Aug 14, 2015 | Global
This magical woman swooped into my world when she published “This I Know: Notes on Unraveling the Heart,” a book I could relate to on various levels and that had felt like cool water after being parched for too long. Ever since I have been a cheerleader for her and her work. I’m so glad to introduce the few who don’t know her to Susannah Conway!
Susannah Conway is the author of This I Know: Notes on Unraveling the Heart and forthcoming LONDONTOWN: A Photographic Tour of the City’s Delights (Chronicle Books, 2016). A photographer, writer and teacher, her classes have been enjoyed by thousands of people from over 50 countries around the world. Co-author of Instant Love: How to Make Magic and Memories with Polaroids, Susannah helps others remember their true selves, using creativity as the key to open the door. Visit her at SusannahConway.com and say hi on Instagram.
What is your wisdom whispering to you today?
Patience. Play the long game.
It’s so easy to wish away our lives when we’re wanting circumstances to change, but the older I get the more I understand how things will change only when they are good and ready.
I still waste time wishing and hoping, but after a while it morphs into knowing and trusting and that is so much more useful. That’s where I am today.
What is helping with the mending?
Time.
Time alone doesn’t heal our hurts butama it does give us the opportunity to integrate the lessons as we finally start uncovering them.
Time gives me distance from the hurt so I can see what is true and what it is not.
Time reminds me that I have survived before and will survive again.
Time is hard to accept at first because it seems to be taking us away from what we’ve lost, but it also protects us. It helps us carry on.
What is your mantra?
Go gently.
Tell me how you rise up in fullness?
By knowing who I am, inside and out. Shadows and light. Especially the shadows. Diving into that side of myself has been the most powerful excavation work I’ve done in recent years. There’s something so freeing about accepting the less pretty parts of your being. My fullness includes all of me, and I rise into it every time I’m honest about who I am, what I want and what I don’t want.
What supports the true expression of your authentic self?
Creativity and curiosity. And getting past the worry of what others will think of me. That worry has never served me in any of my 42 years on this planet.
List a few inspirations right now:
My nephew.
My city. I love London.
My Instagram feed. So much creativity from other souls around the world!
Oh Wonder. A new find.
White nectarines and over-ripe cherries.
Reading back through my own journals to see how far I have come.
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
I’ve been asked this question many times in my nine years of blogging. Mary Oliver’s poem certainly lit a fire in the collective unconscious!
I intend to continue sharing and inspiring.
Listening hard.
Loving harder.
Opening my heart to new experiences even when they scare me.
Mustering as much kindness as I can for my self and others.
Forgiving often.
Softening.
Laughing.
Being the best auntie in the world.
You may also be inspired by this podcast with Susannah Conway and Sara Blackthorne.
or check out these amazing E-courses…
Aug 6, 2015 | Global
Every writer has their process.
Art and work are not- one size fit all.
Trying to make a one size fits all practice has a tendency to make others feel like failures if they can’t do it your way.
I have heard many people feel they have a story to tell but just don’t know how to get it out.
Some do morning pages. Some write when it hits them no matter where they are. Some sit and wait.
Everyone does it different and this is okay…
“When we write we don’t sit down knowing. We sit down desiring.”-Marybeth Bonfiglio
This is how it is for me. This gives me much peace as a writer.
I sit down not knowing. I sit down desiring.
I am a writer because I am. Not because I am the best at it. Or have a better story to tell.
I am a writer because I have a desire to sit down and write.
That is all. And that is all I need.
I sit down wether the words show up or not.
Wether the words form a neat pretty inspirational sentence or a messy heap of words.
It all matters.
It all comes from the belly of my soul.
It is all apart of how I live.
I show up because for me, I need too. I have too.
For me art is desiring.
It is blood and bone.
It is a life line as Susan Conway calls it.
I create because it is how over and over I have healed myself.
How I have gotten through, moved on, processed, showed up…
No matter where I have gone, who I have loved, what I have been through, art is the only companion that I have kept.
I have had seasons I didn’t create, it feels like a slow drown.
It feels like a forsaking.
It feels like a breath stolen here and there until there is no breath left.
Another words a dying of what is most deeply me.
It has felt like a burden at times the need to create.
The weight of wanting to bring forth life but feel the void where inspiration ‘should’ reside.
That’s the thing, the need to create doesn’t leave even if the inspiration has.
It’s like the need to love without a lover. This can be a deeply painful thing.
The isolation of nothingness that lives within your chest and brain.
It goes on and on until on day suddenly something changes and the inspiration comes back.
Flows out again from the rock that has been your body.
I sit down not knowing when or what magic will meet me.
I sit down desiring and this is enough.
Jul 31, 2015 | Global
This woman right here! I discovered her lovely voice and story for the first time over at StyleLikeU watch this amazing video!
Singer-songwriter Alexa Wilding has beguiled audiences for years with her haunting voice, cutting-edge style and singular noir folk. Called “the neo-Stevie Nicks” by The New York Times, her two albums – 2009’s self-titled debut and 2012’s Coral Dust – feature “moody fables over a spray of watercolor sounds” (Time Out New York). Confessional, mystical and tinged in Americana, both efforts feature support from Wilding’s longtime collaborator, Tim Foljahn (Cat Power, Thurston Moore, Townes Van Zandt) and Television’s Fred Smith. She is currently at work on her third album with producer Tom Beaujour, who has worked with Julianna Hatfield, Guided By Voices and Nada Surf.
In 2013, following the birth of her twin sons, Wilding shared a cover of Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game,” featuring Au Revoir Simone. The following year saw “Mirage,” a collaboration with Kevin Serra’s Cloud Seeding, a singles project on Brooklyn’s Bleek Records. She also continued to score fashion films and commercials for Scandinavian brand, Ivana Helsinki. Lastly, Tim Foljahn’s cover of “Bird” from her 2009 debut, was featured on Showtime’s “Shameless.”
Tagged as “one of music’s hippest chicks” alongside Florence + The Machine (New York Post), she has been featured as one to watch in Bust Magazine, Dossier Journal, Nylon, Urban Outfitters, Page Six and Harper’s Bazaar amongst others. Her music reached a national audience while on tours with Au Revoir Simone, Ben Lee and Jennifer O’Connor, and overseas via her video collaborations with Ivana Helsinki. A native New Yorker, Wilding cut her teeth as a side woman in Int’l Shades, an art-rock project with former Pussy Galore/Sonic Youth drummer, Bob Bert and Live Skull’s Mark C. She lives and works in Manhattan with her family.
Describe a time when you walked through the doors of passage? Becoming a mother, one inevitably walks through the doors of passage. But for me becoming a mother was a particularly complicated time. I lost my first pregnancy, and then shortly after I became pregnant with twins! Then right before West and Lou’s first birthday, Lou was diagnosed with a rare, cancerous brain tumor, and we spent almost a year seeing him, successfully, through chemotherapy. Needless to say, it was a horrific time, and there were, of course, moments when I wondered who had put the hooey on me! But now, four months out, I look back and realize that it was a magical time, too, despite all the suffering. I learned the greatest lesson of all, which is that you can’t control anything.
Control is an illusion, and once you are freed from it, it is actually quite liberating!
I still try to control my little world, of course, I’m human, but I can now check myself.
I know now that the secret to life is being 100% present and giving it all you got.
It’s not easy, but in the case of my son’s illness, for instance, I can honestly say I showed up every day and just did it. I don’t feel much residual upset from the whole thing, because I believe, like the chemo, the experience ran through me clean. Done.
How has being female affected your spiritual journey? Growing up, I learned, fast, that pretty girls got special attention. I was a super girly girl and I got a lot of attention for being pretty and well behaved. Unfortunately I carried this nonsense into my adult life and really hit a wall when I couldn’t reconcile my inside to my outside. I was a strong personality, but I was also soft and feminine. Could the two co-exist? Since becoming a mother, and putting everything on hold to see my family through our crisis, I have found a new femininity inside myself. The warrior mother, I guess. I have come to value my softness as much as I value my smarts. As a result, I have come to a very peaceful place after years of wrestling. In short, you can be a badass in a dress.
Who are you becoming?
I learned so much from my children. West was so brave during his brother’s illness, and Lou taught us all how to experience joy despite pain. I mean, goodness, they are only two years old! But this child-like showing up, with wonder and wide eyes, is something I have returned to. For many years I tried to protect myself from hurt, pain, disappointment, by backing out of things, running away, or pretending I didn’t care as much as I did. I hope I am becoming a braver person. I was scared out of my mind during Lou’s treatment, and of course I will always be afraid for his health, but I know now that every day is a gift and you have to meet it with open arms, as corny as that sounds, and catch yourself when you want to run away for good!
What is pulling you forward? What is your motivation?
Knowing that I have nothing to lose! Every day is such a gift, even when we were in isolation in the hospital we managed to have so much fun. I wrote a new album and began a book. Literally, while my child slept, while I went between children, it was nuts but something propelled me forward. I realized that I have something particular to give to the world and whether or not it is amazing is not the point. It is simply what I have to give. I try now to treat my thoughts, ideas, hopes and dreams as lovingly and with the same patience I treat my children.
What does being BRAVE look like these days? What does it feel like?
As an artist, it means following my ideas from beginning to end, not ditching them mid way because I’m worried my music isn’t cool, or my book – about my time in the hospital – will be too hard to handle. As a mother, it means loving my children. I mean really loving them, with a big bleeding soppy heart. As a woman, it means continuing my struggle to see my desires clearly and ask for what I want. It feels like riding a horse, fast, or like Alice waving her shiny sword at the Jabberwocky. Yes, I think about Alice and that sword a lot!
Tell me about what you crave? What are you saying a big Holy YES to these days?
I crave the big holy YES! I crave an open heart, the balance of giving and receiving. Our community and friends came together for us this past year. Until then, I myself had been guilty of not showing up for people. I was scared I wasn’t enough, that what little I could contribute of myself was so little it couldn’t possibly make a difference. Now its contagious, I crave giving, helping as much as I can, and giving my music and my words so that maybe I can make something of a difference, even if its just making someone feel something new or relating to a sound or image.
Because I have to ask whom are your heroes? What did they teach you?
Of course, my children, and my husband, Ian, we did it! We fought the good fight and came out laughing! Good grief!
But Marcia Tucker is as close as I will come to having a hero. She was a family friend and I was lucky enough to spend some time with her before she passed. Famously fired from the Whitney Museum in the 70s for being too radical, she founded the New Museum. She was the epitome of joyful bravery. Before my first show, I must have been 22 or 23, I was playing at a dive bar in the East Village, we barely knew each other, but she held my hand before I went on. I will never forget how she squeezed my hand and looked me in the eye with those big bulging eyes, on fire with excitement and encouragement. That’s how she met life, and its how I try to show up, too, for myself and for others. Marcia also introduced me to Buddhism and thus sent me on my spiritual path. She used to say, “Act first, think later. That way you will have something to think about!” Some times I look up at the sky and just say to her, “Can you believe this!” with a wink. She had a great sense of humor.
How will you honor the ordinary moments today?
I try to make every moment special by being present. Sometimes I will be walking to the subway with my headphones on and I’ll stop, take them out, and take a deep breath, just so I can really hear the day, the wind, the noise. At night I always end my day with a bath and I burn a smudge stick. It is my way of saying, the day is done, you did your best, and tomorrow is fresh!
What would you like everyone to know?
We are all so scared. When Lou came out of treatment, he was tiny and bald, and honestly, some people couldn’t help it, they would ignore us at the playground. I don’t think they meant to, I think they were scared, like the chaos we must have gone through was contagious. I couldn’t figure it out. I knew they couldn’t possibly fathom what we had gone through, and maybe they were ashamed at that? It was only when I’d look at their children, and try to imagine them going through what Lou, physically, went through, that I realized the horror of it. But honestly, they would have done the same for their child. I’d like people to know that being afraid, making efforts to avoid “the worst possible thing in the world” is pointless. Because “the worst possible thing in the world” happens eventually, and in the end, it grants your soul peace because you learn to never, ever again, fear that worst possible thing. And when you stop fearing it, your heart opens and my, how much more love you can give and receive!
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild precious life?
I want to be able to say that I gave everything my all. I hope to leave a body of work behind that makes even the slightest mark, but honestly in the end, if I could affect people’s lives like Marcia did mine, with her huge kind eyes, that would enough for me.
Jul 24, 2015 | Global
Jalaja Bonheim is one of those transformative writers, the kind where everything she writes is eaten up like honey. When reading Aphrodite’s Daughter for the first time it felt as if I was reading the answers to all the questions I had been asking… all the questions that made me feel as if I was the only one. Her words are medicine. She is medicine.
Jalaja Bonheim was raised in Austria and Germany. She completed her Ph.D. in English and German literature at the University of Freiburg and spent two years teaching at the University of Warwick. Her life took a new turn when she decided to study classical temple dance in South India, where she lived for several years. Here, the seeds were planted that led to her first three books, which explore issues of embodied spirituality, sexual wholeness and feminine empowerment. The practice of temple dance also deepened her understanding of how music and movement can help people shift into expanded states of consciousness. Today, Jalaja (pronounced DJA-la-dja) is internationally known for her groundbreaking books, inspiring keynotes and her work in empowering women internationally. Her workshops, retreats and trainings are life-changing cauldrons where women from all walks of life, faiths and cultures connect in a spirit of rare authenticity, openheartedness, freedom and joy.
How has being female affected your spiritual journey?
My second book, Aphrodite’s Daughters, is all about being in the female body and how this affects our spiritual journey. It came out of my experience of going to India and studying Indian temple dance. I realized there had been a tradition of woman who held their own spirituality sacred and did not split it off from their sexuality. Coming from the West this was an eye opener. We are taught that gender doesn’t matter… that it’s not supposed to matter. Perhaps it doesn’t in terms of where we’re ultimately headed. But as far as our personal experience is concerned it matters a great deal.
While leading circle gatherings for woman around the world, I kept hearing women tell stories about their sexual experience that they would not have told anywhere else. I realized these stories needed to be shared. There are so many books that tell us how to have better sex. But we as women really need to hear from other women about their personal experiences, their stories. This sharing cuts through a sense of isolation. So many women think, “This is only my issue…. this only happened to me.”
When you hear stories from women about falling in love or ecstasy or sexual abuse or birth, you begin to realize that we are on a collective journey. We are living in a very exciting time because today, the feminine is returning and coming into her own. So this isn’t just about our personal healing, but it’s something we are doing together.
Describe a time when you walked through the doors of passage? What did it feel like? What did you learn?
One time I was teaching at a summer camp where about three hundred woman had gathered. There was this beautiful lake, and one morning we did a ritual by the lake. You have to picture this: It was very, very early in the morning, barely dawn. It was still a little dark and mist was rising from the lake. At first, everyone was completely silent. All you heard was the sound of birds waking up. Then this very slow drum beat started, like a heartbeat. Now picture three hundred woman, all of them totally naked, wading into the water, still in silence. I still get chills thinking about it. Wave upon wave of woman’s bodies, all ages, all sizes. It was so ancient, so primordial. What I saw weren’t separate women wading into the water, it was the Goddess, the Sacred Feminine herself. Tears were streaming down my face. There was such a sense of holiness, reference and awe. I will never forget this moment of actually seeing the Sacred Feminine. Encountering her, not as a thought or a concept, but as something I was seeing with my own eyes.
How did you learn to honor your voice?
The first time I led a circle I felt a sense of home coming. I wasn’t taught or trained. From the start, I knew what this was about and how to do it. It felt like the archetype of the priestess had awakened in me. I had access to a wisdom and knowledge that I hadn’t absorbed from the outside in. Rather, it was emerging from the inside out. At the same time, I have had many wonderful teachers and role models. Every time I lead a circle I feel like every woman present is one of my teachers. Each one teaches me something about what it means to be a woman, what it means to have a voice, what the healing journey is about. It is a collective journey and we are all learning from one another.
What does pleasure mean to you? What does pleasure look like from day to day?
Pleasure is how nature signals to us that we are on the right path. It’s how nature tells us that there is a YES coming from our body or our heart.
This can be hard to remember in our Western culture which doesn’t really honor pleasure. On the one hand we have these spiritual traditions that teach us to distrust pleasure… to be wary of it or to avoid it. One the other, consumer culture is constantly bombarding us with messages that make us feel that the pleasure we feel naturally isn’t good enough.
There is a lot of confusion about pleasure. What I find in my circles is that we need to really slow down so that we can return to the natural speed of our bodies. As long as we stay in this speedy, frantic mindset, we remain disconnected. Pleasure is constantly offering itself. We need only to be open and present in order to absorb it.
We need to slow down so that our bodies are capable of receiving the pleasure that is our birthright.
What are you saying a big YES to these days? Projects? Places?
There are several things. First of all, I have a new book coming out that I’m super excited about. It’s called The Sacred Ego: Making Peace with Ourselves and Our World, and it’s about how we can understand and heal our collective ego instead of judging and rejecting it. You can find out more about it at www.sacredego.com.
Also, I’m exploring the relationship between women on the spiritual path and money. I feel that it is the last frontier. A lot of women can talk about sex now, but they can’t talk honestly about money. There is a lot of pain, shame and confusion around it. So in August, I am starting a webinar called Invoking the Goddess of Wealth. What does it means to actually embody her in our lives? I think there is a lot of healing to be done here so we can come into a positive healthy, clear relationship with money.
Of course I am continuing to train women both here and around the world in the art of circle leadership. That’s a big YES.
Tell me how you rise up in fullness?
An essential medicine for me is dancing. I entered this path through Indian temple dance. Dancing is something that brings me back to myself. Solitude is important too, and spaciousness. Many teachers I know don’t have a spacious life, they’re too busy. Yet this is my commitment to myself. No matter how much I am committed to my work in the outer world, my first commitment is to my own soul. My soul craves spaciousness. I need empty days so I can follow the thread of my own creative process.
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild precious life?
My purpose is to connect women to the sacred feminine and to the divine Mother. I have been given the gift and the blessing of knowing how to do this. I believe it is crucial to our own healing, but it’s also what our planet needs. Connecting to the sacred feminine is crucial for our collective healing. Every time I see a woman stepping into her own true self I rejoice. If I can facilitate that, then I’m doing my true work.
