she hands me a blank art journal and a micron pen then instructs me to draw with her. my daughter is present and she’s excited for me to join them. as i stare down at all the white i freeze. i don’t know where to start.
a blank slate.
the irony is not lost on me that this is what i’ve been working towards for quite some time…a blank slate, a fresh beginning, a new start…yada yada yada.
my palms begin to sweat and i’m brought right back to my earlier years in grade school when i spent all of my time comparing myself to those around me. quiet and constantly observing everyone and everything to see how i measured up against them.
she’s an artist. everything about her screams creativity. but me, i don’t “do” art.
i once sewed a shark pillow with giant wide eyes for my home economics class in seventh grade. i received an a+. i was so proud. i took it home and showed my mom, an accomplished sewer, who praised it. i proudly displayed it on my bed. it literally fell apart in less than a week.
it makes for a good laugh now, but it was maddening when it happened. i was embarrassed. i threw it away in the dumpster outside of our duplex in the early hours of the morning when no one was watching.
truth be told, i have a million shark pillow stories. my brother and i dubbed my creative mishaps “shark pillow”. any time i would try something and fail we’d look at each other and one of us would simply say, “shark pillow”.
i recently had something come up that led me down a rabbit hole on my laptop, which led me to the realization that i haven’t written anything for public consumption in 3 years. i must've checked the date no less than three times because how can that even be possible. i write about my life experiences and trust me, there have been experiences and lessons aplenty over the past 3 years.
i’ve learned more about myself in the last few years than i have in my entire lifetime. so why haven’t i written?
i really needed to sit with that to find the answer. then the answer came to me and was so blatantly obvious it was startling.
shark pillow.
3 years ago my life started to come together in a beautiful amazing way. i was so happy that it’s hard to put words to how i was feeling in a manner that would serve it justice. i finally felt completely whole. everything i had hoped for was happening. i was able to be myself and truly honor and love myself.
and just when i started to sink into that feeling, get comfortable and move through my fears…it all fell apart. it unraveled like that damn shark pillow. it happened really fast and without me even touching it. it happened in a way that was beyond my control.
and then, when no one was watching, i started to pick up the pieces.
it unraveled in many ways. each one was like a loose thread working it’s way out of the fabric of my being.
as i stood strong in my power everything i thought i knew unraveled exposing what was true and real.
i haven’t written publicly in 3 years because in an effort to protect everyone around me i stopped telling my story. as i went to save this post i saw two other posts saved to my website that i never published. one is about my decision to divorce my now ex-husband and the other, written almost a year later, is about falling in love when i least expected it. (i'll share them in time.)
i felt as though i couldn’t share because my story involves others and i didn’t want to share my story with you if i couldn’t be real. i don’t want to share if i can’t be open and honest.
i’m too exhausted to be anything but real.
i’ve been sitting with that for 3 years and what eventually came to me was this…
it’s completely ok for me to share my story because even though it may involve someone else it is just as much my story to tell as it is theirs. the important part is that i share in a way that respects everyone involved.
i also had to come to the understanding that it's ok to keep some things to myself and that doing so doesn't make me any less authentic. i can share my story with you while maintaining a certain level of privacy that everyone deserves. i've released my all or nothing mentality.
i don’t have to stop sharing my story.
it seems so simple when i read those words, however, in reality getting to this place has been very complicated.
the pages are my blank canvas. the art of storytelling is where my creative energy flows. hand me a blank canvas and tell me to paint something or give me a blank art journal and tell me to draw and i freeze, my palms sweat and i start to measure myself against everyone in the room.
hand me a blank page and my fingers can’t keep up with the words that are ready to flow from my soul onto my canvas.
so with this, i begin again.