Balance In A Storm
This photograph came up on my memories from four years ago with a caption about creating giving me balance in the storm. The past few years, well decades, in many ways, have been tumultuous. With the exception of friends and family (or when friends and family are going through the same thing themselves) what are the two things that are always ALWAYS there? Nature and creating. They always give me somewhere to GO. It’s why I walk every day and why I have a variety of creative practices. Writing, illustrating, painting and poetry. All there for me in different ways. All ways to express myself when experience has made it difficult to simply say what I really want to say. I call myself If In Doubt Create for a reason.
A small example is when a ex-boyfriend broke up with me about 20 years ago. I remember thinking, “What the hell am I meant to do with all this love now?” I remember where I was standing at the time when the answer came to me very clearly, “WRITE.” So I wrote. Not about the break up. In fact quite the opposite. I co-wrote a book about weddings that got published soon after.
When I was faced with my Mum’s illness, I found I couldn’t write… So I started to draw (having not drawn since I was a teenager) and went on to gently challenge myself to create a picture book (published three years later).
I started painting a few years ago when life had made me feel totally frustrated and stuck. The flow of the paint made me reconnect with *moving*. I started painting with my eyes closed and it helped me to FEEL.
And in the terrible, ground shaking grief I’ve experienced in the past few years, my mind unexpectedly gave me poetry which let me express myself in a way that prose couldn’t quite achieve.
I wonder if it’s sometimes the simple, meditative focus of making, that has these calming powers. But it’s so much more than that. It’s the feeling of purpose and productivity. Of making something that didn’t exist before. And nine times out of ten, I find I make things that have some element of comfort and cosiness to them. Very much as much for me as anyone who might like to buy a book, print or painting from me. Creating things feels nurturing.
So in unsteady, upsetting times and also, it must be said, in beautiful, happy times, that’s why I always, always come back to my centre, CREATING and the comfort it gives me. How about you?
