A Mandala for October's Shadow Work Challenge

As I was reading Ellen's blog, Grey Lady's Hearth, yesterday I saw that she is participating in an October Shadow Work Challenge primarily via Instagram, though she'll be posting certain aspects on her blog as well. She posted the challenge, originated by Mnomquah, in case anyone would like to participate:

The first task listed for the Shadow Work challenge is to create a Mandala that reflects who you are at this moment. The final task of this challenge is also to create a Mandala depicting who you feel you've become by the close of the month. I really like how this has been organized and have decided to participate, though I'll probably participate primarily through my blog since I'm a bit slow with Instagram! We'll see!

So last night I settled down with a pencil and sketch pad and started to work on my own Mandala. I didn't put a lot of thought into a particular vision for it, I simply started to create, and allowed it to develop on its own:

At first I considered leaving it simply a gray-scale pencil drawing, but then I decided to add color. I asked Lourdes, my crafty kid, to dig me up some colored pencils and she came through quite nicely. So I set out to bring some life to my Mandala:

The textured appearance looks almost like watercolor paper, but it's just the shadow of the screen that the sunlight was filtering through as I took the photo! Considering that I didn't plan out the image, it was interesting to review the symbols that ended up here. I see signs of hope and new life in the rainbow and the sprouting plants. I drew a sun and crescent moon over my forehead, a connection to my sign in Ifá, but I realized that I'd drawn a waxing crescent which was cool - there is growth there rather than retreat. Considering that I've felt very overwhelmed with various aspects of my life of late, this is a nice symbol that, even if I can't always see it, there are indeed seeds of positivity unfolding.....!