The Language of the Soul

Last month I signed up for an online mixed-media art class, and then promptly forgot all about it until a week ago when I received the emails that the class was starting.  I was elated!  How did one-month-ago Me know how badly present day me would need this? 

I immediately dove in!  I ran to the craft store to buy all of the supplies listed for the class.  As soon as the link for the class was sent out I logged in and began devouring the content.  I was hungrier to feed this side of myself than I ever could have guessed.  With every layer of paint I applied I could feel a bit of my soul stirring and coming back online.  How could I forget how much this playful creativity feeds me?

It has been years since I engaged my creative side.  It’s not like I decided one day to put the art down and get serious.  It’s never like that.  It has happened little by little. As I make more room in my day for the needs (the constant needs) of the kids, family obligations, squeezing my work into whatever crevasses remain, the art and the play slip away.  I’m sure there are things that I like to do, to see, to think about- but they’ve slipped below the surface and I can’t quite make them out anymore.  And somewhere, tethered to it all, I think, is me- or pieces of me, but I can’t quite make that out either.

I’ve been struggling hard over the past couple years to move forward with some of my work.  I take one step here, and another there, and then I’ll hit a wall that feels insurmountable.  It might be my languaging, my content, my structures, the tech- whatever it is feels massive and heavy, and I feel a little more of myself slip a little deeper below the surface.

The bigger everyone else’s needs get the less room there seems to be for me, and somehow that feels acceptable because it also feels like I’m shrinking, so why not give them more room?

Until this last year.  Somehow I gave so much of my space away that I began to feel like a ghost walking around my house, my town, my life.  Someone who is kinda there, but mostly imperceivable. I might feel worse about it, but I don’t think I’m alone in these feelings.  I think in many ways this the experience of motherhood these days. But maybe not.

The thing about loosing all connection to yourself is that it actually becomes much harder to show up for everyone’s needs.  If I don’t know who I am, what I enjoy, what makes me truly ME, then how do I know how I would show up in any given situation?

So I had hit yet another wall in my professional life, which just feels like more sinking. Then BAM- this art class shows up. And for whatever reason, I grabbed it with both hands.

I forgot that mixed-media feels like life playing out on a canvas.  Splash some color, make mistakes, anything is a tool, experimenting is essential.  Layers build on layers, and what might have been considered a mistake at first can be transformed by more layers, more light, more dark, and the final product is all of the layers- all the complexities coming together in this creation to be incredibly unique, never duplicated, speaking with many voices and one voice, offering to the world what only IT can offer.

So I’m giving myself this space.  I lay a drop cloth on the bathroom floor and line up all the supplies. Then when everyone goes to bed I take a deep breath, pull out the paint, and invite myself to show up.

I haven’t fully emerged yet, that will take more time. But I did get back to work this week with new energy and hope. I have a lot of work to do for myself, giving myself permission to take up space- just like everyone else gets to. 

Art is one of the languages of the soul, and I’m trying to listen to her again.