It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how it compares with other expressions.

“There is a vitality, a life-force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.” Martha Graham

  Too often, I believe, we wait for the PERFECT time to make that jump, share our poetry, show our artwork, start our dream job.  Frozen in the "not quite" we stifle ourselves waiting for the conditions that only exist in our dreams, never in our present. We wait and wait and wait somehow under the faux impression that life lasts forever.

Well, it doesn't.

So do, and maybe celebrate the daring way you allow yourself to come alive.  Celebrate the failures and celebrate your ability to stand back up time and time again.  Begin to trust the universe.

Use your fear as kindling for a big, blazing fire.

There will ALWAYS be people who, having yet to find their own inner light, will hate on anything you do.

Ignore them, and do it anyway.

I love the idea in the above quote that the repercussions of not being ourselves is somehow bigger than us.  It does harm to the universe AND to ourselves.   "It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly, to keep the channel open."

Dare where others are afraid.  Just concentrate on you.

I have been painting all of my life, but only in the last 15 or so have I dared to make a living in the arts.  Inch by inch, day by day, moving closer toward my own light.

As much as I have fought it and wished that I was someone else, painted like someone else, enjoyed accounting or medicine, or something "normal and stable" I don't.  The truth is that painting, art, what I do and how I do it is inseparable to who I am.

Why is it so hard to just be who we are?

A great friend told me this week, "I think you have a true-fire-in-the-belly type of drive and love for what you do.  I think it's the reason you don't stop because how could you separate this love of art from who you are."

Enough said.

It's amazing to have people in my life that support me, love me, and KNOW me.  Especially when I need the reminder.

My challenge to you, dare to let your truth out.

You're as ready as you'll ever be and the universe WILL celebrate your  courage.