LUNA MOTHS or How I found my way back, beginning steps...

Interesting image to choose for the beginning of a post in the middle of January, isn't it? The giant green Luna Moth has always been important to me though. It looks like some magic fairy companion, sitting and waiting for her riding partner to come along. I found this one last Summer, in September. She's a bit worn and tired but still beautiful. I even brought the cats inside so she would have a chance the next evening to fly on to whatever her destination was without being harassed. I spent the day checking in on her to make sure she was OK. She was gone the next morning. 

I was glad she had moved on. I went to sleep that night with the vision in my head of her tiny, fairy companion coming carefully up out of the woods to take her on to the 'Other Place', where the air was clear and clean, the waters all blue and deep and the animals and insects talked to each other. It's the World where trees live to be thousands of years old and, when they die, they never really die. Instead they fall slowly to the Earth and there's a celebration. New families of insects and birds move in to the old and gnarled branches, taking up residence within the trunk and beginning a whole new world of tree sprouts and Luna Moths, fairies and birds, frogs and a thousand insects who live off the fungus growing from the trunk. And the tree they all begin their lives in exists as a ghost, ready to dispense wisdom and help when ever she is needed. 

CHECK. Imagination still intact. Next ...

We're moving in to the second week for my online coaching with my horses. My coach is doing a great job of pushing me to move and guiding me towards setting goals. 

I used to be good at that, setting goals. I let myself get knocked off course a few years ago though. And I started hiding out instead. I was facing the possibility of failing again, or what felt like a failure. It's all inside my head. I don't have to stop or let my original ideas lapse. But I fell in to a set of patterns that supported the IDEA of failure. It was easier to moan and groan than it was to keep trying. I got lost. My bad or rather my decision. I wasn't bad. I simply lost my way. It's the process of asking for help, allowing myself to be rusty and then trying again that needed to be worked on first, inside of me. And then, second, getting that information out to my toes and fingers. And, third, to let my guard down and just be me in all of my messy finiteness (pun intended). 

A rather blurry me, more years ago than it's easy for me to believe. There's my Brownie camera. I always had it with me. And I had, somehow, talked my Mom and Nana into wearing blue jeans! That was huge that year. Up until then it had been all delicate handmade dresses with perfect fit and lace ankle socks with patent leather shoes. I had a different inner vision, IDEA, of who I was. And they, eventually, relented and chose to focus the need to control on other things. It was big for me though. I still remember that giddy feeling of being able to dress just exactly the way I wanted to. I still wear, almost exclusively, jeans and T-Shirts with a camera around my neck.

It's the IDEA part that's intriguing here. I had a dream of who I was, an inner vision. And that's where I went too. That is, for me, proof positive of the power of the inner voice, the words we tell ourselves. They wanted me to be a ballerina. I did that too but more because it pleased them. I was also kind of clumsy and goofy and lost in that inner world where I made up my own story. 

This week has been one of agonizing (well, OK, not quite agonizing . I just like the way that sounds. ) reappraisal for me. There's nothing wrong with being an artist who lives for that inner story, but there has to be the part connected to the world too. That's the 'me' that takes care of ten animals and helps to pay the bills. There has to be a goal and that's what I am supposed to be focused on ; goals. There's the short term goals for the week ie. working with my horses, especially Lucky, with a game plan in hand. And then the mid term goals of finishing an assessment so I know where I am, where the holes are and what I need to learn or do a better job at. Horses are perfect. They already know. Then there's the next level out goal of being able to ride when the weather permits, of taking a little jaunt with Lucky and, maybe, Stony. Then there's the end game. I want to complete my circle with them, fulfill my promise. I want to be there all the way, giving them a home to live in that is safe. In a jumbled up world like ours that's a huge IDEA of a goal to hold to. 

For me finishing a circle has become my spiritual focus. I see it in the word commitment. I'm taking the first shaky steps back on to that circle and relearning how to believe the way I used to. I'm working on that inner voice, the one that keeps the horizon ahead in sight. I'm still nervous, afraid of failure. But I'm also more awake than I've been for a couple of years too. 

Tonight is the next online seminar with the focus on fitness. I'm guessing that has to do with both mental and emotional fitness as well as physical fitness. And I have set up a vision board and a marker board in the barn, to help keep me going ahead. I've left up our broken clock in the barn, to remind me to be aware of the fact that horses are non linear creatures with the goal of safety, comfort and survival in mind. Anything else we create between us is a lovely icing on the cake. It's lucky (pun intended) that I love icing!

In the words of Elizabeth Taylor in 'NATIONAL VELVET', " Horses!"

I haven't met any that I didn't like. The world is a better place with them in it. 

I am, ever yours, Nancy, busy visualizing and trying not to stumble too much, smiling.