I’ll tell you my former and current ‘titles’, whatever those mean, but mostly I’m a fallible human just trying to figure out life along with everyone else. I often have the urge to call myself the learning teacher, because teaching the lessons I need to learn has become a theme in my life.
But if I must write titles, I’m a mom and former teacher turned author/illustrator and advocate for children, animals, and heart-centered living. As a former elementary school teacher and Early Childhood Education college instructor, I was drawn to social/emotional education in my quest to understand myself, my three sensitive children, and that which seemed too often lacking in the education setting and the world at large; empathy and an emotional understanding for the stories behind each of us. My children’s books are at once the culmination and continuation of that quest. I believe learning does not begin in the mind, but in the heart, and that learning pathways open when children first feel safe, loved, and understood for their authentic selves and in context of their larger lives outside the classroom. I also believe that children deserve to learn as much about their internal worlds as their external worlds and that our education system is woefully behind and out of touch in all the ways that truly matter.
Healing from chronic illnesses and mental health challenges between myself and my children took me on a journey of remembering who I was always meant to be. Animals and creativity have forever been central to my life, and I believe both are a profound source of healing.
I live in Las Vegas with my husband, three children, five dogs, and two cats. I love to read, cuddle my four-leggeds, and create soulful interiors filled with family art and found treasures. I also love to listen to my three musical kids rock out in the garage.
My first children’s picture book is Life Lessons by Bobolina Delphina, which is based on BoBo, our real-life rescue cat, and teaches lessons of the heart. My children and our family friend, Venus Rodriguez, helped me illustrate. It was truly a co-creative act, made with love. We have two more books in the BoBo series underway.
“Whatever pain you can’t get rid of, make it your creative offering.” ~Susan Cain, author of Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole
If you found your way here, it’s likely because you found my book, Life Lessons by Bobolina Delphina. I wrote and illustrated a children’s book, but it’s never what I set out to do in my wildest dreams. It looks like sunshine. It’s filled with hope, but it was born of a deep hurt and an attempt to find the light. Perhaps it was also the only way I could tell my truth right now. I think it was the beginning of finding my voice.
Have I found healing? In so many ways, yes. But maybe the human condition is to always be in the act of healing. Hopefully it is, because that’s also growing. Coming to understand my wiring, my sensitivity, my ‘orchidness’, the bittersweet nature that is me, was part of that journey. I still struggle with depression and fatigue, but the hurts and sorrows that settled into my body since forever …those don’t drown me as much anymore. Maybe those are just a slow ache, a low grade fever that will forever sit somewhere deep in my heart. I tuck them away, but not too away. Sometimes I pull out my aches and sorrows on purpose, to examine them, to contemplate the wisdom found in the ways we hurt and the ways we might heal.
Being highly sensitive is to not just be the noticer, but the holder of so much that others can’t or refuse to acknowledge or see. It gets heavy, and all I can do is turn into something else. I’ve come to believe we are all broken, or have been, or will be, and when we are, whether aware or not, we turn it on others or ourselves… sometimes both. I do believe it’s what we see playing out on a grand scale in our world right now, and it’s heartbreaking. My brokeness I turned on myself. In time, I turned it into my creative offering, but there is still more alchemizing to do. That’s what this is I suppose.
I hope to share my creativity outside of our BoBo book series, because I think that was just a preamble. I have more writing to do, that I am doing. I had also once dreamt of going into interior design after being in education for some time. I’ve always been sensitive to spaces and had some need to express the world I felt on the inside in my surroundings. My carpenter husband is tired of my projects, but I managed to pick up my own skills along the way; wallpaper, tile, painting …anything at all that could make my new house look old. This is where we put extra money as I thought about what I would do with part two of my life after healing from so very much. But one magical cat had other ideas for me, and I’m so thankful she did, because truth be told, I was too scared of people and the world to do interior design for others. I hadn’t the slightest bit of confidence for that. BoBo is helping me find that. But it will be forever something I’m drawn to do in my own space.
I have long struggled with social anxiety and fear of feeling seen, so this is my practice in facing that fear. I don’t know where this will lead, I only know I feel drawn to keep writing and creating and sharing, because I know it is at the root of what heals me. I hope it also offers some opportunity to see each other with masks laid aside in an attempt to know the true essence of connection.
And if you are an orchid, invisible or not, I see you. I love you. The world needs us.
-Leafe