lili

Time to reconsider how we look at work. Holley's deep dive into this area highly resonates to that of my own path and questions I pose around what it means to feel fulfilled and authentic in the work that we do. She has come to know work as: "A lifelong devotion, to deliberation and transcendence of myself, my family and community, and society at large. What that contribution looks like shifts over time, and the action or inaction within that contribution can be grand gestures or small simple deeds - that's the beauty of it." She describes her current work resembling a manifesto: To honor self-acceptance as the antidote to the allure of external validation. To cherish and express my uninhibited creative expression and honour my weirdness, whether it makes me money or not. To share the unfolding of my story, the triumphs, the falls, the lifts, the climbs in artful, honest ways that challenge people to not turn away from themselves.

I don't need to be anything other
Than a prison guard's son
I don't need to be anything other
Than a specialist's son

I don't have to be anyone other
Than the birth of two souls in one
Part of where I'm going
Is knowing where I'm coming from

I don't want to be anything other than me

Mary Oliver: Morning Poem

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches–
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead–
if it’s all you can do
to keep on trudging–

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted–

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.