Giggling Sisters has moved over to Giggling Sisters   Please come on over, pull up a chair and lets have a good old fashion visit and piece of Pie!!

fun photo shoot at the parlor this weekend

Opening weekend

Opening weekend was supposed to be the very first weekend in January but two nights before my husband claimed to have not known it was THAT exact weekend. (he's my handyman and there were still finishing touches needed before we could open)  It's all I've been talking about for over two months.  And we live together.  I just wasn't getting how this could happen.  I found myself at the "loose it" or let it go" crossroads (and any number of other things in between).  The lesson I have been getting over and over again about this Pie Parlor is to not get attached to certain outcomes.  So I let it go and although we were not up and running (more like up and crawling) this last weekend I did open it up with Darcey Blue being my very first parlor guest.

She showed up around 10:30 and stayed until 4:00ish and we just sat and visited and ate pie.  And more pie.  With hours of visiting.  This is how I first imagined it just three years ago.  Lots of visiting, some pie eating and now I've added making art to my days.

Day two had Katherine (Michaels Sisters), Michael & Tim (Katherine's Husband).  I shop at the local gardening establishment called Tierra Designs where Katherine is the manager.  Last time I was there I told her about the Pie Parlor, gave her my business card and next thing you know we got company!

 I am so very pleased with Opening Weekend.

Origins...

I had stayed behind in the meeting room after they broke for lunch, too engrossed in some archetype work and did not want to interrupt it.  I was tucked away in the corner and once I heard her start to tell her story I felt maybe I should leave but then thought “they know I’m over here in the corner if they want me to leave they will tell me” so I continued on with my work while keeping an ear tuned into their conversation.  Turns out this retreat sister had a very painful and sexually abusive relationship with her Mormon step father as a child leaving her with deep resentments for all Mormon’s.  Having just found out that one of the facilitators was Mormon she felt shaken and needed to address this.  So much came together for me in that moment.  Several months back when I had signed up for this retreat I had just found out myself that this facilitator was Mormon and realized I had issues of my own to work through.  Why does this matter?  So what if she is Mormon?  Can’t I still find her work and her very beautiful self just as beautiful with this new knowledge?  Why should being Mormon matter at all to my perceptions of her?  These and more were the questions that flooded my mind during the months prior to the retreat.  And with those questions came the realization that my issue was not with Mormonism but with certain Mormon people who had treated me poorly.  They had judged me harshly and excluded me from the very family I was born into.  It is not always so apparent to us just how damaging exclusion from one’s tribe/family can be.  It tears at the very fabric of trust and belonging.  Two things we all need to feel safe, loved, cared for and of value in our respective tribes.  So my abuse or issue, though not as explicit as sexual violation in nature, left me with a similar wound as my retreat sister.  In the moment of watching these sisters heal their wounds (this lovely Mormon facilitator had similar exclusion wounds) a healing balm of love, peace and true acceptance swept over me and I wept.  There are no coincidences I’ve heard it said.  Oh and did I mention my ride to and from the retreat was an equally amazing Mormon sister?  Coincidences my Jack-Mormon ass.  And to be even clearer on this magical moment let’s take a look at the archetype work that kept me behind that fateful day.  We had been given instructions to bring a couple of pictures of ourselves for one of the projects.  Knowing nothing else I picked a picture of myself when I was a Mormon teenager at a youth function where my “sister” friend and I were laughing.  Hard!  One of those precious moments captured with no staging or posing.   The second picture was taken when I was older, at a Beltane ceremony and again my “sister” friend and I are laughing big!!  After discovering that my archetype is the ‘fool” using those two pictures together on the artwork, then over hearing the healing of those two “sisters” I saw clearly how we are truly one and no religion or group can be excluded anymore.  We have to get past our skewed perceptions of each other and love each other and stop judging each other so harshly.  Returning home with this fresh mindset had yet another deep sister wound bubbling up and the words that came to me during that surfacing were scribbled down quickly.  Immediately I posted them on FB.  A friend asked “did you write this?” Too afraid to own my own words I quickly created a page, called it Giggling Sisters and the rest is “her”story.