Complete

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A week ago today I woke up in the painting suite.  It was the start of my third day of my own personal painting retreat and I began it by writing leisurely in my studio log.

Trust the whispers.
Marry your curiosity.
Believe the brush.
Wait. Listen. Paint. Repeat.
It’n not a color.  It’s energy.

That’s all I wrote.

When I type it out so orderly it feels like poetry, and my heart settles back into my rib cage just a bit.

now

Now I’m back at home, still writing in my Studio Log but not spending my days saturated in FEARLESS® Painting.

One thing I realized about myself while at my retreat is that I’m NOT a full time painter.  I have no desire to spend all my days painting.  Shocking — isn’t it!?!?

It’s nice to go away on retreat and dive deep into my process, but it’s even nicer to come home and slip back into my routine and rituals that make up my creativity.

My Muse loves to multi-task.  She wants a little of everything — and I don’t mean in choice of medium, because I’m pretty loyal to the brush, but she loves to express herself through writing, teaching, gathering others in circle, mentoring, and even all the bits and pieces that make up my business practices.

I left my painting retreat fully energized, fulfilled, and most of all stepping in a new direction with my work.

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There’s only one reason why I FEARLESS® Paint and that’s to get the download.  To open myself to messages wanting to surface and reveal themselves in my life. In the past this process many times has been excruciating — especially when what I’m hearing doesn’t jive with the agenda of my mind — when it seems unattainable or illogical and most of all when it feels all scary as hell.

But when I was at my painting retreat I realized that this no longer is my reality.

I no longer get flustered or worried by the messages I receive.  I no longer question or doubt the desires and longings of my heart.  Those days seem so long ago.

I’m here to serve the messages of my heart.  By being curious instead of frantic, trusting instead of worried — and by showing up fully for myself. It hit me while being there that going away for four days in celebration and honor of myself proves this new reality and so it’s time to fully own it and saturate myself in it — not the things that I do.

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This painting retreat now sits as a trail marker in my life.  Much like the day I quit my full time job with only $700 in the bank to devote myself to Dirty Footprints Studio or the blessed moment my beloved son Phoenix was born.

This painting retreat marks where I slipped into my skin as an artist.  I left fully embodying the work I’ve been called here to do and already I’ve been making choices that come from this knowing, this Truth, this holistic way of being.

The last thing I wrote in my studio log before packing up and leaving the painting suite was pretty simple.  In bright orange ink I neatly wrote the word:

Complete.

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