Confessions: A Night of Creative Awakening and a Writing Offering

10/28/2017: I have a confession: yes, I love the night. I really do. (I will return to regular blog shortly) 

Although I adore the sun, I love when his golden light fades into the sunset and modernity’s fierce flame of urgency disappears. Yes, this flame disappears and the feminine darkness invites me into her subtle, soft, creative juices, where I bathe for hours, like a rebel against the insanity of today’s world.

No one is watching when I light a candle of my own inside this dim, but potent night. She reveals to me a restless urge inside, a longing to return to source, and be the creative life-song that comes from within. I sow the seeds that require darkness and the spirits of the night to begin germination inside my belly. I listen to my dreams, to the unraveling

Painting by my ancestor, Frida Kraemer, wife of one of many family artists. I love the sense of freedom of this painting.  

of my consciousness, to places inside, of barbed wire pressing against my heart, my wings. I discover what I must do to untangle this mess we’ve been taught to be, and make way for a new dawn of love, of being the creator of our own destiny.

This morning, I let the sun dance in the sky as I stayed with my dreams, easing my way into daylight. No rush. Nothing to prove as I used to do years ago. I am free. We are free. We can all be free in ways we’ve long forgotten.

Writing has been a path toward this freedom for me, a place of deep meditation with my soul’s longing. I imagine it has also been from my dear author friend and children’s book writer, Burt Kempner, who will be traveling from Florida to here, New Mexico, to offer with me a Shamanic Writing Workshop on Saturday, November 4^th, from 2-4:45p.m. at Tortuga Gallery. This is a unique chance for Burt and I to work together and offer this journey of the soul and a taste of that freedom I speak of.

If you are in Albuquerque, New Mexico, next Saturday, November 4^th, please join us. This may be a one-time offering with Burt, who comes with such an immense heart of the imagination and award-winning talent as a children’s book author and television producer (he has produced shows on PBS, Discovery, History Channel, and CNBC). I also bring with me my own experience leading healing circles and classes, and Flamenco performances with my novel, Child of Duende: A Journey of the Spirit, here in New Mexico and in Washington State, California, and Argentina.

In this almost-three-hour workshop, Burt and I will take you on a journey to awaken your soul’s voice through writing, and help you discover, explore, and write the voices and matrix of ourselves and all of life–the animals, wind, water–that coexist with us on this earth. Our intention is to invite you to experience writing as a process of connecting to the life within and all around us in a shared, rich manner.

My heart is tender, my wings soft, in my offer to join us, Burt Kempner and I, next Saturday. I am honored to share this place of surrender, of the feminine creative force that awakens within us in the night, in the dark, in the stillness that carries our longing for another way. I feel we have all been so busy, running around, doing “life” in this modern, insane way, and I so I look forward to time inward, together, exploring who we really are.

Upcoming Shamanic Writing Workshop information: at 2-4:45 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 4, 2017, at Tortuga Gallery, 901 Edith Blvd., SE, Albuquerque, NM 87012 (Park on Pacific Ave.). No writing experience needed. $30.00. RSVP at writeaway@hotmail.com or 505 923 0649 or at Facebook event page ( Facebook Shamanic Writing Event Page )

Also, for more information on My Novel, Child of Duende: A Journey of the Spirit, see my Amazon Page  or  www.michelleadam.net. It can be ordered at a local bookstore as well. Also, watch a brief video on “duende”, “the spirit of the earth”: YouTube Video

 

 

41. Big in Love

WHAT PROMPTED YOU TO BECOME BIG IN LOVE?

BLOG 41: September, 1998—Another month passed by in New Jersey, with the highway noise bleeding into the background of my consciousness as I unraveled this person I had been. And almost every day and evening I wrote, adding sentences to my novel from an unknown place.

“Writing this book is hard,” I scribbled in my journal. “It’s hard to get to the heart of it. I feel like I am gnawing away at the edge of the bone… My characters also feel small, and they are in a small world. I need to give meat to those seeking, living characters wanting to be what they can be. As a writer, I need to be many more people than me. I need to look inside and understand more than myself.”

As I explored the depths of where my novel wished to go, ideas came to me—inside the music I played and the space I created of eternal night. Some of these ideas seemed so outside myself, so irrational, that I would call a friend and share what was coming to me. Rather than tell me to pull back, and not go there, he always inspired to me to follow this irrational, out-there idea, and to let it tell its story and purpose. That extra prodding from a good friend allowed ideas that had begun in my mind to seep into my bones and discover their resonance for a larger story than me.

This journey inward beyond the musings of my mind, would not have been possible if I had not been injured and been guided into a vulnerable, still place within me. It became so clear how I was unraveling that part of me, driven by ego and insecurities to become someone big. Nothing grows grand and beautiful without solid roots, and this time was about growing and feeding those roots of mine so I could create an enriching story. It was also about letting go of the need to push outward when the rich soil of my life lay within.

“I’m always amazed at how I feel this great responsibility to do something big in this world, to affect change, to give in a big way,” I wrote in my journal. “But another part of me wants to live simply, to eliminate all this bigness and just concentrate on breathing and loving.”

Today, years later, I see that it is through breathing each moment in and in loving that we become big. We become big through letting go of that which we are determined to be. We begin to dance, sing, and be the joy we have always been with those we love. Together we can celebrate life and be the gift that makes us so much more than just ourselves.

WHAT PROMPTED YOU TO BECOME BIG IN LOVE?

*My recently-published novel, Child of Duende: A Journey of the Spirit, is the culmination of years of musings and gnawing at the bone. Check it out on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Child-Duende-Journey-Michelle-Adam/dp/099724710X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1474233011&sr=8-1&keywords=child+of+duende  or at www.michelleadam.net

Duende: A Creative Fusion of Spirit and Matter

September 24, 2016–Last week, I asked, “Where do spirit and matter meet?,”and this week, as I sat down to write, I felt called to answer this question: they meet when we share our soul’s longing and gift with others through creative fusion and love…when we embody our spirit through creative expression.

This is so much what happened at this past Thursday’s Storytelling and Spanish Guitar and Tapas event I had at my local library with Ronaldo Baca, a Flamenco guitarist, who played guitar as I shared my story of passion and love for the Spanish land and culture that inspired my novel, Child of Duende: A Journey of the Spirit. About 45 people joined me and Ronaldo Baca, who had chosen to collaborate with me  because he, too, understood and shared the depth of love I had for the Spanish land and her soul that “raised me.”

My reading began with these words: “There’s a voice inside the earth, subtle, yet there, easing her song, her melody of sweet, nurturing love into every part of our being. This voice–this ancient, primordial song–came to me as a child, from the land in Spain who sang my young child’s soul alive. This evening is dedicated to her and to the novel that I wrote, which comes from her soul.”

Ronaldo Baca played and sang a Flamenco Malaguena before I began, and ended with an Alegria.  It was so beautiful and carried such soul and duende–that spontaneous, raw, creative passion–that I felt a great of wave of gratitude come over me. I then told the story of the earth’s spirit, the soul of Spain, and that place within us as a child that is so alive, and full of imagination and room for spirit to rise within us. It was a sweet, honey-filled way to honor Equinox and the first day of autumn.

At the end of the event,  one woman came to me in tears and shared how I had reminded her of her magical childhood–of a time when she and others in her family believed in spirits, in worlds unseen, and lived the richness of her child’s imagination. This evening for her, and for others (including me), was a reminder that there’s an eternal door open to us to walk through, at any time, into this place of magic–of duende–that we may have carried as a child…and to live this once again.

Check it out: A Short Clip from Storytelling Event

My novel, Child of Duende: A Journey of the Spirit, is available on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/Child-Duende-Journey-Michelle-Adam/dp/099724710X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1474769851&sr=8-1&keywords=child+of+duende (or can be ordered through your local bookstore).