YOU ARE SO COURAGEOUS!: Seeking the meaning of this exclamation

TELLING MY "UNGRATITUDE" STORY.  Here I am taking out all those negative remarks out of my body spirit during our premier performance of the Soulprint Players on Sunday, November 16th, 2014, at the Mask Center in Little Five Points Community Center, Atlanta, Georgia. The theme was gratitude in its entire spectrum, including the opposite. (all photos by Dean Hesse)

"YOU ARE SO COURAGEOUS!" a fellow InterPlayer proclaimed to me after our first performance a week ago here in Atlanta. We had just finished our debut as the newly minted Soulprint Players improvising on the topics our audience had given us related to the theme of gratitude. 

Hallelujah for COURAGE! But what does it mean? What exactly is COURAGE?

I thanked my fellow InterPlayer for his remark and then was drawn away by the celebratory hugs and remarks of other InterPlay performers. But his remark nagged at me, harkening me back to the many times viewers of my artwork at an exhibit had exhorted the same remark:

YOU ARE SO COURAGEOUS!

GESTURE CHOIR ON "GROWING OLD".  Here I am (second from the left) supporting Atlanta InterPlayer Gerry Cook (far right) as he tells his story about "growing old." It felt tremendously freeing to let my body wisdom imitate his movements. I practiced "easy focus" and followed Gerry. He succeeded in telling his entire story through movement without words. How interesting! How courageous!

Part of my discomfort at this proclamation emitted by those who SEE me and my work is that their remark about my courage does not feel complimentary. No. 

The phrase, "YOU ARE SO COURAGEOUS!" exists in another category of social discourse, something other than a gift of praise or an acknowledgment of an accomplishment. Their remark, instead, appears to be a hidden REVELATION about themselves. But what is that revelation? 

Let's try some meanings on:

I would never paint or exhibit an image that is so raw.
I would not be open to expressing such personal content in a painting or performance.
I would not show pain or confusion to the public in an art form.
Exhibiting one's emotional life in performance unskillfully would be embarrassing to me.
I believe I would not present myself to the public unless my dance, song, art was perfect.

SHAPE AND STILLNESS ON BEHALF OF LAUGHTER. Imagine your fellow performers deciding to laugh uncontrollably while creating shape and stillness on behalf of laughter. "What should I do," I asked myself, struggling with what my body spirit wanted to do and how I wanted to follow my fellow Soulprint Players in what they were doing. I hit the ground laughing...ecstatically following!

Well, with all the courage I could muster, I returned to the InterPlayer who had pronounced me "SO COURAGEOUS" and asked him what he meant by this exclamation. That's a first for me. Previously in other creative arenas, I had somehow felt ashamed for not eliciting more noteworthy praise around the outcome of my creative efforts.

We had a brief but meaningful exchange. He told me that he admired me for being authentic in a way that he strives to be. He felt that I know who I am and that I state that knowledge honestly and unafraid. And, yes, his remark, YOU ARE SO COURAGEOUS seemed to be more about him than it was about me. 

Or, it just might be, YOU ARE SO COURAGEOUS is a statement about us both in relation to one another. After all, we exist in a world of "I am's" and "You are's."  A lot more could be said on this topic!

I FORGOT TO HAVE BABIES.  Telling a side by side story about gratitude for "babies" with two other women who are mothers. "I forgot to have babies," my story began. I was able to tell my authentic story about NOT having babies and the sadness it brings me some times. How cathartic! How authentic? How courageous?

These days the word "authenticity" is getting a bad rap for being a buzz word and resulting in anything but what the word means (see a previous blog that I wrote about authenticity). For now, I will say YES. I AM COURAGEOUS. I am authentic. THANK YOU! InterPlay is providing another way for me to experience and expand this courage.

I hope I can support all of you pilgirmins you in your own courageous journeys towards authenticity. Hallellujah!

That's Coffee with Hallelujah! SOUL BLOG with me about your understanding of YOU ARE SO COURAGEOUS! I want to know! Please share!

Other Hallelujah Your Truth Blogs about Courage

Couraging: Speaking Heart

I Speak Heart

Hallelujah Truth Blogs about Authenticity
The Authenticity of Creating Life with the Joyful Ease of a Cat Napping

The Ongoing Journey to the Authentic Self

Blasting off to your own truthiness

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY: BLASTING OFF TO YOUR OWN TRUTHINESS!

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY 2012 BLAST OFF.  Celebrate your independence from oppressive self-criticism. Let each July Fourth be a renewal of your commitment to be your AUTHENTIC SELF. National patriotism can only become with self-patriotism! I love myself first, then my family and community, and then my nation. A healthy nation is made up of healthy citizens! (This art is by me, Hallelujah Truth. I made it to honor and remember my "blast off" to authenticity in July 2009)

Hallelujah PILGRIMS! Happy Independence Day! In addition to celebrating the United States declaration of independence from an oppressive ruler, let's happily celebrate our liberation from those psychological saboteurs that prevent us from expressing the TRUTH OF OUR HEARTS!

THE GASP OF SELF AUTHENTICITY!

DECLARE YOUR TRUTH! Let each gasp that you utter tonight while watching fireworks be a declaration of your SELF APPRECIATION! Think these thoughts with each burst of red, white, and blue:


I AM AMAZING!


HOW WONDERFUL TO BE ME!

EWWWWWWWW....AHHHHHHHHH

IN MY FULL ME-NESS, I GIVE TO MY FAMILY, COMMUNITY, and COUNTRY!


I AM HONORED.


I AM RESPECTED.


HALLELUJAH!


HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY 2012!

LISTENING TO ONESELF. In the middle of all the noise is your OWN VOICE! Enlarge your capacity to hear what you are saying. CELEBRATE your VOICE!

JOYFULLY CREATING WITH THE EASE OF A CAT NAPPING: THE RESULT OF CREATIVITY COACHING

What is creativity coaching? Imagine the Dementers in Harry Potter. Dark cloaked figures arrive flying from the sky’s horizon, materializing out of another dimension, something like the Wicked Witch of the West but without a broomstick.  The atmosphere becomes embroiled with a sad heaviness as they hover over their human targets. Then ALL THAT IS PRECIOUS in LIFE is SUCKED OUT of the frail mortals who are left empty human shells incapable of experiencing joy or thought evermore.

Now IMAGINE the opposite—and you have CREATIVITY COACHING. My creativity coach, Lesly Fredman, is more like Peter Pan’s Tinker Bell with the ferocious intuition and intellect of Lily Tomlin, a whale and Leonard Cohen. Often appearing around Metro Atlanta as a SUNFLOWER in the “Dancing Flowers for Peace,” my CREATIVITY COACH follows the THRILLING LIFE FORCE, much in the same way that the sunflower moves synchronously with the sun’s position throughout the day.

(Lesly posing with old work of mine at a Christmas "Hot Grog" sale at her house in 2008. Before creativity coaching, I only worked on wood or found materials from the street. I used only acrylic and latex paints--generally gathered from the curb on garbage day. Since then, I have experimented with a variety of other media, finding my intense love for watercolor pencils shown in my work here on this blog.)

Okay, what would a mortal do with a CREATIVITY COACH? Let’s start with a simple act of imagination. CREATE a list of ALL that you HUNGER to DO to BE to EXPERIENCE to REALIZE—This is the list of YOUR ESSENCE (the kind that the Harry Potter Dementers want to suck out of you and that often remains IN you like an unlit fire!). With the assistance of the CREATIVITY COACH, you might do any of the following imaginative acts:

 1) DANCE each item on your DREAM list, experiencing and savoring each DREAM, bringing it into your body’s muscles, bones, and breath.

 2) PRETEND you are someone else interviewing the REALIZED YOU and finding out the ways you BECAME the DREAM YOU.

 3) PAINT (especially if you are a visual artist like me) aspects of what BEING in this NEW REALITY looks like.

 4) WRITE an “Exquisite Corpse” poem, teasing out fluid verbal images of YOUNESS.

(You have read earlier blogs about the death of my friend, artist colleague, and fellow pilgrim Sally Wylde. In the days following her death, I honored her in my daily creative meditations. I allowed her to be present in the unknown with DEATH. I trusted that together we would find a new way of being in DEATH.)

(The days following Sally's death, I drew each morning, holding the thought of her pilgrimage in the unknown terrain of death and without flesh. I was happy when I began envisioning her physical body returning to the earth.)

 Well, you get the idea. The CREATIVE ACTIVITIES are as INFINITE as the IMAGINATION. Live in the PRESENT and the thoughts and actions that you have and do become NEW WAYS of BEING. My Creativity Coach calls her business “PRESENCE.” We start a session by my answering the question, “What is going on with you right now?” Asked calmly, this question elicits a sweet hushness. We both lean into me to listen to my heart beat, my breath, to determine who I am now….

(We are readying for Sally's memorial service here in Decatur. Her death is with me. Mourning takes time. Sally will be a part of me in the many transformations of her PILGRIMAGE. This painting with death hovering around me is unfinished.)

This method of BEING PRESENT heals and rejuvenates. We, the CREATIVITY COACH and I, begin with WHO I AM--now. No past narratives and no whining about past periods of inactivity. We “light” the fire of Hallelujah. Even thoughLesly is sitting across the table from me, our meeting has the heightened feeling of ME being a performer on a theatrical stage. Didn’t Shakespeare write that all the world is a stage and we are all actors upon it? How FUN to get to TRY NEW WAYS OF BEING ON like a character in a play! Lesly gently directs ME with the skill of an experienced theater director. In fact, Lesly seems to me a most unique CREATIVITY COACH, having managed and been the artistic director of Theatre on the Prowl for almost 25 years.

 After working with Lesly for three years, I am here to tell you that our IMAGINATIONS CREATE REALITY. In our creative work together, I have started my own business, RuthTruth Art; created a new persona—Hallelujah; generated a blog, “Coffee with Hallelujah,” which integrates my creative process with my visual art; signed the lease for a studio at Sycamore Gallery to do collaborative work with my husband, Tony Martin, a paleontologist; given birth to the “Art Factory,” with Robey Tapp and Sally Wylde (who envisioned this art collective) and together completed a year’s art program with adolescent teenage refugees at Global Village School in Decatur. Believe me, there is much more that our creativity coaching has given birth to.  That is the subject of future blogs!

My journey has been both light and dark, buoyant and treacherous--I have been willing to open all of these doors because I am dedicated to being present to my AUTHENTIC SELF, and because of Lesly (and my Chigoogamoo)--I have not been alone!

 What is CREATIVITY COACHING? For me, it is doing my LIFE’S WORK with the JOYFUL EASE of a cat napping! I am happily experiencing every inch of my BEING! Thank you Lesly Fredman, CREATIVITY COACH EXTRAORDINAIRE!

 Hallelujah wants to hear from YOU, FELLOW PILGRIMS! Tell her about your AUTHENTIC SELF. Soul blog with Hallelujah!