I made my 2020 Intuitive Vision Board in January. One year later I can see that almost everything about my 2020 vision board has come true. None of which was in my conscious awareness when I was creating my vision board.
My year began at the start of a house-sitting adventure, having sold most of my belongings in the Autumn to be lighter. I planned to take a year to decide where to put down roots next now that my daughter had left home.
Natal astrology informs me I must live near water – Moon in Cancer and both Neptune & Vesta (Goddess of the hearth) in the 4th house of the home/domesticity, which probably accounts for my Feng Shui profession too. The dreaming spires of Oxford are luring me with their winding waterways of rivers and canals and I want to discover more of the hidden beauty of the city. That’s all I know.
Covid-19 is a distant rumour.
January 2020 – setting the scene
My first housesit complete over the festive season. My daughter, her boyfriend and I had cosied up in a lovely cottage in Warborough, south of Oxford – the scene of many a Midsomer Murder.
I move to an even smaller village called Toot Baldon (Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Worldwide Web lives there) for a further 2-month residence. The neighbours had invited me to housesit their home next. This gave me another 3 months stay in this bend of the Thames that I was enjoying a lot.
Workwise, I have 6 workshops and 3 talks scheduled for January and February 2020. I’d revamped my website and was pleased with it. In between the Toot housesits, I am to spend a week with a friend in North Oxfordshire.
March 2020 – changeover
When I came to load the car and head off to my friend in North Oxfordshire, Covid-19 was just on us. It hit me during the drive that my ‘new’ website already described an outdated way of working with people in person. For the foreseeable future I will need to figure out how to work online.
On arrival in Hanwell, a quaint ironstone village outside Banbury, my friend greets me with her announcement. She was already ‘shielding’ and I would have to do the same to remain there. I didn’t know what ‘shielding’ and had to get my head around the implications quickly.
The very same day, my next planned housesit cancelled and overnight the housesitting market ground to a halt.
I was curiously, pleasantly and safely stranded in North Oxfordshire..
Lockdown
Before lockdown I thought I would be looking after a large, red-brick Victorian building surrounded by large lawns edged with shrubs.
I’m now in a cosy, stone-built property with a grape vine framing the front door. As lockdown entrenches even further, I set out to discover this understated part of the country on foot, inspired by the beautiful Cotswolds villages and National Trust gardens.
Work was a whirlwind of activity. For the first 2 months I had no income at having fallen between the slats of the government’s small business support packages. Like many I had to reinvent myself and wrestle with the technology necessary to morph into an online professional. Then re-market myself as such. Time-consuming, frustrating and ever-evolving, years later I’m now witnessing a grand payoff. Now I have the flexibility to to live and work wherever I like being able to work both online and in-person.
How much of this had I already intuited on my intuitive vision board (IVB) in advance of it happening?
How many of the pandemic restrictions were already reflected on my board? Let’s take a look.
Here’s how my intuitive vision board was to steer me through a crisis unbeknown to me at the time of making it.
When I made the board I was due to look after a large, red-brick Victorian building. However, bearing in mind the floral image above I’d placed on my IVB in January, it speaks to me entirely of Vine Cottage where I moved to in March. The warm glow of flowers enveloping the cottage and me walking down the cobbled path to the front door.
The woman below the cottage is absorbed in writing, reading and creating – working alone in a homely environment. In 2020 the writer in me never stopped writing. I wrote newsletters, blogs and constantly drafting social media pieces. I now have a library of close to 100 Blogs on my website. Off the back of these I was offered a copywriting job and had three articles published in an online magazine with a circulation of 50,000.
I had NOT anticipated doing any of this thing although the images on my vision board already suggested otherwise. Let’s take a closer look.
Roaming freely
A woman is roaming freely through countryside with arms outstretched. At the peak of lockdown I averaged 30 miles a week striding across unfamiliar fields, quite the adventuress. No dog alongside but memories of my dear old dog Willow accompanied my solitary explorations. She was with me when the first inspiration for the Intuitive Vision Board came to me.
Sagrada Familia
There are two images of Sagrada Familia, the cathedral in Barcelona designed by architect Gaudi. They’re taken 10 years apart and show how construction progressed slowly and steadily. These images speak to me of the vision and commitment to see a project through to fruition. Plus the words “To the visionaries who do things for love not the money.”
To my surprise I calculated it was 10 years since I began my own project for visionaries when I devised the IVB process. It has taken me 10 years, alongside working a day job at times, to get this far. I’ve taken 2,000 people through it. And published a book.
Like Gaudi, my work is still work in progress. But these day I have a much greater grasp of the creative process that came to me intuitively while out walking with Willow in the woods.
Subtler images
Adjacent to the Sagrada Familia cathedral, is an image of a man striding through the archway into the light. It’s similar to another photo at the heart of my board, which shows a passageway between buildings that widens into the blue light of dawn on the city beyond. One way or the other, Covid-19 has finished with us, we’ll all have been through another rebirthing canal in some shape or form before.
I have 10 different buildings on my vision board, mostly square-shaped with flat roofs. This shape is associated with the EARTH element in Feng Shui, the Relationship corner and the feminine principle. In Covid times, my Feng Shui skills were unexpectedly in demand with so many people grounded/EARTH and working from home. Or escaping to the country.
I have eight images of women (versus two of men) to emphasise the feminine principle further and the word Womankind. The predominant colour on my board is fleshy pink. With Covid forcing us to return home and to acknowledge the vulnerability of the body, the flesh is an appropriate symbol.
While it’s been a very disturbing and unpredictable time, staying in one place has been good for me too. It kept my nose to the grindstone and allowed my work to deepen and transform. I hope you can identify some positive benefits to have come from this unpredecented time.
South of Spain
Before Covid I’d planned a road trip for May 2020 – the grand tour of Seville, Cordoba, Granada, Ronda and Malaga. Not surprisingly the Alhambra Palace in Granada, a Moorish mosaic and flamenco dancers had already appeared on my board. When travel was out of the question, I found a romantic tome, by chance set in Granada and I soaked up the Spanish vibe that way. The Moon Sister by Lucinda Riley.
I was intrigued by the two flamenco dancers and the third woman with her arms flayed flamenco style. Even the seals’ flippers are wrapped around each other, which spoke to me about giving ourselves a big hug and loved ones too when we could to stay sane.
Tener duende
I’d placed two heads/ two faces on the one dancing body. The left face (left brain) on the serious sovereign queen speaks to me of the masculine apsect of a woman. The right face of the performer portrays her passion and creativity (right brain). Both men and women I believe need to find both aspects of themselves within to achieve the right balance in our love relationships.
The dancers have ‘duende’. Tener duende is a Spanish verb to describe a heightened state of emotion, self-expression and authenticity associated with flamenco. The something intangible that emerges when there is a full commitment and engagement to the dance, which cannot be rushed or analysed without its power eluding the dancer. Lorca, the Spanish author, also born in Granada, would say: “The duende is a power and not an act, it is a struggle and not thinking.”
The duende resonates deeply with me too about how the intuitive vision board works away quietly on us. How the potential of the IVB emerges and the narrative unfolds in time. When the conditioned mind steps in and takes over, purporting to know better than the intuition, the innate wisdom embedded in the IVB escapes the creator.
My purpose in offering the IVB is to help people find and follow their ‘duende’.
Ring of roses
Was this a Covid premonition? Around the neck of the Sovereign queen I’d placed a ring of roses. Remember the nursery rhyme – Ring-a-ring-o’-roses – that came to signify the Great Plague? From a distance they are similar in colour and shape to the depiction of the virus circulating around her chest, throat and nostrils – only I’d placed these roses here in January. The flip side to this is encouraging. The roses are energising her throat chakra and encouraging the feminine aspect of ourselves to speak out.
There was another positive connotation for me too. I helped a Feng Shui client source their 50-acre dream farm during Covid. I received a magnificent box of Rose Alchemy oracle cards as a thank you – every card a different rose, the archetypal symbol of the Divine Feminine. Rosy Humby, the creator of the Rose Oracle, received her inspiration for this while ….. wait for it …. visiting the rose garden in The Alhambra Palace, Granada.
I also visited Nick Knight’s exhibition Roses from my Garden at Waddesdon Manor, NT. His work is stunning – a mixture of art and photography – and only features roses.
To round things off, I received not one but two bunches of 12 long-stemmed red roses in 2020. In spite of the pandemic I certainly had a rosy-filled year.
Marseille
The wooden fishing boat below the seal has “Marseille” on it. I’d also planned to visit Marseille for my birthday and sourced a gorgeous hotel on the waterfront. Covid came along instead and dealt a blow to the plan. At this time, Marseille came under scrutiny in Black Lives Matter as a major port for the slave trade.
Still yearning for the sea. I made three coastal visits in England instead, all with fishing fleets and old-fashioned vessels like the one on my IVB. First came Teignmouth in Devon where I grew up part on the sand, part in the sea – just like the seals on my board. I attended ballet school in a beach hut on the river beach, which was peppered with small fishing boats. Then we visited Hastings in Kent, colourful and quirky, also with a fishing fleet. Finally Padstow on the coast of North Cornwall to visit a client who has a delightful restaurant there I’d Feng Shui’d two years previous.
Dressed in silk
The elegant woman above is dressed in silk to present her work. Is she presenting paintings or are they vision boards? In 2020 I spoke to a few people who have made two or more IVBs with me about a retrospective exhibition. Meanwhile a woman attended my workshop who makes bespoke outfits from recycled silk. When we’re allowed to wear something other than tracky bottoms, I plan to ask her to make an outfit I can present in.
The bowls next to her are deep and rich in colour. They speak to me of receiving abundance, sitting as they do in the Wealth corner of my board.
“You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem and smarter than you think” reminds me to keep believing in myself, to keep going, and trust in abundant universe when I continue to love and love what I do.
Romance
A vision board would not be complete without a comment on romance. That’s why I saved it to the end.
What a year it has been in which to find, develop and keep romance alive – in different counties, in different tiers and while shielding people back home. Impossible.
My IVB does feature one diamond ring, a sporty car, and two men – all sitting in the Relationship corner of my board alongside a beautiful hotel that looks colonial. One man is cooking and the other is a man of the world, Paul Theroux. Are they two different men? Or two aspects of the same man?
Notwithstanding Covid I met two men in 2020 I got to know them some after I’d made this IVB. One was a scientist who loves to cook and until recently owned a Black Audi TT. The other is a racing car designer who designed a midnight blue roadworthy sports car. Both were keen at the outset (the diamond ring). Both lured me with talk about a holiday in the Caribbean. Then Covid got the better of us and, like Ring a ring-o’ roses, metaphorically speaking “we all fell down”.
More about Intuitive Vision Boards …
Mary Nondé has pioneered the Intuitive Vision Board (IVB) since 2010. She is the author of ‘Awaken Your Intuitive Vision – unlocking possibilities you never knew existed AVAILABLE ON AMAZON or from your local bookstore. Mary’s formula works well for anyone who finds themselves stuck and wondering what to do next. The IVB can help to get you moving again by envisioning possibilities you never knew existed.
BOOK HERE – the Intuitive Vision Board programme includes both 1-2-1 sessions and group workshops, in-person or online. Plus in-depth 1-2-1 coaching to unlock the most from your vision board.
VISIT HERE for more information about Intuitive Vision Boards.
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