Grandmothers

When words & paint gang up on old hang-ups!

Posted on September 17, 2025by sue boardman

One of my current paintings-in-progress is known by several names. Artisan is the easy one. Talisman is next. Or, in my case, Taliswoman. Commonly, that means an object held to act as a charm to avert evil and bring good fortune. Or – my favorite – something producing apparently magical or miraculous effects. It is related to the Greek, telos which means end, result, or fulfillment… and boils down, historically, as consecrate.

Now, that, right there, is enough to cause a ruckus in some of the places I’ve hung out. Here’s an example from my years as the Wandering Wedding Woman... Think of it rather like what happens with a wedding ring. Round. Metal. With or without gem stones. Jewelry. Set apart from the usual with meaning and purpose.

That’s what this painting is all about, for me.

We began with claiming our core identity. Gulp!!! And, Oh, Holy Wow!!! And, yes… now I know more!

Part of that, I suspect, has a lot to do with a familiar question in a new context. (Yep! Filters!!!) And new context can come in many forms. The top two on my list at this moment are news and body-gone-rogue. You fill in what comes to your mind!

The deep underlayers are generational surprises. The stories before the stories before the stories I knew. Part of what I hate about our current context is all the increasing efforts to erase those stories. To ban them, if you will, from the greater conversation. This painting is me, refusing to play along.

Then, there’s the body stuff. Mystery symptoms they didn’t cover in nursing school. Pain. Tests. Anxiety over what feels like an overdose of unknown. My painting, though, is insisting on bodies. Generations of them. Bodies carrying stories and symbols and choices.

Deep breath, now, for the big news, please.

We can’t treat our bodies as consecrated if we are – at the same time – trying to banish, ignore, or blame them. Boiled down… consecrate and neglect don’t go together!!!

The painting, as you could probably tell, is a long way from finished. As is sorting my relationship with my body! Here’s what I do know:

I’m staying on the road! Body, Mind, and Spirit!!!

And, I have a map!!! Well, a couple of them…

First, Grammy’s MetaMod Wisdom Cards! They’re actually arriving in their new homes!!! Here’s a bit of what one new client had to say:

Sue! I received the package with your beautiful wisdom cards and book. I read through the book. I had spent the afternoon with a friend who is frustrated that she hasn’t found her purpose in life. I am going to lend the cards to her for her to use. Thank you. They arrived at just the right time! (LSM)

Just click here and the elves will hook you up with your very own!

ps… there’s a Filters class coming, too! Stay tuned…

Contemplations Filters Grandmothers Medicine Basket Wisdom Cards

Entering the Intentional Unknown…

Posted on September 14, 2025by sue boardman

Gulp! As I suspect you’ve noticed, it’s been quite a week, at least in the land still known as The United States of America!

First, please hear me say that I’m going to assume that you’re doing whatever sorting you need to do with the stuff my Social Studies teachers used to call current events, according to your Filters. I am, too! And, even being aware of that is huge!

There’s another thing happening in my corner of the world, too. The Legendary Husband and I actually have an entire weekend with no external obligations or expectations!!! This is a very rare event at our house and we took some time to choose – intentionally – what would be most helpful.

As I write these words, Bill is napping. Blessed be! We’ve had no shortage of stress and not-knowing lately. The rest of our plans are organized around the notion of making what we have work better with what we need.

Blessedly, a friend will help with actual furniture shifting, tomorrow. (Not my best thing!) Then there’s the fact that shifting furniture goes hand in hand with shifting artwork! And that means not only a lot of measuring, but also which paintings whisper from the walls and where they need to be.

And, no… I’m not crazy. I’m just more tuned in to how I actually process things than the 5-senses bit I learned in nursing school!

So, left-over Strategy Soup for dinner. (The food kind!) Comfort and yummy healing in a bowl. And super easy!

Paintings to re-wire so they’ll hang at different heights. Sheets in the dryer. Quick review of the Feng Shui book! (Intention counts!)

And, yes… it hasn’t been too long since we had a similar adventure in other parts of the house. Here’s the thing… our needs change. Our dreams change. Our intentions for our life change. And, if nothing else, the context around us often makes it harder to ignore what we long for!

In a rather odd way, I find that comforting! Now, you can skip the next paragraph or two if you’re not in a space for real deal chatting. Fair warning that I am in such a space!

First, take a glimpse, please, at the photo we began with. From my recent #Quickening adventure. (The same adventure in which the Wisdom Cards were conceived!) It’s Creation-esque, for sure. And I love it.

What you can’t see, though, is all the layers of trying and trying again! Trying to get the energy I felt inside to appear in the world. And – here’s the big thing – I think Creators get it! I no longer think that they snapped their fingers one week and the whole world appeared as we know it, now. Instead, I believe that there was a whole lot of hoping and learning and loving along the way.

And, just between us, that feels like the best plan I know for this moment in time! One right thing after the other, hoping and praying that – one day – we’ll all join hands. In the meantime, though, I have some other strategies!

ps… ask the elves to hook you up with a batch of Grammy’s MetaMod Wisdom Cards and they’ll be delighted to email you the soup recipe, too! (It really is easy… and ever so adaptable!) Order your cards now, while they’re in stock, before the Decatur Book Festival coming up October 4!

pps… while I’m making space, I still have a bit for a couple more 1:1 coaching clients! And a very special offer! Get 6 sessions for the usual investment of 4… and a set of Wisdom Cards, as my gift! The Next Right Thing is getting on the road to the place where you are called, and you don’t have to enter the unknown alone!

Art Journey Contemplations Filters Grandmothers Wisdom Cards

There isn’t a box!

Posted on September 10, 2025by sue boardman

As you’ve probably heard, I’m a bit of a Madam Secretary junkie! Okay… maybe more than a bit! I suspect, like my similar fondness for The West Wing, it has to do with wanting to fill at least some of my intentional awareness with what I choose, rather than what’s in the news.

So, a couple of nights ago, it was time to circle around to MSec, season 1, episode 1 again. President Conrad Dalton is standing in Elizabeth’s kitchen on the farm, asking her to be Secretary of State. She is, shall we say, surprised. Perplexed. More than a bit curious. When she asks, Why me? she gets a great answer from her old boss.

You don’t just think outside the box, replies Dalton. You don’t even know there is a box!

Now, I’ve seen this episode more times than I can count. This time I HEARD it! Yes… it’s a Filters thing! And, from my perspective, the news is way too full of people trying to convince us that their box is the only one we can have.

I’m not buyin’ it!

Which led me, sometime in the wee hours when my head was full of #Taliswoman paint plans, to wonder if there are any boxes! Or, perhaps… there are only the boxes we choose!

And, yes… this has a whole lot to do with all the hanging out I’ve been doing in the land of Grammy’s MetaMod Wisdom Cards!

What if we choose consciously??? Really! Me. And YOU. And help our Littles learn that they’ll be able to choose, too, though a bit of brain growing will help along the way…

As you may have heard, we moved a lot when I was a Little. One of those times, when I was just three, my okay-to-move box was all about whether there would be corn on the cob and Romper Room in the new place!

In some ways my world has gotten considerably more complicated since then. What I’ve realized, though, is that my main box – my most precious one – is pretty simple.

Concrete Passion and Very Large Hope.

Choose it. Have it. Be it. Do it. Write it. Paint it. Teach it. Share it. And, yes… vote for it! Even on days when it feels a lot like the image at the top… shifting, vague, and not too clear, yet!

The red blotch, over to the left, is my mark. My intention, if you will. My determined presence.

As boxes – or non-boxes – go, this one feels like a really huge start!!!

There’s room for you, too! Keep reading along. Root around a bit in the “archives”.

Get yourself a deck of cards. (And, yes… the Calling Cloths are in stock!)

Ask me about 1:1 coaching. (There’s a really special offer going on just now!) 45 min. My gift. Your questions!

Stay tuned for the latest Filters class, coming soon! Better yet, leave a comment, below, and let me know you’re interested! Or email me: suesvoice@gmail.com

My calling is to help you find – and claim – the place where you are called! It’s going to take a whole bunch of us!!!

Where might YOUR magic Tardis door lead???

Filters Grandmothers Medicine Basket Wisdom Cards

Context goes both ways!

Posted on September 7, 2025by sue boardman

If you’ve been hanging out for a while, you know I have a thing about context. The external stuff unfolding around us… and, if you’re anything like me, it may feel like there’s an avalanche of it happening just now, even if you’re intentionally rationing news time.

I’ll admit that there’s part of me that wishes I could control a whole lot more of it than I can. I can’t even actually control my internal responses to all the stuff I’d label as crazy.

What I can do is make conscious choices about what I do with my time and energy and resources in this moment!

First, though, flashbacks, if you will, from my earliest days as a reporter… for the high school paper & yearbook. Who? What? When? Where? Why? How? Yep… Filters!

Here’s a real life example… my first year on yearbook staff, I was in charge of covering freshman basketball & freshman wrestling. (Lucky me!) There were absolute photo commandments from our advisor. Action shots always. Our guys – and I do mean that literally – had to be winning in all photos, and no armpit or butt shots!

As it happens, though, I have some different things to write, just now. Like a plan for the next Filters class! After a really helpful conversation with a dear friend, I dreamed it. Literally! And the “rules” I’m choosing for this adventure are utterly more helpful than those old yearbook rules!

I’ll have details to share soon. For this moment, a sentence or two from my journal to get your curiosity going:

… Every day she got out the secret book she was writing and read some words from her old friend, Fred Buechner: The place where we are called is where our deep joy and the world’s deep longing meet. She’d actually known Fred long enough to know that those words worked in lots of times and places and ways. And she was counting on them, now, more than ever before!

In fact, her vision of that place became a great deal clearer as she wrote!

The next right waking thing, though, was packing up already adopted decks of Grammy’s MetaMod Wisdom Cards for their trip to the Post Office on Monday! (Labor Day week tends to leave the delivery elves a bit behind!)

For this moment… fix yourself a cuppa and give yourself some space for visioning. You, in time for 2026. Place, claimed! Next right things planned out. The personal kind AND the big picture kind!

Here’s a bit of what one participant in the most recent Filters class had to say about her #workinprogress:

What a great circle of discussion yesterday in Filters. Two symbols that often come up for me are Gratitude and the Celtic Triskelion. Meanings next to sketches. And they’re fun to draw 😉 Thank you! I can’t wait to talk with my canvas tonight!!! (S.M.)

Now, though, the part that wonders me the most: As we encounter our Filters and get to know them, we gain access to many, many more conscious choices along the way. I love choices! Now, I suspect, more than ever!!! And there are a whole lot of them to experiment with in the cards! This one is from the Symbols & Language category, and wow, does she bring a message for this moment! A message about staying on the path, even when it’s really hard and scary.

Here are some next right things:

Order your very own cards now! All the details are here…

And, if you’d like to talk about your next right thing, just tell the calendar elves here! They’ll set you up with 45 min. My gift. And first dibs on a very special offer for 1:1 coaching. You’ll want something to write on & with, and some Red Thread if it’s handy. We can even pull you a card! The world needs what you’re dreaming!!!

ps… today, my first granddaughter is turning 18. (Gulp!) And I’m feeling more determined than ever!!!

Art Journey Contemplations Filters Grandmothers Medicine Basket Wisdom Cards

Worldview Ancestors!

Posted on September 3, 2025by sue boardman

Does that give you chills? It does, me! And here’s a glimpse of one of my personal Worldview Ancestors… She’s my Artisan/Taliswoman painting from my first Color of Woman adventure in 2018.

In many ways, that was a birth year for me! Really, really new at painting. Even newer at thinking art might be something WE could do. You see, that was not a belief I learned as a child.

She looks familiar. Draped in a quilt, which is very much a WE thing, instead of the suggested veil which is utterly not a WE thing! (I’m guessing you hear me!) And, she is whispering from the walls, again. You see, yesterday I opened the awareness door for a new Taliswoman painting to be born!

Back in the day, she was my first journey with the notion of Winged-eye beings! And, yes… her winged eye is on the – shall we say – other side! (I’m not great with right & left!) I loved it, though, as a symbol of wisdom that’s lots more fun than a basement full of dusty diplomas!

And, even though I haven’t even unwrapped the canvas yet, she’s already plotting and planning. So far, we’re committed to a unicorn friend, and – surprisingly – a magical walking stick. I’m excited about both of those notions.

Unicorns, according to some traditions, are symbols of the true teachings of Yeshua/Jesus and this seems like a great time to wander with that.

The walking stick feels like a persistence message. A way to stay on the road, even when it’s hard. Or scary.

The more I learn about my actual ancestry, the more I realize how much many of those who came before me would have related!

Then there’s the part about Worldview Ancestry! What does that bring to mind for you? (You can leave me a comment, below!!!)

For me, it’s a reminder that we’ve inherited much more than eye color and tendencies toward crooked teeth. (I’d gladly give that last one back!) The cool things start when we claim the wild notion that we can add to our Worldview Ancestry, rather like finding 70th & 71st great-grandparents in My Heritage! (And all the people from them to me!)

When it comes to Worldview Ancestry, I’m releasing myself from the influence of my third grade teacher. From the perspective that the differently able kid in our class was being bad. Also from my 7th grade geography teacher who seemed to think that the only parts of the world that were worth learning about where ones he’d dropped bombs on in a war.

There were more, but you get the drift! And I’m so hoping some similar folks are occurring to you, as well.

The big question, though, is around those folks we’ll choose to add to our worldviews!

You know a bunch of mine. In this moment, the obvious one to mention is Fred. Dr. Frederick Buechner. The guy who helped me claim several versions of the notion that:

The place where we are called is where our deep joy and the world’s deep longing meet.

Just between us, this feels like a good time for as much of that as we can bring!

I’d love to help you get closer to your vision of that place! That’s why I made Grammy’s MetaMod Wisdom Cards! (Really!!!) Just click here and the new batch of elves, who renamed our store, will have lots more info and be delighted to set you right up at WingedEyeWisdom.com

ps… down below Taliswoman #1’s winged eye, there’s a block in her “quilt” that’s kind of hard to see. It says, I am a grandmother… an open-eyed visionary of fierce compassion. She speaks for me!

pps… Ready to raise your hand and claim your next right thing? Let’s talk. 45 min. My gift. Just click here and the calendar elves will hook you up. Also, I have a very special, time-limited offer for a couple of new 1:1 clients available… and it includes a bonus set of cards!

Art Journey Contemplations Filters Grandmothers Medicine Basket

All the Me’s had a committee meeting!

Posted on August 31, 2025by sue boardman

You know how some of the parts of you are easier to chat with? And some of them feel reluctant to show up for tea? And occasionally, one of them says, “No, thanks! I’m having my nails done!” (Or whatever…)

Well a whole bunch of the Me’s showed up this weekend. I’m grateful. You see, I need pretty much all the medicine in my basket just now.

Tea was the first order of business. And cacao. And Red Thread. Then came intention setting. We had two:

Get over the old notion that it would be bragging to tell others you did a cool, helpful thing! It’s now officially excited & determined, which are really helpful things to claim!

Unpack and package all the decks of Grammy’s MetaMod Wisdom Cards and figure out how to get them out into the world… tech challenges and all!

One of the Me’s took over as Recycling Queen and took charge of all the brown packing paper. Another invited virtual Joan Baez along for encouragement. Another Me – one I know well – tended the pot of soup simmering on the stove. The good news is that we made big progress! Even with the heavy boxes and gnarly paper cuts and and puzzles to solve.

In an odd way, all the time one of my Me’s spent scrubbing in surgery came in handy. Setting up the back table with all the tools in order. Filling the tape dispenser. Cutting all the Red Thread at once, rather than one piece at a time. You hear me…

And, running through all the activity… the precious Intentional Creativity® notion that Mattering Matters.

Then came a different sort of ah-hah! The word kind. (Haven’t figured out how to put the techy crossword thing on my laptop again, yet, so we’re going old school…)

There’s more to do. Calling Cloths to claim space for the journey, in transit. Cards to ship. The Decatur Book Festival (10/4) to prep for. And lots more excited & determined for the Me’s to be!

And, a new painting to start! And…

For now, though, huge thanks to the dear friend who showed up in this dimension to help, and fan the excitement.

And more thanks to the Me who just dropped off this link so you can check out the Wisdom Cards. (There’s lots more info and photos!) And, the shop is in the midst of re-modeling!!!

That place where you are called??? Don’t set out without your cards!

ps… Ready to claim your next right thing? Let’s talk. 45 min. My gift. Just click here and the calendar elves will hook you up. Also, I have a very special, time-limited offer for a couple of new 1:1 clients available… and it includes a bonus set of cards!

Art Journey Contemplations Filters Grandmothers Wisdom Cards

Cards on the table?

Posted on August 27, 2025by sue boardman

I had a plan for this post. Cheerful. Excited. Optimistic. You see, my eagerly awaited Wisdom Cards are due to appear tomorrow, UPS willing. Fifty decks. Right here in my house!

And, I’m really hoping they will. More, now, than ever, actually. You see, I’m having a really hard time with the Minnesota school shooting. School kids. At Mass. It’s utterly beyond me. And, if we’re being real, not remotely cheerful or optimistic.

I cried. And swore. And prayed. I contemplated skipping this post for today. And then, I knew where to look for some inspiration in this moment.

Grammy’s MetaMod Wisdom Cards! The test runs that helped me learn along the way. Crooked edges. Faded colors. A typo here or there. A reminder of the place where I am called, even on this day when the world’s deep need is in our faces.

I even got out my preview version of the Calling Cloth. Sacred space, if you will, for newness on the road.

And the wonder worked!

So, I am reclaiming my ability to choose, here and now. Not everything that happens, of course, but what I do with it. What my next right thing becomes, in the face of days like this.

You, too, are able to choose. And NOW seems like a really good time to claim that!

First, I made a contribution to a Congressional Rep who gets it. Lucy McBath lost her own son in a school shooting.

Then, as I finish this post, I’m going to go make prayer dots on my #Codex canvas. Dots inside my Unicorn constellation which, according to a tradition I just learned, symbolizes the true teachings of Yeshua.

Making the dots will help soothe my nervous system. (Really!) And, it will remind me of why the hearts in my paintings insist on standing for Concrete Passion & Very Large Hope! It’s the best plan I’ve got!

ps… curious about the cards? Just click here!

Category: Grandmothers