Yesterday, I had a healing vision 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. The experience of creating the cave and picture was an intuitive process that I have written about in detail in my journal. I created 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. Inside the cave,  I used pastels on a cotton canvas to draw the vision I had earlier in the day. I put my Inner Child in the arms of a strong, Mother Bear in that cave. After drawing my picture, I allowed myself to lie inside this cave. I embraced the creative river and allowed it to carry me deep into my child-heart where the wounded-one lives, where the artist lives, where the most golden self in me, lives. I noticed that the fabric hung in the shape of a hug and resembled butterfly wings! 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 ended up being the most sacred art of all, and I felt so protected. ♥