

A Magic Dinosaur

We've been inundated with busyness the last few weeks.  It's overwhelming to me at times to try to balance a graduate internship, mommy duties, house work, while getting even a tiny bit of time for myself and to do art.  My husband's different worlds have also recently shifted into full gear, and so we both struggle to find moments of peace and silence together or with our son to just be together with no agenda or tasks needing to be completed.  Is it just this time of year?  My internship is a part time position as a Family Counselor with families with at risk youth, and it has almost completely taken over my world right now.  Kids are getting restless and acting out more at school, which in turn fills up my client load to the hilt.  I've been doing this since the beginning of the semester and am still learning to let go of my expectations for myself in my other parts of life.  My son goes to less play dates at parks and more play times in the backyard, dishes arent done everyday, laundry will pile up until I can get to it on the weekend, I have neglected my friendships, and my paints... well they sit still and beg me to ignore everything else and just spend time alone with them.   I know that this season of fullness will pass and space and time to stretch and breathe will come soon, but sometimes I just want to walk away and say "who needs a graduate degree to be an artist anyway?"  But sometimes, little windows of joy peek through the overbooked schedule and magic happens.  Like what happened last Wednesday when I was home with my son for the morning and he held up a pencil and asked if I could make a dinosaur picture for him.  "Oh yes!" I said, "and we can do better than just a silly old pencil."  I pulled out lots of art supplies and piled them onto his old plastic picnic table, and we covered our arms, hands, (a bit of our faces) with paint as we created together.

How do you get your art fix during your busy schedule?

A New Years Confession

Why is it so hard to get back into a good routine after the Christmas Holiday break?  Its been over 2 weeks since I last posted, and I find I am struggling to get "back to the norm." As I speak its 12pm, my son and I are still in our PJs enjoying a lunch of leftover popcorn from one of those Christmas tins that they sell for $5 around the holidays.  I spent the last weekend doing nothing but watching reruns of a fashion design reality show, (something about watching the creative process of other art mediums, gives me new ideas for my own artwork), and I just cant seem to get myself out of the vacation mindset or even close to thinking about starting a new art project.  Part of the problem is this:

Yes, this is my creative space.  Its a fantastic mix of the aftermath of 3 months of shows, Christmas gift making, and storing all the extra random stuff I acquired from my show displays that will no longer fit in our overstuffed garage.  Its a holy wreck and it is wreaking a bit of a havoc in my head space for creating.  So before I can take anything thing new on, I have to clear out the old and get it organized.... (what a cliche way to start the new year) - :)

Here is a bit of something I started working on before the Christmas break and just cant seem to get momentum on now to finish it.  Its like everything I try to do on it just feels muddled and without clear intention.  I am hoping if I make myself clean my work space that my heart space for imagination and creativity will clear out as well.

 

I will also admit to you a bit of my own personal process constantly going on in background of my thoughts throughout all of this.  I chose to finish my Counseling Degree this year, (previous post about that HERE) and my mother's over thinking, guilt, and needless worrying has kicked in the last few days.  It took me hours to fall asleep last night, as I went over my new schedule AWAY from home and AWAY from my son over and over in my head.  I want nothing more than to stay home with him and finish my last clinical when he (and any other subsequent children) are older and busy with their own school schedule, but unfortunately, the world doesn't work like that, and I have to choose between finishing now or not finishing at all.   As I am writing this out, I am realizing how much borderline anxiety I've been holding onto about this upcoming transition for my son and myself, and this is probably contributing to my feelings of overwhelm and confusion when it comes to starting a new art project.

So I am giving myself permission to slow down, take one step at a time, first clean my work space, let my heart start to clear of my worry and calm my nerves, and ease into giving time and attention to other sides of my life that I may not be so excited about...  and in the mean time, there will be lots and lots of attack hugs and silliness.

I Can Be A Brave Girl

 Photo from here

Sometimes it just takes a moment to grab your attention and clarify so many things that you've been hiding in your heart.  Let me start at the beginning:   I had to make a stop by my clinical site that I will be interning with this coming Spring and Summer, to have the Director sign my contract.  No big deal, I had made the decision to finish my Masters this year, (previous blog post about it here) and I was settled in that decision....or so I thought.  I showed up with my contract in one hand and my 2 year old son in the other.  He slept horribly the night before and we were both a bit unhinged that day because of it.  While waiting in the lobby for the receptionist to help me, my son started to throw an oh-so-typical 2 year old tantrum.  (over a walking cane he found in the closet from when I tore a ligament 2 years ago, and that he insisted that he carry it with him from our house - dont I feel ridiculous) There I was dressed up in my business-y clothes trying to appear like a capable counseling intern, while feeling like a frazzled exhausted mother ready to tear her hair out.  I frantically hand over the paper to the woman trying to help me, but who was now backing towards the door to her office escaping the shrieks of pure rage and frustration coming from my child (BTW: who is now sprawled on the floor in the middle of the very small waiting room).  I scooped him up quickly and ran to the car, him fighting me the entire way trying to get down.  Ever try to strap an unwilling screaming toddler into a carseat while strangers are watching you?  Dont try it, it takes forever, and its humiliating.  He kept screaming, even when I got him buckled and shut the door, even when we drove out onto the highway, even when we were 3 miles down the road....and then silence...he fell asleep...and I started to cry.

Then my own insecurities crept in, the worry, the doubt, the second guessing my choice to leave him with a sitter for 20 hours a week for 2 semesters.  I got home and started to freak out and had pretty much convinced myself after one very long neurotic train of thought that I should just stay home, be a good mom, and forget about finishing school.  I started to realize that I had been harboring a lot of unconscious tension and stress over my impending return to school, and that its been surfacing in other ways unbeknownst to me over the last couple weeks.  Namely, my ability to cope with my normal 2 year old's behavior and my ability to access that part deep within me that helps me make GOOD art.  This was my artistic block.  I finally got it.  I started to pray about it, and a little bit later randomly came across these incredible words posted on this very inspiring woman's blog:

Dear Lovely Girl,

It is going to be ok. Take a deep breath and then another, and just know that everything is going to be just fine.

That big thing you are fearing is so much bigger in your imagination than it is in real life...and it is all going to work out. You know from experience that not everything is easy, or comes easy....but that you have always made it through everything that has come along. You will make it through this too.

Please don't be afraid of change, dear friend, change has to happen for things to grow...for things to get better.....for things to become what they are meant to become. Change is good. Change is uncomfortable and scary and sometimes seems unnecessary....but change MUST happen for things to progress.

You have a choice in this moment and in the next....and the next and the next and the next. So, if it's too hard to choose peace in this moment....know that you have the choice to choose it in the next. You get as many chances as you need to choose to feel peace......and, you can do this. You can feel peace even inside of uncertainty.

Just be still, and listen very closely.

It really is going to be ok....and there really is a plan.

You are very very loved.

I was floored.  This was exactly what I needed to hear right then.  My heart calmed, my spirit breathed, I started to feel a bit whole again.  This was an email that was sent to participants from a recent women's retreat.  I wanted to know more and so checked out the website of the Brave Girls Club.  I added their blog to my sidebar, as I instantly knew that I would want to come back again and again for words of support, comfort, and empowerment.  It is a truly beautiful site, run by some very beautiful souls.  I also decided to sign up for this e-course that they are offering in January.  It felt like exactly what I needed while I am letting my heart and soul rest, while I am restoring, and while I am opening myself up to a new path in my life.   Here's the flyer for it and I am very excited to be a part of it at the same time that I start my journey back into the counseling world.

So these are the words that I have for myself today and maybe they are words that you need as well.  Today is a powerful day.  Today I will embrace my own true beauty and worth.  I will be courageous.  I will be a Brave Girl.  I can do this.

The Recesses of My Life Returning

In my other life, the one before having a baby and getting swept up into art buisness dreams, I was a student in a doctoral program for Marriage and Family Counseling.  It was all I did, all I thought about, it consumed my life.  I was a career girl, driven and focused to reach the peak of my chosen field.  I was good at counseling and even better at academics.  My ego could not have been any bigger.  Even though I was still finishing the Masters portion of my program, I was adopted by one of the more sought after professors in my Dept, and he began mentoring me through my first steps of conducting research and publishing in professional literature for my upcoming doc program.  My interest was in further developing Adventure-Based Counseling and Wilderness Therapy into benefiting couples and families. 

 found here

This was a passion of mine and I was throwing all my energy into this project.  And then everything started to change.  A summer mission trip to Haiti and the unplanned arrival of my son the next spring shifted my heart, my mind, and all my focus.  Research and doctoral programs were the farthest things from my mind.  My life now revolved around this new little person that entered my life and my heart and passion became focused on families and wanting to help people more than help my profession through teaching and research.  So I stopped going to school, I stayed home with my son, and 2 years flew by. 

Now I find myself in this strange space of wanting to continue to stay at home raising my son and keep plugging away at building my art buisness, but I have this almost completed Masters degree (1 clinical left to graduate) looming out there in the fringes of my heart and head space.  I have no intention of going to work until all the children we choose to have are all in school, but I have to finish my last clinical in the next 2 years or I cant graduate AT ALL! (there is apparently an expiration date on learning).  I struggle with the choice of when to go back and finish, EVERYDAY.  I know that I have come too far to not graduate, and I know that when my children are older that my passion and focus for practicing counseling with families will probably return, and I dont want to regret not finishing.  So after a lot of family discussion and prayer, my husband and I have decided that I will start back up in the Spring 2011.  What I have to do is do a 2 semester internship, where I practice as a counselor at a clinical site and get weekly supervision from a licensed practitioner.  Then at the end I write a really big paper and get reviewed by the department where they decide to sign off on my graduation or not.  Fun, right? 

My heart is torn,  I want to finish and the thought of doing counseling again is a bit exciting (it is one of the very few things in my life that I feel really good at), and I am really excited to incorporate more art therapy techniques than I had before, but I look into my son's teary eyes on the few times that I leave the house without him now, and I wonder how will I manage to leave him day after day for 8 straight months?  My prayer right now is that I get accepted into a clinical site that allows for night and weekend appointments, so that my husband will be home with him for most of my time away.  So here goes,  I am filling out my application and sending it in today.  No more thinking about it, no more should I or shouldn't I, no more wondering when, it will just be and I will take what comes one day at a time. 

 Trash Art done by my son and I

prints available here

Any advice from the fabulous working moms is appreciated :)  How do you deal with the separation of your heart and mind?