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Johnell's avatar

You always keep me captivated from beginning to end. Loved it.

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Mary Ellen Hale's avatar

Vulnerability... our greatest gift which lies under all our defenses... That's the "hot stove" you were warned against(a few essays ago) as a child but you touched it anyway and you embraced it and owned it... 'still love reading your stuff💕Happy spring to you & yours🍀

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Isabel Cowles Murphy's avatar

Mary Ellen you are right--I think that truth telling is also one of the stove coils. Very dangerous.

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Isabelle Amy's avatar

You’re such a beautiful writer and I found myself nodding and shriek-thinking, me too! So glad to have found you x.

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Isabel Cowles Murphy's avatar

I am so glad you are here! Thank you!!

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Helene Demetriades's avatar

You have hit a cord in me. I love that there are always many layers in your writing - it's an intense thinking process each time you offer us - and I need to read you a few times to be sure I get them all.

There is a thin line between many concepts: ego and having principles, compromising and capitulating, self love and self hatred, etc. We constantly look for balance, sometimes too hard. We then think we found it and suddenly realise there is an even higher summit behind this one and on the way we will fall into those ego traps again. I find it difficult to keep the balance going on the long term.

And I do love your troll doll: the black part is compact and short, while the length of the multicolour hair is what we try to attain: elevation through a diversity of possibilities- all mingling wonderfully together.

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Isabel Cowles Murphy's avatar

Helene! Thank you. I often think of life more as a bulls-eye than a straight line. We keep moving on in time, circling the same issue with deeper layers as we go. The second you think you've found balance, a new challenge appears.

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Helene Demetriades's avatar

True! Have you noticed that one way our ego expresses itself is through the way we educate our children? I surprise myself thinking once in a while "HA! This mistake my parents made, I won't do it with my own flesh" and I am for a short while all happy with myself, naively thinking I have outgrown the previous generation. And here and then, that is exactly how and why I produce new mistakes, which later on, my kids will surely mention to me.

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Aunt Kat's avatar

Keep Going! I love reading these essays. I consider them generous. It's always generosity when someone dares to show us their interior work. Whatever inner voices drive them. And I love your new troll. He reminds me of my new cat, an expression of relentless optimistic readiness.

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Isabel Cowles Murphy's avatar

Kat!! Thank you. I'm so grateful that you always read and respond... can't wait to meet the new critter.

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Valerie Monroe's avatar

Personally, I enjoy watching you struggle with the same shit I struggle with...and come out of it with the kind of clarity I wish for all of us. Because...vulnerability. Ego's worst enemy. xo

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Isabel Cowles Murphy's avatar

Totally. Also, making friends with all parts of ourselves feels so important. Thanks so much for relating... I so love your work I'm grateful mine lands for you.

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