Secret 3 in the 12 Secrets…”Following Your Fascinations”…

This chapter is about listening to your intuitions, being courageous and following those intuitions and dreams, taking risks to do so, learning from your mistakes and overcoming your inner critic.

The book talks about ‘your inner patriarch’, which is an inner voice that tells us – women - to put our creativity and self expression aside and think firstly of the men in our lives. I don’t agree with this...I mean, I don't agree that all of us have this inner patriarch…maybe I am lucky and was raised in a house where I was encouraged and supported and that is where my foundation comes from. Now, this isn’t to say that I don’t have that inner critic that can be very negative…but it has nothing to do with cow-towing to men! My inner critic whispers in my ears nasty thing like ‘who are you trying to kid’, ‘you aren’t really an artist’, ‘anyone could have done that’…and it also tells me I’m wasting my time and money and that I should clean the house, make a nice place for all of us to live in and to go out and do some ‘real’ work…that is where my guilt comes from…but, again, it has nothing to do with the male superiority that this part of the book refers to. I am lucky, also, that my Cariño is so very supportive and encourages me in this creative endeavour!

I do take risks in my life…I don’t think I would be where I am now if I didn’t. I moved to Ottawa with three young kids, not knowing anyone, so we could start a fresh life. It was scary, but it was also very, very exciting! If I hadn’t moved here, I would never have met Cariño!

This move into painting more seriously is also a risk; a risk and a challenge. I haven’t quit my day job though…so it is a calculated risk as opposed to an impulsive one. I have always loved art and spend a lot of my spare time looking at it and reading about different artists. One of the things I love about my job is that it brings me into people’s homes and I get to look at their art too!

The decision to begin painting was not a sudden one…a seed was planted by an elderly woman I met…fixing her computer…she and her husband were watercolour artists. She was a fascinating woman and took an interest when I asked about her paintings and told her about my love of art …she said…”if you want to paint …just paint…just do it!”

Well, that advise sank in…I had originally thought that if I actually wanted to paint (which I did want to do…I was feeling the need to do something creative), that I would have to take some classes…learn how to use the mediums, learn how to paint…but this woman told me that I didn’t need to do that…I could just go ahead and paint!

It must have taken a year or so after she told me that before I finally went out and bought some paints and canvases. And she was right…just do it…I learn as I go…I ask questions…I continue to look at art and read about how people do what they do…

At the beginning of this chapter, in a quote from Betsy Morscher and Barbara Schindler Jones, authors of “Risk Taking for Women”, it says that the original meaning of risk is from the Greek “to sail around a cliff.” I like that…because once you do sail around that cliff…you have a whole new view…and that is how this creative journey seems for me…the more I do, the more I spend time painting…the more ideas I seem to have…the more I move forward into new territories…

There is another quote in this chapter by a person that fascinated me when I was young…I remember reading a book about her and I was amazed and awed by how she overcame the tremendous obstacles that life had placed before her…

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” ~ Helen Keller