When the messages of childhood all of a sudden make sense.

I grew up in the most loving, beautiful home. One where we enjoyed being together. And still do. My niece told her friends that our family could be locked in a room with a deck of cards and have the best time.

This is true. 

My Dad was an entrepreneur at heart. Although he worked at the same company from his return from Vietnam until the day he retired, he was always creating - art, a business idea, a way to help those in need. Always creating.

“I grew all of these tomatoes. You two should set up a farm stand.” My brother and I would run out of the house to go play before he could hand us a hammer and nail to make a sign and a tomato to sell. Even today, when driving by a little roadside farm stand, I laugh and think of Dad.

Projects, ideas, and brainstorms were always met with more ideas and brainstorming. His mind was always creating. I can see this part of my Dad in both myself and my brother. It makes me smile.

And, it makes me cry. Not because he is gone, I do miss him, but because I wear myself out creating. I rarely finish much of anything. It is all quite exhausting. I know, I know…if you know me or have worked with me, you are shaking your head in disagreement. Here’s the thing: I hide most of what I create. It is in journals and folders on my computer, hidden deeper in more folders.

And, I beat myself up for it. For not being consistent in my communication. For not making sense. For saying the wrong thing. For all of it.

And all of this has manifested in a way where I cannot get out of my own way. I have the hardest time getting my ideas and thoughts out into the world. 

And my wonderful parents would be sad for how I’ve internalized the message to “keep creating” into a measure of self-worth: keep creating = you are enough. And, because I haven’t matched the visible output - because much of my making is quiet and private - I judge myself for not doing enough. For not being enough.

Yet, here I sit as a teacher creating ideas and pathways for others.

This duality of inner and outer worlds is so wild and interesting. I am learning to hold both: the hidden artist and the public teacher. The one who tends notebooks and the one who tends rooms full of people. The healing is in the awareness of it all. 

I know I am enough. 

I know the messages that I interpreted and the lens that I used was vastly different than the intent of the message delivered. I know my parents see me as enough and love me deeply. I have never doubted this. Yet, I let the message fester in a way that created such tension within. Ew.

The messages of this eclipse season have been awakening. They have not been easy to hear, yet I have heard them. They have asked me to see love in a more expansive way, to release the interpretation so that it does not fester as before. They ask me to consider what finishing means. They are not asking for perfection. They are asking for presence. For the small acts of completion that honor the impulse to create while also honoring the rest that allows creativity to continue.

So, I will start small. I will make one thing public. It may be imperfect. But it will be honest. I will offer it as a doorway rather than a destination. An invitation for myself and others to step through, to learn, to practice being seen imperfect and still whole.

And, when I falter, I will remember Dad’s smile as he handed us a tomato and a hammer. There is joy in the making more than the boast of finishing. The completion is the harvest. And there is also the tending: the daily watering, the awkward pruning, the watching and waiting for the bloom. There is a generosity in showing up, and there is liberation in letting go of what no longer serves. 

The eclipse asks for surrender and for brave beginnings. I choose both: to finish what I can, to be in the presence of the energy that I am holding, and to love what I have started and what I’m still becoming.

This was pinned above my Dad’s desk and reminds me of his creating ways. I cherish it.