Braveheart, I am living in the in-between place. Again. Reluctantly. In a swirl of thoughts … 🌀
🎭🎬 [when life is interrupted] — “Every single one of us will have our life interrupted, whether it’s by the rip cord of a diagnosis or some other kind of heartbreak or trauma that brings us to the floor. We need to find ways to live in the in-between place, managing whatever body and mind we currently have.” -Suleika Jaouad
Suleika Jaouad shares that “living in the in-between place is the real Hero’s Journey.” I can relate as I was “brought to the floor” with the details of three serious health diagnoses since March. 🙃
🪄 I am doing my best to remain focused on simply being and doing the next thing. I know how to do this because, like most of us, I have experience with uncertainty and the in-between place. 🌀
My first cancer experience is what I tried to remember when I felt overwhelmed within all the uncertainty of 2020. Our wild and precious lives as we knew them before COVID-19 were interrupted—and yet, we continued to live the only ONE wild and precious life we have to live, Braveheart. 💜
- Within the weeks following my first cancer, I had to face the challenging (lifelong) reality of living in my body after the trauma of my cancer surgery and chemo”therapy.” Along with the reality that ovarian cancer was statistically very likely to recur within 3-5 years.
- And yet, it did not recur. And that has been 24 years ago. 🙏🏻
Related: choices in the space in-between | hope vs. powerlessness
Truth sets us free. False hopes and “enabling fictions” represent the stuff we tell ourselves to dull our ability to accept the truth about our choices—and that which we have no control.
“Whether we realize it or not, we define ourselves through stories. Understanding your own story is the key to understanding yourself, your world, and your capacity to act within that world.” -Elle Luna
24 years ago I was dealing with the physical realities of ovarian cancer (and a ton of grief 💔 due to familial hardships).
After my cancer surgery and chemo”therapy” concluded I felt the same as Suleika, that “the hardest part of my cancer experience began once the cancer was gone.” It was time to navigate that tricky “thing with feathers” aka 🪶 Hope.
“‘Hope is tricky. It doesn’t live in the future. Nor does it guarantee that future. Hope can be right now, wherever you are. But you might have to let it surprise you.” -Kate Bowler
Because of the various (and undesired) outcomes of relationships and situations I hoped would be different (but are not) I have a complicated relationship with [hope]. 🙄😝
Yet another way my right brain planning practice + my creative community “saves” me …
Kate Bowler says that [hope] is “a promise to stay”—and I really like that definition. 😎
The principal goal of Right Brain Planner is to foster a daily-ish (and/or lunarly) practice of [being present] + [self-compassionately seeing and reviewing] the details of our living by compiling a visual chronicle as a safe place to check in with ourselves. 💖
- Examples of how to pause + check in with ourselves: copy a quotation from something you are reading; snap a photo of the ☁️💙☁️ sky while noticing its details; pull an oracle 🃏 card and reflect on its meaning within your life; jot notes about your day, your 🪄 wishes and/or your 🚨 vents; a quick 📝 chronicle of the moon phases and weather on a monthly 📆 calendar; a one-line journal … there are lots of possibilities, Braveheart. 😊
The focus in developing a right brain planning practice is to see our living as ongoing—a timeline [days within years; years within a lifetime].
- To resist the urge to allow a “bad day” or a “bad week” to become a filter—a lens—that limits our ability to hope and live differently.
- Easing away from a performance-based valuation of self-worth; cycling like the moon and exploring so-called irregularity (stops and starts) as a cycle of wholeness.
Right brain planning is an opportunity to allow our journals to be our “planners”—elevating expression and desires over expectations and shoulds. A safe space to tell our stories.
Now about those very real challenges of recovery, reentry and moving on … 😎
A daily practice may not be your thing, Braveheart. That is 💯 okay. But, also, just a reminder:
A daily, two-minute check-in/breathing-in-and-out practice is a right brain (creative) “planning” practice. (Just sayin’.) 😎
This summer, my daily practice has been to create an index-card-a-day with a few notes jotted on the backside.
More than any of my ICAD collections, THIS summer has been so very essential for me to keep moving through.
- 💔🥠👨🏻⚕️ The grief surrounding my physical challenges has required that I do my best to lean into 💜 love + maintain my creative rituals as I sojourn with my sadness (fear?) and a long list of what-if’s.
Braveheart, I am writing this post in the middle of a restless night. There are several milestones set for the next few weeks, so my mind is “lit up” with thoughts.
Reading (sometimes a paragraph, sometimes pages, sometimes chapters) is an integral part of my right brain planning practice. So are sky meditations.
“Stars say yes to a higher consciousness. Stars say yes, there is a future beyond our own. … A night sky of stars invites us to dream.” -Terry Tempest Williams
This past week’s reading included excerpts from Terry Tempest Williams’ new book, The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary. A reminder that we “do not have to look away from our difficult histories.”
- This is the very real challenge of recovery, reentry and moving on: acknowledging that we do not have to look away—and we can be honest with ourselves about the suffering and the hope that often surprises us. Especially in the middle of the night when we are writing a blog post. Just sayin’ … 😎
Braveheart, thank you kindly for being here. 🪄 Let’s hold this space together (because together we are stronger) and let’s remember to give our attentions to the Holy Ordinary. K? ❤️
Right Brain Planner is a collection of lunar + seasonal prompts and journal-planning ideas to encourage self-compassion and review, reflection and expression, discovery and healing.
Braveheart, we learn by doing: we discover details about ourselves through dated, chronicled observations 👀✍️📔 because everything we experience is data. 📊
Data is value-neutral; it is neither “good’ or “bad”—it is merely information to use for our choices, intentions and conclusions. Remembering this helps us to live free from judgment and shoulds.
Thank you kindly for your presence here.
I appreciate your interest and support.
~love & good wishes~
Artist’s Statement 😊🔮🔎📝🖌️🎨❤️📊
❤️ Braveheart, as the Creator/Artist of Right Brain Planner I am ever-grateful to have the opportunity to share my creative work online + support other creators! 🎉 For almost 20 years I have had the privilege of sharing my art and writing about right brain planning while also hosting kindred 👭🏽💞👭 communities. ✨ I consider it an absolute delight to continue this portion of my creative work (even as I retire from full-time work).
This is possible, in part, by {you} and your presence here. ❤️ But also because of the support of my Ko-fi patrons and the other member/subscriber communities I host.
If you already have your own system of creative journal-planning, but are interested in financially supporting my creative work, you may do so by making a donation:
- Make a one-time contribution in any amount via [this link]. (Thank you!) ❤️