Writing, painting, and cramming everything into the last half of May

19
May

It’s a busy time of year, is it not? So much to do and the clock is ticking down the days until summer and the shift that comes along with the changing of seasons and schedules. There’s a feeling of immediacy, a flipped version of squirrels storing away nuts for winter. But it’s in the air and there’s an urgency to get things done.

Originally I called this post “Light a fire under my writing” but that sounded like I was going to set it on fire and burn it down, which is the exact opposite of what I mean, so I had to revise.

What I actually meant is that I’ve had a revelation: although I’ve been doing a lot of painting which has been my focus for a while now and which has been really great experience, I’m not done with writing. I had a moment of clarity, when the restriction of a more externally-dictated work schedule loomed and I almost wanted to cry with disappointment that I’d never accrued enough rejections or taken enough risks in pursuing more with my writing. That reaction really surprised me, and I think it revealed more of my passion.

Over the past few months, I feel like my words have returned after a long hiatus, and I want to pursue developing them, and getting them out into the world. That means submitting things to various publications and contests (scary), as well as trying to post here more often. In addition, I’ve registered to attend a local writing conference this summer where I have an appointment with someone from a literary agency (terrifying). I don’t know if it will lead anywhere, but I think I need to try.

I KNOW I need to try.

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That doesn’t mean I don’t plan to paint anymore. Not at all. I still love it; I totally enjoy the physical process, I love learning and trying different techniques, and I’ve found a wonderful online community through art journaling.

That’s a great segue to let you know there are a couple more weeks of the Get Messy season of play, and I thought I’d share a couple pics I’ve grabbed.

Dontcha just have certain color combos that make something ring inside you?

My playful superhero, spreading glitter and mischief wherever she goes. (She never gets it in the carpet though.)

This week I had a tutorial on the Get Messy website and I showed people how I made this. I used lots of stuff that wasn’t meant for paint or art. It’s surprising what you can do with the goodies in your junk drawer!

Page made using Legos, a cushioned mailing envelope, a leftover party napkin and lots more

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Because it’s been the season of play, it just felt right to put googley eyes on as many things as possible.

Oh there are more, but I’m holding back.

You’re welcome.

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On top of trying to make myself meet a specific word count, create meaningful and not entirely ugly art journal pages, stick googley eyes on everything without getting caught, and work at my work-from-home job, it’s the end of the school year. And as anybody with school-aged kids knows, this time of year is bonkers.

So here’s to trying to get all the things done, everybody! Let’s aspire to achieve all our dreams, even if some of them are delayed or if it will take a bit longer until we can put in the work to make them happen. And good luck getting to all the kids’ programs they’ve all got scheduled for the same week. Maybe if we all sign a petition they’ll quit doing that to us…but probably not.

The season of play comes naturally: a round-up of the first few weeks

28
Apr

As I’ve mentioned (I hope not too many times), this year I’m on the creative team for Get Messy Art Journal. I’m having so much fun! Right now we’re about halfway through the Season of Play, so I thought it would be a good time to share some of the spreads I’ve made.

For this season we’ve been challenged to work in an altered book. An altered book is really simple: you find a book (I’ve found good ones at used book stores or thrift shops) and create your art in that book. You might have to do a few things to make it amenable to your plans, such as removing pages or gluing pages together. I’ve done this previously and did a little documentation of the process which you can see here.

I have run into a little problem. I NEED MORE PAGES! There are so many good prompts and tutorials, on top of just loving the theme of the season, that I’ve expanded into a second book. One is a fairly short story with interesting block prints illustrations. I like keeping some of the original peeking through when I can, and these prints are interesting. The second book is a collection of Helen Oxenbury illustrated nursery rhymes and children’s stories. I’ve always loved her illustrations so when I saw it on the shelf, I snapped up that book right up.

Now for some pages!

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Don’t you just love the idea of a Saturday from your childhood? All cereal, cartoons, playing outside, using your imagination, running until your legs feel like noodles, coming home all windblown and full of stories from your adventures? Yeah, sounds pretty great.

For the next page we got to play a game. You’d roll the die and depending on what number you got, you’d consult a list and do whatever corresponded to that number, paint, scribble, write, drip, stencil, you get the idea. So what started out like this…

…ended up like this…

That game could get addictive, I tell ya! It really took the decision-making out of your hands and kept you moving. Getting tired of painting? Roll the dice for a new idea. It was also a good reminder to utilize different techniques and not always rely on what you’ve always done, shake things up a little.

For the next page I used my hands quite a bit to spread the paint around. It’s funny but there’s something really satisfying about using your hands to move paint around. I put a small paper figure on the right side and then this big lady wanted to show up on the left side, and the contrast led to the writing. Sometimes I feel like I’m too much, too loud, too opinionated, too whatever but I try to remind myself to just be who I am, let my personality or my spirit be as large as it truly is, because that’s the authentic me. Why walk around doing a dulled down imitation of yourself all the time?

If I could wear my hair like the person on this next page, I totally would.

In my mind, playing often involves movement, really movement of any kind.

You can really see the block print figures on this next page. They were under a tree, so I went ahead and used molding paste to create more leaves with a palette knife. I liked the texture and dimension they brought to the page, but it’s a little hard to see in this picture.

Since we’re in the season of play, why not have a flower-face lady? She’s an image transfer from a magazine — I didn’t even have to put the flower on her face, she came that way!

Here’s a close up of the left corner because TEXTURE!

The next page just feels swirly and calming to me. The process involved a lot of experimenting and layering — this page is heavy with paint. I haven’t used these pigment powders much because they frustrate me, but someone challenged us to learn something new or use something you already had in a new way. These little gems have been in my cupboard, so I figured it was a good time to learn how to use them.

My own contribution to the prompts involved thinking of your favorite things from childhood, putting them in some kind of representation in a balloon and then connect them to you as a child. Here’s what I ended up with when I did my own prompt. I was thinking of a very specific outfit that I LOVED as a kid, it had these great puffy sleeves and a goofy skirt. The pattern here is it’s own thing, but the color scheme isn’t too far off.

Crazy how many different results there are from the same person. I know there are themes in my pages, things I come back to, but there’s also a lot of variety. Does that mean I don’t have an artistic voice? Does it mean I’m versatile? I don’t know! Making more pages will lead me to answers, so I’ll focus on that and let it work itself out.

Thank you thank you for visiting, and I hope you’ll come back again soon!

Recap of the Season of Kindness

3
Apr

For the past eight weeks, the focus of Get Messy art community has been Kindness. Each week we receive a list of prompts around that theme, in addition to a tutorial each week. It’s been a good characteristic/value to explore, with many different aspects to consider.

This is the cover I created for the season. I’ve learned not to make these until towards the end of the season because where I am when start the journal and where the season takes me almost certainly are different places.

Here’s my video collection of the Season of Kindness. I did a quick flip through so you could see the entire journal (fyi: there’s no sound). It’s a fun design, with pages nestled inside two sections — it almost looks like I’m showing you two separate journals with the same covers, but it’s actually one journal.

Here are a few of my favorite pages from the season:

Same page as the one above it, but the page with the cup is now open.

This next spread is based off a quote that is said to come from Mother Teresa. The full original goes like this…

People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway.

What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway.

If you find sincerity and happiness some may be jealous. Be happy anyway.

The good you do today will also often be forgotten. Do good anyway. Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway.

In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.

I had the opportunity to do my first tutorial for the membership portion of the Get Messy website. I was excited and nervous but it turned out pretty good! Here’s one photo from the tutorial:

The next couple months of Get Messy are the Season of Play. You know I’m gonna love that one. My goal is to post more pages here more often, instead of a big pileup at the end.

(In case you find yourself intrigued by the whole Get Messy art journaling group, you can find out more on their website.)

As always, thanks so much for letting me share my thoughts and creations with you.

Get Messy Creative Team and first weeks of the Season of Kindness

19
Feb

For the past couple years, I’ve been journaling alongside a big group of people online called Get Messy Art Journal. They’ve provided prompts, tutorials, inspiration, and an active online community. I’ve learned so much and been really encouraged by being a part of what they’re creating. And now…

Guess what?…

I’m on the Get Messy Creative Team for 2018! **cue enthusiastic cheering**

Can you find me in the team pic?

I am blown over by the honor of being a part of things behind the scenes this year. There’s so much arty goodness and a sincere desire to provide creative inspiration across the world, it makes you more aware of the unseen ripples of positivity that widely go unacknowledged.

There have been a lot of things happening behind the scenes, all really fantastic but there’s definitely a learning curve, so my attention has been focused there. I hope to post here every couple weeks with pics of what I’ve created and other art journal-related goodies.

The year is organized into seasons and the current season is focused on Kindness. See? I knew you’d love it.

Although we receive weekly prompts not all of my pages are in response to those prompts (some are, some aren’t). Because I’m on the Creative Team, this year I get to help contribute to the prompts! Hooray!

Many times I just use the general inspiration of the topic to create pages that go along with that theme — or pages that go completely in another direction! I know, it’s all over the place, but that’s the beauty of it and of art journaling. You don’t have to do it a certain way in order for it to be worth doing. It’s so responsive to each moment, it has the freedom to be whatever it needs to be.

See what I mean? No real mention of kindness or anything kindness-related in that spread, but because I made it in the last couple weeks, I’m going to share it here. Agreed? Agreed.

The next bundle of photos shows the development of a page.

;

The final product, which I’m pretty happy with, looks like this:

I’m basically in love with that quote from Mary Oliver. The full quote is even better and reads,

I believe in kindness. Also in mischief. Also in singing, especially when singing is not necessarily prescribed.”

It’s so perfect.

One of the fun ways of practical kindness we were encouraged to try was to make a page, turn it into a postcard (either by turning it into a PDF we could print or by printing photos of it, etc.), then leave that postcard as a happy arty bright spot in a stranger’s day.

On the way to pop these in random places around town, I snapped this pic.

I tried to explain to my kids what I was doing and they were pretty confused. Like, wait, you’re going to just leave that there? Can you DO that? What if someone sees you? Is this okay? It was pretty funny.

In response to this idea of giving away art, I was going to try and create a bunch of tags to give to a group of people I volunteer with. Nice idea right? Even if they didn’t totally dig the painting, if it just wasn’t their style (which is okay, because we can’t all like the same things. That would be weird.), they would probably appreciate being appreciated, if that makes sense. I made a good start and this was all coming along fine…

But apparently the cat felt differently and expertly knocked over my paintbrush rinse water for optimum damage. About half of them are ruined, but despite this the cat still lives with us…for now. I was able to salvage a couple pieces of the ruined tags, and added one of them to another page. Win!

Lift the flap for a little kindness encouragement.

Okay, I’ve probably totally overwhelmed you now. Thanks for hanging in there.

I do plan to share more of my pages this year so you will see more of that here. Like one of my pages mentioned I do think that kindness is the best way forward, especially when things right now feel so polarized and heated. There are reasons why things are polarized and heated, and I don’t mean to say they should not be so; however, if we approach one another with kindness, I think we’ll all get through our days better.

Hope your week goes swimmingly!

Ashes and construction-paper hearts

14
Feb

Most of us have those childhood experiences of a beloved pet dying (or in my instance discovering that your dog has love-licked your sister’s gerbil to death), we try to nurture that seed in a plastic cup only to see it shrivel from our exuberant watering. The example can be closer, say an elderly grandparent passes away, or a difficult diagnosis threatens our sense of health and well-being.

At what point of human development do we become aware of our own mortality? And does that awareness serve us or subjugate us?

…most of us attempt to escape from death concerns by avoiding life. This defensive denial of death has profoundly negative consequences for each person’s life.

Most people spend their lifetime without a great deal of self-awareness, living lives of emptiness and drudgery based on their early programming. They rarely reflect on their circumstances but rather are addicted to a lifestyle of form and routine. Few develop a life plan or project that gives value, substance or meaning to their daily lives. Humans are a meaning-seeking species, and when this experience is limited or excluded, they are deprived of their human heritage. – Robert Firestone, Ph.D.(Click here for s ource article.)

Thank you, Mr. Firestone, Ph.D., for being a beam of happy warm sunshine sent to brighten our day. Oy.

However gloomy, Mr. Firestone’s got a point. There are those folks who want to avoid thinking about death so badly that they disengage from true living.

That’s not to say a fixation on our ultimate end is a healthy strategy either, but an awareness of death as a part of the natural flow of life is a sure way to squeeze more living out of each experience we have the privilege of, well, experiencing.

And here we are, on the day when we remember that we’re all just a fleeting moment, that we are made from dust and to dust we shall return.

Andplusalsotoo, it’s Valentine’s Day, grand holiday of paper doilies, candy hearts, and expressing appreciation for special people in our lives. Or as The Princess Bride would suggest, Whatcha got that’s worth livin’ for

Isn’t that timing of Ash Wednesday and Valentines Day this year just a perfect analogy for the tension between an awareness of our own finite nature AND the full living — friendships and romantic relationships — we all wish to do?

Maybe there’s more here to deal with but for now I just wonder if you’d be willing to reflect on your own attitudes towards mortality, and also on love. Then, if you’re so inclined, report back on your discoveries. We’d love to hear from you.

Peace in Troubled Times

15
Jan

Exhibit A

The snow was supposed to hold off, hit someone else. What showed up was no predicted rain shower, and now the town is slushy and surprised.

Required machinery was still being tuned up and serviced, yet to be pulled out of hibernation so we were all left on our own. Normally we would do this with grit and pride, but this caught us unawares, our thick skin not built up after months frolicking in the water and sun. It was as if we were trapped in a snowstorm wearing flip flops. How humiliating.

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Unable to avoid the things a normal day requires, you navigate doctor’s office, library, hospital, post office, grocery store, trying to get it all done in one outing.

The unplowed piles between lanes makes your car joggle and pitch, and almost with maniacal glee the piles slide you into curbs and oncoming cars.

While you wait at a turn signal, in the middle of the mundane, a short moment of stillness within the storm,

Witness a miracle.

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Peace in the Midst of Chaos

A person travels along the sloppy sidewalk in a wheelchair, I kid you not. On a day when no one wants to be out in their cars, this person ventures out in an automatic wheelchair. As I sit at the light, running through the list of things still to do, I watch as he nears the corner and much too late I realize there’s little chance of navigating the mess that’s accumulated there.

He sits there, appearing to access the situation, and his dangling feet softly paddle at the edge of sidewalk, as though at the edge of a pool, at the edge of danger, at the edge of the isolation.

Blink

Truck stops, not afraid to block traffic.

Blink

Two men jump out of truck, one reflecting in fluorescent yellow, one in thick tan Carhart, walk upright on functioning limbs,

Gently so gently lift the stranded dabbler,

As though they’re the biblical friends who lowered the man on the mat through the roof,

Blink

They wait, traffic waits, the sky waits, we all wait as the hooded person zips across the street and on with his day.

Blink.

If we blink we might miss it, this miracle of connectedness.

Peace, just Breathe.

Exhibit B

Dreams coming true at the ice rink, our youngest starts her first session of Saturday ice skating lessons. She slowly, almost imperceptibly wiggles across the rink — no actual skating yet — to meet her class while I take my place in the heated stands, my heart aching at the difficulty she faces even getting over to her group.

Class underway, I prepare to read or daydream for 30 minutes, until I see a scene unfolding at the entrance to the rink.

The woman wears a white head scarf and waits at the edge of the ice.

The high school boy, shaggy hair sticking out from under his baseball cap (surely a fashion statement that would accommodate a hockey helmet equally as well), huge hockey gloves on his hands, black and white CCM skates on his practiced feet.

He comes to her and offers his hand, she on hard ground, he on the ice which to him is just as stable but to her is fraught with potential injury.

She takes hold of his armored hand and enters the arena gingerly, testing the conditions, the slip factor, the slide of her skates.

They slowly tour the ice, hand in hand, one shuffling, one gliding, partners in motion.

At an invisible signal they return to the top of the rink. She steps back onto solid ground, releases his mitt — or did he release her? — and and he, upon her safe delivery, turns back to his other hopes and diversions, she to her dreams and responsibilities. The world continues on its path.

The following week they are both back at the same time and place.

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There are too many things going wrong, too many offenses, too many breakdowns. People who should know better, seem not to know anything at all. People make offensive statements and are insensitive or calloused to the impact of their words.

It makes the world seem dark and off-kilter, on it’s way to self-inflicted oblivion. It’s too easy to proclaim all hope as lost, our society at an impasse.

Those observations are not wrong. Things are a mess. They’ve always been a mess, but now we’re (un)fortunate enough to have access to ALL the mess ALL the time.

However,

There is always glimmers of hope,

Evidence of love,

Occasions of joy,

And moments of quiet peace.

We just have to remember to zoom in and find them. We have to be willing to go out and create them.

Finding Joy in the smallest Places

23
Dec

Finding joy used to be like looking for sugar in a candy store, finding wonder and happiness was like stumbling through a daisy field looking for a flower. Without trying there was just so much happy to notice, and so much excitement that punctuated every day.

Sugar! Flowers! Yay!

Some of that was due to my natural temperament, some of it was probably connected to being younger, some of it was undoubtedly due to the unearned privilege of being insulated from the hardships that so many people face on a daily basis. It wasn’t that everything was constantly smooth or went according to plan, but those glitches felt like the exception and were fairly easy to recover from.

If I had to write about joy at that point, it would have been no problem.

It’s a little harder now, though not impossible. It’s a matter of perspective.

Last year I tried to write about joy during Advent, and even tried a couple art journal pages to work it out, but none of them were quite right. Here’s where you can check that out. There I mention a difference between joy and happiness.

Joy seems to be consistently connected to a spiritual state, a grounded connectedness to ourselves, those around us, and a higher spiritual purpose. …Happiness is almost a consumable good; joy is more durable.

These days finding joy is more difficult. There are so many things that seem to be going off the rails, globally and locally. Here’s a summary of sound bites from this year, and when listening it’s no wonder it can be hard to feel joyful. It’s been a helluva year and our political in particular continues to be intensely disturbing. Sex scandals, election tampering, a gag order for scientists, undercutting environmental safeguards, it’s all overwhelming and disheartening.

However, at what point could we ever have looked at things in the world on a large scale and feel joyful? There’s always been something going haywire, some despot wreaking havoc, some natural disaster displacing whole communities. You’d think we’d start to notice that “desolation” is humanity’s default setting.

Okay, I’m not saying we’re quite like that movie, but you get the idea.

According to the Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, desolation is one of two states humans move from and into. Sounds dramatic doesn’t it? The opposite of desolation is “consolation”. Consolation is used to describe moods of harmony and settledness, desolation is used to describe moods of inner turmoil or disconnectedness. (Click to learn more.) It is assumed that people will move from consolation to disconsolation. People won’t stay in one or the other indefinitely, which is important to remember so we have hope and appreciation.

Hope and appreciation.

I think those are both tied to joy.

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The thing I’ve discovered is my joyfulness improves when I adjust my perspective from being focused on large scale things down to smaller scale things:

The sound of my boys together downstairs practicing crazy loud music on their instruments, and actually being able to make out a tune.

Watching someone open a door for a stranger, and the stranger respond with gratitude.

The confidence of having a full tank of gas in a car you trust to get you to your destination.

Waking up one of your kids and having one of their first statements be, “I love you, Mom.”

These small moments remind us of our humanity, remind us of our smallness, and help restore out connectedness to others around us.

When I pay attention and take time to notice these things, I do better. I discover joy, that warm feeling that buoys us through hard times, that quiet confidence that there is good in the world if we’ll only remember to call it out in ourselves and others.

Joy can be a choice, and we have agency in cultivating more of it.

This is not joy that disregards the facts, this is joy that searches out the positive, the good, the things that tie us together as humanity and elevate us to our better selves. This is joy that seeks the details, the secret acts of good will, the quiet gestures of connection and celebrates those. This is calm noticing that settles down into the smallest moments, and then acknowledges their energy and the positive force they ripple out into the world. This is no flimsy pollyanna cliche. This is a brave act.

Original art by TC Larson

I really do wish you a joy-filled holiday season and believe you can help create that by deciding to choose joy. Go get ’em tiger.

Second week of Advent: Love

15
Dec

Love is viewed a lot of different ways.

It can be a flimsy thing, something Hallmark-carded for the purpose of being sweet or schmoopy.

It can be sentimental, conjuring up images of times long past, picture perfect moments that may or may not have actually happened. Nostalgia has a tendency to smooth over the bumps or tension that could smudge the feeling we want to maintain or produce.

Love can be steamy, a chemical wash over the brain that makes us drive long distances late at night, make us bold (or stupid) and disrupt our focus and productivity.

It wasn’t that I didn’t feel or experience love, but for a very long time I resisted what I saw a the softness of people who cried at commercials and movies, dismissing it as annoying, flighty, or weak. I might have thought of it as being stereotypically female, and there are few things that make me bristle more than fitting a stereotype.

Isn’t it too bad when we cut ourselves off from something too soon, before we give it a chance to come into itself fully?

I may be speaking out of turn or again, too soon, because I’m not that old, but I’m starting to think maybe grief exposes the rest of circle of love. The full expression of love’s strength and it’s power that transcends space, time, or physical presence is experienced when you lose someone you love deeply. For me that’s my dad.

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It’s easier to talk about at this point, three years out from his passing, but that doesn’t mean everything’s fine. I’m actually surprised by how difficult it is, especially around dates of significance and big holidays. It continues to surprise me. I wipe away sneak-attack tears and say to myself, “Gosh, I thought I was doing better.”

“Better” in the world of grief is a hard thing to quantify.

It’s definition can mean so many different things. Are you comparing “better” to before your loved one passed away? Are you comparing it to when they were sick and you had to watch as they received treatment/surgery or grappled with the decisions around that treatment? Or did you lose your loved one suddenly and you’re comparing it to what looks like the bliss of still having them in the world? It’s not really a fair comparison is it? Because after you lose someone, everything changes. There’s a before and an after. It’s a firm mile marker, a gate through which you’ve been forced to pass, and you don’t ever get to go back through that gate.

The kookoo thing about getting a bit further out from that gate is the pain of distance.

Here you are, still around by some cosmic mistake or the luck of the roulette wheel, and every month that goes by is a month they were supposed to be with you, every month is a month further out from the last time they were with you, is a month further away from your shared experiences and memories, another month of them missing out on being part of the events of sharing a life together.

It sucks.

However…there is a strange, surprising discovery I’ve made. Maybe you’ve already figured this out but it’s news to me.

You’ve heard a million times that phrase, “I’ll love you forever.” or “Love never dies.”

I’m starting to see how that can be actually true, not just a cliche.

There are people who honor their ancestors, who build traditions around honoring the memory of people who have gone on before us, but in my traditions we never really did that. In my tradition we might tell funny stories or speak with pride of accomplishments but that was the extent of it. It’s possible other people in my family or community were doing more than that privately (and I’d never fault them for that need for privacy), but it was never passed on nor shared with me.

I’m beginning to see how, if we choose to, we can stay connected to those who are no longer with us.

Turns out there’s some truth to the sentimental saying, “They’ll live on in our hearts.” See how I could have missed it? It’s too easy, too schmoopy, too hallmark-y when you say it that way.

However, when you see it in context of transcending space and time, it’s a whole different thing.

What if, in a mystical, cosmic way, Love really never dies? It just changes or becomes fully itself. Unfettered and untied to physical constraints, it passes into the metaphysical realm of being, which allows it — Love — to exist everywhere, all the time.

Why not? Why couldn’t this be true?

Think about the power of Love, the powerful force that would make you cross deserts, climb mountains to be with one you love or save them from some imminent danger. Think about the motivating force of Love that draws out our most sacrificial selves. Think of a life spent in cultivating that energy, a life emitting that unmeasurable volume of Love. What if that never dissipates but merely changes form, an invisible radio wave we have no physical scientific instruments for and yet have our gut, our intuition, our spirit that rings, prickles, warms, quickens to that force.

Amazing, right?

I’ll leave you with that thought for this second week of Advent, when we focus on Love. This is no dime store Love we celebrate. This is a Love eternal.

On Advent which falls the day after a funeral

3
Dec

When people say the holidays can be hard, they’re not exaggerating.

As magical and warm as Christmas and New Years can be (throw Thanksgiving in there for good measure) they can be equally lonely and cold, and on top of the memories of those we can no longer celebrate with, there’s the pressure of obligation to celebrate that adds a layer of self-judgment when we can’t live up to our past standards.

It’s a season that’s complicated and challenging for many, many people.

Please allow me to relieve you of some of your burden.

There will be other Christmases.

That’s the beauty of traditions, the beauty of holidays. They come around every year. So if you need to sit this one out, it’s ok. You’ll get to take another crack at it next time. And guess what? If that doesn’t pan out like it used to, it’s no problem. You can see how it goes the next year. And if you need to run away for a while, if the traditions bring back too many memories that you just can’t revisit right now, then you lace up those shoes and you run. There’s no way to predict how you’ll need to do this and it’s a bit like having to let a fever run its course. It often gets worse before it gets better. And the “worse” can feel like the worst thing you’ve ever felt.

But who wants to hear that, that it’s going to get worse before it gets better? That’s cold comfort for someone in the earliest, rawest throes of grief. There’s got to be a better answer…except there’s not.

People try to offer these “better answers” by giving greeting card adages but we know as soon as we hear them they’re not representing the sorrow of deep loss. It’s possible they simply can’t encapsulate it into something palatable by the general public, except that loss is a universal human experience, so there’s a built-in market for it. You’d think they would have figured it out by now. Thing is, if they set up a bunch of people in their “Sympathy” card department, half the staff wouldn’t show up and the other half would stare at the wall or accidentally put their lunch into the letter-folder to warm up.

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A month after my dad passed away I set up an appointment with a counselor. As I sat in her office and explained the timeline and that it had only been a month, I could tell she was confused. Why was I there?

Wasn’t it obvious?

I needed her to tell me how to stop feeling so terrible. I needed her to tell me I was doing something wrong and here was the right way to process my dad’s death and the gaping hole made by his absence. So why was she confused? There was nothing confusing about it. She needed to FIX IT because this kind of pain is unbearable. I must be doing it wrong because I forget where I’m supposed to be going when I drive the car, I can’t taste anything but sugar, and even though my eyes feel like there’s a permanent layer of sand under my eyelids and they won’t stop leaking all the time even when I think I’m doing ok and not actually crying.

I’M NOT DOING OK AND YOU NEED TO FIX IT.

This must not have been the training she received at school. Because she did nothing to fix it. Nada. Buptkis.

She did take my money though. And I went back for non-fixing about four times.

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All of this to say if you want to talk to someone, do it. If you want to cry into the phone while your friend just sits with you on the other end, call ’em. If you want to hack down fifty trees in your back woods, grab the handsaw and remember to take some Tylenol when you’re done.

Maybe you won’t ever want to do advent or Christmas or Easter or 4th of July or Thanksgiving or any other pre-existing holiday ever again.

That’s ok. Let other people work on those holidays. Now you have your own awful dates to mark, ones personal to you and those closest to you. The first holiday without her. The birthday or the anniversary. And once you get through the firsts, the kicker is that THERE’S ANOTHER ROUND of the same thing next year, another year of them not being here.

It’s a bitter pill to swallow.

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This Sunday is the beginning of Advent, the preparatory month before Christmas. This week many Protestant churches will light the first candle of the advent wreath, the Sandler which symbolizes hope. Hope. Hope right now, are you kidding me?

For those who have recently faced a devastating loss, it’s almost profane to ask them to focus on hope for the week. If it’s not profane, it’s blind, because too often our definition of hope has been morphed into something that turns its back on reality. Reality is too hard to fathom at times, so we resort to rejecting it in favor of cliche. There are people who are unable to remain in the depths of their sorrow more than a few minutes before they fear it will devour them whole.

A candy coated hope will get the job done if it’s the only hope you have available.

However, if you define Hope as a much grittier, denser thing, something that glows even when surrounded by darkness, that’s something that makes more sense. When you think of Hope as the next small step, rather than a shining monument, that’s more doable. That’s the kind of Hope I can focus on, that’s the kind that is present even when muted and muffled by hardship and loss, and therefore I’ll be trying to turn my shoulder towards that Hope this first week of Advent.

Are you looking forward to this holiday season? Are you not looking forward to it? How will you carve out space for those who may experience it from a different perspective than your own? I’d love to hear your perspective.

Trying a new thing: an art journal video for fall

23
Sep

Greetings! I’m trying a new thing and it’s kind of scary. I’ve created my first video of the process of creating an art journal page. The whole process is filmed, start to finish, and includes a few voice-overs (does anybody love the sound of their own voice? ‘Cause I sure don’t.).

The way I figure it, art journaling has become something I use every week — every day if I can — and maybe someone else will find it useful to their own journey in the world. Not all my art journaling is full of deep thoughts or mystical ah-ha! moments of illumination. Very few of them can be described that way. However, that doesn’t minimize the significance of it, nor does that mean it’s not still useful.

Much of my art journaling is simply appreciating things around me, or processing something that’s on my mind. There’s a quote that says writers get to taste life twice, and I believe that’s true for many art forms, including art journaling. So you can think of this as merely the process of enjoying the little details of your life, and doing so through smoothing paint on a page. I’m going to include what mine ended up looking like, but yours could look COMPLETELY different and that right there, folks, is the beauty of art journaling. You just can’t make it look wrong, and you have to love that. It’s got built-in accomplishment.

Completed fall-themed art journal page

Below the video, I’ve included the main materials I use. Please do not worry about having fancy stuff or getting anything special. You might have a little container of water colors around — use that. You might have highlighters or markers — use those. One of my favorite things is to scrape paint across a page using an old gift card; completely un-fancy. Start where you are because this is intended to be freeing and fun. And if you have time to come back and tell me about your experience, I’d love it!