We’re A Team ~ Maisie & Daisy & Maitri & Molly…

The beginning of the year was a rocky start into the new year. I couldn’t find my way to Maisie so, as I shared last week, I started drawing her each day in my sketchbook. We’ve been getting reacquainted, she and I, and we are closer than ever.

The wonderful thing is Maisie is the part of me that I could never love because she was too different, never fit in, was kind of odd, in a way that I now find rather endearing, because Maisie has helped me begin to accept and love myself. It’s been quite a journey. One of the hashtags I use on Instagram now is #maisiesavedme and indeed she did.

The first year’s work with Maisie was just playing. I started out just drawing and painting with no destination in mind, for the sheer joy of it, and then it became deeper. I learned a lot about myself. I even wrote a book in 40 days as you all know between November and December. It was a good exercise but it will not be a book, and here’s why. What I have learned is that if I wrote my story, non-fiction wise, and really told the truth, there would be too many dark passages, too much sadness, and loss, and grief. Every time I have tried to write a memoir, many times over the years, it has come to this. So much trauma, so much sadness, and that simply isn’t the legacy I want to leave. Through Maisie and her world I can tell a story that, at the heart, parallels my life, without going to those dark places. They rose up again in the book I wrote in 40 days. It’s just not the kind of thing I want to publish.

Maisie is the vehicle for reaching tender places and expressing those feelings in a more palateable, to my mind, way. She is the transmutation of a life of suffering in many ways turned into compassion, and loving-kindness, and grace. Maisie has come to the point in her life, as I have long been coming, to a place that is all about love. Of course there will be hard times, we are both human. There will be sad moments. But for Maisie, well, she has found the secret that I am just learning and she is teaching me. And she makes me smile, and she makes me laugh, and we all need more of that.

Maisie is like a spirit guide, she is part of me, and yet not exactly me. She is far more highly evolved than I am. She has accepted her limitations and learned to create a life of beauty, love, magic, and joy. She knows that we are more alike than we are different, whether it be a one-eyed dog, a kitten, a house mouse, a transgender rainbow ex-showgirl snail, a mentally challenged flamingo, or a creature of unknowable origins whose name, by the way, happens to be Lola, Maisie accepts, loves, and learns from them all. She is teaching me so much. They all are.

So Maisie and I spent time together today as you see above. She with her little Daisy in her lap and me drawing with Molly in mine. It was a very tender, very sweet day. And now we are ready to return to the work we were meant to do. Tomorrow I will begin the new full-size drawing. We will set out on an adventure, we 4, and I think it will be grand.

Hold a good thought, will you. I’ve had a lot of thinking to do lately, I’ve been feeling all the feels, as they say now, and I am ready to begin again.

We are waving to you from our drawing table. We are happy, we are content, and we are ready to bring Maisie’s story to the world. Take care dearhearts, be very gentle with yourself. Maisie wants you to love yourself. She is teaching me how to do just this.