Join Margaret as she shares her thoughts whilst navigating an emotional and overwhelming time in her life. She expresses her gratitude for the many acts of kindness she has received and, as always for her, how her art is instrumental in helping her cope.
You can see Broughton Santuary here
And see details for Creative light at Broughton here
Sign up to the next Creative Light Festival here:
https://creative-light.co.uk/
Sign up to my newsletter to hear first about new retreats:
Follow me on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/margaretsoraya/
Join my online Creative Haven community :
https://creative-haven.newzenler.com
Join Margaret as she shares her thoughts whilst navigating an emotional and overwhelming time in her life. She expresses her gratitude for the many acts of kindness she has received and, as always for her, how her art is instrumental in helping her cope.
You can see Broughton Santuary here
And see details for Creative light at Broughton here
Sign up to the next Creative Light Festival here:
https://creative-light.co.uk/
Sign up to my newsletter to hear first about new retreats:
Follow me on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/margaretsoraya/
Join my online Creative Haven community :
https://creative-haven.newzenler.com
Welcome back to the podcast. This is probably one of the hardest podcasts I have ever recorded, but I was just waiting for the time that I actually wanted to do this, and I think part of the podcast, part of art, part of expression, is a desire to create, to share and to release emotions, and I know that personally, I do that through sharing with others, and it has been quite a journey to get here, but I've got to a place where I enjoy sharing my journey and I also realised that I'm helping a lot of people through doing this honestly and, I guess, authentically, even though I don't like that word, but in a real way, and that some of the things that I go through people resonate with and it helps to talk about them rather than have this facade of an amazing life that's often shown really on social media. Now I suppose and we tend to put this front up that we're all doing really well, we're all really happy and everything's going great in life, when the reality isn't isn't that way. So I am recording this from a Broughton sanctuary in Skipton and, if anybody follows me on Instagram, I managed to share a couple of days what's actually going on. It took me a week to come back from this place of just feeling frozen and not being able to, not knowing what to share, what was appropriate, what was private, what was something that I needed to talk about. So it just took me a little while and then I suddenly realised that it was actually helpful to me to talk about what's happening and to just keep things going, because there was a lot of people messaging me and not realising what was happening. So I flew into Manchester with about an hour to spare to get a flight from Stornoway. My van is currently stranded at Stornoway airport, so I think it's just going to live there for a while, but we're just dealing with one thing at a time.
Speaker 1:I'm down now in Manchester with my mum, who's in hospital at the moment. We're looking at getting her into a nursing home. I was going to try and bring her back to her house and care for myself, but we soon realised that that wasn't going to be physically possible, so we have a nice place for her to go to. This week, hopefully and I've been navigating a week that's been difficult in different levels, none of which actually have been to do with my mum's illness. She's very calm, very happy, and we're actually really enjoying the time together, and the difficulties have arisen around all the circumstances around that and coming here with not many clothes, not the right kit. So my friend Trisha has stepped in, like she's done so many times before, and she's been watching my house as well as sending me things down that I need.
Speaker 1:And just on that point, the amount of kindness and generosity that's been shown to me in this past week has been unbelievable. I want to thank every single one of you, those who know who you are, and also those people that don't. For example, loganair have agreed to let me fly home as and when, because I missed my flight home. I thought I was just coming for a short while. We were wandering on the streets of Manchester round the hospital recently, not knowing which way to go to get to the bus stop, to get the bus back to Chalton, and I was looking at my phone for directions and, out of the blue, two lovely young ladies stopped and said excuse me, we didn't even ask for help. Excuse me, you look a little bit lost, can we help? I was just blown away by that, because Manchester is so busy, it's so overwhelming and on the senses and you just assume that everybody is going to walk past you in a bigger city. But it's proven the opposite and this has happened on several occasions now and people have gone out of the way to help. And to my friends in Harris who own Boris Dale Tweed and have allowed me to stay in their flat that they just happened to have in Chalton for a short while while I was just getting myself together was just an act of generosity without a second thought. Now, as events took a little bit of a turn for the worse, the other day I reached out to Port of Sanctuary in Skipton, where we will be hosting the Creative Light Festival and next September, and just explained my situation and they, without a minute's thought, said just come here, there will be a place for you here for as long as you need.
Speaker 1:And so I've gone to this place of incredible luxury and I have a beautiful roll top bath, a huge bathroom with the most beautiful wallpaper and one of the most amazing bedrooms I've ever seen. And I'm just surrounded by this history and this beauty and suddenly back in nature where I just feel at ease. So just going out and walking through the grounds and through the forestry and just exploring and being around the sheep and the birds and I'm just having that space outside that hospital, manchester. Time has just been. It's just made all the difference to me. It's changed things around for me and it's just given me that resilience to go back to Manchester every day and to spend that time with my mum in a better state, better looked after state, than I was previously. One of the things that's really important is to just really highlight the fact that Broughton have called themselves Sanctuary and they're not just calling it sanctuary, they're actually embodying it. They're actually physically doing what they meant to do and to create this safe haven for people. They've just proved it over this week. Every single member of staff that I've encountered have been genuinely caring and it's almost like this kindness vibe has rubbed off throughout the whole place and whether people are working here or they own it and live here, it feels so in tune with everything that I believe in. It's just been an amazing place for me to be.
Speaker 1:I won't be staying for that much longer. I'll probably just stay for a few days and head off again, but hopefully I'll be sharing some videos from here as well, just so you can, you can see it and hopefully you can join me next year at the creative light. We have released it now, so there are some tickets left. Some of the rooms have sold out, but there are some places left, so I would just love it if you could join me and enjoy this, this whole feeling of overwhelming kindness and sharing and a deep understanding of what self-care is in terms of being in the right place, being around the right people and doing the things you need to.
Speaker 1:So, talking of that, I have been in my room in the evenings and I was just looking around at the wallpaper and wallpapers are incredible here, I have to say. So I was. I was actually lying in the bath the other day and I was looking at the wallpaper and this beautiful bird was on the wall and I thought, well, well, that's lovely. It's deep colours, there's the blues and greens, and I used to paint. I used to paint by copying when I was a child, so I thought I would like to paint that bird, I'd like to copy it because my mum would love that. She always used to really delight in all my paintings and I'm sure that if I painted that and showed her the next day, she would love it, and what followed was an evening just being totally engrossed in this drawing and this really deep way, and this is where mindfulness and art come together.
Speaker 1:And I find, because I'm still learning to paint, sometimes I find it a bit frustrating and I think that sometimes, when my emotions are a little bit too heightened, it can just be not the right thing for me, whereas if you are copying and I suppose this is where, like, those colouring books are very effective, where you're literally just painting, kind of by numbers, but what you're doing, you're still absorbing yourself in that paint and in that colour and in that moment. So this mindful act becomes really pronounced when you're doing this type of painting and drawing. So I guess it was a conscious decision just to do that, and I'll probably aim to do that every night because I've realised that that's very, very calming before bedtime. So I just wanted to share this podcast with you to let you know what that I'm up to, to encourage you, I suppose as well, to do what I'm doing and despite this, this awful time and most of the days are filled with just exhaustion, tiredness, logistics and travelling, but despite that, I've been trying to figure out how can I stay well and how can I keep going through these days and how do I express this? How do I express what I'm feeling right now? And it's just been a week of figuring that through and I've kind of let myself just feel that kind of naturally I think I was forcing it the beaning, thinking, oh, I'm going to do this every day and then that will make me feel better. But once I realise that actually I just need to to go with the flow a little bit and see what feels right. And the painting definitely feels right.
Speaker 1:I've been doing a little bit of free writing, which I don't actually do. The concept of morning pages where you free write that's from Julia Cameron, the artist's way, where you're basically just free writing anything that comes into your head without thinking, without it being shown to anybody. So you're just free writing all the thoughts and the whatever it is, whether it's distress, whether it's happiness. Well, what could be anything? What's happened in your day? And I've started doing that. I've never done it before because I've always said I don't really feel like I need to do that at this point in my life. Well, now, at this point in my life, I feel like I need it. So it's a way of getting things out and getting things on paper. So I've been doing a little bit of that every day and I've just been literally carrying a notebook in my bag wherever I go. So sometimes that's sitting on the bus, sometimes it's sitting in a cafe and I've just been getting that on paper.
Speaker 1:And one of the things that I was looking at I've been looking through my notebooks that I brought with me. I selected just a few notebooks to bring. One of them's a relative new one, and I've been reconsidering what I'm doing, what my message is and who I want to reach and what I want to talk about. One of the the pages. I'm going to read it to you because it's entitled core messages, and this was just like a kind of brain dump of what it is I want to share with people. So it doesn't always all make sense, but I'll just read it out and I've written live life in line with your values and passions, exactly how you want to life, untamed, connecting the threads, using your intuition and learning to listen.
Speaker 1:Quiet. Introversion often means you lose your voice, but regain your voice through creativity and refine yourself, finding wellness and a voice through creativity. Keep strong, powerful, be kind to yourself, but never stop and I think that part at the end was the bit that I really wanted to emphasise was never stop. I think sometimes we can switch that being kind to ourselves to coming to a halt, and I think it's important to keep going. And that means sometimes, yes, we need a break, and sometimes we need days to do nothing, but that doesn't mean to give up. So, when times are hard like this, to keep going and to keep thinking in these, just in these glimpses, glimpses of time that I have to keep writing, to do a little bit of painting as and when I feel strong enough to do it. Okay, and one final thought I was listening to the Creative Act by Rick Rubin. One of the benefits of being away is audible, so I finally got around to reading the book. I was really taken with this statement and I actually wrote it down, so I'm just going to read it to you.
Speaker 1:The best artists tend to be the ones with the most sensitive antennae to draw in the energy resonating at a particular moment. Many artists first develop sensitive antennae not to create but to protect themselves. They have to protect themselves because everything hurts more. They feel more deeply, and I think this all ties in with some of the studying and writing that I'd like about empires or empathetic people and HSB, a highly sensitive person. There's some more reading that I'd like to do on that subject, but I think it relates to a lot of artists and it certainly relates to me, and I can definitely pick out somebody who is a highly sensitive person. I can now I've learned to pretty much be able to read an introvert by looking at the rise, and also I can tell when somebody is empathetic in their nature and I've been really interested in how that affects the wellness side of somebody, but also their creative side. So I'm going to be doing a bit more thinking and researching on that one, because I'm no expert. So all I want to do a little bit more reading and talking to people and then I'll be sharing a little bit of that with you.
Speaker 1:And finally, another part of the creative act which comes full circle to where we are now. There's a part that's labelled look for clues and the ideas of ways that we can develop or further our ideas and how we can look for clues and tune into those threads and those things that keep coming up for us and how we can learn to do that. This is a learned thing. So the fact that we receive all these messages all the time, but we have to be open to them and we have to act as well. So, reading a book and finding a quote, watching a movie, noticing a line For me it's podcasts noticing what catches my attention, what makes me stop in my tracks, and I usually screenshot that point in the podcast and then go back to I'm sure there's a quicker way of doing it, but that's what I do at the moment.
Speaker 1:Then I record it, so I'll write it down. I find that if I don't do the recording part, I don't remember it because my mon to the next thing already. So it's like something that keeps coming up for you and it's only true because that's what you're tuning into, it's because that's what you're interested in, and these things, these suggestions, these ideas are coming at us in various ways. The first part is looking in the right places. That's spending your time doing the things that will allow you to find those clues. So if you sit watching football all day, that's not going to be conducive to thinking about art or introversion, although maybe it might suggest that your true love is sport or football. If you want to open your mind a little bit more, then just spend a little bit more time with books and with listening and being around the sort of people that are talking about the things that you're interested in, and the second part of that is actually paying attention to them. So these messages coming through all the time, it's really really easy to miss them, and one of the ways that you can do that is to consciously make that happen, consciously create that time, create that space and dole the noise of everything else that's going on around you.
Speaker 1:What I really liked in this creative art book was the phrase of allowing for the possibility. That chance is not always at play. I found myself at Broughton Hall. I have a lady who is in the room opposite me. She's staying one after lecturing at one of the retreats here. She's called Paula Petrie and I knocked on her door, introduced myself and a fascinating lady. She absolutely fascinating lady. So I'll hopefully be talking to her a little bit more. But she suggested that Audible. I said to her I'm writing at the moment. She said she's written a memoir. It's on Audible, so I can find a book on Audible.
Speaker 1:So I went to Audible. I realized I'd canceled my subscription to it, but I still had the creative act available to listen to. So I started listening to the creative act and that brought me around to talking about finding clues and listening to those messages that are coming through all the time and talking to you about it. So sometimes we get led in these ways. So thank you for listening today. I hope it helps some people. I hope there's some thoughts that you can pick up on there, and thank you again. Thank you for all your messages. Apologies if I haven't gone back to Audible or replied to comments on Instagram. I have read them all. I just have had limited time, but please do know that everything is received so gratefully. Next week we have a roundup of the creative light festival, which is Clip from various speakers. Then we will see. I'm going to be kind of myself, but I'm not going to stop. So we'll see where we go in December and January, and so for now, take care.