Doubt is my biggest shadow ...

Umm... day 2, will this be a daily practice? Like Julie Powell cooking 365 days of Julia Child. Just not sure yet, but feel some commitment to regularity.

I find it interesting that I am reading Bridget Jonses’ Diaries and Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle – wildly divergent, yet both based on a regular progression of documentation. One fiction and one fact. One revolving round single life in late 1990s London and the other on growing one’s own food for a year. Yin and Yang, perhaps? But something about continuity and accountability appeals to me. Also something about “putting it out there," [maybe that’s why Bridget Jones appeals to me] a message I am repeatedly receiving from a higher authority, yet also from deep within.

I have privately kept journals, in the Quaker tradition without realizing it, all through my 40s and often find it a source of comfort, problem solving and creativity. It’s a place I can turn when it seems no one else understands or wants to hear “it” again ... the “it” du jour. Sometimes I journal religiously, others, not so much.

It seems mildly amusing that as a journalist for so much of my career, I never once considered keeping a journal ... “Just the facts, Mam,” I thought. Older and, hopefully, wiser. I find what’s behind the facts much more interesting and worthy of exploration.

I have two kinds of journals: one for words and another, for images, which often convey for me so much more than words can. I plan to post some of those images here.

Yesterday was quite exhilarating launching this blog (with so much forethought: a couple of hours ... really it’s been a whisper for awhile) and seeing it gain “followers.” Also humbling and gratitude producing. I hope the novelty doesn’t wear off. I joined facebook last year at this time all excited about “finding” old and new friends, then being less enthusiastic when it seemed kind of shallow. I desire a facebook with more substance ... not sure that’s possible given that its name so clearly states the intent. Or my bigger fear: that I have nothing worthwhile to say.

Doubt is my biggest shadow and I am learning to recognize, even honor it ... like the really long shadows of the trees today on the snow in the crisp sunshine.
• What are my shadows?
• How can I more fully integrate them?
• How can I honor them?
• Do I cast them on others, projecting what’s really just mine?
• Can I own them?
I am learning to trust the dark
and see it as not merely
the absence of light,
but the presence
the presence of all
the presence of all color

– Cathy
www.turtleboxstories.com is a place I have created for gathering and sharing the deepest stories of our hearts; please visit and/or share if you’re so inclined