Feelings and Favorite shows...
What’s next?
PIVOT
Um, Love this Journey For me
Things I’ve learned from television shows. (Can you name the shows?)
I’ve always embodied the “What’s next?” mentality, but changing course was hardest for me. Leaving teaching in 2019, even though it was imperative for my mental health, wasn’t hasty. “In my next life…” is not a mantra Alexis Rose would flaunt, but I’ve caught myself repeating the phrase. My children need me home in this season of life, and Craig can provide. So, with a “boop” on the nose, I gratefully announce, “Um… love that journey for me.”
While I’m starting this blog, and I have a “rough outline” of the art and family photography I want to create, I’m leaving space to embrace whatever happens next. A friend shared her Vision Board recently, and her commitment to “doing all the things”. This doesn’t mean she’s a martyr for her family. Rather, she is prioritizing herself, and what she wants for her life. My vision board is mostly empty. I’m not tacking anything up that doesn’t make me squeal, “A Little Bit (like) Alexis”.
Here, I’ll share inspiration and tips on living creatively, how to find time in motherhood for hobbies, how to capture everyday life in photos, and reflections on my life struggling with anxiety, depression and OCD intrusive thoughts. I process life on a deeper level than most, I’m likely an Empath. “I understand now that I’m not a mess, but a deeply feeling person in a messy world.” When I read those words in, ‘Untamed”, I sighed with relief. I’m not broken. My feelings and worries are not a result of something that is “wrong” with me. I just respond deeply to a broken world.
The first series I’m painting is entitled, “Let Me Paint the Rain”. It uses my favorite colors, and allows me to meditate while painting, on the grief and loss that I’ve suppressed the last few years. I’m not sure if my art will always be representative, but at this moment, it feels right.
Here are few watercolor and acrylic pieces in progress. Let Me Paint the Rain series will likely be ready in mid-June. Pieces will range in size from 4x6 to 24x24 canvas.
This is where I start.
Picture it, Morgan County 2014 (Golden Girls), Craig wakes me from a Sunday nap. We get in the car with my sister and brother-in-law. We drive to the hospital. We sit in the waiting room. Time runs out. We circle into a dark and quiet room. This room is where I stopped allowing myself to fall apart, or fully embrace the feelings that would inevitably come. I fixate my gaze on my Mamaw. I keep my hands on the bursting belly I carry. In those moments of waiting, I decide. I will afford myself minimal tears. As we wait for life to leave the room, the new life within me is my focus. I will have several months off with our new baby, and I will spend every moment I can with Mamaw.
Since losing Papaw, there have been other losses. I held those at bay too. I walked out of the my last ultrasound, confirming my miscarriage (our third loss), and back into a room full of second graders, within 12 minutes of staring at the empty screen. There are pieces of this story I’ll likely fill in later, but I find myself at the end.. and the beginning.
In early February Mamaw fell. The break was too much for her. Not being able to see her, due to COVID, was too much for me. Here I am, in the Spring, in the season of showers and growth. This is where I let myself feel everything. This is where I honor the grief inside. This is where I pause, and ask those around me to “Let Me Paint the Rain”.
I took this photo the day before Papaw’s accident. It was by chance that I quickly snapped it on my phone. Dad, Mom, and I took them to the Honey Farm’s festival. We drove around back roads, I was squished between them in the back of my dad’s car. Papaw pointed out things he remembered, the way things used to be.
“Being human is not about feeling happy, it’s about feeling everything.”
Glennon Doyle
