New Beginnings: The End of My Mexican Era (and final workshops here)

Big changes are afoot. Or aloft — if you prefer a flying metaphor.

These changes are vulnerable to share, especially since I am smack in the middle of them.

My Happy Place: at Art House Oaxaca in Mexico, with happy dog tails.

I’ve just spent the most deeply nourishing creative week in a circle of wise and wild women, writing and making art at my retreat space here in Oaxaca, Mexico. (Fear not missing out, we’re doing it again in February.)

At the retreat, I facilitated a creating art journaling process called The Wisdom Journal. Here, we leap into wordlessness (after morning creative writing sessions) and allow our intuition and imagination to reveal itself with color, image, phrases and words clipped from magazines, and all manner of luscious collage supplies.

Our wisdom journals contain layers and multitudes, secret doorways and hidden envelopes to store treasures, maps… treasure maps to our most cherished dreams, ideas, destinies.

September 25^th is my birthday, and each year I create a wisdom journal that asks potent questions like:

How can I best express my true creative self in the next year?

What wisdom do you have for me?

For over a year now, I’ve been exploring where to move next when my time here in Mexico draws to a close.

Concrete ideas and plans are starting to form, a timeline is taking shape. So I asked my Wisdom Journal for guidance about this move.

It’s going to be another BigAss Move, like the one I made from the USA to Mexico back in 2012, only in reverse.

My friend and co-facilitator of the Wiser & Wilder retreats, Emily, reminded me that I am completing a 7 year Saturn cycle. (Emily is an astrologer and somehow has my birth chart in her brain for quick reference.)

What’s hard for me to say (write) out loud:

My time in Oaxaca, Mexico is drawing to a close.

I’ll be leading my final workshops here this December, and the last two in 2019, February and March.

After that, people are coming for private stays (art residencies or just artful vacations).

Someone else will take over the management and business of Art House Oaxaca.

While several people are coming forward with interest, no decisions have been made. If you are interested in working, living and playing in Mexico in this capacity, (or know someone who is) please email me and we can discuss details.

During the retreat, I practiced writing and sharing these ideas out loud.

I’ve written and rewritten this post so many times.

Hesitate to press: Publish.

Words set in stone, or something like that.

More than anything, I am reminded how powerful and enriching it is to have people you can tell your deepest, most sacred dreams. The women in the Wiser & Wilder retreat gave me this gift. Best birthday present, ever.

It is a gift to have people who hear you and care enough to draw out more of your wisdom — by asking another potent question, like: Tell me more. (Thank you, Meo, for that question.)

New Beginnings is a big subject. In fact, it’s our theme for Magic Book this month.

There is so much more to share.

Stay tuned.

Thank you for reading, listening and sharing.