When this idea for the Forest Fairy Festival (and the Forest Fairy Training School) came to me, last year, I didn't really know what I was in for. I knew both of these things felt like "big ideas". The scope of this vision felt wild, exciting and vulnerable. Bringing these dreams to life feels perfectly aligned with my values of creating the world that I want to live in, and living in the magic all the time. And I knew that in order to follow through with this, that I'd learn something and grow into this next season of my life.
Well, here we are, more than a month into the group coaching program, and two weeks away from the festival, (PS we still need work traders!) and I'm feeling so grateful for all that I have learned (and re-learned) thus far. It has been an emotional journey!
Here's the biggest thing I am harvesting right now:
Disappointment work is a devotional practice for stretching the size of your dreams.
The size of your vision equals the size of your capacity for disappointment work. What is "disappointment work"? Thank you Somatica for introducing me to this phrase. Disappointment work refers to the willingness to feel grief, loss, sadness, anger, frustration and hurt. I wanted to add to the end of that sentence "and not collapse in the process." But sometimes we DO need to collapse - and spend hours, days, weeks, years in recovery, healing and rest. What's more crucial is simply the WILLINGNESS to feel the feelings. When there is willingness to feel, there is much less need for collapse.
Pretty much every work day since I embarked on this Forest Fairy journey, I have encountered something that felt disappointing: people who won't be attending, forms of support that are not available to me, people unwilling to show up for repair, people unwilling to contribute what I am requesting. Some days the tears have been plentiful and I have needed lots of emotional support from loved ones. What has been magical about this Forest Fairy process is that because I am so enamoured with the vision, I have stretched into new willingness to feel the sadness. There have been days when I fought the feelings. And because of the deep love I have of this dream, and the people who are co-creating it with me, I have stretched my heart into a new capacity for feeling the big feels.
Through this birthing process, I have felt the labor pains in my heart. There have been days where I had to go lay down in my bed and breathe through the ache in my chest.
And it feels great to write this, to celebrate the process, and to celebrate even more that I AM STILL SO THRILLED TO BE DOING THIS! I get up each morning feeling really honored to get to endeavor to create this beautiful performance art piece with the many other forest fairies who will be there.
I hope there are a few of you out there who still might want to join us for this unique and magical event, taking place two weeks from now!
Sarah Belzile
