Catching Up....

Right after I posted my last blog about my life in Moses Lake, a couple of special friends died suddenly, within two weeks of each other.

The first one was my former boss at the Peninsula Daily News. Rex Wilson moved to Mexico to join his wife, Olga, in their family business and was suddenly diagnosed with lung cancer and just as suddenly left us all behind three months before his birthday.

The second was a fellow I met while traveling about eight years ago, William Good from Florida, and who became, along with his wife Sandi, delightful additions to my life online as well as when they came to Washington State to visit family. Bill was traveling in Spain with Sandi when he had a heart attack in mid-February, less than two weeks after my boss.

I tried to talk to my husband about the grief I was feeling, but he did not really understand the joy that having any exchange with these fellows gave me - their laughter, their quick wit, their expansive natures causing the lights in my world to shine a little brighter. In some ways it felt like my Dad had died again because there were aspects of each of these fellows that must have reminded me of him.

Then, getting over those sad days, my son-in-law announced his Multiple Myeloma was causing numbers to rise and he was going to have treatments again. So I retreated once more and found myself self-diagnosing anxiety and took on the objective of becoming a healer with art therapy.

"Celtic Knot Flower" is a design from another CZT that
I incorporated into a 12 -inch by 12-inch acrylic work.

This art therapy is called Zentangle™and though it is not advertised as a therapy per se, it is well understood that meditation is helpful and this process of drawing certain patterns was clearly helping me.

Something from my journal that has color and light in it.

I signed up for and was accepted to the 33rd session of training for Certified Zentangle Teachers (CZT) in Providence, Rhode Island for the end of March and beginning of April, 2019. For four blissful days I did nothing but eat, drink and draw with lots of laughter and fun. I concluded my trip with a fresh lobster dinner to celebrate achieving this certification, feeling pretty sure it might be awhile before the next trip and lobster!

Me with my seminar roommate, Norma G.
from Brazil. We had a good connection
and helped each other along.

Home again, I find I am not quite ready to begin teaching The Zentangle Method because I feel I still have so much to learn myself. But I have incorporated it into my existing art activity and have some fun plans for doing more in the future.

This is a small frame purchased at a yard
sale; making the Zentangle appear to be
more worthy... 

This is a Zendala, using tangles from Zentangle, Inc.

The other shoe dropped when we heard that a relative was
diagnosed with cancer, so I made her a blanket with pink
symbols for healing but it had special meaning for me as
it had patterns I have used in tangling.