In this moment … like a dandelion seed on the wind I’m falling deeper into wabi sabi perception.

Lovingly continuing to sip many times a day, every day from my nearly 15-year old white china coffee mug, handle broken off from two falls, tiny cracks appearing like frail hands on a ladies wrist watch.

Re-reading “Practical Wabi Sabi” by Simon G. Brown.

While looking for an image for you I came across this beautifully-written article by Robyn Griggs Lawrence, Editor of Natural Home, 2001 and author of another Wabi Sabi book, wherein he says:

“Broadly, wabi-sabi is everything that today’s sleek, mass-produced, technology-saturated culture isn’t. It’s flea markets, not shopping malls; aged wood, not swank floor coverings; one single morning glory, not a dozen red roses. Wabi-sabi understands the tender, raw beauty of a gray December landscape and the aching elegance of an abandoned building or shed. It celebrates cracks and crevices and rot and all the other marks that time and weather and use leave behind. To discover wabi-sabi is to see the singular beauty in something that may first look decrepit and ugly.

Wabi-sabi reminds us that we are all transient beings on this planet that our bodies, as well as the material world around us, are in the process of returning to dust. Nature’s cycles of growth, decay, and erosion are embodied in frayed edges, rust, liver spots. Through wabi-sabi, we learn to embrace both the glory and the melancholy found in these marks of passing time.”

Enjoy giving yourself permission to be yourself.

{Post-script: Did you notice my blog images refuse, no matter what I do technically, to center themselves symmetrically under my headlines thus making my posts visually imperfect? Wabi Sabi suggests the eye enjoys asymmetry. I attempt humble acceptance which may lead to tranquil liberty from design decorum.}

Image “In this moment” borrowed from Theresa Durant. Available to buy.

I see I’m not alone in my love for wonky wood. Of course it’s not easy to find seawashed and sunbleached branches in urban areas so you are able to buy them on Etsy – these are Norwegian sticks. I use my sticks for lots of things, not least just to touch or have as decoration. They are wonderful for stacking balls of wool like quoits, hanging clothes – you just wrap ribbon or yarn around the ends. I feel today with all this computer activity and its super-charged electric static activity making me zing I’ll move from 2D looking at sticks to 3D skin on wood playing with sticks.

Driftwood pieces from Green Wallet on Etsy.

That book you loved when you were a child?

It’s as good now as it ever was. Better even.

Re-read it. You’ll probably enjoy it even more now. Certainly your appreciation of it will be greater. And your heart will expand. Stories written for children are often far more soul-touching and issue-resolving, comforting and entertaining than those for adults.

If you don’t have the actual, original book you remember, and I guess most of us don’t, see if you can find the same edition you read on ebay with a ‘saved search’. I just found “Return to Sula” by Lavinia Derwent and ordered it when I realised it sat deep within me; I must have been tapping into this childhood comforter when I called a cat character in The Wild Folk “Sula”.

Things may not be as you believe. This can be good.

Lately I’ve taken to questioning all sorts of things. I’m noticing a sense of expansion and freedom.

Questioning helps us to re-frame our world and make it better for all.

Ask the questions you asked as a child. You don’t need ‘answers on a postcard’.

Questions lead us to considerations. Possibilities. Opportunities.

Question everything.

Image “The natural history of the imaginary world 002” borrowed from LilyMoon. Available to buy.

I don’t know why colouring-in a French book feels a little more enchanting but it does.

Maybe when you only have a vague idea of what the text says you let your conscious mind relax into a dreamy, mindful state more easily than if you’re reading and thinking.

No matter. Have a look at these beautiful art therapy books from French company, Hachette-Practique. There’s also a sweet kit of colored pencils. Trying to figure out which brand of coloured pencil to buy can be so stressful as to have you colour-in more pages to re-balance.

My short story “Tenderness” was included in the Bloody Scotland International Crime Writing Festival‘s “Worth The Wait” ebook in September.

You can download the ebook for free courtesy of the short story competition sponsors, Glengoyne Whisky.

Sláinte!

* Image courtesy of Kat from In A Pale Place. Available to buy along with more of her beautiful art in her Etsy shop.

It’s been a while.

I’ve suffered a little performance anxiety.

I’ve received many beautiful, heartfelt emails in response to the little pieces I’ve been writing here at Inner Wild Therapy. Wonderful people baring themselves to me. My response was to feel uncertain.

I didn’t like the cloudy, unformed sense of influence over others that floated up around me as my writing journey on Inner Wild Therapy continued. And so I paused.

I stopped.

In the time between then and now I’ve realized the very last kind of someone I want to be is a someone who advises others directly about their lives. It’s just not me.

Instead I’ve been writing my {third} novel, The Wild Folk.

I’m smitten by the characters in this story. Now I’m done with getting what they want to say into a book, they push and poke at my back to get them out in the world. I

Thank you for continuing to walk with Inner Wild Therapy now and again even when I’ve been absent. I notice from my site stats a lot of dearhearts have been visiting and that makes me feel like everyone is watching and judging me so I freeze up like a bunny supported and appreciated. {hug}

Ah, I love Inner Wild Therapy. I’m not exactly sure what it is but it is. And that is good.

We shall journey with instinct.

* Image courtesy of Kelly Louise Judd of Swan Bones Theatre. See more of her art in her Etsy shop.