Welcome to the Lotus Ink Newsletter
Bringing more of your dream life into your real life!
Brought to you by Silvia Foti

Notes from the Ink of the Lotus Blossom
Trust your perception. Listen to your intuition. Tune into yourself.

Issue #2
October 30, 2002

What's in this issue?

Day of the Dead -- Let's Rattle the Ghosts from Our Past to Unblock Our Creativity

Profile of Andre Beaudoin, inspirational speaker: To move forward in your creative adult life, did you need to delve into your childhood?

Skullduggery Signings

Day of the Dead -- Let's Rattle the Ghosts From Our Past to Unblock Our Creativity

Last week, I was doing research for a Command Spanish class I was teaching to a group of executives from Turle Wax, and came across some fascinating information on the Mexican culture's celebration of Days of the Dead. The days are celebrated on November 1 and 2, and they coincide with the Catholic celebration of All Saint's Day and All Soul's Day.

While researching Days of the Dead, I became very excited about the concept of honoring the departed, and immediately saw a connection to how we could borrow from this celebration to help unblock our creativity. So much of our thinking stems from our childhood, and if one of our parents or relatives who played a role in shaping our thinking has passed on, we can still make a connection with them by using a ritual.

The Day of the Dead celebration views death as the continuation of life, not the end of it. So instead of fearing death, celebrators embrace it. They have a strong belief in transcendentalism -- or that we are much more than just our bodies, and that our souls live on.

On the Day of the Dead, families visit the graves of their deceased and they construct an altar for their departed in their home. I was fascinated to learn that skulls play an important role on this day. People wear wooden skullmasks, called calacas, and dance in honor of their deceased relatives. Sugar skulls, made with the names of the dead person on the forehead,are eated by a relative or friend. The skulls symbolize death and rebirth, and it is thought that skulls hold the powers of the deceased.

For the second year in a row, I constructed an altar to the deceased family members in our home and noticed how this ritual continues to help me unblock my creativity. I placed photographs of my other, who passed away two years ago, my grandmother, who passed away five months after my mother, as well as photos from my husband's side of the family. We lit some candles, said some prayers, and then played some music. My mother was an opera singer, so we had some classical music, followed by Argentinan tangoes to accommodate my husband's grandparents who died in Buenos Aires.

This new ritual had a strong effect upon me and allowed me to think about the good and the bad times I had with those who passed before me. Like many daughters, I had several heated moments with my mother, but with this ritual, I felt safe enough to relive some of those that affected my self-esteem and level of confidence, and that had played a huge role in blocking my creativity. By deeply concentrating on what happened and acknowledging my emotional injuries, I felt a sense of release and peace, knowing my mother didn't really intend to scar me for life with her whippings when I was a child or her biting words when I was an adult. Mom was programmed to do to me what her mother had done to her, and she truly didn't know better. Everything she did, she thought she did for my own good, yet through this ritual, I reminded myself that many of the things she did were not for my own good, despite her good intentions.

I've convinced this is an important distinction and is a crucial insight to grasp to help us unblock our creativity. I had some imaginary conversations with Mom, and journaled about this experience in the following weeks. I've learned not to blame Mom, and to take ownership of my own feelings. But by knowing, truly knowing, that Mom did some wrong things to me, I had a strong reference point, a strong comparison for what would have been right. I was also able to feel more self-confidence and a higher sense of self-esteem, and this greatly affected my ability to create and heal.

I was also able to contemplate on how much creativity I had inherited from my mother and her mother. Both women were singers, writers, and good story-tellers, and in many positive ways, they were also an inspiration to me. I was able to be grateful for the creative heritage that they had left me to build upon. Mom never knew my first novel was accepted for publication, and I know she would have been very proud, which is why I dedicated my first book to her.

I invite you to consider doing a similar exercise with those in your family who have passed before. Find a photograph, light a candle, play some music, and commune. Write about this experience, and see what happens. If you're willing to journey back to some of the painful moments, go there and explore them, and come to terms with what was really for your own good. Then think about any creative inspirations this person was able to pass down to you, and contemplate how you can build upon your ineritance.

If you feel like sharing the experience, please feel free to send it to me at lotusink@aol.com, and I'll be happy to publish it in my next newsletter.

Unadulteratedly Yours,
Silvia Foti

Profile on Andre Beaudoin, Inspirational Speaker
To move forward in your creative adult life, did you need to delve into your childhood?

Andre Beaudoin, of Meriden, Connecticut, is a double-life creative. By day he's the customer retention manager for a company that sells home and business security systems. His job is to contact customers who want to cancel their service and vonvince them to renew their contracts.

By night, however, he's a professional inspirational speaker. His slogan is "Inspiring and Teaching Organizations and Individuals to Achieve More." He began his speaking career in June 1999 with commissioned sales people and network marketing companies, but today he speaks to a wide variety of audiences.

In March 2002, when I interviewed him, he was preparing a presentation for COVE, a non-profit organization that provides a safe harbor for grieving children, those who have lost one or both parents because of an illness or accident. The day after, he was going to speak to a group of at-risk high school seniors, students who beat the odds at staying in school.

His focus is to overcome challenges, and if anyone would know how to overcome adversity, it's Andre. When he was 15 months old, he was afflicted with polio and had become a paraplegic. He grew up with leg braces and crutches. His parents made an extraordinary commitment to his recovery, which is how the story of his life began.

His most poignant stories as an inspirational speaker to businesses come from the emotional mines of his childhood, which he draws from frequently to feed his creative side. By exploring that murky territory of his past, he was able to help his creative side blossom even more.

As a child he had four hours of physical therapy each day while attending grammar school. As a teen-ager, he swam for two hours while attending high school.

"This level of discipline had a major impact on my career in sales, and it affects how I inspire others to achieve what they want," Andre said. "The toughest thing for me to realize, however, is that what I consider to be a normal level of persistence is just beyond most people's comprehension."

After his second divorce in his 30s, however, he became depressed and went into therapy. "It required taking a look at the baggage from my childhood and reframing it. I realized I had a lot of anger over the fact that I wasn't able to do things other people could do---like skate, ski, and run. My parents never allowed me to feel sorry for myself, which was at the same time one of the greatest and worst things they could have done for me. I had never been allowed to go through a grieving process of what I never had."

He continues, "If my parents hadn't pushed me so hard, I wouldn't have become independent. The pressure from them pushed me, which created a personality to get things done, but I hadn't worked through my anger. My esteem came from my external successes, not from my internal worth."

Andre stresses that today he is not resentful of his parents because he understands that they provided "tough love" before it was fashionable, and that they also gave him hugs and kisses and twenty-four hour care without which he would have been condemned to hospital life. Nevertheless, he did need to work through his childhood issues to grow as an adult.

While journaling, he wrote about his first memory at two years old, and this is what he recalled: "I needed to go to the bathroom and I didn't want to walk with my crutches. My mother refused to carry me. It became a stalemate. According to my mother, I stood in the hallway for three hours. It was tough love, but to me, it didn't feel good.

"I remember being in a public place with my parents, and I'd fall two to three times. My aprents would stand back, and keep other people back from helping me up. They were willing to take the ridicule from people who thought they were being cruel. Yet this is the foundation of one of the strengths of my personality. You can knock me down all you want. I'll get back up.

"Working back through my childhood has allowed me to develop my stories, which I use as analogies in my public speaking engagements. I often talk to businesses about overcoming challenges, and I share one of my favorite stories of when I was eight years old. I was trying to climb a chain-link fence. I was playing Army with my friends, and they all went to the other side of the fence.

"My brother tried to help me, but I was stuck. Then he brought my mother. First, she took a picture. Then she got me down--but on the wrong side of the fence! Business audiences are usually alughting at this point. But the story isn't over. I still want to get to the other side. My brother, with his friends, got an etension ladder, which they positioned as a see-saw over the fence. The first time I climbed it, my brother and his friends got off the other side of the ladder too fast, and I cam crashing down from a height of 15 feet. We eventually perfected the system, which required evaluating our assets and weaknesses. It becomes a basis for my team-building exercise."

It is interesting to note that Andre's exercise of deliving into his childhood brought up a treasure trove of stories that he could parlay into his "dream" life as an inspirational speaker for businesses and non-profit groups. First, however, he needed to journey back into time and acknowledge these events from his own childhood perspective so that he could feel the full range of emotions he wasn't allowed to feel by his parents as a child. His parents, with the best of intentions, were concerned about toughening him up and making him ready for the world, and did not want to see him cry or have tantrums. As an adult, however, Andre felt blocked and depressed, and wasn't sure why. Once Andre felt safe enough to go through his emotions of anger and grief, the ones he repressed as a child to please his parents, he was able to get out of his adulthood depression and resume his "dream" life with more emotional strength, blaance, and vigor than he ever had before. At the same time, Andre does understand that what his parents did was done in love and with his best interest in mind.

"These are great stories," Andre said, "but the first time I drew them out of my childhood, they were all about how angry I was during these situations. Only with time, was I able to reframe them in a way that I could use in a business setting."

He says he uses this story differently with different groups. "If I'm talking to a group of insurance salespeople, and I'm there to movate them, I won't get into all this touchy-feely stuff, but I'll hint at it. This sort of an audience can deal with picturing an eight-year-old boy throwing things at the fence, screaming at it, shooting his gun at it, and eventually sitting down and crying. This is an audience who can deal with a boy whining over an obstacle. Other audiences want more of the emotion, and part of my learning process is judging what's appropriate for which audience."

Andre's childhood injury was outwardly physical, and under his parent's direction, he was able to emotionally disassociate from it, always knowing that it's there, but always working to overcome it, to beat the challenge. As a child, he joined with his parents' perspective so that he could get their approval. It wasn't until he acknowledge his childhood injury from his own boyhood perspective in a very deep, slow, methodical and respectful way that he was able to reframe his past, and move forward in his adulthood in a richer and more creative way.

The journey through his childhood took him through the scary and unexplored territory of anger against his parents for not picking him up when he fell down. he also allowed himself to feel grief---the huge, mournful, sobbing kind---over his inability to do what other childhren his age could do. Once he acknowledge the pain he didn't dare face earlier when he was vulnerably dependent on his parents' approval, he was able to achieve a deeper and more stable emotional balance as an adult, which allowed him to take the creative risks that are so necessary to thrive in a life of creativity.

Today, he more freely understands and appreciates the unusual stance his loving parents took when raising him, yet he also is fully able to acknowledge his own childhood perspective---the lovable boy who was entititled to have a tantrum, or two, over his calamity. He is now able to hold both of these perspectives in his mind and heart, and is able to feel comfortable with the paradox. What was missing was his own childhood perspective, and that is what he had to dig out.

To find out more about Andre and his services:
Visit his website: www.AndreInspires.com
Email him at Andre@AndreInspires.com
Or call: 800-205-6958

Skullduggery Signings
My first mystery novel, Skullduggery, is out now! Supernatural reporter Alexandria Vilkas launches a feature on Crystal Skull but is skeptical of its metaphysical powers---until the Chicago mayor dies in her arms. Now the prime suspect in the mayor's murder, Alex needs to clear her name, fast.

What are people saying about Skullduggery?
"Skullduggery by Silvia Foti brings a new novelist of real talent onto the scene. Besides delivering many a laugh, Foti creates gripping suspense."--Robert Gover, author of One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding

"In Skullduggery, Silvia Foti gives an unusual and inventive tale full of slippery Chicago politicians; a female hero who's courageous, vulnerable, and oh-so-human; and a smoothly-paced plot to the end. What's not to like?"--David J. Walker, author of Show No Remorse, a Malachy Foley Mystery

I'll be signing copies of Skullduggery at the following venues in Chicago:
Sunday, November 17, 2002: 3:30-4:30 p.m.: Waldenbook's in Ford City

Saturday, December 7, 2002: 2-5 p.m.: Our Lady of the Snows (Winter Fest), 4858 S. Leamington

Sunday, December 8, 2002: 3-6 p.m. Border's, 2210 w. 95th Street

Skullduggery is also available at amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, powell.com, and booksamillion.com

Book Readings and Workshops
Contact me at lotusink@aol.com for hosting a book reading at your favorite venue, or for doing a lecture on unleashing your creativity.

Story ideas and letters to the editor
Do you have a question or issue on creativity you'd like me to investigate? Do you know of someone who would like to be profiled as a double-life creative? Send your story idea to lotusink@aol.com

Blossom Like the Lotus