Me painting easter eggs with my autistic nephew, Harry, and my daughter, Helen.

“What’s wrong with her?” I over hear someone ask about a child who seems to have autism. This scenario plays itself out over and over again around the globe. Someone in a wheelchair, someone who is blind, deaf, short, tall, with cerebal palsy, severe injuries gets asked this question. This leads me to ask “What is wrong with us?” How do we have this global reaction to difference? Maybe nothing is wrong with these people, maybe, they just wear there differences in a more obvious way than most. If everyone in the world were the same, the world would stop. Think about it. If we lived in a world where everyone were like me, for example, we’d have a whole bunch of people who love to talk about healing, do lots of painting, write poetry, spend time with their family, yes, that’s all good, but who would invent and build the computer I am typing on, or the lights that I am using, or grow the food I eat, or make the car I drive? So, diversity is a gift to us all. We may not clearly see the purpose of each other’s differences, but they are there.

We can reach even further on this theme and look more closely at how we speak about even our “normal” friends. (”The only normal people are the ones you don’t know very well”-Joe Ancis). How often does conversation about a mutual friend or family member revolve around how you or others think they should change? Or how often are we “hurt” because someone didn’t act how we would have or we wanted to? I have a friend who never called me back when I called her. For years I got so frustrated by her behaviour. I wanted her to call me back within a day or two, just like I would if I were her. Well, I am not her! So, I reflected on that and decided that if I want to be her friend, I have to accept her and love her for the way she is, not try to change her. It was such a great relief for me to no longer be victimized by what she was “doing to me”. I knew it was a weak spot for her and not personal. So, I accepted that difference between us.

So, let’s try to ask the question “What’s right with that person?” more often. Imagine the energy shift in that question. Next time you are thinking of or talking about a friend or loved one. Try coming up with what you love about them. How uplifting would that be? What if that became the global question?-Amy Roemer 7-30-10

Sound familiar? There is so much to do in this amazing world we live in and most of us are fortunate enough to have access to an abundance of ways to fill our time! Bored? Whose bored anymore with facebook, twitter, tivo, dvr, ondemand, etc…! Instead, I think we are overwhelmed! How do we find balance when there is so much to experience? One tool that I am working with is expanding time. No, I’m not casting some sort of spell, though I do have witch ancestors! I am creating spaces to do what I want and need to do. My life coach, Fran Asaro (www.thriveanyway.com), suggests to get your to do list out of your head and onto paper, or screen, file, whatever works for you. Even though I am a list girl, I didn’t realize how much I had been keeping up in my head! Today, I divided my to-do list into 4 categories, then used some of Helen’s markers to mark which tasks needed to be done first-yellow! Second-pink! Third-green! Then I marked this week as my yellow week, next week pink, and the following week green! Now it all looks so much more doable that I can even see open time in there! Look, I’m getting this done now that I put it on my list, in yellow!

What I also am getting into the habit of doing, is believing there is time to do everything on a daily basis. When I wake up, my affirmation is “I have all the time I need to get what I need to get done today.” It’s amazing how the spaces suggest themselves! Our apartment was cleaner this weekend, than it has been all month, while my husband was away and I had 24/7 Mommy duty. Helen helped me clean, had moments where she drew pictures or played by herself and wow, I was getting so much done during a time I thought things would be piling up!

That’s not to say that accomplishing everything has to be seen as the best thing one can do. Sometimes, relaxing into the attitude that you did enough, is what is needed. Animals are great at showing us that. Our cats nap most of the day, eat, and play. I think they are amazing, loving beings! I’m not judging them for what they did or didn’t do today. So, we can relax our need for an accomplishment fix and sometimes enjoy just being. There’s no better way to do that than to get out into nature, where we are away from our stuff and just placed into the present.

So, make a list, check it twice ( with colorful markers, if you so choose!) look for the surprising open spaces in your day and get out into a peaceful place once in a while!  -Amy Roemer May 17, 2010

Looking for an amazing Life Coach? Check out Fran’s website www.thriveanyway.com

Jill Augustine Carter was born in Chicago and as of this year has spent the other half of her life in Los Angeles, CA. Teen model, actor, fine art consultant, ghost-writer, Realtor, and insurance agent, her most exciting vocation so far has been her recent work with Peace Warrior Brigitte Secard, author of SoulFire-The Birth of Wild Aliveness (http//:generationinstantgratification.com). She is also working on a project near and dear to her heart, CampaignforCivilDriving.org (currently under contruction) as well writing her new blog : www.Channel941blog.blogspot.com. She is honored to have been asked by Amy to contribute to “Life Art Healing”.

Sing Your Song

Lately, I have taken to watching Channel 941 on Time-Warner cable. Actually, ‘listening to’, is more accurate, as it is a music station; “Light Classical”, to be exact. I like the fact that the music is continuous; never interrupted by a spoken word. Once in a while, if I walk past the television in the living room, a fact about the composer or musician currently playing will be at the top of the screen. Here’s an example: “Chopin finally succumbed to tuberculosis while living in Paris. He was only 39 years old.”

There are several things about Chopin that I find particularly interesting. Not the least of which being, I used to detest his music. I didn’t get it. It struck me as treacle and overly romanticized. I hated the flourishes and aimless meandering all of his pieces seemed to include; so fussy compared to my favorite classical composer, J.S. Bach. Then, a funny thing happened on the way to the forum… On December 5^th, 2008, nineteen days after turning 49, I was diagnosed with stage 2 colon cancer. Within days, I was relieved of about 1/3^rd of my colon. It was a sudden and shocking turn of events.

And one of the greatest gifts I have ever received.

My favorite line of that New Year was that I was “new and improved and 1/3^rd less full of shit!” I thought I was making light, but the reality is, somewhere inside myself, I knew those words were actually true. What before may have seemed important became trivial; what before had been important became imperative.

Like singing my song.

What IS my song? I have spent a lifetime humming various melodies in search of it. I have hung in there with some of the tunes for years and years, only to decide that the chorus has become monotonous or that the through-line is no longer pleasing to my ear. My ear… Wait. Let’s get specific: MY SOUL and what it wants, what it hears and what it hungers to hear, reveals itself more and more to me with each passing day. It is a mandate I am joyfully learning to fulfill.

Chopin is delicious to me now.

His melodic meandering is like the path of life itself. The sweet, aching, melancholia, balanced by occasional outbursts of exquisite trills can be seen as a musical narrative of the human heart. Thank God Chopin sang his song before he died. And thank God I lived long enough to appreciate it.

So it is time to sing. Even if my song is not perfect. Or it changes. Or it even grates, occasionally. The voice may wobble or occasionally falter, but if sung with conviction, the song cannot help but be beautiful. Regardless, it is my turn now. No time to waste.

Day #3 revealed the answer. Here I was, being sick. How do we Americans do sick? We hunker down, when possible, and watch tv and lay there until we are either needed or feel so disgusting that we actually get up and take a shower, or we go through the motions of our daily lives and down some medicine or other in hopes that it will make us feel somewhat better.  So, when I got to that point…the so disgusting I needed to take a shower, I thought, this is how I learned to be sick!  Now, here I am, with all the knowledge I have, doing the same old behaviour! Yikes!!!!

So, I vowed to put the remote away and step #1 get out that neti pot and cleanse my sinuses…..wow, did I feel a million times better, just doing that! Next, I meditated. A nice calm, untimed meditation, first with the vision of myself feeling better soon, then off to a gentle zen state. Then, I sat on the balcony for a long time with a sketchbook in my hands. Mostly I watched the clouds move across the sky. Then, I wrote a short poem. Watched the clouds more…nature gets you into the present, I remembered, nature is so healing. Again, I was so improved by this day of really staying with myself, not escaping because I had been invaded by a virus.

The next day I took a walk, tissues in my pocket, but oh….how nice it was to breathe fresh air and have the kind of magical moments nature can bring you. I came upon about 13 deer in the woods, 3 of them were taking a little nap under some trees! Now, those deer know what to do!

I am trying to redefine what being sick looks like. If you stay home sick, you’re supposed be laying in bed, right? What if your boss saw you taking a walk? Rest is absolutely important and some laying on the bed is a very good thing, but seeking out what heals us physically and emotionally, is a road to a more meaningful and perhaps quicker recovery.

Now, I’m recovering, but deeper still, I realized how I am always reaching for perfect wellness and while that is a good goal to have for lots of reasons,  is it healthy to expect any aspect of my life to be perfect all the time? The imperfection of life is what makes it so beautiful.

-Amy Roemer 3-15-10

Their voices drifted as I entered the woods. The grey-brown trees dark from the moisture of the snowstorm last night, the branches covered with a thick layer of snow, like the whole world had been frosted for some king’s birthday. How quickly I had left witnessing such a tense situation to seeing such peace and beauty. So, I thought, why did I see that today? I believe that everything that happens in our experience is a chance to learn, so what would I have to learn from these two men arguing over a traffic stop?

As I noticed deer and squirrel tracks in the new snow, I thought about the conflict and the two main characters. The police officer believed he was right. The man believed he was right. The truth, I believe, is they were both right, at least to themselves. The police officer would report that my neighbor did the wrong thing. The man would tell his friends about the crazy cop who pulled him over.

A woodpecker high up in a dead tree pecked away for his winter meal. I was circling back home, when I realized the lesson in what I had observed. As Aimee Mann, one of my favorite singer-songwriter’s, lyrics say “perspective is everything”. In every conflict, there is a truth to both sides of each story, a truth so strong that we will raise our voices, slam doors, turn to addictive behaviors, isolate and even cut ourselves completely off from each other. I was able to have a neutral perspective on the cop and my neighbor, I could see both truths.

So, perhaps from this perspective I had today, the next time I am in disagreement with someone, I will be open to not only my truth, but have compassion for their truth and to quote myself from my painting titled pure truth, “The truth exists pure somewhere…”. -Amy Roemer 2-22-10

Pure Truth by Amy Roemer

To view more paintings by Amy Roemer, visit www.amyroemer.com