Rain-Inspired Reflections and Creativity

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Aloha and welcome to your Heart Magic , an illuminating space where psychology , spirituality and heart wisdom meet . Here's your host , Dr Bethann Kapansky-Wright , the clinical psychologist with a mystic mind .

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Aloha everyone . Welcome to your Heart Magic . This is Dr Bethann Kapansky-Wright and we have a talk story time episode today , and the theme that I clustered all of the passages I'm going to share around is rain , and that was literally inspired by the events of my morning where I was thinking about what I wanted to pull together to make this podcast today and I looked outside and it is a beautiful , sunny day on Kauai , but it was also raining we often get morning rain here and it will be so beautiful and so misty , and that planted the seed in my mind today for our Talk Storytime episode to share passages that I wrote that were inspired by the rain . As I've often shared on the podcast , so much of my writing is inspired by nature . It is inspired by the beauty of Kauai and the natural world around us and , prior to living in Kauai , it was inspired by the very rugged and very different kind of beauty of Alaska . It also occurred to me today the whole idea behind this series was that once a month I use my podcast to share different reflections and pieces of writing that I've done throughout the years and talk story behind them .

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But I suppose a more polished way that I might describe these episodes is that they're really about creativity and meaning and how we take the ordinary moments in our life , the moments we collect through experience and observation and things that we feel and things that we go through , and we use those moments and find something creative in that process . For me as a writer , it's wonderful to have that lens where I can take something and deconstruct it with words and tap into a different meaning or find some hidden wisdom in it . And that is ultimately what I love about these Talk Story Time episodes is they are these offerings of creativity where I took different moments from my life and made meaning out of them , and I love that I get to share them . And then they transcend just me and transcend the moment and get turned into an offering of peace or hope or wisdom or something else that I can share with everybody else through words . So with that , let's dive into some of the passages I have to share today . The first one is called Rain Days and it is from my book Things of that Nature , words for the Mystic Heart . It's a simple poem and we'll just start with that one Rain Days . Rain days are like meant to be curled into , with gentle soliloquy , an invitation to travel to the worlds in between , where angels dance unknown with wild creativity . Behind the veil , mysteries await . Love is the portal to travel this space portal to travel the space . The life of a raindrop is a story of change and grace . When we allow life to shape us , magic takes place and we , like the rain , become more An outpour of peace on a thirsty ground .

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When I first moved to Kauai back in 2017 , I was living on a different part of the island and it was far up in the hills , up in the mountains , the jungles , and we got a lot of rain . It rains anywhere on the island a decent amount , especially the east side on up but if you're in the mountains , you're going to get so much more rain . There truly was a jungle that was right behind the property that we were renting at the time , so the backyard , which wasn't that big , backed up into the sloping hill and it was all jungle and it was so magical and mystical and so very different than anything I experienced living in Anchorage , alaska , for the majority of my life , and we had so many mornings where it would just be pouring rain and we'd have flash rains , and it was so inspiring as a writer to be able to , on these rainy days , kind of curl into them and curl into the moment and allow myself to be in more of a reflective and contemplative place . I think being by

Water's Inspiration for our Emotional Process

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water does that to us . Water is connected to our emotions and it's connected to our inner world and our feelings are so fluid and they're mutable and they're something that are always shifting and changing . And there's this mystery to water that there are things in the deep of us that are still rising up , things that are subconscious and our unconscious mind that we are still shining a light on and making known . And then there's something kind of magical about rain where you could almost imagine being in some fantasy film with elves or fairies or things living all around you . And so the mystic heart of me also really enjoyed this idea of having a gateway and this veil to between the worlds .

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I actually just free associated a little bit before I hopped on here with the word rain , and some of the adjectives and phrases that I came up with were mystical contemplation , reflection , coziness , purification , self-possessed . The rain comes and goes on its own accord , whether or not it's welcome , and that is certainly true about the rain . Sometimes we really do want to curl up into it like a little blanket , and it suits our mood , and have a cup of tea , and other times all we want is sunshine , depending on the season , or we want something else . We're tired of the rain . It's inconvenient to us , it's rained too much , it is doing something that is maybe destroying the environment around us , hurting things in some capacity when it won't stop , and then we want it to stop and , of course , we have no control over that . So there's this autonomy and independence and just operating on its own system to the rain . That is also a beautiful teacher on life's timing and patience and self-possession .

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So this next passage I'm going to share is from a book that I don't know that I've ever shared on the podcast before . It's a children's book called Tallulah Talks to Nature , and it is a book that I wrote and illustrated back in 2018 . And it is about a little girl named Tallulah and her pet , parakeet Tuesday . They live on an island and she has the ability to intuitively hear the words and wisdom of nature , so she listens to nature and nature talks back to her , and the whole book takes her through these different elements in nature and what they have to say to her , this was an absolute joy to create . I would love to make more of these . I self-published it and it is more of a time issue , not a desire issue , that I've not done more , but I'm so glad that I did this one . And this passage is when Tallulah is talking to the rain .

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Whenever the rain came , tallulah liked to stay inside and daydream . She loved how the water trickled down her window and the fresh scent that came when it fell . Sometimes the rain was mysterious and misty , sometimes it was gentle and quiet , sometimes it poured and poured with mystical force . Tallulah sometimes thought she could hear music . When it rained , the drop sounded like beats and notes and chimes . She always felt like it was trying to sing to her and she and Tuesday would hum along . And when Tallulah listened to the wisdom of the rain in her heart , the rain said the rain washes all and makes things clean , making droplets , puddles , pools and streams . When rain pitter-patters , the earth grows green , for water is the life that helps grow living things .

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It was so fun to write that book and to take little wisdoms that I might turn into a poem or something that I would put in a different kind of book for adults and translate it into something that I thought kids might enjoy and read . Nature is for everybody , inspiration is for everybody Our relationship to the earth and the world around us , and creativity and nature's wisdom . It's for everybody , no matter what age you are . So it was so fun to write that in a way that maybe sparked creativity and meaning and curiosity for nature in children's hearts . This next passage is another poem . It's from Things of that Nature Once More , and this was called Rain Dance , and it was also written close to these other two .

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As I said earlier , when I was first living on Kauai especially 2017-2018 , so much of my writing is really heavily influenced by what was going on in the environment around me , or it's woven in somehow . I was just living so close to the elements in a different way than I'd experienced before , and certainly Alaska is living close to the elements , but there is a necessity usually of being indoors more when you're there , especially in the winter months , so it's a very different relationship to the elements . But being on this island , surrounded by water and surrounded by the intensity of the ever-changing natural world and how the winds change here and the skies change and water changes and the ocean changes all of that just brought this whole different level and layer to what I felt called to write about . So this is called Rain Dance . There were those days where I wanted to cry over all of it . Cry for the beauty , cry for the ache , cry for the wounds of the past , cry for the hope of the future , cry with the rain outside echoing down her drops , living water for a tired , thirsty ground . We dance together in fluid harmony . Tears intermingled , watery weaves . One mind , one heart , one plea among our sodden cheeks . One heart , one plea among

Finding Voice Through Writing Amidst Change

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our sodden cheeks . Peace , peace , peace , peace .

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I wrote that after some kind of major tragedy that I don't even remember at this point . We've had so many of them where there's been some form of cruelty done to others by a human being , and we will get these headlines in the paper actually usually on our phones anymore . It will be this like flash headline of this horrible thing just happened , and I don't remember which one inspired this one . I just remember having a moment of just hopelessness and reading something else in the news that just ripped my heart out and made me so sad and so shocked by the cruelty that some people are capable of and not knowing how to process my feelings and wanting to write something redemptive . For me , poetry and writing has always been a way of trying to make sense of something , even if you can't make sense of it , and trying to find something redemptive in it .

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And it seems , no matter what , no matter how awful things can be in this world , that it really helps me to keep my hope in love and peace , to keep my hope in the light , to keep my hope in the best of humanity and those with awakened hearts who are moving things forward at this time and choosing a better way to keep my hope in nature's constancy and the grace that we're surrounded by every day . Our life is so transient , we don't know what's going to happen , and so there's such a sacred , precious quality to it when we really remember that and it's a grace and a blessing to be here . It's one that's a privilege . It might not always feel like it when we're in the doldrums of humanity and we're suffering in some capacity over something , some capacity over something , but when we are able to receive from life , it is a gift . And trying to find a way to tap into something sacred when we've seen something chaotic and destructive and dark and evil happen and to reaffirm the sanctity and the beauty and the magic that's always been important to me . It's been important to help me keep hope and keep light when things feel really dark , to come back into my heart magic and my heart , wisdom and my spiritual connection . And I look at poetry and some of these pieces of writing as a peace offering , as if I were waving peace flags or releasing a lantern for peace . Doing something in remembrance of that says I care about these things and I'm going to take this mindful moment to pause and to grieve and appreciate the loss and the beauty and then try and find something transformative or redemptive in that moment .

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So this last piece is called Raindrops and

Raindrops: Personal Reflections on Life and Writing

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it is unpublished . This is the first time I've shared this . I pulled it off my laptop today , remembering that I wrote it back in the winter of last year . It is going to be woven into a future book that is in the works now , nowhere near ready for publication , but it's written from the vantage point of myself in 2023 . And the earlier pieces I shared with you were all written probably in 2017 and 2018 . So some time has passed and you'll hear it in my voice and my reflections and how much has changed since those initial first couple years on Kauai Raindrops .

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Earlier today I was reading pieces from my older works for a solstice-themed podcast episode and I heard something in the words of my slightly younger self that I haven't accessed in my writing in quite some time Conviction . I wrote like I meant it and like something inside of me depended on it and at the time it did . Writing was my ticket into broader words and a way I could access a bigger vocabulary of being and understand my experience of self through both a terrestrial and celestial lens . Telling my stories through poetry , essay and little vignettes of prose and reflection is how I both grounded myself and bridged into unseen worlds that I accessed through imagination and intuition in something a bit ethereal and magical . I stopped telling stories a few years back I'm not sure if I lost my voice or lost my place , like I had been keeping time with the music through the metronome of my words , and somewhere along the way I got out of rhythm and couldn't find the beat after that . That's a hard thing for a writer to admit .

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There's been a few brief periods in the past when I slowed down on writing for a time , but never for long , it was always just a brief season necessary to be present in whatever phase of life I was in at the time , and when I picked up the metaphorical pen again , I'd be met with the harvest of new knowledge and experiences that I'd squirreled away during my time away from the page . Usually , a rush of inspiration would come and I'd be off on a writing bender and channeling my words into a new poem or blog post or piece for a future work Somehow . For the last couple of years , though , I just haven't written much . I've done other things use my voice to start a podcast , and sometimes I remind myself that is its own form of communication and storytelling . I have a handful of poems I wrote back in the first half of 2022 , some of them polished into completion , some of them left unfinished without an ending or a home .

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I've had a couple of rushes of inspiration as I've begun to work on a new book , but even that has only come in small spurts , not at all like books of the past , which seemed to pour out of me once I embraced and opened to the idea . It's left me wondering what happened to my voice and how to access that deep well of creativity and experience I know is still inside of me . It would be easy to blame stress or being busy or some other external factor that's getting in the way . Perhaps there is some truth in that , but I think the deeper truth is that I've accumulated some stories over the last few years that are hard to tell , and I've been in the process of evolving how I communicate myself within myself few years that are hard to tell , and I've been in the process of evolving how I communicate myself within myself , which makes it hard to communicate myself to anyone else . After all , how can we effectively share our truth with another if we're still getting clear on what our truth is ? And that brings me back to where this piece of writing began Conviction .

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There is a belief that I could hear in the voice of my slightly younger self that is resonant with desire , assurance and certitude . Even in moments where I felt inexplicably lost , I'd find my way through by following the thread of the words in my heart , and they always help take me back to a space of my desire to follow my beat and choose the way of the heart . I think sometimes we think we've lost our beat . We feel we've disconnected from some key essence in ourselves and we miss who we used to be and wonder how to get back to a brighter space . We try and pick up the count again and find our old rhythm and pace . Sometimes we can't . Sometimes we change in the night and have evolved in such a way that we need to write a new song and figure out a way to weave elements of our old essence into a new composition .

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The rain is falling as I write these words , pitter-patters on the patio outside in the scent of saturated grass and nighttime . The droplets slow to an uneven pace , haphazard drips that drizzle in accordance with their own timing . There is no measurable rhythm , just the beat as it comes . Their irregular music seems to answer my questions of self tonight , reminding me to stay with the changes in our cadences and constellations . Even times when we feel off rhythm are still part of a greater arrangement of soul remixing and scrambling itself into a bigger composition . We can't lose our key essence amalgamated atoms of hydrogen and oxygen . Even water and all its vast forms , from modest drop to tumultuous sea , all breaks down the same .

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I listen to the raindrops fall in misshapen syncopation , dancing their way through the dark of December's shortened days , moving with the guidance of their own time and pace . If you listen carefully , you can hear them say trust your process a little bit deeper , a little bit longer , a lot more freely . Things have a way of coming together in their own brilliant way and everything , including you , dear heart , will be right as rain . I can tell that's a piece that is less processed to me . The earlier ones , when I read them , they were just joyful to read and they are filled with nostalgia and memories and that's fresher and it actually sparked some emotion in me as I was reading it and I'm still writing the rest of that story . Obviously , things have shifted since I wrote that back in December .

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I had no idea at the time that this next book , small Pearls , big Wisdom , was what I was going to channel my writing voice into for this next season and the book that I referred to in that passage . I am still working on it . I think that is what will be next for me after Small Pearls comes out , and I can feel that there's wisdom in me wanting to be harvested and it ties into some of the experiences over the last few years for myself and navigating some of the life transitions and themes that have been coming up for me . So that is a story that is to be continued . Stay tuned .

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Thank you , whoever is listening to this , for being the very first audience for this piece that is unpublished and for this part of my life that I'm still writing and still allowing it to

Embracing the Sun's Wisdom

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unfold . Thank you as well for joining me today and our podcast on rain and writing , creativity and meaning , and I will be back next week with a new episode of your heart magic . We are returning to our archetypes of the tarot series and we are talking about the card , the sun . We only have three cards left , so the sun is card 19 and the tarot deck , and it's a wonderful message to share . I did not time it out that we had an episode on rain followed by one on sun . I feel like the one after that needs to obviously weave in rainbow somehow , but I'll be back next week with the sun and whatever wisdom wants to be shared on the podcast . In the meantime , have an amazing week and , as always , be well , be love , be you and be magic .

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You've been listening to your Heart Magic with dr bethan kapansky right tune in next week for a new episode to support and empower your light .