Welcoming multiple ways of knowing this year, the WholeHeart community has been playing with imagery, improv, music and movement to embrace the whole and the many. With gratitude, we share Tarah Gibbon's exploration of voice as a way of encouraging us each to find and honor our ways and welcome the perspectives of others.
Here are seeds and stories of an inner and creative journey of
listening and honoring one’s voice:
The seed to listen to a different voice. The one inside. The lost voice? An invitation to recognize and honour the invisible time of process; learning my forgotten language.
Space to witness and experience through a lens rooted in nature, listening deeply, beyond words.
Sharing, learning + listening in community rooted in gratitude, growing love here. Love for me. Love for you. Love for Land.
Celebrating the joy of dancing on and with the earth. Honouring movement in all its forms as a way to create forward momentum through celebration and joy in everyday moments.
Living a new language, distilled thoughts and words that offer questions into deeper knowing, listening + learning. Composting, recycling + upcycling along the way.
Through participating in a Grief and Gratitude Guidebooks gathering, I was inspired to create an artistic assignment for a University course I was taking. I attempted to explore the Domains of Change from an earth based, compassionate lens that highlights the process and relationship between all the domains.
![[an image of a seated, cross-legged Tarah Gibbon in a sunlit room, surrounded by magazines and other paper and pillows behind her]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55f8f336e4b0fcc8b9d62559/1620915570021-MPOD1JNZ893C7CFAOABZ/received_796834567592439.jpeg)
[an image of a seated, cross-legged Tarah Gibbon in a sunlit room, surrounded by magazines and other paper and pillows behind her]
The little chalk board that could. I wrote this and hung it in my house after the Courage to Lead Retreat I attended 3 years ago (my first introduction to the Centre for Courage and Renewal). It now lives in my barn, placed there after I cleaned it out and transformed it into a rural, rustic and whimsical hosting space, inviting others to discover a new, forgotten way of listening.
I find beauty and surprise in noticing the unexpected gifts along the way. They are like clues telling me I was right to move ahead, even in the unknowing. Breadcrumbs left from the universe, ancestors, earth knowledge, signs and noticings. Affirmations.
It's like finding (or searching for) a key you think is for a buried treasure, but the key was never needed in the first place. The treasure is within you. And the key is in sharing it. Is this how abundance grows? And how regeneration reseeds itself?
Abundance is a seed, indeed.
Tarah Gibbon lives in Hillsvale, Nova Scotia where she learns daily with her four children and the community of land and people. She is host and steward of Resilient Barn and dig it! Naturals, a line of wild-crafted herbal body care. Tarah is woven into the WholeHeart community in many ways, as she participates and shares her personal and herbal gifts with gratitude for connection and reciprocity. Our sustaining contributors have been blessed by her generous thank you gifts. Tarah embodies a commitment to “living on the learning edge.”
The Domains of Change: Rao, A. and D Kelleher. (2005) Is There Life After Mainstream?
Multi Media Images:
Moon Jars image, by Elena Megalos; Shelter & Space image, by Katie Spring; Owl image, by Morgan Padgett; Woman Dancing image, Llewellyn Witch Calendar
Multi Media Texts:
Taproot Magazine; Orion Magazine; Emergence Magazine