Category Archives: mental health

Jun9

Now You Know That You Are Real

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This next week I wish to explore a new concept that I have just come across – yesterday, actually: the thin place. The thin place means a place in our environment where the veil between heaven and earth is thin. Decades ago I read a quote in an interior design book that profoundly impacted me: “Home is heaven for beginners.” I was a guest in someone else’s home at the time, long before cell phones existed. So, no camera or way to record it, I soon forgot who said it.

Around that same time I participated in a meditation retreat. Normally I hate guided meditations. My imagination needs little encouragement to take off, and by the time the person speaks I’m far off in my own world. They’ll start us down a path and seconds later suggest we are standing on a vast beach, when I’m already talking to a bird in a dense forest. Leave me alone.

But this time something remarkable happened. Tuning out the voice from across the room I continued walking further through that dense forest, and I came upon a castle. Tower and all. Big heavy door pushed aside I started up the circular stone stairway. It was lit with gemstones set in the outer wall, refracting rainbows of light to guide my way. When the meditation ended we were asked to describe what we saw. The woman nodded at me to go first, and when I described the castle, she said, “in dream or meditation work you were scouting heaven. That structure represented what you expect the afterlife to be like.” Ahhhh…yes. Yes, I do expect that. Beauty beyond my wildest imagination.

We’ve all experienced a thin place; we know how it feels, viscerally. Goosebumps and skin prickles and an otherworldly sense of wonder overwhelms us. To me, it speaks about the concept of environmental fit that contributes to self awareness. You have to be able to be present, to notice that something is happening. You have to be comfortable enough in your own skin to be just 10% more curious than scared.

Like Francois Halard, I, too was a shy and quiet child. My environment was anything but. It was constant chaos and noise and activity. I spent any and all available hours alone in my room, reading and thinking and drawing and painting and more reading and staring at things. I bonded with inanimate objects and the trees outside my window, my cat, and my own imaginings. Years later in high school when I first took LSD it would be as natural as breathing to walk through walls, to vibrate with the plants, to become the colors of the sky. I still believe it helped keep that portal open, the veil thin, and made for me a better life.

While I love the idea of heaven on earth, I’m taking it literally. I am entirely committed to living fully in my body. I’m not interested in spacing out, or fantasy, or in any way becoming less present. What if the thin place exists within us? Do we carry it always? Sometimes we happen into a place that reminds us to notice; sometimes we create that space. Any surreal experiences I’ve had (and there have been many) were solid. Not beyond my senses, but through them. They were not ethereal or “spiritual.” They did not take me to other worlds, they expanded my awareness of this one. That is The Hanged Man experience in the tarot. You know what you know, even if it is not shared. It cannot be described with the English language; we haven’t the framework.

I haven’t taken any recreational drugs since high school (and few prescribed medications if avoidable). The last time I drank too much I was 21 (I’m 70). I don’t want (or need) my state to be altered, unless it is the organic release from anxiety that allows a fuller experience of presence. Even if that means pain. I’m all in, having a look down life’s hallways…

May31

murder and mint chip

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As pearls of wisdom go, I have two words of invaluable advice for anything at all that troubles you: Maira Kalman. I ask myself daily: WWMD = what would Maira do? Now, I’m not saying she’s an enlightened being…but she’s got more wisdom in her pinky than any guru I’ve ever encountered. Spiritual, schmeer-it-ual, I’m sticking with her.

For me, Maira is a great example of how an artist overcomes personal hardship and adversity while offering the world a piggyback ride on her healing journey – without ever losing grace or humor. Oh, she’s had her share of bad days. Her beloved husband Tibor lost his long battle with cancer at the age of 49 and left her with two young children. She exemplifies someone who incorporates grief, both personal and collective, with tremendous empathy and turns it into beauty. Curiosity moves her slowly through the world and she reports back to we lucky observers.

Lately, coming to terms with t h i n g s – like finding out I have a genetic disease that should have killed me decades ago, and like old age being ever so different than I expected…among other issues (!) I have become acutely aware of how much I appreciate quirky individuals who persevere. I have regrets, people, (can we talk?) about settling and about making too many compromises and about not taking my art seriously enough. I actually do wish I’d worked harder – at the things that I love. Mostly my regrets boil down to one common denominator: I didn’t TRUST myself, my intuition. I didn’t follow my dreams. It certainly is not too late for me, or for any of us. And I am enjoying life more now than I ever have. I appreciate the ordinary and everyday idiosyncrasies. I gladly traded wrinkles for the need to know. I’m learning to live in the questions. I like it.

Like Maira, I love British murder mysteries. I, too, revel in my inconsistencies. I, too, value an acute sense of the absurd. I value observation skills over job performance. I value ordinary life over extraordinary accomplishment. I value rest over productivity; I value silence and solitude. I value imagination over knowledge. I value Maira Kalman, and I value YOU. I’m not a fan of mint, however. Make mine a double – one scoop coffee and one scoop chocolate.

Women Holding Things by Maira Kalman: https://amzn.to/3X9BssN

May24

Peace and thank you

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My Mother never ever complained. About anything. She would famously say, “there’s nothing wrong with me” when we kids would corner her. We could see the pain on her face. Then she’d say, “there’s a hitch in my giddalong…” or, “the only thing wrong with me is that my children are trying to find something wrong with me.” Every so often she’d finally admit to a headache. I don’t know how she did it. She had five very spoiled children, 6 if you count my Dad, and most certainly many mornings had a hangover. As she aged her hands began to cramp up and become crippled with arthritis like her fathers had.

I am not my Mother. Try as I might to emulate her talent and tenacity, I whine. Regularly. I’m not proud. But today I have a hitch in my giddalong, both physically and mentally. Nothing is really wrong, but somethin’ ain’t right. Let’s just say it’s been a week. I began this week of writing most enthusiastically, setting out to explore the common denominator between fashion, storytelling, and sleep.

I think I do know the connection – it’s creativity, of course. But when I don’t get enough sleep I am anything but creative. Surly comes to mind. Coffee and Morning Pages certainly help. As I’ve talked about since I began this blog over 12 years ago now, Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages practice has saved my life, and certainly my sanity. When I don’t feel like writing – or think I have anything interesting going on, I may write stupid trivia, but I write. Some days I can barely think, and I might start by “reporting” to myself, the weather, the night’s holdings, any plans for the day, all of my frustrations, what I’m most surly about, and eventually listing things I am grateful for – even if I don’t feel grateful. Sometimes I can write myself free; sometimes I can’t. By free, I mean through a change of mental state, from anxiety or perfectionism to optimism and more creativity. It’s an invisible door that I have to find by feel.

But the real goal is always peace. Creativity is the how. It’s how I get to peace. It’s how I shift out of fear and toward expansion, possibility, and hope. It’s how I re-member myself. And that, quite simply is what fashion, storytelling and sleep have in common. Fashion, design, architecture, color – the ideas of others that excite and inspire me. Storytelling, mine or others, that incite curiosity and invoke my sense of human-ness, of belonging. And sleep, even if it wasn’t enough…dreams or nightmares, rife with the potential for more. These simple elements get me up, curious about what the day might hold, moving forward.

Ever forward, toward peace and thank you.

May22

before the world got in the way

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If I’m honest, I am needy much more often than I let on…it’s ugly. Like most of us, I grew up in a household that equated personal need as weakness. The culture, the times, reinforced this belief. But make no mistake – it’s a belief system. Learned. Un-learnable.

Now in my 71st year I am finally getting around to looking at what I want from life. What do I really – really – want? How much time and energy have I spent pursuing things that I thought I wanted, but that didn’t work? Why? Along the way too many compromises were made because of co-dependency, in an effort to make relationships and houses and jobs and situations work that were not an organic fit for me. Know thyself takes on a whole new meaning when life isn’t working. It turns out self awareness is key to being happy and healthy…duh.

Living in the Detroit suburbs in my 20’s, divorced far too young after marrying far too young, I sought counseling. The counselor, Jo, lived around the corner from me. She taught the first nationally accredited hypnotherapy program for Wayne State University, and she taught private courses in NLP (Neuro-linguistic Programming.) She was a huge influence. Shortly after we met through a mutual friend, she told me that the quality of my life experience would be directly reflective of my communication skills. I told her she’d lived in California too long. My usual objection to her platitudes was “I want tangible evidence.” It was my own feeble 1980’s rendition of “show me the money.”

She encouraged me to enroll in a weekend workshop on psychic development using NLP techniques that was being given at nearby Marygrove College. The facilitators were sisters who lived and practiced in a cloistered community a few hours away. I don’t remember if it was Canada or upstate New York. I do remember the experience vividly. I do remember that I was stressed. The cost of the workshop was a stretch, and it required I negotiate with my former husband to make certain I had my son’s care covered, and plan for backup with my family. And I couldn’t tell anyone what I was doing for fear of ridicule and reprisal.

Besides, I didn’t believe in psychics. Jo had tried to convince me that I had some psychic gift. I had no idea what the heck she was on about. The weekend would prove to me that I was psychic, although that didn’t really mean anything at the time. Isn’t everyone? Obviously anyone can learn these techniques; I just did. I can follow instructions – they told me what to do, I did it, it produced said results. So what? I actually still feel exactly this way, although I do see more value in the practice than before. The 2 people leading the workshop would pull me aside for private sessions and we would end up laughing and crying together. I wish I had paid more attention then, but I did not know how to get free of survival mode and be present, for myself or anyone. I’m learning to pay attention now. Better late than never.

Let me begin by giving an example of the tangible evidence I have stumbled clumsily upon: you cannot begin to understand self awareness if you don’t feel safe. Survival mode is just that – it focuses all your attention on being elsewhere and otherwise. If you are in survival mode you are stuck. Frozen in time. Unavailable. A walking zombie. Remotely controllable. I’ve lived much of life this way, and I do not recommend it.

So, yes, everyone is psychic. The important thing to know is that it is not some unique and weird complex trait. Let’s stop glorifying it as if it is magical and mysterious. It’s just a sense. It’s normal. It’s boring.

Where it’s value lies is in bringing us closer to knowing our selves. Now that we know self awareness is valuable – and not just selfish as we were taught to believe – why not utilize our natural capacities? Let’s salvage some tangible evidence about who we really are, authentically. And what it is we really need and want. It isn’t a shortcut to happiness, but it does short circuit our neurosis, our insecurities. Any time you feel needy or insecure, I invite you to ask yourself where you might have inadvertently picked up someone else’s expectation of you and are trying to fulfill it. I would ask you to pause and conduct a personal inquiry: what is it that I want here? Let’s be archeologists of our own personal culture and unearth those dreams…

May19

we all know this…and yet

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The military has used visualization techniques since WW2. Olympic athletes practice them daily. Grief counselors know this works as well in reverse; they will tell you that having faced a life-threatening situation you must grieve as if everyone involved did, in fact, die. Your subconscious cannot tell the difference between the threat and the reality.

Einstein knew it. I posit that it was the truly valuable discovery he made – far more valuable than splitting atoms. He said, “imagination is the language of the divine.” In more recent scientific studies, since the ability to map the brain while neurons are firing, we now know that intuition and imagination are the same brain function. So, psychic ability can be taught, and it turns out daydreaming is one of the ways to learn it. (Hence the value of the tarot, of storytelling.) Being busy and “productive” all the time is the way to lose it. This brings us full circle around to “Rest As Resistance” – the only way to have freedom from oppression is to mentally remove yourself from the culture; to learn how to think freely again.

I’ve had it all my life. I suspect that being the eldest of five children in a chaotic, abusive household required my “Spidey senses” be hyper-vigilant. And so the natural sixth sense was not un-developed, but allowed to function. Maybe I’m not dysfunctional so much as I’m super-functional.

I remember watching the movie Brainstorm in the theater in 1983 and getting it. This was no longer science fiction. It made for a good screenplay; I knew better intuitively. It was what my son calls “soft disclosure,” meaning it is preemptive propaganda being presented to the masses as fiction so we will readily accept the reality in the near future. And we did. We’re living in someone else’s reality (or dystopia) now. Let’s take back our own.

So, why are each of us not experiencing absolute joy and prosperity? And the answer, as far as I can surmise, is that we don’t practice. We are scared out of our wits of our own power. The only truly meaningful question becomes: WHAT IF? What if time is NOT of the essence and money IS no object?!

What do YOU want? Have I got some stories for you…

May18

Preservation Resource Center…

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WHO isn’t up for some preservation resources?!

I have often felt like my Dad was born in the wrong place and time – for which I’m grateful, of course (because…well…me.) He was gay, for one thing. He confided that to us after my parents 27 year marriage ended in their forties. But that was not something he was safe to disclose as a younger man, born in 1933, working in the factories of Detroit. He and my Mother both were talented beyond measure, both visually and musically. They never had much opportunity to be artists; they nurtured and encouraged it in us children. The expression that could not be contained, or even managed, was their rebellious spirits. You’ve heard me say that my parents were beatniks in the 50’s and became hippies in the 60’s…he did like to sport a colorful bandana around his forehead.

He played the piano, daily. We had a baby grand tucked in the corner of the living room where you would often find him tinkering. He played all the classics, but honky-tonk was his passion, and I suspect his sanity. I’m not exaggerating that his voice sounded like Frank Sinatra, and he was extraordinarily handsome throughout his lifetime. Circumstances being different, he’d certainly have given Sinatra some competition.

My father was not a particularly kind man. In fact, I’ve identified him in my older years of therapy as a narcissist, a sociopath. A man of extremely high intelligence and very low empathy. But I can’t help wondering who he might have been if born in a more tolerant time and culture, were he given even a bit more freedom of expression. Repression forces our personality out sideways in unhealthy choices, into addictions and immature abuses. I’m but one child of that fact. Please, God, may we finally learn that now, if we are to have any chance at all of a healthier future. Preferably before another world war. Preferably before the complete collapse of this empire. We have all suffered the consequences of oppression. Our society, our country, is bereft because of it. Our collective spirit is bound by grief, but we shall each know it personally. It’s our wake-up call.

Yesterday I discovered a fabulous new (to me) YouTube channel. Sorry (not sorry) to report – but I am a YT junkie. And home tours are my guilty pleasure, but I’m ever so picky. I want a lot of visual grist. This channel features restored historical homes of New Orleans, post Katrina. Let’s explore a few of these treats this coming week, beginning with this story, which brought me to tears for obvious reasons. THIS was so much like my childhood. Freeze this video on any frame at all and I will point out at least three things that spark memories. I am an endless fount of story, and I’m done apologizing for that. What awareness does this treasure spark for you?

May10

Let’s Get Medieval

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I’m kind. Until I’m not. And lately, I’m not a lot. Something happened to me. I’m not sure when. I know it began about a decade ago, living in Manville. Only those closest to me know what that means, but here’s the short version: I was in an unhappy marriage – again. And feeling like an enormous failure for being there. Would I just never catch on? We had moved my elderly father in with us as he could no longer live alone. He came with Hospice care, which is only available with a terminal diagnosis. He would be taken off Hospice before the six months expired. Fortunately, he did not. In fact, he would live another several years.

Then my brother came to “stay” while getting his feet back on the ground. He stayed for three and a half years. He, my father, and my husband (17 years my senior) all hung out together quite happily while I went off to work. Their idea of fun was going to the casino and playing the slots, which they did regularly.

They did not clean the house. I did that. They did not grocery shop. I did that. They did do most of the cooking. Because all 3 of them were “meat and potatoes” men. They ridiculed me while I chopped greens for my salads, laughing accusatorily that I was part rabbit…that never got old. They would ignore any pleas for help, or even kindness. At one point in time I’d gotten myself a camp counselors whistle, which I would blow at the kitchen table and announce, “Ass-hole retraining bootcamp begins now!” They rolled their eyes and each went back to their televisions…I’d have been invisible were I not so irritating.

You know where this is going, don’t you? Suffice it to say I was in my own special hell. Then I became ill. Deathly ill. I didn’t realize how sick I was until I finally got myself to the doctor once I was recovered enough to drive (they were busy) and was told that I was lucky to be alive. Apparently I had a blocked duct from passing a gall stone. Helllllloooooo….

In one of many fever-induced nightmares I had been driving cross country alone and my beat up old car broke down (someone call Dr. Freud.) The creepy desert town I was stranded in had become intolerable. I’d realized that they had no intention of fixing my vehicle. In fact, they were fattening me for the slaughter. I waited until after dark and snuck out my hotel window unnoticed. But I did look back once over my shoulder and saw the arched sign above the road into that town: MANVILLE. And I woke up.

I’ve never been the same since. It took a couple of years to fully extricate myself from Manville. Thanks for asking, but no, I have never recovered. And as my sister would say, now I’m “meaner n’ a snake-bit coyote…” Now I’m a lot like Mother Nature: you won’t like me when I’m mad.

I thought that if I survived that nervous breakdown, I’d soon get back to my kinder, gentler self. It didn’t happen; I’m not the same person anymore. But I did have another health crisis less than two years ago. Another wake-up call. And something remarkable also happened then. Hooked up to IV’s in a hospital bed, the nurses were so very kind. And it touched me to my core. It was as if a cellophane capsule growing inside me suddenly burst and all the bad drained out. I had never known kindness like this. Let me say that again: I HAD NEVER KNOWN KINDNESS LIKE THIS. I’m sure it’s been offered many times throughout my life. But I hadn’t really understood it until then. Perhaps we can only assimilate kindness proportionately to the hostility we’ve been faced with. And until that day I wasn’t ready to let that in, to relinquish the bubble that held hostage all my human-ness.

May5

You Can Have a Re-membering…

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“Easy is right, and right is easy.” – Lao Tzu

To say that I’ve been in a funk lately would be quite an understatement. My beloved family is really struggling, facing homelessness again. I’m heartbroken, and I can’t help. My friends are having a hard time, juggling hardship and trauma far more elegantly than they realize. My cat has been ill and I wasn’t sure he was going to make it a couple of nights ago (he has improved now.) My bank account just seems to be empty all the time no matter how hard I try to get ahead of the deficits. Unforeseen expenses come out of nowhere. I haven’t felt well, having another flare-up of chronic Lyme and wondering if I will ever feel alright again. I have had no energy.

About 2am last night something shifted, through no direct effort of my own. I have been meditating and praying more consistently (I haven’t been able to do much else) and doing my little magical feng shui “cures”…getting rid of yet more clutter and cleaning in small spurts as I learn to pace myself and accept that perhaps this may be the way it is now.

The cat woke me at 2. He let out a big sneeze and then crawled right up and stood on my chest staring at me. I reached over and turned the light on. Immediately I knew something was different; he was talking to me. He was letting me know to pay attention. He was better. I was better. The damp, mouldy old fog of fear and desperation had lifted. It was that experience you have when you feel so much better that you suddenly realize how far off you’d been.

What if…what if we just allow things to be easier? What if we re-member ourselves? What if we take the easy way out because EASY IS RIGHT…and right is easy? Have I been unconsciously making things harder than they needed to be? The circumstances haven’t changed, not yet at least, and they are still difficult. But FEAR makes everything harder – in fact, it makes things impossible. From fear I can’t see creative solutions to anything. From fear there is no hope of improvement, everything will go downhill from here. Sorrow has overwhelmed every cell of my being.

And how many times have I said you don’t need to figure it all out? You don’t need to understand what this is for. You just need to have ONE PERCENT more curiosity than fear…you just have to accept the POSSIBILITY that there is LIFE at the end of this tunnel.

Apr3

when it’s nobody’s business

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Heart pounding anxiety woke me up at 3 a.m; which is not unusual anymore. I managed to talk myself off that ledge in about a minute. I’m getting better at it. My goal was freedom. The goal is always going to be freedom. Because I feel like my dream world, my rest, was hijacked. It’s mine. I want it back.

My friends and I are all worried about our adult children. They are struggling to find their footing in a culture that is undermining them every step of the way. And we are not sure how to help, or if we can. Mind you, they were raised as we were, in decent middle class families. We were well educated, but our current incomes are not cutting it. We don’t have the financial security we thought we were building all our work life. Our children left school in debt with no guarantee of a job, let alone a living wage. I read a news article last week that shocked me to my core: recent studies have shown that at least fifty percent of the baby boomers in the U.S. are financially supporting adult children. In many cases it’s the adult child and their family. They came home to get their feet back on the ground – in one case cited, 13 years ago.

Children or not, everyone I know is struggling. We are all trying to figure this out as we go along. We have no role models. We’re outliving our parents, and we are in entirely uncharted territory. We are the first generation that is openly talking about the abuse our parents and grandparents kept secret. No one was consciously dealing with narcissistic abuse 20 years ago. Or 10. No one recognized that past generations were being groomed for sexual abuse. The culture tolerated it, they tolerated verbal abuse, even laughed about it. They tolerated bad behavior, made excuses for it. Hell, we’ve voted it into the White House. Taking accountability for your behavior was optional. Do you wonder we have an epidemic of dementia?! (Help me forget!) Addiction? Of narcissism? Of sex trafficking? Of all manner of spiritual bankruptcy? Can no one connect the dots here?! That pandemic was no accident – it was a physical manifestation of a spiritual problem. It’s time to pull our heads out of the sand.

Meanwhile, I’m struggling with my health. Last week I called for a doctor appointment and was reminded that I have to be interrogated by a nurse over the phone to determine whether or not I am sick enough to qualify for a precious appointment. I have to beg just to be seen. Then before I can be given the necessary antibiotic I have to endure a week’s worth of tests. Meanwhile, I was prescribed a temporary superficial treatment. Medicare doesn’t cover that prescription, so I didn’t fill it. I can’t do that and buy groceries. And I’m angry about that.

Now, lest you think me ungrateful, or just a whiner, I am aware of opportunity hiding here in plain sight. When worry and anxiety seem to steal my peace I know my training is not yet complete. And I’m not havoc-ing it anymore (see blog post of March 15th.) Intellectually I know that the way out of angst is gratitude. But my intellect is not easily coerced. I can’t expect to start pontificating about big, general platitudes and get myself free. Those old affirmations aren’t working anymore; this feels like spiritual warfare.

But. I can start small…go back to basics. I’m sure glad I bought an orange desk chair instead of black. Orange is the happiest color. Wow, I love my bed. I love my wide Frodo feet. I walk to the bathroom in the middle of the night, and I say “Thank You” to everything I pass (yes, out loud) – the floor, the countertop, the cat, the doorway, the moon outside. Try it. There are big things I am grateful for, too – like my son having survived cancer. He is struggling through his self-proclaimed “mid-life crisis”…but he’s here for it. Not all of his friends have made it past 40.

I can re-member myself whole. I have resources in my spiritual tool box: friends, some of my family, a loving therapist, tarot cards! At 3 a.m. with a racing heart I call in invisible help: “Christ Jesus, Archangel Michael, Ancestors! Any and all available light workers.” That’s step one. I am NOT TO BE TOILED WITH here. Neither are you – know that. God didn’t make a mistake. You were not a cosmic afterthought. You do not need to “find your purpose”…you ARE your purpose. Live like you belong here. There are no qualifications you haven’t fulfilled. You have exactly the same right to be here as 8,019,876,189 other people. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Since that has been established, I can be the narcissist’s worse nightmare. My home, my mind, and my body – my sanctuary – is a no tolerance zone. No talking down to anyone. I carry an expectation that you will be on your very best behavior around me and show up as present as possible. Don’t ever settle for anything less from anyone. Not your teacher, not your boss, not your doctor, and certainly not your family. I can laugh at myself with the best of them – when I’m silly or wrong. But don’t make fun of me at my expense. Don’t ridicule me. I’m a fucking spiritual Jedi, and I’ve trained my boundaries to be stronger than my empathy. Everybody sing along now…

Apr1

Resisting a Rest

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You will see the name of this blog change soon, to A Painterly Life. Let’s face it, it isn’t a blog about home so much as about life. And the content will broaden. We will venture out to explore the beautiful nature I am grateful to live in and near. We will continue to explore lifestyle, particularly through the lens of an aging woman…a creative woman who has survived incest, near-death experiences, growing up in an extremely dysfunctional family in the wild sixties, profound loss, decades of narcissistic abuse, and who is surviving chronic illness. But mostly, a woman who wants to live as open-heartedly as possible moving forward. Moving life forward will be the theme here.

Like most of us, from all walks of life, we are figuring it out as we go along. Our culture is changing fast – as it must. It’s archaic in so many ways. Those of us who long to see a new far more sustainable world for future generations must make serious and often difficult changes – and quickly – to keep our lives moving forward. To feel relative. We must learn to live as a verb rather than a noun.

“I want to learn to live my life as a liquid.” – Cody, Dinner At the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler

These days my body and my psyche require an unreasonable amount of rest. I do resist, albeit futilely. I have so much to do. I find myself wondering how anyone works and does everything else, but in truth, we don’t. I didn’t. I ignored more than was healthy to ignore. I lived in a constant state of overwhelm. I suffered in silence, but I also caused an unnecessary amount of suffering in my bull-in-a-china-shop charge through life. But I survived. I’m a survivor.

So are you. And I maintain a foundational premise I have adamantly defended since adolescence – that creativity is the only way through this chaos. Art, to be specific. And art is not a thing, it is a process, a way of life.

And so I aver: ULTIMATELY, IT WILL BE THE ARTISTS WHO SAVE US. You’re not an artist, you say? I beg to differ. Do you problem solve? Art. Cook? Art. Sing when alone in the car, maybe even off-key? Art. Notice the lichen on the fallen log? Artist! Love crisp, clean sheets? Know when something just feels “off”? Have a favorite color? Savor coffee with dessert? I can go on, oh, and I will…stick with me.

Let’s talk about this plaque of deep fatigue, physically and psychologically. Perhaps more so psychically. Don’t think you’re psychic? Well, I will prove that you are that, too. And it is required of us now to acknowledge and develop this atrophied gift. It is part of living artistically. It is part of living.

We are human. We are alive. We are artists. We are now.