my present

Photo credit: dilaquis

there are lines that live in my hands

and make a living 

by telling

my past                     my future

               my present

these are not poetic lines,

but they are geometric —

my fingers can trace

the triangle they make:

my past                     my future

               my present

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Medusa

Photo Source: La Piccioletta Barca

I began the day
no – the day began
me 
o p e n i n g – closing – o p e n i n g – closing – o p e n i n g – clo –

give me those lemons – the  l  e  m  o  n  a  d  e
looks fresher in Greek –      λ ε μ ο ν ά δ α
that said, I’m not sure if it tasted fresher when
my mum got stung in Athens that day

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Creative Conscience – 10 Years – 10 Stories – 10 Lives: Giulia Gandini

Giulia Gandini is a London-based writer/director originally from Italy. An alumna of King’s College London and MET Film School, she has worked on numerous critically acclaimed projects since the beginning of her career – including her award-winning documentary ‘Home Stream’. It was this groundbreaking documentary that brought Giulia and Creative Conscience together in 2019 and which led her to win a Creative Conscience Silver Award in 2020.

Giulia reflects on how making this documentary and being supported by Creative Conscience was a life-changing experience: “I had always dreamt about making a documentary and this project was very different from all the other ones I’d done in the past. I was also supported from the very beginning by Chrissy and Creative Conscience, which made a huge difference.”

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Creative Conscience – 10 Years – 10 Stories – 10 Lives: Megan Williams

Photo Credit: Creative Conscience

Graduating from university and contemplating your next steps can feel like walking through thick fog – especially in the midst of a global pandemic. The unknown can be full of fear – but it can also be full of hope. It can be “the worst of times and the best of times” – and it definitely was, for Megan Williams.

Megan had just graduated from Leeds Arts University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Creative Advertising when she crossed paths with us, back in 2020. Reflecting on how she and her fellow classmates felt at that time, she says, “Before I got involved with Creative Conscience, it was quite a depressing moment and quite despairing – especially coming out of university on just a random day, it did kind of just put us all down…”

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The Wild Beauty of Life

Photo by dilaquis

Some moments in life make us feel what being alive truly means, in a very powerful way, in all our cells… In such moments, when I stop and take a deep breath, look inwards and then around me, at the sky; the feelings of gratefulness, love and serenity wash over my soul, and make me realize that only this moment exists, and I’m fully present, fully “here”… ⁣⁣

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The Journey is the Thing

Art by Ella Frances Sanders

The journey is the thing.”

This quote by the ancient Greek poet Homer was written on a notebook I bought two years ago – a light blue, thin notebook with sea shells on it. It struck a chord deep within and I always came back to it, especially when I got lost in thought over the future, over the next ‘destination’, over the to-do lists. It always brought me back to ‘this moment’, the moment I was in, and helped me realize that this is all that I have, and all that I ever need.

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The Power of Choice

Photo Credit: Xuebing Du

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

This quote by Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor E. Frankl, the author of one of the most deeply touching, illuminating and thought-provoking books I’ve ever read, “Man’s Search for Meaning”, never ceases to give me goosebumps.

⁣We all have the innate power within, no matter whether we realize it or not, to connect with our inner core wisdom instead of getting caught in the web of our Ego, to respond with our heartfelt, genuine feelings and thoughts instead of reacting with our habitual defensive patterns and primitive coping mechanisms, to hold space for ourselves and embrace our vulnerability even in the most challenging situations, instead of wearing our armour and denying our humanness and resisting our pain, while unconsciously making it much bigger.

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