It’s dark because you are trying too hard.

Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly.
Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply.
Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig.
Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me…

So throw away your baggage and go forward.
There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet,
trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair.
That’s why you must walk so lightly.
Lightly my darling… – Aldous Huxley

I don’t know about you, but when I read this quote from Aldous Huxley’s “Island” I really felt it. Something inside of me, just said “Yes!” I couldn’t quite put my finger on my own mantra, as a person, and as a mother, – but “lightness”, that is what I strive for. As a mother, it is my wish to delight in my children as they grow up. Not to get bogged down in expectations or ambition, but to truly enjoy my kids and to lightly acknowledge their mistakes, as I do my own. Neither to be too hard on them, nor on myself. So that they can learn to forgive themselves easily, and others too. I hope that surrounding them with “lightness” will inspire them to walk away from problems with ease, to comfortably move on from disappointment, and to meet their successes with grace. But most of all, to enjoy the tiny pleasures that life has to offer when you don’t make it quite so heavy.

And so I wear a feather on my everyday necklace. I didn’t understand what the feather meant to me, I just knew that I was drawn to it. But that’s it! “Lightness”! I think its amazing how we feel connected to certain symbols without even understanding why. We just know that we like them, and that they suit us, and make us feel good. And I think that’s really enough. But I feel really happy that I now understand what the feather means to me – and I’m going to hold on tightly to that meaning, and continue to wear the feather and to let it inspire my journey as a person, an artist, and as mom.

While writing this I can’t help but think about how much “lighter” my kids have made me already. We go through stages together: Sometimes my kids need me all of the time, and other times I am free to focus on my own work. Never do we rest in sameness and certainty long enough to consider it for too long. This has helped me as an artist, giving me periods of pause to think, consider, grow and change, but never long enough to dwell.

                                 

Thank you for taking the time to read this rather personal post!

Kate