Category: Phoebe and Luther

I’m having a bit of re-entry shock. It was, in a metaphorical sense, a looooong way down the mountain from the legendary painting adventure known as Vivid.

And when I got back down the mountain, all the things I hadn’t gotten done before were waiting for me. (I can see you nodding!)

I won’t bore you with the details, except to say that there’s handy homeowner stuff on that list. And holiday prep stuff. And learning stuff. LOTS of learning stuff.

Oh, and Luther has grungy ears and decided blowing coat would be helpful which means a whole bunch of other stuff, besides.

Intriguingly, it’s my first Legend painting that’s whispering the comforting thoughts in my ear. Here she is:

Wow, has she taught me a lot!

You can use your imagination on what some of those teachings might be. There’s one, though, that I especially want to share tonight.

You see, her name is Follow Your Heart. I have followed my heart to this time and place. I suspect following it into the future will mean coming out from under the rock where I sometimes hide.

Being visible. Entering the world as a living symbol that love conquers all. Gathering my beloveds and inviting them into their own legendary futures.

It’s going to take a lot of us. Women who understand the need for loving legends in our families and our world.

We have the power to change lives. I’m saying yes. And I’ll have more to share soon about how you might join me. For today, Follow Your Heart is hanging out in my special Etsy holiday gift shop, in a couple of different forms, along with some of her best buddies, ready to follow you home and remind you, the way she reminds me.

It’s the red-winged blackbird in her hair!

ps… Luther says to remind you that he’s legendary, too!

Today, I went to a meeting. In and of itself, that’s clearly not news!

It was an online meeting, all quarantine appropriate, and full of people I didn’t know before.

It doesn’t matter so much, in this moment, what the meeting was about. Here’s what you need to know:

Over 700 people, from all over the world. Kenya, Canada, USA, France, Mexico, Ireland, Brazil, the Ukraine, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Trinidad & Tobago, the UK… and those were just the ones I caught going past in the chat!

If you’ve been to meetings like this, you may be familiar with the quotes going by on the screen in the beginning. One caught my eye…

Don’t be pushed by your problems… be led by your dreams. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

And there, in that little spot of www.land, I found some hope in the midst of what I’ve been experiencing as election terror.

The hope came, mostly, from being surrounded by hundreds of strangers all there because they, too, have dreams for their lives and our world.

I’ve already voted and, as far as I can tell, my job in this moment is to keep dreaming a better nation. A better world. Because, as I’ve mentioned, I have two granddaughters growing up in this world.

Chances are you have a similar motivation for the future.

Let it be conscious. I know it feels safer to try to bury it, so that disappointment isn’t so scary, but that’s not going to work. Please, please, please let yourself believe in whatever it is that keeps you getting out of bed in the morning and doing the good you can.

In the coming weeks, I’ll have some more information about the meeting, and about what I’m up to. And some ideas about how you might get involved…

For today, check out the art, above. It’s under layers of a painting from a year or so ago. If you look closely, you might just find an eye, gazing with hope into the future.

ps… Hi from Phoebe and Luther who have been helping by, you know, not eating roofers and such!

Okay, let’s get real. This is an especially hard time to be a teacher! Nothing works the way it used to which is a major example of something that isn’t good or bad. It just is.

And pretty much everybody is involved. Teachers. Students. Parents. Grandparents. Sports teams. The folks who sell beer for tailgate parties. Bus drivers.

You get the drift.

I’ve been looking at all this newness from the perspective of both a student and a teacher. This past weekend, I had the great privilege of being a student in a retreat affectionately known as The Bunny Slope.

It had been scheduled to be in-person back when organized people, like Sam Bennett plan things. Clearly that wasn’t going to work, especially with participants from several nations.

So Sam and her team of wizards figured out how to teach business concepts to creatives of many sorts, virtually.

Because I also teach, and am re-figuring a bunch of things I had planned, I feel safe in observing that, there on The Bunny Slope, the teachers were learning right along with the students. In my world, that’s a good thing!

It’s a lot like living with Luther, who graciously agreed to appear, above. In case you’re a new friend, Luther is our latest Newfoundland rescue dog. And one of my greatest teachers.

He came to us, about 3 1/2 years ago, severely traumatized, from a puppy mill in Michigan. (Insert rant of your choice, here.) It was about 14 months before I could leave him alone. Which, in retrospect, was probably good training for the pandemic and quite possibly the reason I’m hanging in there, now.

The social and emotional issues healed slowly and the huge-hearted guy inside began to appear. Unfortunately, his eye problems began to get worse. Despite all our efforts to help, he lost his vision entirely. Eventually, he began to have increasing pain from pressure in his eyes.

About a year and a half ago, we made the difficult decision to have his eyes surgically removed to relieve his pain. I kept thinking about a beloved Vet who once told me that, “When they’re in pain, they think they’ve been bad.”

Luther and I spent the first three post-op weeks literally tied to each other because he couldn’t tolerate a “cone of shame” and I couldn’t let him try to take out his own sutures.

Almost from the moment our current beloved Vet and I got the black silk sutures out of his Newfie face (Time out for major eye rolling on my part!) he started to get more sociable.

Fast forward to tonight and the photo, above. This big guy, whose favorite word is friend, found his own way from the kitchen, which is his usual hangout, to the den so he could bond during Chopped. He’s actually started, just recently, to decide where he wants to be and go there, instead of staying where he is until somebody tells him he needs to be somewhere else, even though it usually means bumping his nose a few times on the way.

It occurred to me, as I was taking his picture, that lots of the world feels like Luther’s world must, much of the time. And the dog-mom inside me, who is also a student and a teacher and a grammy, has hope.

Which doesn’t mean I’m not also pretty livid much of the time.

It just means that livid isn’t going to get me too far down the road to different. So, I’m going with determined. A lot like Luther. And that determined me is definitely going to vote.

And keep learning what I need to know. And helping others learn, too. And giving thanks for all the amazing teachers in my world. Even the ones who didn’t set out to be teachers.

ps… It’s me, Luther. (Sometimes I get to write, too!) Mom painted a picture with me in it. It’s called “Chosen, Safe, and Loved.” You see it if you click HERE!

It became official in July when my certificate came in the mail. Many of you wrote to offer congratulations, which I hugely appreciated in this time of compassionately distanced celebrations.

Some of you wrote to ask, with varying expletives, what on earth was Intentional Creativity® Coaching and what did it do, which I also hugely appreciated.

Questions, as I’ve long believed, make all the difference when it comes to learning new things. Also doing new things!

So, as the pandemic goes on and some of you are dealing with kids you didn’t expect to have home from college and parents you can’t visit and ways to make a living while supervising adventures like virtual algebra, here are a few of your questions, along with some answers.

If it’s called Intentional Creativity, do I have to be artistic? Nope! At least not any more so than we all are. (Yes, even you!) Which is to say, if you can take markers – or crayons, for that matter – and make marks on paper, you’ve got this. (Okay, larger sized, heavy paper like what you find in a 9×12 or larger mixed media sketch book is handy, but flexible are us!)

If I can’t come see you, how does this work? Great question! I have an “office” in the land called Zoom. We find a time, I send you a link, and we get together for a while and do what I like best about ICC which is unsticking stuck stuff. I’ll light the electric candle. (No real ones with Newfoundland rescue dogs wandering through, especially when one of them is blind!) Please bring your own tea and Kleenex.

Okay… what exactly is this good for? If you’ve known me a while, or been reading along, we’ve probably talked about strategies. In an ICC session, we use a strategy called Metacognitive Drawing to find new ways for you to get from where you are to where you’d rather be. Think for a minute about someone you know who might be feeling stuck about a certain issue. She uses a familiar strategy like eating a pound of p-nut M&M’s or yelling at her cat or binge watching Hallmark movies. (There’s no judgment here… just the observation that these are often not choices which actually get us to a new place.) Metacognitive Drawing, also known as thinking about thinking while moving a pen, puts us into a different relationship with our thoughts and that makes new options not only possible, but kind of obvious!

But you’re a grandmother! And a pastor! This all sounds fringy. Or new-agey. What’s up with that? You’re right. I’ve been working to help people for more than 30 years now. I’m a pastoral counselor with mastery level training in Ericksonian hypnotherapy/NLP. I know a whole lot about Enneagram personality types and where you store your past by how you move your eyes, though that gets tricky because I can’t tell my right from my left . And I am, in fact, a grandmother. Those two girls, growing up in this world, are a big part of the reason I do this, because me just knowing a lot doesn’t help them make the changes they want and now I have more ways to do that, even when I can’t be there.

Say more… Okay. I had two amazing grandmothers whom we’ll refer to as the story Gramma and the picture Granny. Once upon a time, I was a seminary student getting ready to preach for the first time in the church where I grew up. I realized, while I was preparing, that I felt much closer to the story Gramma than I did the photo Granny, though I loved them both. (Break for whole lots of right brain/left brain learning and time for a bit of perspective to sneak in.) ICC makes a place, like Rumi’s field, where the story brain and the picture brain can work together to create new possibilities. Really!

But, what if you don’t know the answer to my questions? Or my problems? No worries! I know some questions that make all the difference and how to create sacred space for the journey. YOU know what you need and ICC helps you find the answers inside you.

What are your clients saying about their experience? Ahhh… we’re getting serious! Here are some actual comments…

“The MetaCognitive thing helps my brain stop being obsessive compulsive about the problem or emotion or whatever, and allows me to see myself, and my issues, from all angles.”

“It’s different every time! I’m not good at memorizing Bible verses or mantras or whatever. The visualizing really helps. I can remember the pictures and carry them with me!”

“It helps me re-frame dilemmas about taking care of others and realize that it’s actually about taking care of me so I can be in relationship to them.”

How do I start? email me at suesvoice@gmail.com We’ll find a time to get on the phone and see if working together feels like a good match, then we’ll make a plan that starts where you are. We’ll also sort out the time and investment issues of this journey which work a bit differently than you may be used to.

What else? Another note from a client: “Participating in an IC coaching session was a new way to explore and express my feelings. It was very helpful to be able to share back & forth on Zoom. I really liked being able to draw some of the things I was feeling, instead of always having to verbalize my feelings. I’ll definitely do it again!”

And one from me… You – yes you – were born with great gifts. Gifts the world needs now. Set yourself free to live in hope by taking a chance on you and what can be if you’ll let it! I’d be honored to help.

ps… Once upon a time, I spent about an hour and a half with a brilliant wizard woman named Julie Steelman doing an impromptu ICC session. By the time we were done, I had recognized my biggest, hairiest lurking fear and realized that, while it was very deep and old, it wasn’t me now. And the fear disappeared. How do I know it’s still gone? Because I posted this today!

pss… Yes! Should you happen to know others having a challenge getting their cats to march in a parade, you’re welcome to share this 😉

A miracle happened this morning!

I opened the door to the deck to let the beasties out for their stroll around the back forty. (This is not the miracle part. Well, kinda, but that’s a physical therapy story!)

Then I noticed. It was like a breath on my arm. The first breath of fall. (In Atlanta, this is, indeed, a miracle!)

Soft. Ever so slightly cool. A bit damp in the not-totally-humid way. And the light was different, too.

Phoebe and Luther felt it. They actually stayed a while, wandering. And then they bounded up the stairs for their treats and water.

Bounding, by the way, is also a miracle for two huge dogs, one of whom sees with his heart and one just joining the little old lady syndrome crowd.

As for me, I’ve been humming. If you’ve been hanging around for a while, it’s probably obvious.

It really does feel like some new seasons are beginning.

My Unified Archetype painting, aka The Critic & The Muse, has been quite chatty. Insistent, really. I’ve actually figured out – or drawn my way to – how all this works for me.

This, as you probably suspect, is a shift that makes room for so many other things to shift… and heal. The magic is still in my head. But, stay tuned! There’s a whole lot of new to share on the way.

My Artifact painting is still mulling. And looking forward to gathering for salon time. I’m, kind of oddly, feeling very settled about where we are at the moment.

Also on my list for the afternoon is an online thing with a politician. He and his not-remotely-esteemed opponent are doing an awesome job of reminding me that language isn’t the only thing which creates reality.

Images create reality, too.

And I, in my reality, am hoping and praying for huge amounts of newness, come November. (Also, helping… my action for the day!)

Which is to say, I guess, that I do believe in times to every purpose under Heaven. And I’m counting on the possibility that those times may come even in the midst of chaos. They seem to, for me.

ps… it rained just a bit and then I went hunting in the garden for more signs of impending fall. The grapes have doubled in size and are almost ready to turn!