creative life – Page 2 – Frozen Spaghetti

Things are Sacred “Before They Are Beautiful”

August 22, 2025August 22, 2025by ErinLeave a Comment

I spent the last week in Green Cay, U.S. Virgin Islands in creative process, in conversation and – ultimately – in exploration of the deeper colors of life. What does it mean to be surrounded by beauty? What does it mean to be resourced by the earth?

Blessed be the Creator God – who made the heavens and the earth. 2 Chronicles 2:12

Part of this exploration was related to how, on an island, you celebrate the rain for filling up the cisterns, you wait for the sun to power up the panels before you do your laundry. This coordination with nature is and of itself a deeply desired internal rhythm I know I have, but I truly think we all have in our innate humanity.

What child doesn’t want to love and feel love from its mother?

Being in community with women who not only lived this way, but discussed which fish were eating which fish, increasing the big fishes’ mercury and who marveled over who had what trees growing on their property was nourishing and replenishing. Like rain to the cistern of my heart :)

Waking up this morning in the midwest with the type of tan I have found you really only get in St. Croix, I walked my garden similar to how I walked Samadhi by the Sea, the garden of my beautiful host for the week, Riya – a chakra oriented artist whose sculpture garden served as the key dwelling place for me and my creative spirit.

My garden – with it’s patchy weirdness, spiraling thin weeds and a serious need of mulch looked much different than Samadhi by the Sea. Thoughtfully still, I took my prayer beads and charged them by one of my favorite 2025 plantings: a baby rosemary shrub I am going to experiment with sheltering over the winter. I walked my garden slowly, kneeling down, looking carefully – naming what I believe are its main centers.

I moved the lemon eucalyptus and the pineapple sage together (near the “The Stump of Contemplation”) so they could be friends as they will both fruit Christmas gifts for my friends when I harvest their leaves, dry them out and bundle them for smudging gifts later on. I texted a dear family friend and studio member, Kim Joern – a master gardener and herbalist – for insight on my lavender. I danced in my garden when a neighbor stopped on her drive by. I pulled a few more weeds, said a few more prayers, noted a few more tasks and came inside.

One of the takeaways from my trip is a new installation in my vocabulary of the word “sacred” before key nouns in my sentences. Like the gold paperclips I picked up on my first day on island were dubbed sacred paperclips and kept all week in a dish, I started seeing the weird, the unorganized, the unmulched, the unattended parts of my Garden of Knowing as sacred.

My list of next round needs? A sacred rain barrel, small sacred fencing for the hostas… Among other things, of course, like sacred stones.

There is this stoic thought about how you cannot tell an emerald it is beautiful and it all the sudden becomes beautiful. Likewise you cannot tell it is is ugly and it becomes ugly. Rather, the nature of the emerald is that of an emerald, its nature is derived from itself.

As I spent time in my newly appointed sacred garden, in its overgrown honeysuckle and hidden irises, I reflected on how nature simply becomes. It unfolds without rush or definition. More rain does one thing, less rain does another. Early falls do things like late springs, hot summers and cold winters are an active part of the unfolding.

I promised my garden I would write in it. And I saw the process of the gardening serve up a lesson as I walked up the steps again (similar to a 12 hour writing day a few days ago, when I ascended and descended the steps of Samadhi by the Sea over and over and over and over).

“Discipline means walking up the steps again.”

It is my recent finding that the faithfulness to the process seems to be more important than the dedication to the outcome itself.

To allow my garden its sacred nature brought the same wave of gratitude and inspiration, nourishment and knowing as the waves crashing ear’s distance away from the vibrant intentionality of Samadhi by the Sea.

At the 3rd Eye Point, Ajna, the 6th sculpture in Samadhi by the Sea.

Words in Sentences

My Creative Life: An Honest to God Life Update

January 11, 2024January 11, 2024by ErinLeave a Comment

I had a stress dream a few days ago about my old job. I mentioned on some other outlets that, over the summer, I was exploring a return to corporate life when the conversation went silent… awkwardly silent and came to an abrupt end with no honest explanation.

Was I rehirable? Did I say too much? Who doesn’t like me? Who doesn’t want to deal with me?

The immediate thoughts that flooded my mind brought me back to that red tape wonderland, my desires to achieve – to be trusted – to have a seat at the proverbial table.

It was three years ago that I decided to retire from corporate life and try something new: a garden, perfect a pie crust, start self publishing. These things felt complementary to my new role as wife, stepmom. That free time felt a little blank and has gotten full, though flexible. These days, I am constantly rebaselining as so much of my effort has born blossoms and buds and – in some very cherished cases: actual fruit.

In the dream, I was shut out – though I don’t remember why or how. I felt like I needed to know it was going to be OK. That I was worthy. I woke up at 2:30am, stressed out. Worried about money and health insurance and all of the other reasons people tie themselves to desks. “I have to get a job”, I thought. I can’t waste this time. I am not getting younger.

OOF.

Even now, recalling that, I feel that web of want and worry across my chest and back. <take a deep breath in>

And though, it’s true: it’s time to take Monday Night Yoga to its next formation, it’s time to update the audio page for Words that Rhyme and start selling and it’s time to reeeeeaaallllyyyy sit and whiteboard out the experiences for the Restorative Yoga for the Spiritual Person Journey, it is also true that I am right on time. Things are happening.

I have posted all over my social media (specifically a public Facebook post) about my recent trip to Universal Studios in Orlando and about the witnessing I got to do as I watched my oldest daughter absolutely field day with my stepson, recalling a wish she made on a Chinese Wishing Tree “for a baby brother”.

I also got to feel the growth my personal life undertook to make that manifestation all happen: the very private and supportive conversations between me and my husband, the evolution and inner closet cleaning I have done to heal or at least acquaint myself with childhood wounds brought to light from stepmothering (it’s not quite mothering, not quite friending, not quite stranger, not quite acquaintance) young women I didn’t raise. My love for my dogs, my absent minded gardening, my pie crust recipe I need to dust off. My hoodie. My makeupless face.

My writing.

My honesty.

The way it feels when you are both sad and happy, when you are both trying and successful, when you are both here and there, I think, is a real feeling. It brings out the inner stoic that remembers impermanence is the vehicle for mental transformation. It brings out the faithful mindset and the beautiful practices. It brings out the magic. It honors the muse.

To sit and write this, I recognize, is a gift of time.

My house is completely quiet. The wind outside and the click of the oven cooling down oven are faint. I can’t even hear my next task as the dishwasher hasn’t been run and the dryer has been done for an hour.

And to update Frozen Spaghetti with my 42 year old self, Erin Ford (I even have a new name. I mean – SO much has changed.) is to update the future on the past. To put into words where I am. This next round is real and it’s now and there are things that truly feel ripe and ready.

To close – back to the dream – so I wake up.

I stretch in bed. It turns to 3a and I remember, at midnight that morning, the Impromptu Sessions went live.

The Impromptu Sessions is a project David has had going for awhile and is a major milestone as it debuts US on world sound media.

The songs are special as they were made up (and recorded) impromptu, on the spot. And I love it. I love it there is no grounds for critique on my voice in “Farfelu” (a la “who doesn’t like it”) type thoughts because the face I am freestyling is so fun. And because of that, it’s freeing.

So I pressed play and was mesmerized all over again at how David and I wove so perfectly unplanned together and then was absolutely floored by David’s production as the next track “The Road” presented itself.

Brilliant. Beautiful. All of the words. So good.

Listening in the middle of the night, the EP closed with “North West Sunset”, a song that takes me directly back to our breakfast table in Washington and yet I was in Orlando… soothed back to sleep with fresh tears and a gentle reminder of my creative life.

artist residency

When you are where you’re not quite there.

November 22, 2023by ErinLeave a Comment

I shared on my IG a couple months ago a stream of consciousness doodle about how growth isn’t about arrival but about progression and how the fragmentation you may see or recognize in yourself is actually the art of being whole.

The past two weeks have involved a high level of change for me. My basement study, adorned by a water heater and directly below one of the kids’ bathrooms (making for excellent water sound effects in meditation recordings, let me tell ya) evolved to a study in a neighborhood boutique yoga studio, OM Old Orchard.

With an exposed brick wall and space for two chairs, a microphone and a yoga mat, I moved in on Friday, starting a new chapter of assuming the growth / arrival / progress combo. Of being there and not yet here.

I think it is important to remember the balance of alignment. The sanskrit term “samatva” is about an even state of the mind regardless of what is going on around you – it’s not about indifference, but about stability. I have found myself very aware of this, this past week.

Part of the reason is because – like most people – the courage to take creative freedoms & initiatives rarely comes without at least one darkish night of the soul where you feel the failure of the work you were enthusiastically calling your mom about the day before. If not that, you wonder who are you to do this work – you see other people with similar work and think they know more, they have already done and given the world what you were thinking about. You could stop.

And so evenness / stability of the mind in this sense requires the self control to recognize this is a pattern of the mind, this is a survival (risk averse) technique of the mind and to take all of the energy relative to being forlorn or lost and assume it right back into the root belief that powers the inspired thought. And to have an evenness / stability of the mind in such case also requires one believe in their work regardless of what transpires. The notion that you cannot be wrong unless you’re trying to be right comes to play here. Be authentic.

Be authentic.

So – one of the deals I am working out right now is how to take some of my innovative ideas for how to offer restorative yoga to people and test them out in OM Old Orchard / from my new study. Already, we have hit brakes and gas / gas and brakes and I could feel a sense of need for control rise up. The need to explain. The need to convince. The need to protect. The need to establish.

Sattva. Evenness of the mind. I think it is so easy to be in something new and recognize that it is not what you thought without really crediting the fact that it needs time to grow. How many times I have seen folks in the yoga world give up on an idea or a model because it didn’t seem successful right away, when the seed was definitely in fertile soil, when the listening was nourishing iterative change & positive growth.

I recognized the need for control and threaded it into the integrity behind the ideas. Remembered that the only control needed was self control. To be thoughtful about what I felt God has put on my life. To listen well. To iterate wisely. To suggest. To tend to. To direct, ultimately – and to offer.

“Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and your plans will be established” Proverbs 16:3 was a key for me this past week and will continue to be so… we only get like this one shot and being who we are, where we are and how we are. We only get one life with these stories, these parents, these people.

Using the body to notice our intuitive voice & align our actions and interactions with a motive we willingly surrender to be examined I think is the one thing I have learned that gives me peace of mind every single day. Every single freak out. Every single clutch of “will this make money”. I go back to the body.

Back to the breath.

Back to my yes. My no.

And proceed.

Till next time. Thanks for listening :)

PS: Enjoy these pictures from move in weekend. That is my dear friend Jan, who did not know she was coming to my new study but had serendipitously brought me a gift of a singing bowl & perfect fall leave & bundle of palo santo. One of the first projects is to bring the recording of Words that Rhyme to completion!! Praying for that because Lord knows I have been dilly dallying.