Freedom

I love this picture it so depicts who I am and who I have always been and who I will always be.

Pain

I was thinking today... we all try and avoid pain of any sort. But pain is not an emotion to avoid but rather to embrace, because it is only through the experience of pain that we learn some very valuable life lessons. I am in so much pain at the moment. Fear of going backwards and fear of moving forward.
I am about to move back to Johannesburg, a city I really don't like much and never did, but my daughters and grandchildren are there and I love them dearly. My fear is that not only do I not enjoy the city but I have horrible memories of living there, that I will have to face. Pain teaches us what is good for us and what is not.
My pain has been ignored for most of my life and as a result I have done many things to mask and disguise it, but now that I have the time to 'feel' it and acknowledge it, I have the opportunity to deal with it.
No one has control over me, only those I give permission, and I have done that in the past, it is now a new phase for me, a time to be authentic and secure with who I am and what I want and those around me will have to either accept me for who I am or move along.... swiftly.
Pain has taught me so many things about life, my journey from birth to death and I am grateful if somewhat reluctant to accept all of those hard lessons.
God said - 'I have a plan and a purpose for you and that is to prosper and not harm you'. That is hard to digest sometimes when we insist on doing things our way and resist the consequences of those choices.
One thing I never do, is resist change, it comes with the willingness to move forward and do and experience something new... I am willing.

Break Out and be free

Every now and again I have to break away from my usual art style and do something different and crazy. I have been playing with these little paintings using all kinds of textures and 'stuff'. I am not crazy about the end result, but hey, I think they could be cute in a teenage bedroom or something, tell me what you think.

God speaks loud and clear in silence.

Oh I am thrilled, today is the first day that I feel human. I had flu for the whole month of May. I have no doubt at all that the universe, who I call God, has been trying to say something to me for a long time.... I heard! I can be hard of hearing at times. No I do not believe that God makes us sick, I think we make ourselves sick we do things that are not in line with what God wants for us, we allow our bodies to be under nourished, we work too hard, we don't rest, we pay far too much attention to all the things we should ignore and illness finds a place to rest in us.

I was forced to take some time off and relax and God speaks loud and clear in silence. There are many things I have learned in life and continue to learn and I am grateful for all of life's lessons. I am back watch this space.

Sick n Tired!

I am sorry that I have not been blogging lately. I have been really sick and now I am sick n tired of being sick n tired! I have had flu for almost 3 weeks and I must say it is taking its tole on me. I just can't shake it. One or two good days and them bang... I feel awful again. This of course does not lend it's self to me eating very well and I am sure that is not helping, lacking in all the vital nutrients one needs.
I was hoping to share lots of things about my mother this month, but I just haven't felt up to sitting on my computer. I will be back with a vengeance soon!

Sick n Tired

Oh boy am I man down. I have had flu for almost two weeks now and really not feeling up to much so sorry I haven't been blogging for  a while. The little time that I am up and about I am trying to finish some art work for a gallery. I put in  few hours everyday and then back to bed. I haven't been sick in years so it really is not going down well with me. I have swallowed just about every flu pill there is and it is not easing up at all.
Does anyone have any tips.
Hopefully by the time I am feeling better I will have some interesting things to write about and pictures to post. That will be soon I hope.

Distraction

Gentle Reminder

When thinking about my Mum I am often reminded that she was a very lonely person and she was a child of the 'silent generation'. I judged her quite harshly when she was alive and now that I have grown up and been through more life experience I have a tenderness toward her that I wish with all my heart I could express. I wish I was able to look her in the eyes and say... I love you just the way you are.
This is one of my favourite tracks by Mike and the Mechanics and it reminds of both my mother and my father so I wanted to share it. When someone teaches me how to add a video so that the screen comes onto my blog and you can just click on it then I will do that in future but for now the link will have to do. I hope it means as much to you as it means to me. When I do Public Speaking I often play this at the end of my talk.

Art my mother loved

My mother was born in Poona India and my father was born in Peking China. My Mum was an incredible artist and loved chinese art. She did several paintings on silk but unfortunately I didn't get to keep any of them. I know that she would have loved these paintings they are very much her style and her paintings were always of tigers, koi fish and water lilies. I am not sure why she loved Chinese art and wonder if it was influenced by my father?

Isn't this just the most amazing painting I love it and know that my mother would have loved this one too.

Bunking blogging

The past few weeks have been really hectic with visitors from up country so I haven't really had time to blog but since I wanted to dedicate this month to my mother I feel guilty for not doing so. It was her birthday on the 11th May and I was able to spend a large part of the day just thinking about her. I have heard some stories over the years of the kinds of things other people do to remember their mothers.
Continueing to celebrate with dinners with the family and everyone sharing memories of that person. another blogger friend makes her mothers favourite meals on her mothers birthday. I don't do things like that with my family because they are all spread around the world but one thing I do - I write about things I remember in my journal. This month I am going to do some art journal pages to reflect who my mother was. I want to see if I can do some art that speaks volumes about her. This will be interesting.
My mother loved fresh ginger and garlic for example, how I am going to do something around that will have to wait and see.

Indian Door

I don't have any photo's with me so I am sharing a link with you, to some amazing photo's of India.

Poona

Mothers Day

May is the month for Mothers Day and I want to pay a tribute to my own mother who went to be with the Lord in 1991. I was thinking a lot about her this past weekend because it was also her Birthday on the 11th May, she would be 86 if she was still here. One of 4 children she was the youngest and only one of her siblings is still alive my Earth Angel aunt mentioned in my book. I had two mothers, my own mother and my aunt. Unfortunately I didn't get on very well with my mother even though I really loved her, we always had a mother and daughter 'thing' going on that never seemed to work it self out, but as often happens, I have had years to think about our relationship and more recently I have thought much about her own journey through life and I wish she was here for me to say...Forgive me, for not understanding life from your point of view. Forgive me for not understanding you more, and for not giving you the patience and compassion that you so desperately needed.
This month I want to share some things that I have found out about her and things I do remember from the time we had together.
I will start doing that from tomorrow. My Mum was born in Poona, India so I need to start at the beginning.

Fantasy Forest

This is a place I go to in my imagination when I need a break.

Work to be done.

Just wanted to drop in and leave a message for those who follow my blog. I haven't written much this week because I have been working really hard trying to finish art work so that I can get as much work out into the shops and galleries. I am almost on top of things and then will be filling up with all kinds of bits and bobs that you might find interesting.

Not having time to play much at the moment. I usually spend several hours in the evenings doing PS manipulations which I also haven't done for a while and I feel like I am going cold turkey. Every now and again things just don't go according to plan, and thats how life is. I don't fight it anymore I simply try and go with the flow.

I did this for a workshop recently and have been playing around with the colours.

Oops

I realised that one can't break up a post like this because the bottom half of the message then becomes the top! So If you want to read this from top to bottom then go the Sympathy- Compassion and read that first then scroll back up to Compassion... still learning how to blog properly :o)

Compassion

After the book was published I felt so much compassion for the thousands of other women just like me that I had to become pro active which is why I started the organisation PAINE. For 5 years I have worked tirelessly at connecting with other organisations, counselling people who would contact me from my website or who had read my book. I spoke at several conferences, radio, television, interviews for newspapers, magazines, psychologists and churches. For 5 years I have not earned a salary and I have invested EVERYTHING into doing what ever I could to help other families. Needless to say this has all cost money and I was recently considering closing down the organisation due to lack of funds, sponsors and donations.

This morning when I heard that program on Sympathy - Compassion. I knew, I just cant stop now. Perhaps I will take a break for a while and focus on my art work. I enjoy what I do and that is where the money comes in, so for now thats what I am going to be doing. But in a month or two I will pick up my cross and continue the work that I feel passionately and Compassionate about. I just cannot give up now. When I think of the children in these homes where mothers and fathers are screaming and shouting at each other, the fear that they live with is terrible. I have grand children and to think of my own grandchildren in anyway experienceing what my children when through... that is what really drives me.

And so.... the work continues. All I ask of you if you are reading this... please do one small thing to help those children. Make a donation to a charity in your area, take old clothes and household items to a shelter but please do something.

I doubt that my own life would have been such hell, if someone had just said or done something. I cannot and will not be silent.

Sympathy - Compassion

I was watching a program this morning which really moved me. The message was about Sympathy and Compassion. Sympathy is a FEELING one has for another person, Compassion is MOVING for another person. When I got divorced 5 years ago I felt tremendous sympathy for the thousands of other women just like myself who have experienced any kind of abuse from the people who said they loved them. But most of all I really felt very sad for the child with in me. My childhood was abusive and I swore it would never happen to me as an adult and more importantly I would never allow my own children to grow up in an abusive home. Well I did.

When I wrote my book my intention was to show COMPASSION to other women around the world and to create more awareness of how families suffer at the hands of an abusive partner. I started the organisation of PAINE - Abuse Is No Excuse with the website of the same name adding all the informtion that I could, from all the sources that I had found help myself. Five years ago I stumbled upon a website called MSN- Narcissistic Personality Disorder which was a website for victims of Domestic Violence. I was amazed at the amount of information I found there. For many months I interacted with many other women in the same situation as myself. The most important thing for me at the time was to realise that I was not alone.

Suddenly for the first time in 50 years, things started to make sense for me and so my healing began. I was so utterly desperate and alone that I knew I had to write a book and share my own story so I started to journal. Well I filled 6 journals full, with stories, art work, hatred, tears and pain. But from those journals my book was written and published.

Multi media - mosaic

Now that I have my whole life back I am going to throw myself totally into my art so I am pulling out all the bits and pieces that I have made since I have been in Cape Town and discipline myself to do a little bit of everything. I found this at the back of my cupboard today and thought I would like to make a few more of these, they ar fun to do and I can use up all ,my bits n bobs.