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This is the print-friendly version of the August 2003 Newsletter
- Online Issue # 4
August 2003 Newsletter
Online Issue # 4
In this Issue:
See also, the print-friendly version of
this newsletter (all the articles are on one web page).
Look for the next issue in December.
The Front Page
Connections: One Thing to Another
I always seem to carry with me an idea or two that I am pondering,
exploring and testing.
The way it happens is that I read or encounter something that sticks
to me effortlessly and begins to connect itself to a tangle of other
stuff in my life, in a way that I take notice. A favorite quote
of mine from Burghild Nina Holzer’s book “A Walk Between
Heaven and Earth” perfectly captures this process: “Sometimes
it seems as if one thing has nothing to do with another thing, but
it does.” When I first read these words years ago
they leaped off the page at me in a way I could not ignore. So I
needed to test this idea until my own experience demonstrated that
everything probably is connected to everything else, eventually.
This idea of connectedness matters; it makes a BIG difference,
especially during times that leave a person feeling stuck, lost,
hopeless, overwhelmed, forgotten. I know many people who have amazing
stories to tell about difficult times. I have my own to tell and
you probably do too. It seems to be part of our very human condition
- - to doubt that everything is connected and to forget that we
are too.
If this is true, and I believe it is, or if we believe this is
true, whether or not it is, things shift. What was separate, isolated,
invisible now becomes visible, whole, complete. In a sense, help
comes.
And that is, oddly enough, related to another idea I felt compelled
to examine years ago. Somewhere that I don’t remember, I read
a powerful story about choice. Maybe you know the story, and maybe
you even know where it came from. Basically, the story goes: “You
can choose to believe help will come; or you can choose to believe
it won’t. What matters most is your choice. What matters less
is whether help comes. If you live believing help will come, you’ll
live one life. If you live believing it won’t, you’ll
live a different life. Whether or not help comes matters far less
than what you believe.”
Where does that place you? Are you currently waiting for help to
come? Have you given up hope? Are you sensing connections to the
things you care and dream about? Have you asked for the help you
need? Are you feeling worthy of that help? Do you see how you are
part of any solution? Are you experiencing how one thing leads to
another and another, sometime in exquisitely illogical and beautiful
order that makes perfect sense, yet cannot be figured out? I’ll
illustrate.
Mindlessly glancing through a magazine, a picture sparks something
in you. A few weeks later you’re on your way somewhere and
have a bit of time all to yourself. For some unknown reason you
remember the picture in the magazine, and you also remember an experience
from childhood you haven’t thought about for years. You recall
how much you liked to create your own imaginary worlds, or maybe
how you loved the secret names you gave to things. And the next
thing you know, you catch the glimmer of a thread of a solution
to a frustrating problem that had seemed to be keeping you from
an important dream. Only now the dream has shifted, sort of sidestepped.
It isn’t exactly the way you thought it would be. But it might
be better, or at least more attainable. Why didn’t you think
of this before?
Well, you didn’t. But you have now. And you’re off again,
feeling new energy, experiencing renewed enthusiasm. It seems that
you have entered a favorable stream of fresh possibilities. You
talk to people, you read, you search the Internet, you daydream,
you scout about - - you end up gathering information about related
and seemingly unrelated ideas and opportunities.
You might not have noticed it yet, but you are no longer stuck.
You still might not know all about who or what or where you are,
but you're beginning to choose and to trust again. You return to
your workplace / studio / garage / basement / kitchen / garden without
the fear of making horrible mistakes. You dare to consider, explore,
experiment and try things. You give yourself more permission to
listen to your own inspired longings and you discover things - -
important things, interesting things. You feel the shift and sense
the connections even before they reveal themselves fully. Something
is happening, something is opening. Help has come.
With gratitude,
Laurie Mattila
Good Books
As you look over this summer’s list of books, I hope you discover
at least one new book that might make a difference to you or someone
you know. Thank you to everyone who took time to recommend a book.
Work to Live: The Guide to Getting a Life
by Joe Robinson
Perigee, 2003
paperback, $14.95
Joe Robinson is committed to educating workers about the true cost
and the real danger of overdoing work. He is the founder of the
grassroots “Work to Live” campaign which is currently
lobbying for a minimum of three paid weeks of vacation for workers
in the United States. If you want support for living a more balanced
life, with less work and more time for the other things you value,
this book offers the facts, inspiration and guidance you’ll
need to begin making changes. You can also learn more by visiting
www.worktolive.info.
Roadtrip Nation: A Guide to Discovering Your Path in Life
by Nathan Gebhard, Michael Marriner with Joanne Gordon
Ballantine Books, 2003
paperback, $13.95
Gebhard and Marriner, two new college graduates from California,
traveled cross-country in a thirty-one foot RV to interview successful
people: “folks with interesting stories who love what they
do.” The write-ups of each interview are short, fascinating
and informative. In the final section you’ll learn how to make
cold calls to get interviews with people you’d like to talk
with, how to create your own interesting interview questions, and
more. The book is intended to encourage twentysomethings to explore
their individuality and “self-construct” their own lives.
It’s also a resource for anyone who wants to know more about
how other people get to do likable things in the world of work.
Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work & in Life,
One Conversation at a Time
by Susan Scott
Viking Press, 2002
hardcover, $25.95
Fierce Conversations is also the name of Susan Scott’s
international consulting firm; think fierce as
in robust, intense, real - - not fierce as in
aggressive. “In its simplest form, a fierce conversation
is one in which we come out from behind ourselves into the conversation
and make it real.” The way Scott sees it, these are the
essential conversations we need to have, FIRST with ourselves and
then with others - - at home and at work. These conversations are
our relationships and our results. “... our very lives succeed
or fail gradually, then suddenly, one conversation at a time.
While many people are afraid of “real,” it is the unreal
conversation that should scare us to death.”
Dragon Spirit: How to Self-Market Your Dream - - A Zentrepreneur’s
Guide
by Ron Rubin and Stuart Avery Gold
Newmarket Press, 2003
hardcover $19.95
The authors of Dragon Spirit are Chairman and
COO of “The Republic of Tea.” In their quest for the world’s
finest teas they travel the globe collecting teas, good stories
and ancient wisdom. If you have a dream to market (or a business,
product, idea, talent, skill), here’s new enthusiasm to add
to your project. Among the topics included are overcoming limiting
beliefs, maintaining faith, persevering, and doing well by doing
good. “While entrepreneurs get hold of an idea, Zentrepreneurs
allow an idea to get hold of them.”
What Happy People Know: How the New Science of Happiness Can
Change Your Life for the Better
by Dan Baker
Rodale Press, 2003
hardcover, $22.95
Dan Baker directs the “7-Day Enhancement Program” at
Canyon Ranch where he teaches people about happiness. It turns out
that happiness and unhappiness might not be what you thought. According
to Baker, a person’s highly evolved survival system with its
“biological circuitry of fear is the greatest enemy of happiness.”
The book explores common happiness traps: trying to buy happiness,
trying to find happiness through pleasure, trying to be happy by
resolving the past.... The book also offers tools to cultivate happiness:
appreciation, choice, personal power.... Instead of asking, “Are
you happy?” Baker poses the telling question, “Are you
winning at life?” If happiness is a constant struggle, this
book deserves your attention.
Profile of Constance Saunders:
• Life Is
Art
“I hardly recognize the dream
now cracked
rooted
sprouted.”
from the poem “Fourteen Days Into My Dream”
by Constance Saunders
"There comes a time when holding oneself tightly in a bud
is more painful than opening." This rephrase of Anais Nin has
been taped to my bathroom mirror for two years. The pain of keeping
my creativity wrapped inside, while I attended to real-world issues
of earning a living, became unbearable last October. It was time
to support myself with my art - whatever that meant. I thought letting
go of a steady paycheck and good health insurance coverage was going
to be the hard part. In reality, it was easy compared with maintaining
the self-directed spirit needed to be a working artist.
My mother wrote in my baby book when I was two-and-a-half that
she believed I was going to be an artist because I was always drawing
on the front room window with my finger. An artistic bent has permeated
my life - I've expressed myself with drawing, pottery, writing,
weaving, quilting, sewing, crocheting, knitting and spinning. Sewing
my own clothes has been the one constant source of expression -
all the way back to learning to sew a straight seam to the rhythmic
motion of mom's treadle machine. All the other art and craft activities
entered and exited my life on cue, though at times I felt that I
could never carry an idea through to completion. I built on my college
art minor with drawing classes as time allowed. In pottery, I used
the clay body as a canvas and painted songbirds and cranes using
my own glaze formulas. Messy and breakable pottery gave way to weaving
scarves and blankets that could warm friends' babies. I crocheted
a veritable blizzard of snowflakes and knitted enough socks for
the whole family - literally.
But I have only so many windows to decorate with snowflakes, and
socks wear out, so while I was exploring the intricate designs of
nine-patch quilts - and cursing the inartistic need to sew EVERY
seam so very straight - I learned to create landscapes on the sewing
machine from photos. Tacking down tiny collage pieces left me cold,
so I decided to sew the entire picture with threadwork. Years of
sewing experience merged with an innate ability to transfer images
by eye-hand coordination, giving birth to my own unique art form.
"I've never seen anything like it!" exclaim family, friends
and strangers who stare in amazement that I create whole pictures
in thread which look like paintings from a distance. I am blessed.
Sometimes my belief in my artistic abilities is not as strong as
my mother's. When the voices shouting, "What do you think you're
doing being an artist?" become too loud to ignore, I recall
how I figured out all the details of traveling alone to Italy in
1997 to study weaving for a month. On my departure day an overwhelming
panic seized me as I was leaving the house for the airport: "What
do you think you're doing going to a FOREIGN COUNTRY ALL ALONE for
five weeks?" My son Erik's confident, "You'll be fine,
Mom." helped repack my self-confidence, and off I went. I lived
with an Italian woman who spoke no English, and I knew virtually
no Italian! I boldly fulfilled a dream and "mighty forces came
to my aid". Since I had no idea what I was doing several times
a day, I had to stay alert to my instinctual voice within. As long
as I asked questions, and kept being willing to risk walking in
the unknown, I received information to figure things out. The experience
was so successful that I've traveled alone two more times to Florence
to study at the same art school.
As long as I continue to risk walking in the unknown - that is
the key. As long as I continue to open myself to my art, the tight
bud opens. I stretch to find new avenues to sell my art, people
to contact who lead me to other contacts, and confidence to take
the next step. In January I sent a letter, with the help of a friend
experienced in marketing, to interior designers with a sample print
of one of my Thread Impressions of the Temperance River. I, the
former Tupperware and Avon dealer who found it difficult to approach
others to make a sale, now found myself making cold calls: "Hi!
I'm an artist who sews thread on hand-painted silk. Could I send
you a copy of my work? Good. To whom shall I address the print?"
Who was saying these things? The next week, I'd call back
each designer and ask to meet and show my originals. A twenty percent
response to meet with thirteen designers seemed small to me, but
in the marketing world this is very good. I had assumed that no
one at Gabberts, an exclusive furniture and design studio, would
want to talk with me, so I initially skipped their listing in the
phone book. When I finally stepped past my censors and made the
call, the Executive Director became a valuable source of information
and feedback. As long as I continue to risk walking in the unknown....
I felt like a one-year old learning to walk as I said feebly at
first, then boldly, "Yes, I am an artist." Claiming myself
as an artist took many years; I preferred to call myself a "part-time
artist." Claiming myself as an artist has led me past desiring,
to the next step of actually following my heart's desire. True,
the self-directed path looks and feels different than I had imagined.
And the streets of Florence looked different than any photos - sometimes
better, sometimes disappointing.
I have worked harder in the past six months than ever before, yet
I struggle with internal voices chiding me for not making a living
with my art. Though I am selling pieces slowly, it is not a steady
source of income. I strive to listen to the message from my mother
that I recently taped to my bathroom mirror: "I believe Connie
will be an artist." I need to continue making Thread Impressions
and marketing them, both time-consuming activities. As long as I
continue to risk walking in the unknown, I will turn the spirit
of opening myself to my art into my reality.
Thread Impression of the Temperance River
© Copyright 2003, Constance Saunders
Editor's Note: If you would like to contact Constance about
Thread Impressions and where you can view or purchase her art, please
e-mail her at viaboito@usfamily.net
.
Upcoming Calendar:
Discovery Writing: Creating A FutureSM
For NEW Students:
Discovery Writing: Creating A Future
This six-session class uses process writing as a way to explore
what you truly desire; it is also a path to follow in creating your
future.
Fall Schedule 2003
Saturday mornings ( 9:00 - 11:00 a.m. )
September 13, 27 October 11,
25 November 8, 22
Monday evenings ( 6:30 - 8:30 p.m. )
September 29 October 13, 27
November 10, 24 December 8
Winter Schedule 2004
Saturday mornings ( 9:00 - 11:00 a.m. )
January 10, 24 February 7, 21
March 6, 20
Wednesday evenings ( 6:30 - 8:30 p.m. )
January 21 February 4, 18 March
3, 17, 31
More about Discovery Writing: Creating
A Future
For FORMER Students:
2003 Discovery Writing Weekend Retreat for Women
The annual fall retreat is scheduled for the weekend of October
17-19 at StoneyWoods Retreat Center. Invitations will be mailed
in mid August to all of the women who have been in Discovery Writing
classes.
Discovery Writing Year-long Groups
The next year-long groups for former Discovery Writing students
will begin in January 2004. These groups meet monthly for an entire
year and all former Discovery Writing students are welcome to participate.
Invitations will be mailed in late November. Members are asked to
make a year-long commitment.
About the Newsletter
This newsletter is created several times a year for my clients
and students, and anyone else interested in listening to and trusting
their own deep knowing. It is designed to support your process of
discovery and growth, and to bring you up-to-date about my practice.
It offers encouragement, guidance and resources for you.
You will find new issues posted on my website in the months of
August, December and April. I hope you add my website to your favorite
places and check back when the next issues are scheduled.
Subscribe Here:
Feel free to share this newsletter and my website with others who
might be interested. Please copy the newsletter in its entirety,
crediting me as the author and including copyright information and
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