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Inner Surprises Blog

SoulCollage®

By Anne Marie Bennett

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SoulCollage®

31 Years with This Guy!

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On April 22, “this guy” and I celebrated our 31st wedding anniversary šŸ’–

We met four years before that, so technically we’re celebrating 35 years together šŸ˜®

This is one of the first cards I made, and I found it to be a very interesting process speaking from the card as if I were Jeff!Ā  Ā It gave me a whole new perspective on our marriage . . . and on him as a person.

This is the journaling I did back in 2005 (when we’d been married for 10 years):

Who are you?
I am the one who loves you unconditionally.Ā  I am the one who is fun and easy-going and loves to laugh.Ā  I am the one who is strong and stable and steady.Ā  I am your rock.Ā  I am the one who is hard-working and dependable.Ā  I am the one who loves people and who always believes the best of people. I am the one who embodies positive living.Ā  I am the one who is a good father and who wants the best for my children.Ā  I am the one who manifests abundance by the way I live and think.Ā  I am the one with a big, wide heart.

What do you have to give me?
I give you an abundance of love and support and kindness and grace.Ā  I give you the knowing that you are unconditionally loved.Ā  I give you my everything.Ā  I give you financial security freely and with no strings attached because I love you.

What do you want from me?
I just want your love, and for you to be kind to my children and to my mother.Ā  I want you to be there for me, and to have fun together with you on our many vacations.

And this is the way this Neter answers my questions today, after 35 years of loving . . . can you see/hear a difference that suggests a long journey?

Who are you?
I am the one who continues to love you unconditionally, no matter your moods and perceived failures. I am the one who supports your creative endeavors. I am the one who said “We will get through this together” when you told me you had breast cancer. I am the one who has honored your long desire to live in Maine. I am the one who gives you space to read and write and make art. I am the one who is proud of you. I am the one who has honored my commitment to walk beside you, no matter what. I am the one who loves my children and grandchildren. I am the one who loves going to the theatre with you, and watching TV with you, and snuggling with you and Louis at night before we sleep. I am the one who depends on you to help me see what I cannot see.

What do you have to giveĀ  me?
My gifts to you are my solid foundation, my generous spirit, my loving heart. I have the gift of steadfastness that has kept you steady on your journey forward. My gifts include financial wisdom and a practical approach to living and to our lives.Ā 


What do you want from me?
I want you to speak kindly to me.Ā  I want you to grow older with me. I want you to enjoy our time together. I want you to understand that we are very different people, and to focus on what we have in common instead of our differences. I want you to remember that I love you.

A Mommy & Me Card

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I am the one who knows how to mother myself.

I grew up with a mother who was always there for me physically, but because of her own lack of a nurturing mother growing up, she wasn’t one who nurtured me with unconditional love and kindness.Ā  I missed out on having a real “Mommy.”

After practicing SoulCollageĀ® for a few years, I realized that I could “mommy” myself and so I made several cards to depict this Mommy and Me relationship that I had missed out on as a child.Ā  This is the one card of all my “Mommy and Me” cards that remains in my deck, as a vivid reminder that I can be nurturing and loving and unconditionally accepting towards myself.

Most of the time when I read from this card, it is the Mommy inside of me talking, but recently I drew it in a short reading and I noticed that the little girl was speaking this time:

Who are you?
I am the one who loves being held and cherished by Mommy.Ā  I am the one who can completely relax when Mommy is holding me.Ā  I am the one who feels safe in her arms.

What do you have to say to me today?
My message for you today is this- even though you had an earth-mother who couldn’t and didn’t give you this, you have an inner mother just waiting for you to open your arms to her. Open up on the inside.Ā  Let Mommy hold you when you need to be held. Let go of the notion that you have to do everything yourself, and let yourself be held.

If you have a card with two distinct Neters (energies) on it, like this one, try doing the I Am the One Who… exercise with EACH of the voices and see what you discover.

What’s Inside YOUR Pie?

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scpieShe’s imperfect but she tries
She is good but she lies
She is hard on herself
She is broken and won’t ask for help

She is messy but she’s kind
She is lonely most of the time
She is all of this mixed up
And baked in a beautiful pie

~ Sara Bareilles, She Used to Be Mine
from the Broadway musical Waitress

In the musical Waitress (based on the movie of the same name, starring Keri Russell), the theme of “pie” is woven throughout the whole show. The main character is Jenna who is gifted at creating delicious and unusual pies. She is known for combining unusual ingredients to create unique, exquisite taste sensations. Immediately after seeing the movie for the first time in 2007, I went out and bought a cookbook devoted solely to pie. It’s several hundred pages long and the only recipe I ever made was for a divine cherry pie, although I will admit that I let “Mrs. Smith” make the crust.

At first I was surprised by my fascination with pie. I grew up with a mother, grandmother, and a couple of sisters-in-law who made pies from scratch without blinking an eye. So while I’ve always enjoyed eating pie, for some reason, I didn”t inherit the “pie gene” and I will confess right now that I’ve never made a pie where the crust didn’t come from the freezer section of the local grocery store. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I never really thought very much about pie before this movie and musical made me stop and ponder.

At the beginning of the story, Jenna’s life is a mess and she feels trapped within her job in a diner and her marriage to a man who is unable to love. At one point in the musical she sings “She Used to Be Mine” (see lyrics above). The song comes on the cusp of a major change for Jenna, and she is beginning to let go of who she used to be, readying herself to embrace who she will be.

Take a moment now . . . slowly read the lyrics to yourself; speak them out loud if you won’t be disturbing anyone else.

What Jenna is describing is all of her inner parts and pieces. Some are bright flavored; some are sour. Some are sweet; some are bitter. But what’s important is that they are all a part of her and as she sings, she is embracing that fact. As she says, they’re all “mixed up and baked in a beautiful pie.” I love that she is able to see it as beautiful even though some of the pieces are sharp or difficult to accept.

Because of Waitress, I have begun thinking of pie as a metaphor for my own life. It takes a unique mix of ingredients to make a pie come out tasting and looking whole and balanced, just as it takes a unique mix of qualities to make up my own whole self. So as we move into the holiday season, I encourage you to call to mind these lyrics whenever you come across pie- in your recipe box, grocery store, mixing bowl, dinner table, or even in a magazine ad. Remember that you also are a unique and wonderful mixture of “ingredients” and celebrate each and every one!

With all of this in mind, I made a SoulCollageĀ® card to remind me. Here is what she said to me recently:

Who are you?
I am the one who bakes creative and delicious pies.Ā 
I am the one who is a mixture of tart and sweet and bitter and flaky and smooth, just all my pieces mixed up together.
I am the one who loves to create and my palette is the ingredients and my studio is the kitchen.

What is your message for me today?
My message for you today is this… It’s time to embrace and savor and appreciate the mixed-up but flavorful mess that is you!

The Rainbow Owl

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Several years ago, when learning about the chakras, I “met” a rainbow-feathered owl in a guided imagery meditation one day. After working with that Neter, I realized that Rainbow Owl is the Companion to My Companions!Ā  I do love it when the Neters make themselves known to us in dreamlike states of being. Here is my card to honor him. (Sorry, I cannot remember the name of the artist, but the owl image is definitely not copyright-free and I believe I bought it on Etsy).

Here’s another card (left) I made around the same time, totally intuitively, just loving how the images came together. Here is what the girl said to me:

I am the one who bows to the Companion of my Companions. I am the one who has made friends with my chakras and therefore with my body.

I am the one who journeys deep within, down and down to my innermost cavern where the Inner River flows.

I am the one with feathers in my hair, just as there are feathers on my Owl Companion.

My message for you today is simple- bow to your body, dear one. Allow ITS wisdom to lead you. Float again in your Inner River… all will become clear.

Magical Rainbow Path

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scrainbowpath scmagicwomanThis is an intuitive card that I made a few years ago. It’s only two images and now it’s one of my favorite cards.Ā 
Here’s what she said to me recently:

Who are you?
I am the one who has paused on my journey.Ā 
I am the one who stands on a magical sparkling rainbow path-way.
I am the one who is looking down at my feet.
I am the one who is wearingĀ  a sparkling rainbow dress.

What is your message for me today?
My message for you today is this . . .
You are in a pausing-place on your own journey right now. Instead of feeling frustrated or guilty about pausing, I suggest you look down with gratitude at your own feet that have brought you this far! Notice the magic that is all around you! Savor this new colorful place that is meeting you where you are. The journey will continue soon enough, when you are ready. You will know when you are ready, and the magic will go with you, not to worry.

 

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