(I wrote this post a few weeks ago)

Seven years ago today, I got married. Today, I am not speaking to my husband. We are separated and plan to divorce, at the stage where getting the paperwork figured out feels like too much so just leaving it for now.

I honestly thought I was getting married for life, but here we are.

Things often don’t go as planned. I feel like we can’t say enough: it doesn’t matter what happens in your life YOU ARE NOT A FAILURE.

There is so much in our culture about this. So much judgement and shame and this unconscious push to try to make our lives look as perfect as possible. This is traumatizing.

Life is a mystery. The world is a mess. We’re all doing our best.

I’m finding such surprising gifts in the divorce process. My life is opening up in new ways. I’m turning 50 next week and feel so optimistic about this new chapter in my life.

AND it’s not what I’d planned or aimed for but… what if it’s better?

Re-reading this a week later:

That “It’s not what I’d planned or aimed for but… what if it’s better?” feels like SUCH A FUCKING CLICHE.

Like a pollyanna take on the pain of how disappointing it is sometimes, to go after a dream wholeheartedly and not have it work out.

Re-reading this a few days after that last update:

Last weekend I shared my birthday cake.

I am IN LOVE with how it turned out...

But it wasn’t what I had planned, lol!

My sister baked it - 5 layers of chocolate lavender cake and FIVE (!) batches of icing, so I’d have plenty to play with. She helped me dye the icing 6 different colours.

I piped different shapes all over the cake, in every colour of the rainbow except purple. I saved purple for last.

The purple was in a larger bag with a larger tip, and I piped this thick purple ribbon over the thick, multi-textured piped rainbow of icing…. and then this purple ribbon was too heavy, and pulled the rainbows of icing off the cake as it slide down the sides.

Yikes!

I had a flash inspiration of a “rainbow galaxy” smear of all of this thick icing. It felt like when I am doing intuitive painting and I tend to smear colours together a lot, like I am letting them play with each other.

So I grabbed a knife and did it.

There were big hunks of icing falling down which I piled on top of the cake as I spread out the sides to create this rainbow gradient kind of thing.

Then I had quite a bit of yellow in a bag with a nice thin piping tip so I added the yellow lines and….

It FELT like I wanted this cake to feel.

The original piped shapes, which were sooooo cuuuuuute, didn’t quite have the ZING of it feeling the way I wanted it to feel.

So, my cake was a disaster for a second there and then it did end up turning out better than I’d hoped.

My sister said: “It’s like your life! It fell apart but with the magic of creativity you turned it into something better!”

And now I am remembering that this is actually NOT Pollyanna at all.

This means FACING and BEING WITH the disappointment. Working with it and growing through it, to find your next step.

Accepting that disappointment is a companion on the path, and learning how to find the lessons and opportunities in it.

(Creative Dream Incubator members: there is an alchemy process for working with disappointment, right here. It's three videos with two different journaling sheets, for different ways of working with disappointment)

 

Creative Dream Incubator Coaching Membership members:

Come to the forum to share your thoughts or start a conversation about whatever you're working with.

Get your next Dream Book lesson or get a weekly journaling + alchemy kit.

Go the Library of Creative Dream Alchemy to find a practice that fits for where you are or use the Dream Lab if you're not sure where to start.

Check out the calendar of upcoming calls. Make a plan to join us live or catch a replay.