the beat of my OWN drum

For awhile now I have wanted to buy a drum. while I'm not yet prepared to join a drum circle, I wanted something that I could make music with, as well as something functional and small that I could bring to Sounders games and join in the merry music-making.

I had been perusing online and found a few drums that I liked, but I was on my way to my favorite East West bookshop and saw this shop called Ten Thousdand Villages, and thought "hmm, that looks interesting, I think I'll go inside."

Lo and behold, this shop combined many of my loves and desires all in one place. It is a fair-trade shop that sells hand-crafted pieces from all over the world. At first I thought it would just supply me with my need to Indianify my place, but there was a whole table of drums...and they were so reasonably priced ($25+) that I just had to buy one. So I picked up a goat-skin/mango wood drum made in indonesia, and away I went.

While I had been researching drums, I had also been looking at drawings that people have done on their drums, to add a little flavor. I love henna and in my online research (you know, the internet is truly a wonderful thing in this regard) I found many people who had painted their drums with henna. So while I don't have any henna materials (and was too impatient to go through the whole process...maybe on my next drum!) I used a Pentel marker that is eerily similar looking to real henna.

The process of drawing on the drum was relatively easy. I used a compass and a rule to get the basic circles and radial points, but I mostly just freehanded everything. I was surprised at just how meditative the whole process was. It makes me wish I was independently wealthy and could just draw on drums all day! :)

Here's my "finished" product (I think I want to add a few more embellishments, but I'm happy with how it looks now and I don't want to make it too busy).

Already I love playing it, and I get to break it out in public tomorrow at the Sounders game!

So cheers to following the beat of my OWN drum!

French and who knows what else...

I often have the ostrich syndrome, the belief that if I wish hard enough, or hide my head in a hole, then I will somehow be...'normal.' Because opening myself up to the tidal wave of emotions that comes with being adopted, is hard. HARD. Harder than living in a 3rd world country or getting my Master's Degree. Emotions are tricky things, and I find that I am much easier at navigating the cerebral...

But yesterday, during my massage, the lovely Courtney (and if you haven't looked her up yet, you should, find her through the link Healing Nest on my page), performed reiki and my outbreaths let go of things like: shame, not good enough, closed off, unworthy, unloveable, unwanted, and on the inbreaths I took in: honesty, love, vulnerability. I'm working on opening my heart and making room in the nooks and crannies for all the various people in my life. My black and white thinking often doesn't allow for there to be more than one, like if I have one mom, I can't have 2 (and adding a third in the form of a MIL). But I can, and I do.

So with a heart open to possibilities, I shakily dialed the number and shakily spewed out "I was adopted in 1982 and I have reason to believe he is my birthfather" (like some episode of Law & Order), and there it was...me...talking to my birthfather Jim on the phone, for the first time.

The emotions are crazy overwhelming, because I already have a 'daddy,' but this man is 1/2 my genetic history and it was good to hear him say that a Dec. 13th didn't go by without him thinking of me, that when I turned 18 he updated his info at the agency so I could find him, and that he was 'so glad' I called. He even said he'd want to meet me.

What's great is that he's stable, married for 14 years, has 2 daughters (I mean, I have 2 MORE 1/2 sibs), and one of them is tall & plays basketball (this is the side of the family I get my height from I guess!). But silly as it is, the thing that stuck out to me the most, and it was good that I have been open and vulnerable and flexible...

Before the phone got disconnected I learned that his side of the family is French. This blows my entire life heritage of believing (because my parents told me this) that I am 100% Norwegian. The upside of this is I get to learn about a new country, as well as the fact that his father's side of the family has been in the country since 1620, in Jamestown...and this could possibly lead to there being some Native American blood ;) Not sure why I've always been obsessed with that, but there's much more likely a chance than my b-mom's side of the family which came from Norway like only 100 years ago.

So in order to stop sitting on the futon freaking out internally, I decided to do some art, which of course is adoption related...



And taking this open heart mentality I called my 1/2 sister and said I wanted to hang out, and I wanted to meet my b-mom, too, which is a huge step for me. Wowzers, so much emotion inside of me...

peace

Archetypes

Archetypes have followed me since I took Dan Peters' Myth and the Modern Hero class in high school. In counseling classes we read Carl Jung and so awhile ago I purchased Caroline Myss' Sacred Contracts and her accompanying archetype cards to learn more about myself. According to Myss there are 4 archetypes that everyone has, and then there are at least 8 others that closely shape our personalities. This has been a very fun & eye-opening exercise for me, and has also been fun to talk with Kyle and see what his archetypes are. These are the archetypes that I feel repesent me the best (beginning with the 4 that everyone has)
1. Saboteur
2. Victim
3. Prostitute
4. Child (and I identify with the orphan child)
5. Mentor
6. Damsel
7. Clown/Fool
8. Rebel
9. Student
10. Queen
11. Story Teller
12. Hermit
The most interesting thing for me doing this exercise was how much I resonated with the shadow side (the way the archtype influences us negatively, like always 'playing the victim,' or sabotaging my relationships). I've been working with these archetypes in art, and have found that the two most easily accesible ones (perhaps because within the context of my romantic relationship they rule me the most, or perhaps because I have many fashion magazines with these images in them), are the Queen and the Damsel.

Here's my interpretation of my Queen archetype:


And here's my interpretation of my Damsel archetype:



I'd encourage you to check it out and do it for yourself. You might just learn a thing or two :)

"Unplanned"

Inspire Me Thursday's prompt this week was "Medical" and I couldn't help but think of all my friends who have gotten pregnant on their birth control. I've titled it "Unplanned" from it's original "Unwanted," though both titles bring up my own sense of loss and disconnection as I too feel, through my adoption, that unplanned and unwanted means not-good-enough. Flawed. Not completely whole.

My theology

"I can only speak for myself, from what I know," I kept saying over and over again. It had come up in a Friday-night-without-tv conversation in which I explored (and somewhat revealed) my internalized theology. This morning it was still on my mind and I kept seeing a diagram of a person, like the ones that are always in my yoga magazines, with all of the chakras in their own special colors, and all I could see was black.

Ooozing, pitchy tar-like blackness sticking to all my insides. Radiating from my heart. It was a disturbing picture and I put some pastels down on paper to get it outside of me. What to do about this is a mystery, and even more so a mystery that I don't think others have this inside of them. That's why I kept saying I can only speak for myself, because this is my reality, whether it is real or not.