Recently I was asked by a friend who is also a maker and artist if it is a good thing to create something for someone else when we ourselves are feeling down or unwell. I understand this question, I used to worry about the same thing and very strictly only created when in my utmost health. But one day I created a doll for a woman in great need of assistance, she was suffering panic attacks and I wanted to make her a doll right then when she needed it most.
On that weekend I was in a state of grieving for someone in my own life but as I sat with the soft wool in my hands with all that colour around me - my favourite part of doll making is playing with colour - I realised that I began to feel a lot brighter and happier. What I discovered at the end of the creation process was that not only had I made a very beautiful and joyful doll, I was feeling so much better. I have found this to be one of the significant benefits of creating a healing doll for someone else - we receive that healing too. We heal ourselves through the practice of creating and I feel especially that in the act of sending good wishes and intentions to another, we receive the same blessing. A blessing doubled.
Recently I have been dealing with an old back injury that I used to get when I was much younger. I have come to understand it is emotional and caused from 'holding on' and 'holding back'. Just before the full moon I felt whatever was lurking down there in the depths for too long suddenly and terrifyingly rise to the surface - it was as if a sleeping volcano had suddenly awoken. At the same time, I was weaving a doll for a Hawai'ian friend, Wai'ala.
I asked myself: can I make this doll when I am feeling so much of my own fear? Hesitantly I began preparing the plant bundle to go inside her doll. As I did, I kept hearing the word orchid and getting the message to include this flower for her. I knew I had 2 orchids grown with love by Tony's mother but for the life of me I couldn't find them. Finally I gave up and began to close up the bundle. But I kept hearing a woman's voice very firmly telling me to keep looking! I looked again and finally found the orchids - in the last place of course! I placed them inside the bundle and I could feel right away the doll was happy.
When I shared the message with the Wai'ala about being told to find the orchid, she wrote:
'It's local folklore that our Hawai'ian goddess Pele loves and treasures orchids and it's been said she moves her lava flow around certain ones to save them and consumes everything else around them; preserving them alive in a surrounding sea of lava. I have great joy that the medicine doll requested one'.
Orchids grown by Tony’s Mum
ancient oceans - sea fossils
On the night before the full moon I dreamt of an elderly man coming forward with a carefully wrapped box. Inside the box he said was an ancient crustacean. I felt very honoured but also scared to be it's keeper as if it was too precious and I was not worthy. I was also unsure how to keep it. I was then shown through a series of lessons on how to care for myself more and how to honour and protect the precious animal and mineral gifts that I receive. I was also shown how to release what I had been holding on to. When I awoke from the dream it was as if I was still living in it, it was full moon and I was aware that I had work to do and instructions to follow from the dream.
I woke up and began to finish the spirit doll and as I wove the colours into her dress I saw that she would be holding a crystal skull to represent her ancestors and adorned with fossils of ancient oceans. As I placed the fossils into her dress I realised that the elder in my dream was one of Wai'ala's ancestors. In the weaving of the doll for his granddaughter I had created a space where he could enter my dream and assist me.
On completion, the doll told me her name was FireOrchid Flowing Water. At first I thought that her name was too long, I tried to shorten it to just Fire Orchid but the doll was adamant again, she was also Flowing Water. I placed her in a large circle with all of the dolls, my personal dolls too and also all of the animal, plant and minerals that go into the creation of each doll. I held a simple ceremony at the full moon giving gratitude to every creature, every being, and spirit that helps me in the creation of the dolls.
The next morning I awoke to read a new message from Wai'ala:
'I am so greatly honored, and full of bliss that while bringing her into creation my ancestors visited you and helped heal you and grow your natural talents. Their gift of the crustacean is so beautiful and inspiring. I've been seeking a stronger or more open connection with them, and felt a doll would facilitate that amongst many other things, but I think that facilitation alone maybe most healing. It sounds like that connection was forged in many many ways. I have so many blisssful comments on all the details and beautiful work....but I'll only ask; Did I ever tell you what my name Wai'ala means?? It's my grandmothers Hawai'ian name and it translates to English as, fragrant flowing water; flower water, or commonly known as Flowing Water.'
I was blown away by this - I had no idea of the meaning of Wai'ala's Hawai'ian name or that this doll was intended to open the pathways of ancestral medicine. To receive this message was the just one part of the huge healing I received from Wai'ala and her ancestors. They have been walking with me this whole week and they are strong teachers of protocol!
I am happy to say that I am practicing more gratitude and discipline around my doll making practices and have even released my hold on certain items that I was informed were not for me. It has left me with a memory of ancient creatures who are no longer existing in the same way on our earth but are still here in other forms.
I think sometimes we wait to be perfect to make something beautiful. If we do this, perhaps we will never create anything at all, thinking that we aren't there yet or aren't worthy. I feel that would be very sad for all of us. In these changing times there is so much healing and assistance available to us, especially when we create with the intention of helping another.
We are all a little broken at times, we are flawed and a little ragged. We are all human and we are all in this together. Our shadow helps us to keep connected to compassion and empathy and when someone comes to us and they are facing their own dark night of the soul, we may know what is needed. Because we have have been through it ourselves, we can give them hope to keep moving forward.
Deep gratitude to Wai'ala and your ancestors. Thank you FireOrchid Flowing Water.
Recently I was given the gift of a Lyrebird feather. I was deeply honoured to receive it not only because the feathers of these totem birds of Sherbrooke Forest are so very rare and hard to find but also because they are medicine from these sonic record keepers, the ancestral sound recorders. Lyrebirds have a prehistoric memory recall of the sounds of animals that no longer exist on the earth. These ancient creatures have a lot to teach us about ancestral voices and once when I was listening to a lyrebird in the forest, I felt a line of energy or space open up through my sinuses and mouth – it felt like an activation of some kind and it was created by a frequency of sound made by this bird that is actually way too hard to describe in words. Sonic is the only word that comes close to it.
Lately I have been finding crow feathers on every walk in the forest. This is a photo of a GrandMother messenger that I met on Williamstown Beach many moons ago - one of the biggest teachings I've ever received. She said to me 'you are beholden to no-one' and began to show me visions of past lives where I'd taken sacred vows of silence, poverty, chastity and the healer's oath - beautiful & hon
Owls are magical creatures and there is something so gentle in the heart-shaped face of the Barn Owl. We were gifted feathers of the barn owl from a friend who lives in Queensland and they are the softest feathers I have ever held. When we offered The OwlKeeper's Daughter, we received this beautiful poem from Fiona Lewis, another Sherbrooke Forest inhabitant :
This week I received the finished drawing of our StagWoman medicine doll by Italian artist,