It is an amazing time. It is as if a dike burst and everything is flowing out so fast I can’t stop it. Art and art and art of all types, new art, and old art, and words above and below and all around. I have inhabited this book so deeply, and it has shape-shifted again and again, and I have decided to let it all come, without judgment, without trying to shape it, and see what shape it wants to become. I am giving myself till the end of the year to just let the river run without trying to stop the flow in all directions. At 67, having written seriously since I was 9 (writing saved me during many years of serious abuse) I learned to trust the writing. As an artist late in life I have learned to trust where the art takes me. The 100 Ladies, Maisie, the new illustrations, they are not separate entities, that are what wanted to be expressed through me, and the words that come with the images come from somewhere deep inside me. Writing has always been the one thing I could count on when I could count on nothing else, it has saved me again and again and again in my life. It is saving me now.

This book is not separate from me. My arms and legs and hands and feet and belly and knees and my soft heart are all one with the words and the art and the thoughts and feelings and prayers and hope and love and joy. Each morning, before I begin writing, I say a prayer that I made up years ago…

Dear God, please use me as a channel for your peace, love, light, hope and joy…

I am sitting quietly, waiting. I am letting it all come. I am accepting that I am on the right path. I close my eyes and let my hands do their work. I type with my eyes closed. My eyes are open when I am drawing but I am seeing beyond the work I am creating. I am not going to let myself be caught up in what the finished book will look like, how it will be published, if it will be successful. I am having a love affair with the creative process and it is a private affair between words and art and I.

I do share my process and thoughts about writing the book with my Patrons on Patreon without whom I would not have the means to do the work at all. I am deeply honored and grateful that they believe in me, and the financial help is literally lifesaving for me, but even with that I have stopped worrying, as I did in the beginning, that I have to produce produce produce in a certain way and finish by a certain time. They are witnessing a process that is undescribable. It is mysterious, it is deeper than just “writing a book,” it is a sacred journey I have undertaken and I will allow it all to find it’s way into being and trust what comes.

“Let the whole thing flower: the poem and the person writing the poem. And let us always be kind in this world.”
Natalie Goldberg
Writing Down the Bones

Every day a new piece of art comes to the surface wanting to reach out to the world with a little text, wanting to reach out, and touch others, wanting to help and heal and offer hope, and love, and more. That is as much part of my “job” as producing the finished book. My heart is so full. I am on a pilgrimage, I am not trying to “make,” I am simply receiving, and there are so many riches to be found in letting what will come, come, in letting myself be led, with the absolute trust that it will all come together in the right and perfect way. A pilgrimage can take a year or a lifetime, I have no way of knowing, but I work every day, I offer myself up completely, I have released worries about what other people think. I can only give, and love, and follow the path before me. I have a blindfold on. I am completely heart-led.

This is all that is required of me. All that I need to do. Let the whole thing flower, the poem and the person writing the poem. And always be kind. Nothing else really matters. I am on my way.

And thank you to my Patrons at Patreon, again and again and again, for funding my journey, for offering me love, and support and more, as I do the work I was born to do. You have my gracious thanks, and unending love, always and always…