Week 4 of True North Arts Personal Retreat Workshop is about using nature in your retreat. I connect with nature most in the fall. It seems like a time when even the smallest plant can shine with color. I can walk through fall leaves for hours. I find the powerlessness I sometimes feel disappears when I crunch and kick through piles of leaves on the street. Sometimes the wind gets involved and something magical happens as the leaves start to circle around like they were carrying my cares away. Maybe its just me but the onset of colder weather makes me slow down or it could be the extended darkness that allows me to focus. I’ve all ways felt peaceful around nature but this weeks workshop made me want to explore it more as a way to care for my soul.

Week 2 of the True North Arts Personal Retreat Workshop is all about creating a sacred space, a soul-loving space. I had a head start this week because unknowingly I have been creating a soul-loving space over the past few months in our attic bedroom. I’ve just been calling it something different – nesting. A couple months ago I painted the room a dusty teal (a leap for someone surrounded by the white walls of a military base as a child). I picked up a chair from my parents for a reading nook that just barely fits but it’s comfy. Though there is no door on my bed room it is becoming my fortress of solitude. I usually don’t collected trinkets because clutter can drive me crazy, so I was really looking for a couple things that really moved me. In my search I picked up 2 trinkets I love:

A swan from a furniture store that was going out of business. I’m not sure why I have always been drawn to them – I love water and just figured it represented water to me. Until recently. During one of my retreats in my fortress of solitude I read a magazine article about a woman who had reread the children’s book “The Ugly Duckling” and had seen it in a whole new light. Instantly I knew why I was drawn to the swan it represented a transformation I so longed for. Reading the article spelled it out for me, the real tragedy of the story is that the ugly duckling doesn’t believe in his own inner beauty – NOT the others making fun of him. This trinket has spurred me to journal. I’ve been checking yard sales for an actual ugly duckling children’s story book that I can collage myself into.

I found a glass mosaic candle holder. I love the fact something broken can come together and make something so beautiful. It gives me hope that the pieces of my life that I don’t understand will one day come together and make something beautiful.

I’m currently getting over a battle with the flu and spent most of  the last 2-3 days up in my bedroom and I was so grateful that I had been working on making it a soul-loving space. Who knows maybe my soul being happy helped fight the virus