The quiet art of investing in yourself

I find life such a conundrum.

(I really just wanted to use that word because it makes me sound smart 🤣).

One moment life is full of such joy and promise that you want each second to last for an eternity, and then the next filled with stumbling blocks designed to make you fall flat on your face making you just want to lay there and stare at the ceiling. Life really is like four seasons in a day, and every season brings new weather to navigate, constantly on a new unchartered voyage setting sail without a compass or direction, and every new land is knee deep in some funky shit that we have to work out wether or not we eat it, swim in it, let it swallow us whole or use it to build an empire. Life never comes with a warning label or a signpost, much to my complete disgust.

So how do we get through the stormy weather and out into the open calm spaces?

When I started studying herbal medicine, I learnt the first step of the wise woman method of healing.

First, do nothing.

Be still. Listen to within. In conventional medicine that seems counterproductive. But it makes all the sense in the world. It takes trust. It takes having faith that what is needed for you may not be what you are asking for but that may be even better than what you ever dreamed could be. And in those quiet, still moments, you aren’t being selfish, or greedy, or letting people down.

You are investing in yourself.

Sometimes that investment is time; by stealing moments for things that bring you joy, like quiet walks on the beach, laughter with friends, time to create, or memories that make you warm on the cold days. Sometimes it is financially; by saving little bits of money for yourself in a personal bank account, just for the things that you need to make your dreams a reality. Sometimes that is for health; to make meals that you know are a necessary option, to move more, stretch more, practice stillness. Sometimes that is just putting your needs first and saying no instead of always, even begrudgingly, saying yes.

In the middle of building my shop for this website, when my mind was pulled in so many different directions, I decided to utilise this investment opportunity and get out a block of air dry clay that I had bought months ago and not used.

I made myself a little octopus paint palette. In the craziness of trying to get everything done, I had put aside my great need for play, to create for the sake of creating (I did actually make a video of it though….bonus points!) to make something and not have it perfect and even see the cracks in the clay and let them stay there and even show everyone said cracks because it was all about being in the still do nothing moment, and not about selling, not about perfecting.

I have added the YouTube video for you if you would like to see my cracks 😂 and have some air dry clay play time too 🥰

Even though I only just wrote a blog post about play a month ago, it seems that it really is about “we teach what we most need to learn”. So it’s back to yoga and healthy eating and taking more play time with clay for me! Because I am freakin worth the investment, and so, you awesome creation, are you! So……..how will you invest in you?

❤️ Caz

Blog Post Title One (“Are we finished yet?”)

Obi eagerly awaits the completion of the website that has been stealing cuddle time

What the freakin bleep bleep!!

I am actually doing it! I have a BLOG and a SHOP and a place for FREE THINGS and a place where people will feel cherished and I am so excited and grateful that this morning I had a little happy cry.

I doubted myself, if I could create a website with minimal techy knowledge and I have surprised myself completely! Haa! Just goes to show what you can create when you persist :)

My experience as I began this whole website build was ( I say WAS fully knowing that I still AM on this website build since I am currently writing this as I create it….thanks to my aeronautically designed ping pong brain…..) a mixture of excitement, overwhelm and trepidation.

When you’re doing something you’ve waited so long to attempt, how are you supposed to feel? There’s a big part of me that thinks “If I do this, then what?”

When I co-built my faerie shop ‘Faerie Nature’ many many moons ago in a little town in the south-west, all my heart went into it.

I would sit in that shop with my many ideas, listening to the twinkling water from the indoor pond and feeding my new actual baby that I gave birth to in the middle of creating it all, being amazed how something could go from a spark of a thought into an actual real thing.

I’d made a thing!! And it was so lovely!

We made a big papier mâche tree right in the middle of the shop with real cork screw willow branches shooting out of the sides that my business partner and my kids and my mum and I all made together, and billowy blue hand-dyed material stapled to the roof so it looked like the sky.

There was fairy lights and magic and it was very pantomimey but so purdy! and actually an amazing effort for our first shop and one of my best memories ever.

But you never really know how things are going to look until you actually try it.

This time I am making this purely for my own little creations. For my family. For my dreams.

This website is a shiny vessel of all the things I have wanted to create; held in my heart over years, dreamt about through seasons, and doodled over constantly in the many piles of half scrawled sketchbooks I keep everywhere so I always have something to put ideas into.

I have been spurred on by my now-grown loving amazing children of whimsy and their wonderful loving partners, my awesome ever-listening, always loving mum Judy, my sister Shaz (who I pinky promised last year that we would fully live our dreams and be each others inspiration), WOOHOOO Shaz!!; my ever creative bro Kimmy and travelling bro Jono who bought me this laptop; our little dog Obi who listens to everything I ramble on about even if she doesn’t understand human language and gives me endless love, cuddles and poopy breath; my courageous partner Nate who has chosen to be my partner even though I can get incredibly excited about bugs and I continuously ask questions… haahaa; and amazingly supportive, wonderfully encouraging non-judgemental friends who love me anyway because they are thankfully just as weird as I am……. aaaand the family of possums living in the trees above our house.

Thank you all for loving me, no matter how quirky or persistently annoying I can be when I’m asking “but does it look any good?” for the 8th time, you have helped me to create this dream in so many ways every day; helping me glimpse my potential, being the anxiety soothers, the advice givers, and helping to prop me up against the world when I myself can not.

I do not have words for how thankful I am that you are loving and believing in me as much as I do you.

I am so so very grateful and I would not be making this giant leap without your love and your endless inspiration.

You are all incredibly wonderous, loving beings.

AND to everyone else that has stuck through my acceptance speech (teehee) that I will meet here in Little Moonseed land……. THANK YOU.

For sprinkling your little flecks of joyous sparkle to my world and I so hope by reading these tiny weird brainseeds, that you may feel a little more loved, have a little giggle, and hopefully, encourage you to fulfil your dreams too. I am here to cheer you on!

And in response to my previous question, “If I do this, then what?”

Well…. I guess we’re all about to find out :)

And so with that……

I say a big YAAAYYYYYY!!

Love always, Caz x

The beauty of being dirty

There is something very special

when you first unfurl your fresh piece of thick black paper and take out the brightly coloured chalk pastels from their wooden box home and begin to draw.

It’s not like any other medium for me.

It is sensory. Tactile play.

My hands are covered in muddy colours, and usually the side of my face as well; my mind can go where it pleases and when it works, amazing things happen.

And that’s where these guys come from. The place within me that feels awkward, and overwhelmed, and a little shocked at how I end up in those bizarre situations in the first place.

But yet, beyond the startled eyes, is childlike wonder.

A being so full of love, and hope and adventure and wanting so much to understand everything.; while also, not wanting to understand anything at all and just let it all be whatever it wants to be.

These little pastely guys are a perfect example of the juxtaposition that dwells within so many of our beings, every day; in places we rarely show. So we keep them hidden in an effort to feel secure, be liked, keep everything safe.

This little guy is called “Fish Boy".”

Sometimes heads fall off.

Sometimes you don’t know how to stick them back on but you’re trying.

And that’s what counts.

I don’t really have a title for this one. I think she is probably me, wearing her socks on her head because she knows that if she doesn’t, one of them will end up getting lost somewhere. I made this when I started to like my quirks and so she’s finally made them her friend :)

• I wonder what kind of adults we would be, what kind of world we would have, if every adult could play like children. If instead of lunch break it would be play time. In the lunch room there would be bright walls, bean bags, party pies, fairy bread, a giant easel in the corner with paintbrushes too big for our tiny hands and crazy coloured pots full of finger paint. We’d be given extra time for lunch to just use our imagination or create a picture for show and tell after lunch.

• I wonder, what kind of people would run the world? What different things would we value? What kind of parents would our children have?

We think that once we are grown, we are the teachers but to me, we still have so much to learn about how to play and live fully in our space. How to hold our hands up and ask for cuddles. How to see our quirks, and like them, each and every one. They are all mixed up in a wonderland of emotional vibrancy. I don’t think anyone needs to give us a reason or a time of day to express that child within, that playful, messy, wonderous, adventurous child.

They dance around the mundane, waiting for their front and centre place in your world.

Just waiting for you to get your hands dirty :)

Seeds from the suitcase

I was raised on a farm.

902 acres of green rolling hillsides, bushland, cows, wildflowers, adventure, and the old fallen down homestead that my father had grown up in.

It was the perfect place for an imaginative, introverted child to grow up.

It was a the best playground ever…..well, you now, apart from the asbestos, rusty nails, broken glass, decaying medicines, paranormal experiences and stuff. Sometimes I wonder exactly how we survived our childhood intact!

My brother and I would jump off the hay stack and roof of the house and land with a commando roll because we needed skills to be the international spies we were training to become. Never once had a broken bone. Bizarre! Growing up on the farm gave me a never ending supply of escapist fuel that my brain could make stories from. What I remember the most is all the little things that got left behind in my dads homestead, as my dad would prefer to not have the past haunt him and wouldn’t let us collect anything from ‘the old place’, as interesting as it was to us at the time.

My Aunty Ethel, my dad’s eldest sister, liked to keep things, and many of those things were kept in a suitcase under her bed. I don’t know why this stuck out to me as a bit different, but I remember her and also my grandma, kept memories in suitcases. Perhaps it is what you did, back in the day. Utilise spaces and things the best you could. I have Aunty Ethels wooden scrabble game, filled with newspaper clippings about wildflowers. To me as a child this seemed an odd thing to keep treasure in suitcases, because after all, suitcases were for travelling and for collecting memories, not really for storing them in. After my Aunty Ethel passed away, I opened her suitcase, filled with newspaper clippings, old letters from the war, and all sorts of bits and pieces and it made me wonder if she would just take that old suitcase out and ponder through everything every now and then or did she just shove it under her bed and forget about it all?

Like little seeds that would never see the light again.

So I figured that when I built this whole website, what I wanted was to bring the seeds I have within me that have been lying there in the darkness, and I would nurture them and see what weird and wonderful new species of plant I could grow :). Would it be an inedible puffy fly trap that would shoot out farts, or would it be something really colourful and bold and eclectically wonderous? So despite what urban dictionary would tell you what a suitcase is….I know you’re going to look that up now and I have totally ruined how magical this all sounded but in my head it still sounds magical and so I am going to keep it anyway……..

…… loses train of thought………

*elevator music*

…….

So despite what urban dictionary would tell you what a suitcase is, this is the perfect title for my newsletter. It is all those things I have wished I could grow in the world, from the core of my being, to reach you and then hopefully share a little inspiration to find your seed that you hopefully plant in the world until there is a whole forest of weird unidentified species of effervescent brilliance.

That’s how a forest grows.

It just throws out as many seeds as it can and sometimes birds eat them and they get pooped out and sometimes they find their way on the water, on the wind. Sometimes you just have to throw the seeds out there and let them land where they may. Into a sculpture, a podcast, a letter to a stranger left on the park bench, or the ping pong brain seeds thrown into an oddly formed blog.

One of those seeds is exactly what you have just been reading :)