Quinn McDonald's Blog, page 83

The Nurse Tree

In a limited area of the Sonoran desert there is a tree called the Ironwood tree. It grows only below 2,500 feet above sea level, but despite its limited range, it is a valuable and important tree to the desert. It can grow to 45 feet in height, providing a 15-degree difference in the heat beyond it and the heat under its shelter.

An Ironwood tree seed pod in gold. Seed pods often come in multiples, and when dry, make a subtle rattling sound when shaken. The seed inside is red.

It creates biodiversity and creates food for the birds that live around it. Doves, quails, and rodents eat the seeds. Deer and sheep eat the foliage within reach.

The seeds grow in pods. The pods are hard and tough. When the pods drop from the tree, they don’t disintegrate. Instead they protect the seed  inside. When the seedpod gets rained on, it begins to soften. The fibrous hull opens and the seeds are released. Birds eat them and move them to other locations.

The spreading branches of the Ironwood tree allow other growth below it to thrive. Ground cover keeps what little moisture there is protected. Other sheltered plants grow and provide cover, homes and blossoms for bees, insect, lizards, birds, and coyotes.

Saguaro cacti, which are fragile in the first ten years of their growth, thrive in the

Gold seedpod next to real seedpod and original seed. The pods are tough until it rains, then, having protected the seed, the pod opens and the seed germinates.

shelter of the Ironwood. Saguaros are opportunistic and often seek nurse trees. Ironwoods are exactly that–they nurse the tender Saguaros and bushes by protecting them beneath their branches. The earth is cooler, damper and richer beneath the tree. The roots fix nitrogen and the other plants, which would starve if they were 100 feet away, thrive.

We all have the opportunity to be nurse trees. We don’t need to do anything else except follow our life purpose. Stand tall. Provide shelter. Stay cool when you want to feel overheated. Provide food with what you grow naturally. Encourage biodiversity. It’s a good life, and it can last 1,500 years.

—Quinn McDonald is a naturalist who learns a lot from walking in the desert. Alone.

Filed under: Coaching, Creativity, Nature, Inside and Out Tagged: life purpose, tree metaphor

The Hard Road to Completion

The photo on the left looks like a sunrise on a lake. The lake seems to be having its first ice webs reaching across the reflection of the trees. I love the photo for what it is– possibility. But it’s not a lake. It’s the roof of my car with the first frost on it. Perception is not reality, but your perception is your reality. Build it carefully.

Our dreams are the beginning of our future. The road between is what we build our lives on.

*   *   *

Everything you want is just outside your comfort zone.   ~ Robert Allen

When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one that has opened for us.   ~  Alexander Graham Bell

–Quinn McDonald is writing a book on inner heroes and inner critics. She’s enjoying the trip, even if it seems dark at times.

Filed under: Coaching, Quotes Tagged: comfort zone, opportunity, perception

Getting in Touch with Your Hidden Self

That dream you have, of getting away and writing, of making art, of restoring your soul to a slightly less dinged-up version, what does it look like? To me, the perfect retreat would be on an island, where I could spend part of each day experiencing something new, part of the day walking and listening–to nature, to my heart– and the rest of the day writing, connecting pieces of myself that have drifted back to the heartwood. The center.

I’m unbelievably lucky to be doing that–and not doing it alone–this coming July.

For one week, July 22 to July 27 2013, I’ll be teaching at the Madeline Island School of the Arts. Madeline Island is a restored dairy farm surrounded by the 21 Apostle Islands off the coast of Wisconsin, in Lake Superior.

I’ll be teaching the heart of the new book on inner heroes and inner critics–how to have conversations with your inner critic through deep writing and intuitive art.  Metaphor and Magic will loosen up the tight kinks in your writing muscles and let you ease into the warm relief of your own intuitive art. You don’t have to know how to draw, you just have to be a willing explorer of your own  creativity.

We’ll spend mornings experimenting with paper, color and inks, connecting colors and emotions, intuition to paper. You can spend time in the afternoon enjoying the island and then writing. I’m going to make individual creativity coaching sessions available as part of the class so you can experience the shift from doing to being.

We will spend other days writing–learning about the metaphors you use in your life and how they become meaningful to you. You’ll finally have time and place to write, and to distill the writing to messages that will echo through your life to guide and comfort you.

You’ll be introduced to a new kind of art journaling, combining writing and intuitive art, into separate “pages” that can be used individually to spark your creativity, comfort your racing mind, ease doubts and build a fire of creativity to work on. You will see how to use the pages for brainstorming, for making creative decisions, for planning a project, for getting back in touch with the side of you that so often stays hidden.

Imagine–making a journal that won’t wind up empty on the shelf, but one that you will reach to for creative nurture.

Madeline Island School of the Arts is an amazing cradle of creativity. They have recently added a shuttle to and from the Duluth airport, so you don’t need to rent a car. The school’s studios, rooms, and meals are all within easy walking distance.

Come join me for a week of Metaphor and Magic, July 22 to 26. The class is $425 for a full five days. Meals and lodging are separate. Registration requires just a 20 percent deposit.

I hope to see you there, discovering yourself and your classmates in this exciting creative adventure!

—Quinn McDonald is excited to participate in your discoveries. Come create that circle of creativity you have wanted for so long.

Filed under: Creativity

Letting it Go? or Giving Up?

It’s a thin line, a shadow of a difference, but it changes the road you are on from a long hard climb up a scree-strewn path to a road you have chosen, maybe not for its easy travel, but because you are willing to walk where it takes you.

It’s the difference between Giving Up and Letting Go.

Whether it’s a decision made in your studio, your echoing mind, your hollow heart or a closed-in hospital room, giving up is coming face to face with who you are and how much you can give. It’s often unwilling, exhausted, and the only idea you have left. And sometimes it’s made out of fear, anger and retribution. You give up when your effort is no longer rewarded in any way you can recognize.

Letting go feels different. Letting go may be shaded by sorrow, but it is lit by strength. Letting go comes from self-knowledge and the ability to give up control, give up expectations of how much you can steer the outcome. You may care, but you have weighed the choices carefully, balanced your ability with how much heart you have left, and you have chosen. Deliberately.

Giving up and letting go can both be uncomfortable, but giving up tastes like ashes and letting go is a long cool drink in the desert. You may still have a long way to walk in the hot sun, but you know where you are going.

–-Quinn McDonald is a creativity coach and art journaler. She’s done both giving up and letting go. And letting go is done with open hands and open heart, and giving up is done with clenching fists and fear.

Filed under: Coaching, In My Life, Recovering Perfectionists Tagged: choosing a life, giving up, letting go

Insomniac Falls Asleep

Sleep, in the Jewish mystical mythology, is not just a time for physical rest. The soul returns to its Maker, who keeps it for rejuvenation. The moment of waking is the return of the soul to the body. If the Almighty decides not to return your soul, you don’t wake up.

There is even a special prayer said upon waking up that thanks the Almighty for rejoining body and soul for another day. I find the idea of having my spirit buffed up, the dust shaken off it, setting it up for a new day a wonderfully relaxing one.

Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I imagine the Almighty searching around, having misplaced a group of  40 souls like I misplace my keys. Finally, the souls are found, accidentally dropped behind a random divine thought. They are lovingly picked up, and 40 insomniacs drift off to sleep at last.

–Quinn McDonald is a certified creativity coach who writes and sleeps through her own dreams.

Filed under: Dreams Tagged: dream meanings, spirituality of dreams

Prompts for a Wabi-Sabi Journal

Wabi-Sabi is a Japanese aesthetic that values the time-worn, the aged, the imperfect. It is a philosophy and a way of accepting and giving up control. Bringing wabi-sabi into your life allows you to make room for daydreams, for accepting a simpler life and for valuing the riches already in your life.

Pollen dust form a leaf shape as it gathers in sprinkler run-off.

A wabi sabi journal is one filled with authentic you, the one that hungers for simplicity, nature, the organic flow of life. Here are a few quotes to help you open your mind to Wabi-Sabi. They make great journal prompts.

You are the person you are when no one is looking.

Anger is only one letter short of danger.

No one can give you abilities. For example, an Olympic athlete works with a trainer to develop her abilities, but the trainer only helps manifest what was inherent all along. Likewise, no one can give you happiness. At most, others simply help manifest the joy that was always within you.

Happiness does not mean ‘absence of problems.’ There has never been a life free from problems. It is not the presence of problems, but how we tackle them that determines the quality of our lives.

A yellow dividing line wears away on a bike trail.

Blind faith is no faith

One does not win by making others lose.

–All quotes from “Open Your Mind, Open Your Life.” edited by Taro Gold

–Image from Still in the Stream, a site reflecting on Wabi-Sabi in nature.

--Quinn McDonald teaches “Wabi-Sabi Art Journaling” and is presently updating the course. She’s thinking about making ink from ashes of burned hope.

Filed under: Raw Art Journaling, The Writing Life, Wabi-Sabi Tagged: creativity coaching, journal prompts, wabi sabi journaling

Soy Silk Roving, Part II

After the disappointing soy-silk roving experiment (that included fabric medium and a disappointing, plasticky result),  I decided to keep experimenting. Art-instigator Rosaland Hannibal contributed white soy-silk roving and expertise on the topic I wanted to experiment with–fusible webbing and interfacing. The results are much more satisfying.

First, a black interfacing sandwich. Bottom: Black interfacing, sticky side up. Middle: Green, purple and a bit of white roving. Top: blue nylon net. I wanted to add the net because if the glue from the interfacing wasn’t enough to hold all the roving, the nylon net would contain it. The fiber is so light it floats from surfaces. And I liked the texture from the last experiment.

Second, White interfacing sandwich. Bottom: White interfacing. Middle: White roving with a bit of green and purple roving. Top: White Misty-Fuse, which is more see-through and anchors the fibers really well. This image is shown pre-ironing to fuse the layers. It was photographed on a white towel.

Third, Misty-Fuse sandwich. Bottom: White Misty-Fuse. Middle: white soy roving, green roving, purple roving, orange thread clippings, copper fabric clippings. It was photographed on black paper.

The good news is that all the pieces are smooth enough to write on with gel pen. So I finally have the paper-like fabric. I like the feel, which is more like fabric and less like plastic. This is satisfying.

–Quinn McDonald is not done experimenting, but is satisfied with the results so far.

 

 

Filed under: Tutorials Tagged: fofu silk, silk paper, Soy silk roving

Quotes About Art

Pen Drinks Ink, postcard © Quinn McDonald

There are as many definitions of art as there are artists. Here are a few that seemed just right:

The artist is not a different kind of person, but every person is a different kind of artist.    –Eric Gill

Art without risk, isn’t.

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.   –Michelangelo

—Quinn McDonald is a writer who loves reading quotes.

Filed under: Quotes Tagged: Art Quotes

Quilt Comfort

When I wrote The Angry Quilt yesterday, I had no idea of the response it would bring. Not just the good ideas–and there were so very many of those. What moved me was the tremendous community that has gathered here.

Heart in Hand by John Derian. Paperweight.

Smart, compassionate, giving people. Self-aware people who are wandering the same road and who will offer comfort, wisdom, lessons hard learned. That’s a rare and wonderful thing, and I need to sit with the incredible wonder and gratitude is has brought to me.

What moved me so deeply was the honesty of the comments–the offers to make the Angry Quilt whole, and the offers to make me a whole new quilt. Offers to lead a team to leach out the energy and to gather stories about mothers. And the amazingly frank idea to create a ritual to burn the quilt, and end the quest for something that may never have existed.

For now, I need some time to re-evaluate my emotions about the quilt. There were good, thoughtful reasons for creating a ritual to lay the quilt (and my need to have it complete) to rest. Other reasons to make it into something else so I could keep it. And, of course, offers to finish it. As a coach, I was moved by how many of you were open and raw with me over this. Not fearful of talking about your own relationships with your mothers, or mothers worrying about your daughters. It’s complex, isn’t it, the dance of mothers and daughters?

Right now, I’m thinking through my options to reach a choice that is as honest as all of your suggestions. My deepest thanks go out to you. It’s a little overwhelming to see all of you gathered here, holding out your hands. And looking closer, seeing your hearts in those outstretched hands.

It reminds me of a quote from Brené Brown, who wrote The Gifts of Imperfection and I Thought It Was Just Me.

The root of the word courage is cor — the Latin word for heart. In one of its earliest forms, the word courage had a very different definition than it does today. Courage originally meant to speak one’s mind by telling all one’s heart.  . . .

Heroics are often about putting our life on the line. Courage is about putting our vulnerability on the line. If we want to live and love with our whole hearts and engage in the world from a place of worthiness, our first step is practicing the courage it takes to own our stories and tell the truth about who we are. It doesn’t get braver than that.

Thanks to all of you who showed real courage in your comments. I’m proud to stand in the company of such brave women and men.

–Quinn McDonald is refreshed and renewed by the spirit of supportive people.

Filed under: Coaching, Creativity, In My Life Tagged: angry quilt, Brene Brown, courage

The Angry Quilt

Tumbling blocks quilt pattern

My mother was steeped in anger as long as I knew her. Satisfied with her two sons, she did not anticipate having a daughter later in life. A daughter who was not content to sit on her mother’s lap, but wriggled off and ran off to explore. A daughter who was not servile and obedient, did not like to iron, and would spend days sitting in a tree, reading, instead of knitting socks for her brothers. No, this little girl was not anything my mother imagined as a good daughter.

Sarah’s choice quilt block from Annie’sChoice quilt patterns.

Life did not improve as I grew older. I was smart, but too shy, didn’t make friends fast, cried at sleepovers, couldn’t understand why I couldn’t bring books and read while the other girls painted their nails.  I shamed my mother. And that was not a good thing to do to her. It made her angrier. The years rolled on, my shortcomings and faults piled up around me.

When I left her house, she began to concentrate on her needlework. A skilled knitter, crocheter, tatter, and sewer, my mother took up quilting. This was in the years of traditional quilts, and my mother attacked quilting with a fervor that was amazing. She made both of my much-older brothers and their families quilts. Log Cabin, Arkansas Traveler, Art Block, Flying Geese, Shoo Fly, Nine Block, Wedding Rings. The quilts grew under her fingers, were finished and were sent off to corners of the world where she had friends. I asked if she’d make me one. “You don’t deserve it.” she said. I asked again, every year.

Log cabin quilt block

Finally, she relented. But I could not choose the color or the pattern. Fine with me. She began a sampler quilt, a mix of patterns she liked. When she asked me to help her paint her house, as partial payment, she asked me to suggest colors. In the end, she chose the combination I liked the least–Williamsburg Blue and Milk Chocolate Brown. Remembering my complaints about the colors, she announced the quilt would be in those colors as well–her favorites. I didn’t argue.

Over the next dozen years, she would start and stop, according to her anger at me. Most of those years were in stop mode. She joined a Guild and made elaborate decorative cloths, wall hangings, bed covers for strangers. But not the quilt I wanted.

Double wedding ring quilt block

I was visiting her one year, when I noticed her memory gaps, her frequent stove accidents, her confusion in counting stitches. She had Alzheimer’s. Before it got too bad, we arranged a trip for her. To France, where she was born, to Germany, where she had lived with my father. Each stop was arranged so someone would pick her up and put her back on a train or plane. It was a long trip. When I went to pick her up at the airport in Washington, D.C. she looked at me with no recognition–she thought I was a Lufthansa flight attendant. She liked me more in that role, and I did not correct her.

The quilt was not finished. It was now beyond her skill. Finally, I could have my quilt. Unfinished as it was, and showing some odd stitches and mistakes, I loved it for what it was–a long-term story of my mother’s anger told in tight stitches. And the release of that anger, unwillingly. Long after she was in an Alzheimer’s facility and her house sold, she would remind me I was not to touch the quilt.

I’m not a quilter, so after I gathered it and its pieces up, I asked an excellent

Lone Star quilt block

quilter if she would finish it. She agreed, and asked as payment for some of my mother’s fabric. I delivered 30 pounds of fabric and the quilt. After tactful inquiries over three years, the woman said she simply didn’t have time. The quilt returned home, still unfinished.

This story repeated three more times. No one can finish the quilt. I’ve not asked to complete the patterns, simply use the fabric still available to complete the shape, bind it and machine stitch it. My mother is now nine years dead, and the quilt travels around the country with me, confusing quilters everywhere I live. I’m not sure if it is my mother’s anger that stalls them, or the mistakes that shape the unfinished quilt, or just that it’s a sad project, but no one can finish it.

This week, I will pick it up from another person who said, truthfully, “I don’t know what it was about the quilt. I’ve had it for four years, but I’ve never been able to really work on it.”

The quilt is having its own moment of retribution, and I imagine my mother smiling over this. I may find someone who will finish it, I may not. In any case, the quilt, in its refusal to be complete and to grow old on a bed, has done what I could not–fulfilled my mother’s wishes.

–Quinn McDonal is a writer. She is not a quilter.

Filed under: In My Life Tagged: mother's story, quilt, quilting