Two-thirds Black Irish. One-eighth Portuguese. Math-challenged Democrat.

Gemini Sun. Capricorn Moon. College graduate.

Mother. Menopausal. Divorced.

Five-feet-five-inches tall, down from 5’6” (and a half). Unequal leg length. Mildly arthritic coccyx. Evidence of slowly creping knees.

Dress size 8, formerly size 6. Shoe size 8, up from 7 ½.

Brunette with graying roots and sudden marionette lines.

Klutz. Closet dancer. Bird lover.

Procrastinator. Artistic. Determined.

Suffers from bouts of PTSD. Chronic TMJ. Lactose-sensitive. Left-brain dominant.

Recovering self-hater. Sometimes author with scopophobic tendencies.

Perfectionist. Wannabe slob.  Introvert with lapses of extroversion.

Highly Sensitive Person. Myers-Briggs INFJ. Enneagram Type 4.

Anxious. Intuitive. Compassionate. Impatient. Laughs easily. Cries easily.

Occasional compulsive shopper. Shutterbug.

May have ADHD.

A legacy system is an old method, technology, computer system, or application program, “of, relating to, or being a previous or outdated computer system,” yet still in use. — Wikipedia

In my late twenties, I dreamed I was sitting in a courtroom in front of a judge. No jury was present. I had been falsely accused of committing a vicious murder. Other artists were there awaiting trial, presumably for the same crime. The predominant feelings in the dream were a profound shame and sense of injustice and powerlessness.

Thirty years later, this nighttime dream is still one of the most memorable of my life. And the more present I become and allow my intuition to guide me, the louder the early strategies and patterns of survival I’ve come to associate with that dream, become.

Every time I sit down to write, I’m aware of some degree of shame and fear inside of me.

As you can imagine, it’s difficult to fully let go and allow the “creative juices to flow.”

I don’t know where this fear and shame come from, only that they manifest as an internal bully whose “job” is to protect me from being falsely accused, ostracized, or punished.

In trying to understand the link between creativity and vigilance, shame, fear of visibility, and early trauma — naturally, I turned to Dr. Google:

Several cortical brain regions are associated with attention and vigilance, including the prefrontal cortex (PFC). Brain activation increases during vigilance tasks with greater activation in the right hemisphere.

Cognitive neuroscience strongly suggests that the prefrontal cortex plays a crucial role in the cognitive functions necessary for creative thinking.

Hmm….

Obviously well out of my league, I asked expert neuropsychologist, Allison Broennimann, Ph.D.

The link is spontaneity, Allison says.

“When early trauma is triggered by a spontaneous image or memory, the PFC (prefrontal cortex) is actually going to be the last to know. If you’re about to experience danger, your brain/body will register it, and slam on the brakes…

… Creativity is both liberating and terrifying because “we need to allow for spontaneity and imaginal/bottom-up thinking (“think” with our senses), and top-down thinking, which relies on language and cognition.”

The desire, and I’d argue the need for creative self-expression whether or not we consider ourselves “artists” will not be silenced. If we silence it to avoid shame and fear, all sort of “dis-ease” follows. Anxiety, depression, digestive issues, lower back pain, chronic stress… you name it.

Allison describes it this way: “If we don’t unlock our senses and build a shameless relationship with our spontaneity of thought and visual imagination, we struggle.”

A shameless relationship amounts to patiently, through imagination and self-compassion — installing new software in place of legacy software stuck in a loop of trauma and protection.

It starts with practicing the “Three A’s,” a simple but not easy, living mantra: Awareness, Acceptance, and (surrendered) Action.

I don’t know why I write exactly.  It has something to do with need and possibly desire, I suppose. It’s not something I “chose” yet every day, I have to choose to sit down and write.

Plenty of days, I would rather wash my kitchen floor and organize my junk drawers. Fortunately, there are other days when resistance takes a back seat and I get lost in the play of making up worlds and people that don’t exist.

Regardless of how I feel about writing, my writing space in front of a window with a view, doesn’t fluctuate. It is predictable and constant. This container of simple utility and to me anyway, beauty, consists of the following:

• One round wooden table placed in front of a window with a view, weighing in at two hundred pounds with a removal steel pedestal. I purchased it for $35 from a pretty college student of cultural anthropology — wearing no makeup, a gypsy sundress, and Birkenstocks.
• Two solid wood, walnut-stained chairs in the style of my fifth-grade teacher’s desk chair, discovered at a thrift store moving locations. $8 each.
• Two anemic brown chair cushions from Bed, Bath & Beyond at $16 a piece.
• One 2015 MacBook Air priced for obsolescence.
• Paper notepad + pen to track ideas for characters, scenes, structure, etc.
• One brushed black ceramic vase containing fresh flowers, usually mums that give the most bloom for the buck
• One dead (of natural causes, promise) Palo Verde Beetle, discovered on my front porch.
• One smooth black stone (oval) kicked loose from a landscape border and onto the sidewalk.
• One slightly bent gingerbread man ornament with a torn gold string that caught my eye on a morning walk.
• One sun-dried pomegranate featuring a heart-shaped hole and two remaining, nearly petrified seeds, which I found in an alley.

There’s a standard metaphor that writing a novel is like driving down a road on a foggy night with one working headlight. You can see what’s immediately in front of you and no farther.

My writing space provides something of a second headlight… to help get me if not out of the fog, then to the next word, sentence, and scene.

During meditations these days, a triangle often appears in my mind’s eye. I also see it sometimes when I look out the living room window: A die-cut of lush, green trees.

Not long ago, I saw circles in meditation and in nature… in the shape of sunlight coming through the branches, a pond’s ripple, a stone.

I painted these circles with a feeling of great joy. I can’t tell you why I felt compelled to let them reveal themselves on canvas; I hadn’t picked up a paint brush since I was a wee one.

The time of circles was one when I was seeking that elusive “spiritual wholeness,” although I would not have expressed it as such, back then.

In trying to understand this triangle, I consider the obvious symbols:

The Holy Trinity of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost in Christianity.

The quintessential love triangle of perpetually suffering or perhaps fulfilled, souls.

And, the great pyramids.

Mfuniselwa Bhengu  writes: “The pyramid always symbolises bigger consciousness of strength and energy… at the spiritual level [it’s] a symbol for the integration of self-and soul…”

Sometimes my triangle contains an eye, like the Eye of Providence on the American dollar bill that conjures up Illuminati conspiracy theories. Another interpretation is that an eye in a triangle represents a Divine, or God-like knowledge.

More often though, this triangle of mine appears as an entry point to a road that descends into a vortex. It’s tempting to associate the visual “path” with the wormholes that supposedly carry the traveler out of 3D time and space and into another universe.

I think also of Eckhart Tolle’s spiritual awakening, which he describes in The Power of Now.  In the depths of excruciating emotional pain late one night, a voice told him, “resist nothing.” He heeded the call and when he woke the next morning, he was completely free of all the emotional pain and mental chatter that had kept him in bondage all of his life.

For me, at least now, the triangle is a simply an archetypal shape of consciousness — like the circle depicted in the ubiquitous mandala.

I recognize this triangle as a wishful symbol of perfect unity… a non-dual gift relieving the mind of its constant push-pull between this and that, good and bad, now and never. It is a meeting place where opposites come together to form everything and nothing.

I will no longer worry that I’m broken, flawed, or helpless.

I will no longer blame myself for others’ misdeeds or illness.

I will no longer let shame dictate my thoughts and choices.

I will no longer judge myself for changing my mind when it’s what’s best for my body.

I will tend to the child inside me who is innocent, loving, curious, and creative.

I will no longer outsource her care.

I will witness her without pushing her away and keep her safe at all times, under all conditions.

I will encourage her to express herself and when she’s afraid, I will reassure her that I will not criticize, reject, or abandon her.

I will not ignore her out of fear that she’s too needy or will prevent me from doing my ego’s bidding.

I will keep her close, take care of my body and manage my emotions — asking God for  clarity and strength when I’m confused or afraid.

I will put courage and honesty before self-image.

I will choose appreciation and joy over avarice and fear.

I will trust my intuition and practice my faith in the inherent goodness of Life.