Today is finally the day to share my “dream come true” story, which I hinted at on Facebook and in last week’s newsletter. I wanted to be absolutely sure it was really happening before telling you about it, since I just couldn’t believe it at first.
Here’s the scoop…
A few weeks ago a lovely woman reached out to me with kind words about Blooming into Mindfulness. She is a busy working mom who appreciated my mission to spread the word about how mindfulness practice can help us navigate life more skillfully and joyfully.
Through my main website, she also discovered my photography and signed up for both of my email lists at damselwings.com and damselwingsphotography.com (my favorite kind of reader!).
About a week after she first reached out about the book, she wrote to me again after receiving a story-telling email that went to my photography followers list. She had more generous things to say about my art, mentioned she had shown it to her colleagues at work, and asked if we could meet, since she’s local.
That was an easy “yes!”. I could already tell we had a lot in common and my schedule was unusually open. I said I was happy to meet her anywhere. She suggested I come to meet her at work at Sibley Hospital in Washington, DC. All I knew about her was that she is a nurse practitioner about to receive her PhD.
I was familiar with the meeting point she suggested, because I had taken a girlfriend to her chemo appointments there several times last year. Sibley Hospital’s new tower housing the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center made a huge impact on me the very first time I visited it. I was floored by the beauty and calming, healing energy of the space. There’s even a contemplative garden in the courtyard (I don’t know if they call it that, but that’s what it is).
My new friend was waiting for me in the spacious, sunlit lobby. In the first few minutes of our conversation, I learned that she is the new Director of Sibley Hospital’s soon-to-open Integrative Medicine Department.
I was still processing that when she told me that she and her colleagues had decided to use my photography to decorate their new space. They had already communicated all of this to the corporate art agency they had hired to find wall art for the new department.
Needless to say, I was stunned, confused, not sure I had heard it all correctly. To have this happen under any circumstances would have been hard to believe, but to have it happen in this particular building, which, in my mind, was the ultimate example of the power of healing art and design, just about took my breath away.
If you had asked me six months ago what my dream location would be for my wall art, I would have pointed to that building.
Between my tours of the Integrative Health Department AND the recently opened Staff Tranquility Room that provides meditation spaces for staff (!!!), I asked my new BFF how she had found my book.
“I was at the library with my daughter. Your book was on the shelf and seemed to call out to me. I showed it to her and said, ‘Look! This book was written for me!’”
Wow.
I remembered how I had agonized about my book cover, asking for input from my Facebook friends to vote on options the designer was putting together for me. Then scrapping it all and determining that I really wanted my own photography on the cover and finding a new (and yes, more expensive) cover designer who found a way to do that.
But going back even farther, I remembered my first inkling of inspiration to write Blooming into Mindfulness, not having any expectation or vision, just KNOWING I was supposed to write that book. If sharing my journey could help even a handful of people, it was worth the time, effort, and courage. It was simply what I was supposed to do. Never before had I experienced such a strong sense of purpose.
Those of you who have been following me for a while know that my photography journey started the year I was writing the book, when I was pulled again by a sense of purpose to take on the 356project.org photo-a-day challenge. The only objective of that exercise was to use it as a form of mindfulness practice, forcing myself to stop for a few minutes every day and bring my attention to something of beauty in my midst.
There were countless times when that inner critic (what I call the bully voice) tried to butt its way in with “Nobody’s going to read your book” or “Nobody cares about these photographs and they’re not good enough for you to be sharing on FB. Stop embarrassing yourself!”
But I let those thoughts go and kept coming back to my heart whispers.
Clearing out the thought clutter through my meditation practice, learning to let go of thoughts that don’t serve me, and trusting my inner wisdom and intuition have landed me in this surprising but beautiful situation.
In my very first blog post of 2018, this was one of the goals I listed: “Place my wall art in healthcare facilities to provide calming, joyful, healing energy.”
BOOM!
If this isn’t proof of the power of putting your intentions out there and letting the Universe work its magic, I don’t know what is.
Pictures to come after the work is installed in a few weeks!
Thank you for the positive energy you’ve sent my way through reading this and following my work. I’m so grateful for you!
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