love – Crooked Little Flower Studios

Posted on August 7, 2023June 27, 2023 by Connie Karleta Sales — Leave a comment

misproportioned

fun house
crazy mirrors,
these are her eyes.

misaligned
warping illusion
these are her eyes.

explorer
she searches
reaches anew,

faraway near
carefully observes
the presence-day dawn.
CKS

Dance of the Forgotten Child. I don’t talk about this a lot. For years I haven’t talked about it. It has not been a part of my life. Many many years ago I had an eating disorder. At one point I was in bad shape. I wanted to disappear. I had the ridiculous idea that I needed to by skinny, to be invisible, to be dead, to not exist, and it was the only way I would be okay. It was control because Life was very out of control. My existence was within the reality of abuse. When you can’t get out, and you can’t scream out, and everything is secret, and nothing makes sense, it comes out sideways.

I saw myself as being very large. It didn’t matter what I actually was because when I looked in the mirror I saw a very large and misshapen person. The dysmorphia was very real, and I never really lost that. What I lost was taking action and practicing not eating. I let it just be.

Fast forward to today. I still don’t know what I look like. I still see myself as being much larger than I am and misshapen. To be honest I didn’t realize how present that still was.

Slowly adjusting my wardrobe to suit both what I like and what works in the chair, it is a fun way of affirming life and little luxuries of life. What is freaking me out is size. I am hyper aware that I purchase clothing at 1x , 2x, XL, XXL. In the chair, I do not like tight clothing. It must have stretch, and comfort. As i am listening to other people, I tried on Mediums and larges and was 100 percent freaked out that they fit comfortably.

My mind cannot compute this. I can’t figure out the funhouse mirrors. I don’t see it. like some sort of alternate universe. I even have tried different silhouettes which I would have never ever done.

I like a-line, baby doll kind of dresses because they are roomy and hide things, but have been very unhappy with this silouette for awhile but couldn’t figure out what I was unhappy with.

Tells me I am beginning to see me in some regard. The new silhouettes feel vulnerable, and also feel good. not trying to hide. Which is also very weird to think about. To see myself as myself. That it would even be possible? Do you see yourself? I think I operate many days still within the Dance of the Forgotten Child , the one still needing to disappear into the wall as a wallflower hoping not to be recognized, safe in invisibility; safe as a shadow.

And, also seeking personhood. Practicing personhood. Practicing being present in my own skin. affirming self. affirming the safety of today. Affirming I am proportioned just because I am. Because it is safe to be who I am.

How do you feel? Do feel safe to be who you are?

paint much love, always,
Connie Karleta Sales
a.k.a. This Crooked Little Flower

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Posted on July 3, 2023June 26, 2023 by Connie Karleta Sales — 2 Comments

Independence

freedom from the control,
influence, support, aid,
or the like, of others.
(dictionary.com)

As we in the U.S. come to celebrate July 4th, independence day, I have been sitting with the word, Independence. Both in self and in community. In a time when things feel very out of control. I grieve. I fear. I look for the helpers, because there within is light. The divides feel greater and greater, and I don’t understand. In all the people I know, we are more alike than we are apart. I look to this. To move past the noise so I am not paralyzed into inaction.

Dear Rainmaker,
there are discerning days.
there are days of unknown melancholy.
and then, there are days;
days in which that clutching darkness
dances around my wandering mind, and
I question tomorrow’s dawn.

then I catch a brief smirk upon my lips
when I remember the lilies of the field.

am I sitting with flowers?
am I sitting with flowers, yet?

Fall into the coolness of
the meadow my child.
there is no grief and no madness,
however great, that darkness can consume.

My strength and My peace
shall surround you.
My light shall fill you.

Dear Heart, I love you.
lean on me, through the strength
of those that surround you.
you are loved, my beloved
CKS

We can feel helpless. We can feel hopeless. Grieving in anger, frustration, and disappointment. We pause, we breathe, we hang on until hope and love reside next to us.

I share today a poem I wrote awhile ago, and it is within a greater story and resides in Rainmaker and Flower; pray on dirty knees, my first poetry book.

I share it because I return to this poem when I am in that well of darkness, and feel quite sad and overwhelmed. When my world is spinning and nothing gets accomplished.

Deadlines I have not met. Responsibilities not lived up too, and hope for forgiveness and more patience. When my emotions and mental capacity has weighted me down until I only hear the echo of “I am a loser. good for nothing.” and even less gets accomplished, and I hear less and less, and see less and less; and I want nothing more than to hide within myself.

I become paralyzed in fear. everything, even my art becomes suspect, and I am paralyzed; deciding maybe I should start over; abandoned all together.

Does your world ever appear in bleak darkness? Let us read it together, and know you are not alone. And there is no darkness that light cannot overcome, that fear cannot be comforted; that grief cannot feel kindness, that love cannot find.

It is okay not to be okay. My dear friends, I share my heart because this is what I do. I am with you. I am here in your disappointment, in your anger, frustration, grief. in joy, triumph, and happiness.

We are together, praying as we are; our dirty knees resting in the fields of the lilies.

Enjoy this 10 minute visual meditation: