Blue Bird (I Am Enough)

Blue Bird (I am enough)

Fancy felt, thread, cotton fabric, jump ring

I made this little charm as a gift for a customer. I enjoyed creating the ribbon out of my fabric stash. I felt this charm needed a fabric ribbon. The charm was inspired by this painting that she bought a print of. I'm sending it out this morning, before I go to work, and before a foot of snow comes down and makes the roads impassable for the near future.

There's an interesting thing that happens when I sell a print or a painting. Well, when it's an original painting, I get a pang of loss, because these are like my little babies and I want to hold onto them, even though I like sending them out into the world for other people to love. But a print like this, especially the Flying Girls, always seems to send me a message.

Yeah, I don't know. It's kind of weird. Someone else is buying it, for their own reasons, but when I take the painting out of storage, when I write out a narrative for it, when I print it and package it up and either find or make a little gift for the customer... well, it's as if the message of that painting is the one I need to hear.

I've definitely been trying to live into the "You Are Enough" message of this one. For so long I have gotten anxious over needing to be productive, to make things, to meet deadlines, to make money, to be working working working no fun no play. And there's no need.

I am enough just being me, and so are you. We don't have to crawl on our hands and knees torturing ourself in order to be enough. We already are.

This thought always leads me back to my favorite poem, the one I need to hear over and over again.

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Mary Oliver

I felt the need to post this today. As a snow storm sweeps across the country and I get ready to hunker down into my life, small as it is. And learn to love what I love and let it be enough.

So I dedicate this post to you.

You are enough.