Lately I’ve been really drawn to pictorial representations of what’s going on in my head and in my life. Maybe it’s because I’m feeling pretty scrambled, dealing with lots of loose, untidy ends. Pictures seem to help me see from a distance where words corral me too close.
We still haven’t finalized a place to live when our current lease is up in exactly 19 days, and for me that’s living on the edge. I don’t think I ever not known at what address I’ll be plumping my bed pillow. This is new territory. I’m learning to cope.
Although yesterday I began to feel overwhelmed by the situation. I’m not faulting myself for that, but I hate overwhelm so much I wanted preventative measures above everything. So, I started constellating (or mapping if you prefer) my thoughts with scrap paper, colored pencils and permission to draw badly. I ended up with this…
In the end, I captured an array of clutter, the angst, a way through. I definitely give this constellating business a thumb’s up.
If you want to try the exercise yourself, here are a few bits of advice:
- Try to not get hung up about drawing skills or wordsmithing or anything like that. Sometimes the ol’ hands don’t quite capture what’s in the ol’ head, like – ahem – that pink spiky thing in the bottom left corner. That’s supposed to be a tree.
- Be curious about what spills out. Figure out what stuff means later.
- Don’t fiddle with the flow.
- Your output only has to make sense to you.
In Wiccan lore, so I’ve been told, the full moon is for releasing while a new moon is for asking. That’s the extant of my Wiccan knowledge, and please don’t quote me on that interpretation. It might be drastically off-base and unrecognizable to Wiccans. No disrespect intended towards them.
In any case, I like the balancing aspect of the moon ritual. By constellating the cosmos of my brain I discovered what I can let go of to gain some peace of mind. It’s kind of like witnessing the birth of a whole new little universe in the bowl of a candy dish.
