Honoring Your Highest Self, Day After Day

I’m pretty excited by the newest design recently offered, Day After Day.  I’m grateful to the people who follow me on Facebook and Instagram for really engaging with it and letting me know that they felt it.  It’s been a pretty amazing year.  On the New Year, I made a leap of faith that I could do this business without the built-in boost Etsy offers.  I believed if I built my own little shop - independent of Etsy’s fees, percentages and other costs the customer does not see - people would come and support.  And so many of you did!  I’m so grateful. 

It hasn’t been easy, that’s for 100% sure.  There hasn’t been a lot of room this year for designing.  Because I set off on my own, I’ve had to spend a lot of time on marketing and all those little tasks small businesses must attend to doing.  It takes a toll.  As Quincy Jones said, “God walks out of the room when you’re thinking about money. “(1)

But, on the business establishing side of things, things have settled down.  It took almost the entire year, but, I am more able to show up fully inside of the work. To do what making art for me is all about - listening for what needs to be said. 

That’s why Day After Day is such a meaningful design for me. It’s is a meditation on the life I'm living right now.  The steady pulse of love and balance moving me peacefully along day after day.  I spent a long time working hard to achieve this energy in my life. It’s my way of sharing it with you.

In my younger years, I really battled depression - complete with suicidal ideations, binge drinking and engaging in risky behavior.  I was a mess. LOL!  But, every time things got really bad, I managed to get the help I needed.  And at every lowest point in my life, a common theme emerged.  I was in this state because had moved away from the person I had shown up on this planet to be. Indeed, my very life depended on a deep connection with Spirit and making art.  

Each time I realigned myself with who I was and made that a priority in my life, everything changed. In my faith tradition, our Ori (or head) represents our spiritual intuition and destiny. It is both an orisha in its own right and the spark of consciousness which determines who we are and what we agreed to do before we got here to this plane of existence.  When we are out of balance it is because we are not in alignment with our destiny. That’s a pretty daunting task for those of us living through late stage capitalism.  This is not a story Big Pharma or the other industries who depend on people’s misery, life ennui, or lifestyle dissatisfaction want to be told.  Because every time I pulled myself up out of depression, I did it without medication.  It was literally divine intervention and making the act of  showing up as I am supposed to be holy.  

Needless to say, the past year was quite a challenge. I was simultaneously moving in alignment with who I am while being challenged to do all the things which weigh down being fully inside of my spiritual path which demands that I create art. 

That’s what the pattern Day After Day represents to me.  Everyday we face choices.  We wake up in the morning, we face the challenges ahead.  How we greet them and how we negotiate with others about honoring our first orisha - our Ori -  is up to us. We may have sharp angles to navigate and smooth pathways, but, if we remain true to ourselves, the all flow together in an vibrant elegant pattern. 

Part of that means we have to make clear choices and communicate what we are and are not able to do.  Part of that means releasing internal and external judgement about what is actually a priority.  We’ve been told we can have it all. But, all is defined by someone else.  How can your all be defined by someone else?  What does “all” mean to you?  Yes, we can have it all.  But, it is important to define for ourselves what that looks like.  

Not doing everything is more than okay, it is fabulously healthy.  Take each day as it comes. Honor your energy.  Honor your highest self or Ori.  Decide, day after day, what your “all” is and just do that much.  Don’t sweat everyone else’s definition of what that should be.  Encourage them to make it so in their own lives.  

1. David Marchese, In Conversation: Quincy Jones The music legend on the secret Michael Jackson, his relationship with the Trumps, and the problem with modern pop, Vulture, Feb. 7, 2018 https://www.vulture.com/2018/02/quincy-jones-in-conversation.html