We’re not ordinary. You deserve better.
Gestation is important to each of us, for we are repeatedly granted the process of developing new life and birthing it into the world. May each of you rebirth yourselves and may each of you ponder what it is that you hold dear. You are dear to me. – Jinx Davis
Photography by Joshua Rawson-Harris There are problems and then there are problems. The big ones are fierce, ugly, life-threatening, and gut-wrenching. The rest are created (and nurtured) in our heads. I know this personally. I have sat in the belly of the whale for years not working on skills I wanted to learn, books I wanted to write, damaging relationships that needed to end, ways to become financially independent, and dreams that yearned for attention. Ironically, I was successful at the really big problems that endangered my physical and mental survival and I was good at solving other people’s problems. Yet I found dozens of reasons not to accomplish many things I held dear: I was unworthy, I was too old, I was a fake, …
I was a professional storyteller for decades and performed in over 500 schools, civic centers, museums, and stages before using the art in my one-woman theater plays. I learned the importance of Story long before it was toted by every social media and business marketer around the world. Nonetheless, it is essential to communication, just as it is essential to building my audience for JustJinx – Art for Charity. I admit it was easier to perform than to market stories since I always had an audience. It is quite a task to build an audience online amidst the millions of voices on our computers and phones. We are all vying for your attention. The great storytellers of the world are seldom narcissistic, sexy, or even …
I have been feeling vulnerable after receiving a round of requests for assistance by artists in nations where hunger is now a daily reality. These individuals were seriously vulnerable to suffering. I was vulnerable to my financial ability to assist them and each of us was uncomfortable with the conversations that occurred. We all felt weak but the opposite was true. We were brave and we shared our truths (or at least most of us did). We need to remind ourselves that vulnerability is not weakness. It is our strength. Everything will not go your way, nor should it do so. It is when life wrestles with you that we mature, and seldom before. We cannot evolve into our potential when we remain frustrated and …
Photo by Haley Kean Most of us don’t know what to do with our own pain and rarely do me know how to support others in their pain and grief. Pain is not to be ignored. It is not to be consoled with platitudes that somehow all will pass. Pain is pain. It only asks that you sit with it. There is a lot of pain out there in this nanosecond of earth’s history. Pandemics, starvations, genocides, climate change, conflicts, deaths, fear, inequality, oppression, and huge losses of income surround us. Uncertainty hangs in the air. My inbox and social media messages are full of it. My mind wants to fix it and I know I cannot. The coffers of my limited income or my …