joy formula: creativity + kindness = JOY
radiate JOY!
my ❤ becky j suzik
joy
my driving questions
dear ones,
Last week at a glance… in case you are interested to know… I spent a week at the Appalachian State Expressive Art Institute in the Blue Ridge Mountains, learning about creativity and play from some great teachers. Thoughts are bubbling up, so I wanted to share…..
My mind was overflowing with one-hundred-and-one stories: those of my easy-to-love loved ones, and stories of those I want and need to learn to love.
I drove myself up the mountain–a labyrinth-like-road–giggling to myself about the nervy, curvy road bends, and frightening myself with a few what-ifs.
I arrived at the top alone and unknown to join a group of 40+–each human offering a new-to-me-story that somehow now entwines with my own.
I stepped out of my life–up into the stratosphere–to focus on my own story, deepening my experience with and for the sacred work I feel a responsibility to.
Creativity and joy activism–what on Earth do these mean? What is possible for me to create and support and be connected to? What feels impossible, yet necessary? How can I serve with greater urgency, tenderness and love?
After four days carrying these focused questions in my heart and awareness, my body and spirit blown upon by the four directions… the answer?
Mmmm…. I still do not fully know. But whatever I am part of, I intend to remember to PLAY through to finding the answers and solutions our world so deservedly needs.
GROWN-UP PLAY is one of the most important things us grown ups can do for ourselves, for our children and for Mama Earth. Play is made of different energies than the problems we are facing right now… so let’s play, shall we?! When was the last time you played, dear one? If it’s been too long, be gentle with yourself. Perhaps start with a bottle of bubbles–a gateway joy device–an essential tool in the JOYFUeL playkit. 
Wishing you love and a LOT of play, too!
bjs
love something into existence
Dear Ones,
I have held a seed of a story a secret in my heart for some two years now. I created a few heART-ful images two years ago, that I made into cards and necklaces. Today I colorized a drawing that had remained a black outlined coloring page for all this time.
For the past 10 days I carried this teeny little book I am attempting to fill with words, beauty, love, humor and whimsy– aspiring to become a bigger book– a gift for my 7-year-old Sonshine. It’s a little story about a special little bird.
Earlier this year I told a group of 1st graders about the story’s main character–Joybird. I told them how our imaginations can make so many things, including books. The children are now 2nd graders, and they continue to remind and ask me if Joybird ready for them yet? (I feel more pressure and anxiety about this than if I was on deadline for a publisher!) Gulp. What did I do?!
Joybird needs to fly, and I’ve run out energy to believe in my excuses.
And now double gulp, I am sharing my position with YOU right now, in an effort to support and encourage YOU and that special secret something in YOU that also needs to fly. What is it? Do tell!
I read a lot of books about creativity. Most recently I re-read Lewis Hyde’s classic The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World. I came across this gem, that I want to share with you, in case it can inspire YOU to begin making, writing, illustrating or painting that special something YOU want to love into existence, something that perhaps YOU have carried for a long while.
“An essential portion of any artist’s labor is not creation so much as invocation. Part of the work cannot be made, it must be received; and we cannot have this gift except, perhaps by supplication, by courting, by creating within ourselves that “begging bowl” to which the gift is drawn.” ~ Lewis Hyde
Yes, dearhearts…. it is time for us to SHINE and take a little time to indulge and express our creativity, and open up our begging bowl to invoke the creative muse to arrive before us. Risk ourselves. And let’s finally do it!
I’m here for you. If you want to bounce ideas off me, phone or skype with me, whatever it is, let’s support each other on a new creative adventure. email me.
I have a lot of gremlins: Voices in my head striving to convince me of my illustrative inadequacies. I don’t want to believe them. It doesn’t matter if my gremlins don’t love what is about to happen. It only matters to trust myself, and allow the space and time to love this gift and let it come into being! A gift for my son. (If he likes it, maybe I’ll share with his school friends too. If he doesn’t, at the very least I will have spent time ignoring and renouncing my gremlins, and loosening their grip on me perhaps freeing me up for yet another new creative venture?!) Roar!
honoring YOUR de-gremlinizer superpowers, together let’s do this!
my love,
❤ becky
love and wisdom walk into a bar
Dearest Hearts,
My son brought this exquisite bloom-within-a-bloom flower back for me from a walk he went on with my husband. My boy-sage–now 6– smiled ear-to-ear as he handed me a double-blossoming flower only a few minutes after I penned the beautiful gem of love/wisdom from Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj into my journal. To me, the double flower–name unknown to me–embodies Maharaji’s beautiful words.
Love says “I am everything”.
Wisdom says “I am nothing”.
Between the two my life flows.
The moment my son gave it to me, my breath was captured; I felt my knees buckle to grace–and I held on tightly to my son–my teacher– giving over to the splendor of duality … to everything.
I knew his timely gift had to be shared with you. For joy. I don’t need–or even want–to know the name of the flower. Simply knowing that it is, is knowing enough.
my ❤ and wishes for your joy, becky
kindness is a fire
kindness is a fire
kindness is a fire
a lovefire burning rampant in my heart
alive burning glowing sparking radiating
–fueled by the dark cinders of my being–
seeking for ways to escape my body
to lovingly attach my fire to yours
to burn even brighter
even kinder
together
❤ becky jaine
