Ease Is Always A Sign
When I was that age, exploring my own creativity, what I most craved was freedom. What I most desired was encouragement to be who I was at my core, and to let that truth shine through creation.
There is a phrase that has been haunting me, following me around for weeks, most acutely dogging my heels these past few days: What you resist, persists.
You’ve probably heard it before, too.
First it found me in a book. Second, I heard it discussed in a podcast. The third time, the phrase knocked on my door in the form of a line spoken by a character. As a believer in signs, someone who seeks to be in perpetual conversation with the universe, I felt I should pay attention.
I was chatting with my husband the other day in the kitchen, putting words to all the thoughts and feelings that have been rattling around inside my brain. I’ve been at loose emotional ends, feeling mentally untethered, coming down off the high of overwhelm, intense anticipation, and supercharged productivity.
There is this idea, I explained to him, that life, the universe, divinity, whatever, will tap you on the shoulder. If you don’t listen, that tap becomes a pinch. If you ignore the pinch, it becomes a punch, and soon you’re laid out flat, seeing stars beneath the belly of a semi.
If I don’t learn this lesson now, it may play on repeat. This has happened to me before.
I am told, Get curious. Ask questions. Just notice without judgment. It’s good advice and also too subtle, a step or two removed from what I need right now. I crave embodiment. I need expression. Afterward I can look curiously at the process and result and make new, different choices next time. All our lives are an experiment.
A couple weeks ago, I taught my final class for the artist residency. It was the morning after baptism by Swift and I was feeling rinsed and wrung, strung out on just a few hours of sleep after 48 on adrenaline. But let’s do this, I thought. I’m ready.
I sat on the floor with the kids in a circle. Any T Swift fans here?, I asked, and 13 little hands shot into the air. I told them about dancing in the rain, about singing at the top of my lungs with 70,000 feral Swifties. They came alive with excitement, their eyes wide and bright, asking questions, telling me their favorite song, about watching her documentary three times. One little girl on my left leaned in and quietly remarked, “I don’t think Ticketmaster should be a thing.” (Smart kid!)
Our conversation drifted easily to the natural world, the way rain feels on your skin, squishing mud between your toes, the warmth of sunshine, photographing flowers with your phone, how your body responds to a hike in the Berkshires. Afterward, we walked across the Common to gather seed pods, leaves, and sticks. They painted stones and then arranged them, with all the found elements from nature, into freeform mandalas on the floor of the church where the concert will be performed. A few parents hung around and watched. One of them brought me dried flowers and a box of feathers, delighted to take part in the communal act of creativity. Another told me how cool it was to watch the kids work, asking, what is a mandala, and what happens once they are made? Nothing, I said. We make them for the joy of their creation, and then we disassemble.
Wow, she said.
The best things in life are fleeting. They are made up of a moment, magic that cannot be captured.
When the children finished their mandalas, we gathered once more in a circle to admire their designs. We discussed colors and textures created by vibrant ferns and cheery dandelions, the contrast between intricate leaf patterns and simple stick ones, how one mandala was tight and precise with plucked petals and the other wide open with saucer-sized leaves. And after, they asked me if they could please paint more rocks, their enthusiasm like nectar. Go for it, I said.
I gathered the elements to compost on the riverbank behind my house, and slipped out quietly as the kids and adults moved on to other choral activities. I felt as though I had just turned the page on a challenging but rewarding chapter.
When I said yes to the residency, I didn’t know about my pending diagnosis, had no idea that in the coming months I would lose my uterus, and with it a deep, painful slice of my identity. It’s been a complicated process, teaching children, while grieving this loss.
I’m ok. It just hurts. I am both relieved and devastated, and standing in the eye of that contradictory storm is an act of necessary and defiant resilience. We are all our own child, and part of our charge is to parent ourselves, even as we shepherd others whose lives intersect with ours.
The children I’ve been spending my time with are 11 and 12, an age I find particularly activating. When I was that age, I experienced some of the greatest hardships of my life. (This is also the age when my brother experienced many of his.) More than once since I started teaching, I found myself waking in the middle of the night with a frantic heart, gulping air as I clawed my way back into the present. I am not that child anymore, trapped in an impossible, violent situation - and yet - I will forever be that child, too. She is with me still, and she sees herself reflected in the faces of those painting rocks, arranging dandelions.
Somewhere between class three and four I had a realization, that the resistance I’ve been feeling in teaching these workshops stemmed from my displaced desire to perfectly meet every adult expectation rather than simply show up for the children. The only thing that really ever mattered was their experience. When I opened myself up to the idea, it unfolded as easily as a rose in the sun, and ease is always a sign.
I remembered that when I was that age, exploring my own creativity, what I most craved was freedom. I did not need step by step instruction or a perfectly taught class, only the container of opportunity. What I most desired was encouragement to be who I was at my core, and to let that truth shine through creation.
Teach them the way you wanted to be taught, said my coach. It may be hard to be around them, but maybe this is the Why. Maybe you are surrounded by small, reflective versions of you as a child, so that you can give them what you wanted, what you needed.
I don’t know if I succeeded, but I can say with a full and open heart that as soon as I stopped resisting the hurt ignited by their presence, that as soon as I gave into and made space for the feelings - every damn one of them - I felt the constriction around my heart melt and the joy of sharing art bloom, a lotus unfurling in the center of a still pool.
In that last class, I felt connected to them, from sharing a love of Swift to a mutual admiration for the shape and blush of a bleeding heart. The class came together so easily, almost without effort, and watching the children create, wholly absorbed in an artistic pursuit, gifted me a profound sense of accomplishment and joy.
Hell was the journey but it brought me heaven.
Thanks for reading, friends! Drop me a comment and let me know what you think. Send me an email or shoot me a text. I LOVE hearing from you! What resonates? What questions arise? Tell me everything. And if you feel so inclined, please share. xo!
Hi Elizabeth,
I read this today on my screen porch during a thunderstorm. Your words moved me. Thank you. Now I’m savoring the sight of wet black dirt in my little garden, with little green plants sprouting. Flowers, tomatoes, cantaloupe and sweet potatoes. The hope of renewal and new life.
~ John
Thank you Elizabeth. I have only just found the joy and importance explored by your creativity in the past 20 years. I just was never encouraged.nor was it even discussed when I was growing up. Either at home or at school. Growing up in a strict but lovinv home home creativity was never mentioned . No one ever encouraged it or discussed it at school either. And thinking back, I guess this was the start of a struggle with depression also. Well, it’s an issue that runs in our family. I wonder if exploring one’s creative side would’ve helped over the years. perhaps that’s where my joy of sewing has developed to projects that I do for enjoyment rather than those that I do out of necessity. Wow! Consider by mind blown with your help. Now to find some time to explore this or maybe just to go and see a quilt.