weve got a long one here today, kids. i didnt mean for it to happen, but it did!!!
part of me showing up here as my most authentic self is me not editing too much and just pressing send when it feels finished <3 thank you so much for being here!
when i started writing the draft of this weeks newsletter, it very quickly turned into being about 3 different things, lol. but the truth is that those things brought me here, to Tiny Invitations. the plan was to articulate WHO EXACTLY ARE TINY INVITATIONS???!??!??!! and as i was writing i realized that they are this playful way of me listening to and being with myself, in a world where in my experience, this has not been encouraged.
the first draft was this beautiful process of me talking about why i didnt listen to myself for the first almost 30 years of my life, who Tiny Invitations are, and then also maybe not so randomly my ramblings on how i experience gender! separate essay to come later about my experience of gender, but for today i definitely want to tie in the bit about not listening to myself.
that is the very cool thing, im believing about this project for me, the newsletter and growing the writing muscles- i started writing and all of this stuff was coming out and i was able to see the root of why i have made up this little game. its always to make the healing easier, or more efficient. or turn the healing into something that feels more compact, like something i can carry around with me so much more easily than constantly beating myself up for not listening to myself for most of my life. which is the opposite of healing.
so yes, i can say that i do now FIRMLY believe that Tiny Invitations are the playful and extremely important antidote to the pain (and oftentimes trauma) of not listening to oneself.
to elaborate on Trauma - i do bring this up often with my salon clients bc most people have had very traumatic hair experiences at least once in their life. in the simplest way, i describe it as something that is happening too fast for our brain to understand what is going on. when our brains dont have the full time that they individually need to process what is happening, i feel like it shuts off our ability to listen to ourselves. the list really could go on here but im gonna keep this really simple for now.
during the pandemic, when i was kind of thriving, doomscrolling and deadly virus aside LOL, i was spending my days painting and teaching myself to sew and shooting my shot at a sourdough starter even though at the time our apartment had central air, and well if you know anything about mold or sourdough starters central air will not let either of those things happen. for the first time in my career, oh wait um the first time in my LIFE - i didnt have to WORK. i didnt have to do the job that i did love, however had been very tired of for some time. my current form of capital was gone (and we were all on rent strike so as long as we had groceries and could feed the dogs everything was fine). it is, for me, a form of OUTWARD creativity, creativity that i make for other people - hair was never a form of personal expression for me, it was always a service, and now i didnt have to do it and i could spend literally from the moment i opened my eyes in the morning til the minute i went to sleep focusing on all of my own personal forms of expression that were FOR ME. what a dream. i had been saying to my therapist in the weeks leading up to the pandemic that i was ready for a sabbatical - and here i was - with endless time to be with myself. (keep in mind, i have been doing hair since i was 16 years old - and i didnt have a normal childhood/coming of age experience by any means, more to come on this later, but i was really ready for some un-interrupted, high quality PLAY time!)
if we could only just do as the plants do - their bodies literally point and grow towards the things they need. i think our bodies are always pulling us towards what we need, yet our brains are trying to keep us alive, and keep our bills paid! and so unless we are super accustomed to creating new neural pathways in our brains we end up abandoning what our bodies are telling us we need and want. this is where tiny invitations come in.
i think my first inkling to really listen to myself was in 2011 when i needed to get clean from a very bad pharmaceutical drug habit. i decided memorial day of that summer that i would ween myself down throughout the months leading up to labor day, and surprisingly i guess, i did. i knew i had a dependency - i just didnt know that in the first days that i showed up to my place of work after abandoning said dependency that my body would literally reject that environment and it would walk me out of the salon that i considered to be “my whole life” at the time. in this instance, my body protected me and just did what it needed to do, my brain was on board bc i had been offered another job to help start a new company, but this was really one of the most visceral moments to recall of my body knowing what i needed before my brain did.
(i would like to note here that there 2 instances that could be the ACTUAL first time i was listening to myself - one where i was 12 and decided to leave home, and then again when i was 15 and i knew it was time to return home but this is a very very separate story that will take more than a newsletter to talk about! hopefully a memoir will explain that!)
the next time that i had an inkling to listen to myself, was 6 months later right after the loss of my mother when i was 24, (10 years ago this past january RIP Patti <3) and i had an ex, and a couch boy (thats right you read correctly - two degenerate “graffiti boys” ((not REAL graf boys - my brother was one for many years and these boys were NOT IT but we were young and all of the dreams were lofty) LOL) sharing my rent stabilized $1150 bushwick one bedroom apartment with me, and the only thing i knew i needed at the time was SPACE, and i needed them to get the fuck out so that i could have that. i had no idea how i was going to come up with that $1150 every month bc i was just newly building my clientele, but i was determined to do it. it was a lot of bagels and slices of pizza for lunch, and only PBRs in the evenings at the bar. shots of whiskey ONLY if someone else bought them for me. LOL. to be 24 - another dream. trust me i never want to do it again BUT woooooh a good time was had by all. all of this to say - it was at this time, that my body was gently letting me know it wanted to start leading the way.
this was when the journey of Tiny Invitations probably actually began. i was given a book by a friend after my mother died and that friend told me that “it was going to break me down” and i was like UM HELLO I DONT NEED TO BE ANY MORE BROKEN?!?!?!?!?! but there was a slight language barrier between me and this friend and what they meant was that it was going to break life down in a way that would comfort me in my time of grief. the book is called Many Lives Many Masters by Brian Weiss and its about how groups of souls travel together throughout the course of several lifetimes in order to work out their karma together. to put it simply, this book took away my smallness that i had been experiencing at the time, and made all of life and my interactions actually quite large - it expanded my mind and my every day experience. it made me start looking into the eyes of strangers to see if my soul recognized theirs! anyway - i could say this whole combo of grief, recently getting clean from drugs, and reading this book was the poopoo-platter that opened my life to more than the mundane, regular every day human experience. it was the time when i started to actively look at the clock and if i saw it was my moms birthday 6:16 or the time of her death 1:18 i knew that her spirit was with me.
it was also around this time that i started getting invited to moon circles, i saw my first psychic, started buying crystals, WAS GIFTED A GODDESS ORACLE DECK!!!! and i really started diving into DIVINING my daily experience. anything that could bring me into feeling ALIGNMENT with what was happening while it was happening. diving and divining. it became my favorite past time, and then my job, and it is still one of my favorite forms of PLAY, and PRAY - honestly its a way for my brain to make sense of what is happening around me - it keeps me feeling connected to the divine, and in turn - in my body.
tiny invitations were truthfully born at this time
but i could not articulate ANY OF THIS until i STOPPED. and this is exactly what i did when the pandemic hit. i STOPPED for the first time, probably in my whole adult life.
i created an instagram account during the pandemic, i literally just checked the date that i first posted and it was TWO YEARS AGO YESTERDAY, on may 3 2020. here, my friends is a tiny invitation. a synchronicity. im sitting here babbling and processing and i look back and how charming, two years ago yesterday i tried to start articulating wtf goes on. anyhooooo- the bio reads “magic and musings by intuitive artist roxie darling” because i wanted to share all of the special moments and details that led me to make the creative choices i make. ultimately though, tiny invitations rolled off the tongue too easily for me to justify them being just the things that guided my creative choices, they are the things guiding ALL of my choices, in turn, manifesting as a life style.
my only dream is for all of us to be able to act in our own best interest - which we can decipher what that is when we listen to ourselves. i saw a meme yesterday that read “WHAT WOULD YOUR SACRED INNER BRAT DO?” and i really fucking felt it!!!! i think thats a simple way to recognize the healing that is learning to listen to ourselves.
but what is the language that we speak between ourselves and the divine that facilitates the ongoing conversation? for me its Tiny Invitations.
so lets get down to it - who are Tiny Invitations? their pronouns are they/them, (because in my experience, they are coming through living in full balance presenting perfect ratios of divine masculine and divine feminine energies. more to come one day on my experience of gender :).)
omg omg omg again - LETS GET TO IT - i am a rambling rose yall!!!!!! LOL
(this is where the newsletter gonna get to be a little bit of a tennis match of many short fragmented sentences so just bare with me)
okay so Tiny Invitations are many things - to put it simply they are synchronicities that invite us to a place of self-compassionate inquiry -
they are the things that take us out of a stimulating moment and give way to grant ourselves permission to open to self-curiousity - a potentially fleeting simple reflection on how WE feel in any given moment
they are anything that HELP US PRIORITIZE OUR INNATE DESIRES before whats pushed on us from outside influence
they are the things that KEEP OUR VALUES at the forefront of our CIRCUMFERENCE
and they come to us in TWO forms
first form - THEY ARE THE PINGS INSIDE OF US THAT INVITE SELF-CURIOSITY
second form - THEY ARE THE THINGS OUTSIDE OF US THAT STIR A PIECE OF OUR INSIDES TO QUESTION HOW WE ARE FEELING/SELF-INQUIRY
they are the things that invite us to make space for self regulation in times of overwhelm. they are the bird in the window that forces you to take your sight off of whatever project you are deeply focusing on so that ultimately you are gifted with fresh perspective.
they are the flowers in the distance to help you remember that all of the pieces of the puzzle may not be inside yourself so you have to look around and re-source your energy, or missing pieces.
they are the things that invite us to STOP, to take a break and check in with our self
they are the things that reflect back to us what we are fucking doing
they are mirrors!
they are the moments when you hear the exact lyrics in a song that all of a sudden make sense of the chapter in your life youre experiencing (i call this radio-oracle)
they are that moment when youre outside in the sun for too long and your skin sizzles and your body is reminding you to get some sunscreen, current you protecting future you
they are asking for some universal confirmation message and then you look up and there is a grand bird circling you over the dog park (an eagle whos saying take up space, or a hawk saying remember the big picture, or possibly a vulture who is reminding you that everything has a life cycle and we must carry on and be open to people and things leaving us whether we are ready or not)
they are meeting a person in the flesh who can solve your problem that you discovered just moments before
they are the gut feelings you have when you are shopping and you know you need to buy an ingredient at the grocery store even though it isnt on your list, or maybe not even in your budget!
tiny invitations are the new leaves unfurling in your houseplant or your garden that remind you that you are always in a season, something that shifts and is constantly changing, and that you are possibly unfurling too, and if you are unfurling than so is everyone around you and so you need to have more outward patience and outward compassion
Tiny Invitations are the things big and small that invite us to be with ourselves - reiterating here for meself - tiny invitations are the small joys that build up every day and over time that can make our whole life feel like a big, consistent and sustainable joy
tiny invitations are the basis for feeling like we are living our purpose - the things that make us KNOW were on the right path
the things that confirm our ALIGNMENT
they are little prayers - lots of little prayers accumulate and are oftentimes more effective than grand gesture prayers
Tiny Invitations as a lifestyle is, in my experience, the most sustainable recipe for joy that i have come up with, as time seems to go by faster as i get older. they are the things that make me take stock of my day and see oh wow its actually been really great even though its been so regular and possibly not productive - tiny invitations are ultimately the things that slow us down and invite us to be with ourselves.
in this new world where we have the option to be hyper stimulated literally around the clock, tiny invitations are calls for us to come home to ourselves as many times as we want to.
xxRD
👏🏻❤️👏🏻