Hi, friends! I've been working on this project for a few months (sporadically) and it's important to me that I follow through on building it out so I'm digging in. First and foremost, this is a great big work in progress. My intention is to slowly move over some of my existing projects and use this space to work on them and watch them grow over time. It's a process and it's one I'm very grateful to be doing. This is a place to leave breadcrumbs, plant seeds, and watch my ideas grow; that's the idea of a digital garden and I'm excited to finally be working on mine. For now, I'm just sharing this site with friends & family; I'm still learning and figuring out what I want the structure to look like. This is also pretty scary for me. I have trauma around sharing my work and have been working to overcome that so I could get back to doing the thing that lights me up. So be kind, please. If you'd like to cheer me on and support me, that's great. If you'd rather not be involved, that's ok too! I'm just here doing my thing and learning as I go. Just like me, this project is several things in one; after my cancer scare, surgery, and spending half of the year contemplating my mortality, I've been obsessed with being as efficient and intentional as possible with the time I have left. I see things differently now and my priorities have shifted accordingly. So here are *some* of the things that I am setting out to do here: This is me documenting my learning and sharing my knowledge. This is also a roadmap back to myself. It’s a collection of prompts, practices, and principles that have helped me to survive, heal, and grow over the last year and a half. This is both a labor of love for me and an exercise in following through. I also consider this a form of community service; it is one of my contributions to my many communities. I know that while every story is different, we’re bound to have some similar themes. And I know that something here could be of value to you (whether it’s entertainment value or otherwise will vary depending on the person and the piece). I know this because I have learned so much from my friends, family, and community members - both in person and online -that has helped me on my journey. I'm so very grateful for the wisdom they've shared and the strength and vulnerability that they modeled for me in doing so. I’m sharing this space with the people I love. With family, friends, and community members; I’m sharing this space with you because if even one thing here helps you on your journey - whether that's making you smile or laugh or look at the world and the people that you love a bit differently - then I have done my work. My goals here: - continuing to heal as an artist through exposure therapy (sharing my writing with a small group of people before I move on to sharing it with the rest of the world) - documenting my learning and creating a resource for myself and others - sharing the things that helped me on my healing journey so they can (hopefully) help someone else - organizing my projects and watching my digital garden grow 🌱🌿🍀 - having a space to info dump about my special interests so I'm not talking everyone's ear off about neuroscience and psychology and crystals and my hEaLinG jOurNey. Fun fact: I just realized THIS YEAR, at 41 years of age, that I talk too much and that I'm not as good at peopling as I previously believed. It was a mortifying realization to come to. Imagine spending your whole life trying so hard to be "normal," masking the parts of yourself that make you YOU, and still failing miserably. After realizing that about myself I spent weeks overcorrecting; isolating and barely speaking at all until I felt like I was safe to be around my friends. I shamed myself and hurt myself and set out to bully myself into doing better. I got a tattoo that stays in my peripheral vision to remind myself to pause and listen and that I can sustain the discomfort that growth requires (I've been doing it for almost two years now!) I have spent years performing some watered down version of myself to be "good enough" for people who weren't even my people. Yikes. We don't do that anymore. Needless to say, the whole thing was a mindfuck and a minefield of trauma, shitty coping mechanisms, and rapid fire lessons from the universe. I'm on the other side of it now and a little worse for wear but sporting a better understanding of myself and a determination to not spend another minute pretending to be something that I'm not. (I've since learned that change is easier when it's coming from a place of love and I'm working on being kinder to myself there) ![[creed-brattons-blog-actually-exists-you-wont-believe-it-v0-lfl0a5jrc82d1 2.webp]]