I had a healing vision yesterday of a Mother Bear holding my Inner Child in a cave under the dark, winter sky. A friend encouraged me to draw this vision with pastels and to create the vision around me with fabric. I said, I can do this! I am good at creating things with fabric but I am not good at drawing. I create beauty in other wa...ys, other art forms. But I decided to create for the sake of creating because being creative is what my Leo heart loves to do more than anything else in the world in all the ways creativity can flow, whether it is making love or creating an altar or birthing my child. So I began the process. It was a fully, intuitive, process that I have written about in detail in my journal. But here, I can share that I did create a cave out of black velvet fabric and midnight-blue fabric, both with gold and silver threads running through them, that surrounded my bed. Behind it I hung golden fabric so I would feel fully contained, safe, protected. I created the cave within which I would use pastels on a cotton canvas to draw the vision I had earlier in the day when I had to tell my Inner Child that she is safe and sound even though I have to go to be the grown-up and work with clients and be a good Mom. I put her in the arms of a strong, Mother bear in that cave. So last night, in the deep night, I allowed myself to embrace the creative river and allow it to carry me deep into my child-heart where the wounded-one is, where the artist lives, where the most golden self in me, lives. I noticed that the fabric was in the shape of a real hug and the way the golden fabric behind it hung, like a hug, too, and how it was tacked to the wall, it was in the shape of a butterfly! And as is the way of Spirit, a moment later, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, who was talking from the stereo about the archetype of the Wild Feminine, began talking about the powerful symbolism of the butterfly! (In the candlelight later, I realized it sparkled, too.) My golden shadow, butterfly, transforming, spirit held space for me while I embraced the shadows and the shame and the art from the dark that ends up being the most sacred art of all and I felt so protected. ♥