I did not find pregnancy comfortable.

Physically I was perturbed by the changes taking place, the way in which my body (always seen as separate in those days) “took over”.  I felt I had become host to an alien life form.  Emotionally and mentally I fought the loss of control, despite it being of my choosing.

I was a youngish mother, twenty three when I had my first child, and it would be another twenty years before I finally befriended my woman’s body.

I do recall the sense of count down.  Waiting and waiting for the due date, ticking off the days…

The sense of impending arrival comes, it turns out, with creative projects too.

I completed my first project  last week when the oracle deck I had been working on arrived.  I put off listing it in my shop because this was the last thing, and once that was done, there was nothing else to do…I wasn’t prepared for how I would feel when it was finished.  I was so pleased on one level and yet on another I felt sad..the journey was so much fun.

It was a time of unexpected delight.  I had always told myself I’d never make a deck, I am not an artist, I don’t draw or paint.  It was the regular, insistent messages from the natural world which inspired me in the end.  I began taking and collecting photographs of the garden.

Once I had them all I went into lock down.  Who, after all, did I think I was?

They sat saved in a folder on the computer.  It took almost three months before I was ready for the next phase.  And then the flood gates opened!  There is a point when the process takes over, moving of its own accord.  Once the decision to get it done happened it was like a flood gate opened.

The energy this project generated was unexpected.  I have spent a large amount of time juggling my energetic needs, since a viral infection at aged eighteen left me with fatigue.  There are spells of better health and then an inevitable crash.  But this energy was different, it felt warm, loving, hopeful.  It gave me the power to get through mundane days at work, to put new projects into place, to step up and out, it was my own inner sun.

With its completion I am going through a mini grief.  It is done now…and I don’t know, yet, what will come next.  I have been fishing around in my mind this week for fresh ideas, but they’re not here yet, or not willing to show themselves.

I suspect this means that this is the time to allow the ground of my creativity to lie fallow for a while, to replenish its nutrients, to give myself a break!

And that inner sun is still here, lurking just below the horizon, I know it will rise again when the time is right.

I am so looking forward to seeing the first shoots, the tiny green spikes of the next idea 🙂