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Maridel Bowes, M.A.
www.evolvingjourney.com





In This Issue
When Evolution Calls
Grandma, What Big Plans You Have!
"But That's Not All!"
Launch Party Sponsors


 
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1,641 Grandmas and Me 
 
Twenty-nine cartons of "Who Are You Calling Grandma? True Confessions of A Baby Boomer's Passage" are sitting in my living room. So this week, amidst the boxes, I pause to share with you the inception of this book. Often when we look back at the moment of gestation--be it a flesh-and-blood baby between flannel covers or a pulpy one between glossy covers--we can see its essence. And if we peer deeply enough into that essence, we see a whole new world: the world of our own evolution.

Below is an excerpt from "Grandma" that describes the moment of book-birthHaving fled my own little country of Cal, I was in Oregon house-sitting for my children and tasked with taking care of their dogs. I had volunteered for this assignment, but not without an underlying agenda of my own--reviving a book I had been stalled on for months.

"I turn on my laptop and bring up my estranged novel. This work has become a relationship gone bad for me-like an old love that you can still get misty about, but would walk a mile to avoid seeing again. I had thought spending a week with it in a new locale-the hope of every romantic-would stoke the fires of my once-burning desire. But as I electronically leaf through the pages, the only thing that happens is what's been happening for months: nothing. If this relationship isn't dead, it is most certainly in an impressive coma. And I get the distinct feeling that there will be no resurrection from either death or comatosity on this particular week.

I get up and pour myself another cup of coffee. Always a good ploy in the face of disheartening reality. Sitting on the couch, with my laptop blinking a few feet dead ahead, another light begins to blink. For the last few months, I've been thinking-casually, of course, just for fun, really-of writing a journal about the slow and path I'm taking to becoming a grandmother. There are others like me, aren't there? Women who don't relate to the stereotype and all its unsettling implications?

Without consulting my mind, my body starts to move toward the computer, triggering a string of sentences and a trumped up heartbeat. The dogs are back at the window. What are you doing? their frowning faces seem to ask. I wonder the same thing myself, but it feels too good to stop. I'm writing again."
 
When Evolution Calls 
 
 
1. Get out of there! Alone in someone else's house, removed from things as necessary as the locale of the extra toilet paper, we crack the door to evolution. Familiarity is said to "breed contempt", which seems like an excessively dark view of things to me. But I do think it breeds "content:" content to keep the little bowling ball of one's life rolling down the same lane and crashing again and again into the same set of battered pins and their correlating opinions. In a new place, we have to reach, question, ask for help and feed dogs we only love because we love the people who love them.

If you're serious about evolving as a writer, a lover, a painter, a mother or a human being, from time to time, split from the scene where the face in the mirror is exactly the one you expect to see. You don't have to go far -- just go.

2. Drop That!  In this new place, you will try, as I did, to continue doing what you were doing -- never mind that it wasn't working. New locales bring hope, but not to a self that no longer reflects you. Can you put aside hundreds of pages of your "old story"? On the surface, that was my literal challenge. But underneath, the stakes were far higher. Could I let go of a once-inspiring version of myself as a writer in order to find my true voice? 

Evolution often asks us to let go of the old face without knowing what the new face of things will look like. And to make it interesting, there are no return policies.


3. Act On It!  Once we let go of the life transcript that we've outgrown, we have to stand in that empty space and see what comes through the door. Those few minutes of sitting on the couch with my laptop patiently beckoning, were crucial ones for me. I could feel the tug and the desire of raw possibility rubbing up against the risk of potential disappointment. What if nothing came out? What if what came out was trite, icky or flat? Looking back, in fact, I think it was the moment I decided to be a real writer rather than "someone who writes well." But all I knew then was that I had a choice between a glittering possibility and a nap.
 
I'll quote it again: "Action is the loudest voice to Spirit."


5. Continue When Dogs Frown! Okay, frowning pets aren't going to deter even the most insecure among us, but they're not just symbolic either. Human frowners shouldn't stop us from our own evolution any more than doggies do. Sid and Dakota didn't even know what they were frowning at and neither do most people. I got this lesson most vividly when, as an astrologer, I heard my profession scoffed at by people who had never had an astrology reading -- not even a bad one! Part of evolving into more of the self that you already are is to keep writing, singing, diving, climbing and flying while others frown.
 
Remember, they don't feel what you feel.

6. Follow the Energy! The unborn babe that inspired my act of writing will be seven tomorrow. Making my way from that moment to the second edition of my "trimester tale" has challenged my "little self" again and again -- and continues to. But as I've followed the hide-and-seek energy of this experience, one thing has become clear: it's all about and for my own evolution and what that evolution can contribute to the world. It's as if my angels said to each other one day, "Hey, she's pretty good at writing. Maybe we can use that to kick some serious evolutionary butt!" And as my beloved astrology teacher, Steven Forrest, would say, "today those angels are drinking champagne."

Whether you live far away or around the corner from me, I hope you will join me a week from today, July 21, in "toasting with the angels" that richest of all gifts: the opportunity to evolve into more of our true selves until the day we die.
 
 
Til We Cross Paths Again,
 
 Maridel
 
 
 
Grandma, What Big Plans
 
You Have!

 
WCG Cover
 A week from tonight, The Launch will be over, but the ship will just be setting out to see!
 
Check out my new site--
 
A new BLOG coming soon!
"Where Is Grandma Today?" 
 
On the road to Reno, Sonoma, Portland and beyond!
 
 
But That's Not All!
 
 
Next week in my subscriber newsletter,"But That's Not All!" I'll be sharing an in-depth look at the three deepest lessons of my own evolution -- ones I hope will resonate to your experience and support you to keep growing your own light.
 
To sign up for "But That's Not All!", click here
 
 
 
 
Launch Party Sponsors!
 
 
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� 2009 Evolving Journey. All Rights Reserved. Contact Maridel Bowes at maridelbowes@gmail.com.



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