Joan Quigley, (1954-2009) a good, good, good woman whose oceanic love could be seen in those penetrating grey and Irish eyes of hers, in her special gentleness, in her kindly attentiveness to the other.

She could intuit feelings and her first most spontaneous response was to comfort, to reassure.

“It’s okay”, I heard her say to a guest at her hospital bedside this March, “Don’t think about that. Just be glad for what is now.”

I have never, ever seen anyone face the news of severe illness, a serious cancer, with Joan’s maturity. I just haven’t seen it. She told me that while she did not want death, she accepted it.

“I want a miracle though. I am hoping for one. I want to live.”

Joan shared with me her gratitude. “I raised special boys, Eleanor,” she said.

“Their quality of character is my finest contribution to the world. The love we share, along with my important friendship with my brother, my happiest celebration.”

A special, private and richly loving memorial meeting was held for Joan on Saturday 21 st of March at 11 a.m. on Aylmer Street in Montreal. All Joan’s special tribe gathered for her wonderful send off .

Joan, thank you for your love !

We ask for your continued guidance of us all from the warmth and beauty of your new home.

With sincere and ardent love, dear, sweet and treasured Joan,

From all of your Montreal sisters.

A Jungian scholar, Marion Woodman, wrote that shame-based people prefer to curl up, fetus-like, with their brilliantly coloured, ‘just right’ and unlived dreams rather than chance failure. She explained how hard it is to see a gorgeously radiant dream, full and strong, beautiful and powerful, marched out to life as a frail, skinny and weak replica of the dreamed-of version.

Imagine an individual fantasizing of the perfect wedding for their beloved child.

Beautiful flowers positioned just so, gorgeous dresses, exqusite food and the entire family happily together, everyone in a good mood and lovingly supportive. Additionally, there is the full co-operation of the weather – a cloudless blue sky, traversable roads and finally, the most satisfying expression of delight on the part of the newly weds to their gratified families.

Oh, our dreaming can sometimes fashion tall production orders for the shivering shame-based person. The unreasonable demands of the dream can instil fear and oppress the quaking dreamer. Can I do this? Will my contribution be enough?

The real question is, 'Can I live with my inner critic, that harsh cynic inside me, all set with a baseball bat if I fail to live up to the dreamed-of version?'

Who said "Dare to be average?" With humility, the courageous agree to live with the paler version of their perfect technicolor dream.

They understand that if they insist on perfection, the wedding may never happen.

A student who fails to produce may in fact be the very one with rich, colorful imagination including marvellous, fabulous ideas – and a monster of a self-hating inner critic within. Nothing less than perfection will do and so nothing gets done.

A life is wasted.

In the Artist's Way, Julia Cameron writes about Shadow Artists, frightened people who barnacle to success by proxy. Suzie may work for a writer, but dreams of writing her own book - and never begins to practice the craft. Paul may sell the wedding dresses he'd really like to design - but doesn't.

And so the humility to just do a little bit, an achingly small amount, just for today, while tolerating the incumbent discomfort and disatisfaction - establishes what is necessary for the birthing of dreams: habit.

Every day I write just a little bit, a small something and once in a while, out of the jumble, there is a single phrase for the final draft. I welcome it!

Over time, there are more. Perfect sentences surface, ideal phrases sparkle and while these may dive away again, I have ushered some of them into reality.

Perhaps that is the real marriage – the inner wedding of humility to the radiant dream, one color at a time.