5 years.
Embracing the change is part of the journey, and the journey is the change.
For several years prior to my 45th birthday, I kept imagining an art project that explored what it was like to be a women today. I contemplated how I could examine this amazing time in which I live. Women have never been in a better position across the globe than today. We are more educated, we are in more positions of power, we have agency, and we have laws that protect us. And although there are many sisters in the world who still do not enjoy what we do here, the march of progress, though slow for some, has been incrementally moving toward the better over time.
I recognize the space I inhabit at this particular moment in time, and I dare not waste it to folly or chance. For it is my generation of women that is building the ground floor above the foundation poured by the suffragettes and by our feminist leaders of the last century. The work done here in our nation is the work that changes the lives of women throughout the world. The visibility of women forging new paths allows other women to imagine their possibilities in life.
Growing up, single women were looked at as spinsters or as women who made poor choices, and in either case, it was considered their fault that they did not the find “happiness” that is believed by many to be the only path for women. These labels were not always explicit. Instead the judgment was woven into subtle remarks and conclusions drawn by small-minded group think that invaded every aspect of my life. The role model of the single childless woman was not a path ever encouraged—even our “feminist” mothers would not choose to speak the words. Instead we were told, “you’ll change your mind” or “wait until you fall in love with someone.” The conclusion was that I was not capable of knowing what I wanted until a man entered into my life, and why take the chance of alienating a man when it was quite clear that I was too young to know my mind? I have found this to be a constant theme throughout my life, and I am sure the majority of women in my generation can attest to this experience.
Fast forward twenty five years, an education, a thriving company, and an exhausting path of dating. Prospects were thin, and though men might say they want a “strong woman,” I found the truth to be that the majority of them do not understand what that means. I spent my dating life being open and honest about my personal goals in hopes I would find a partner who would flourish in mutual encouragement as well as in love and companionship. It was quite clear I enjoyed my career and the art of building my business. It gave me joy, it gave me strength, it gave me an autonomy that I always strived for, and as it progressed I found myself growing in ways that I have never anticipated. At 38 I decided to let go of my illusion of wanting a child, which in turn freed me to explore my age and my freedoms in a whole new light.
I don’t deny women have been here in the past, but many of these women lived in the shadows. They were not running companies, but they were the most dedicated worker a company had ever seen. They were not pillars of their community, but they were the support team for countless moms and dads who needed an aunt to lend a helping hand. They weren’t the parents, but they were whisperers of truth and the arms of non-judgment to those who felt alienated. Today I am surrounded by a gaggle of single women, all highly professional and THRIVING! We are learning new paths while desperately trying to shed old, ugly, internalized programming that says we are not enough OR that we are too much. By taking an intentional artistic path, I am relearning my internal dialog, and I hope to shed light on another way of thinking for a newer generation.
The evolution of my Kali.
4/20/2021 Desire Production
48.
December 31, 2021
Me posting this on the Eve of 2022 becomes even more appropriate than if I posted it back at the end of October when I ALMOST finished writing it OR on my actual birthday which has always been the plan. Sans my computer crashing the first week of November and me just getting it back two weeks ago, I would like to say I would have gotten right on it after I completed it. But, I rather not fool myself. I most likely still would have dawdled.
October 29th, 2021
My half birthday was October 20th. It was self-imposed deadline to finally write my art intention for this year. As you may (or may not) know, I have been on a five year art exploration (see work below). To say this year was the hardest of them all would just be redundant at this point. The past 19 months has been hard on everyone. When I wrote my last intention on “Becoming” in 2020 I dropped full on into an uninterrupted art exploration that was supported by the isolation of the pandemic. An artist’s greatest challenge is to find time to do the work- and here I was- the universe was giving me full-on permission of time. I now had no excuse.
What did I “Become”? Good question. This has been the challenge in my writing since before my 48th birthday. After spending a year knee deep in color and pattern exploration with the Umbrellas I felt utterly removed from my mother tongue. I learned a new language but in the exploration I forgot my own. Creating the idea or words to express what had happened, and more important, what I would do in the coming year felt flat. Almost like I had put all the vibrancy into my paintings but forgot about the vibrancy in my soul. This all was around March- the one year mark from me returning from a soul nourishing trip to Africa, time spent with my adopted tribe with an easy landing into pandemic life. One year later I felt a toll of demands. But my demands did not come from children or a partner as I have neither. My demands came from staff and clients. The demand that I be creative was pressed upon me from the outside and now requested at a pace that was inherently draining. There were demands of the self- those expectations I put on myself to keep my honest. There was a great battle going on inside my head and body- one point I was grateful and very aware how lucky I was to have the demand of my creativity and expertise on the other hand I was being given no time to refuel. One demand was layered on a crisis, was layered on a deadline, was layered on my need for personal space. My creative well was being depleted at a pace that I was unable to refuel. I have been running on a quarter tank ever since.
Then I decided to add on another layer and attempt the dating pool again. I was kissed and reawaken on my birthday this year. A magical kiss, one that lasted for hours. How very Snow White of me! After a few months of platonic dating because of Covid concerns, I decided to hop in as being single during a pandemic is a lonely place when it comes to touch and physical affection. My yogic and Tantra practices were what brought me through without losing my mind. Thank goodness the concept of dating myself has been a lifelong practice, but after a year of isolation, I knew it was time to push outside of myself and my self-imposed quarantine comfort zone.
I’d like to report that affair worked out, but alas, for reasons outside of my control- and apparently outside of his, it did not. Alcohol is a predictable animal. If someone is only able to tell half of their truth then it becomes quite clear that they are not truly aware of the vastness of their problem. Truth is what allows one to sit vulnerably in front of another. It is the point of connection and connecting. The lack of truth has been an issue throughout my dating life, one that has left me full of anger on more than one occasion. And with the break from the dating pool and all the “me” work I have been doing over the past years, I was understandably angry at the depth of the deception and the lack of my ability to sniff it out sooner. I was disappointed that I felt my anger show back up even though I knew that the anger would not fix the issue. I was beating myself up when none of it had anything to do with me. And for the first time I stopped myself from going deep into my anger. (It can be a fun place to live. It’s a place of drama where my brain can form stories about whatever it wants to and throw blame every which way it seems fit.) And instead of going deep into my anger I decided to use that energy in my painting instead. And guess what happened?
My Kali emerged.
Many see the dark skinned Hindu Goddess and immediately react to her anger, her fury, and her visible blood lust. When I started painting the first Kali, a man actually commented about how following me was now difficult because the angry woman with the dark skin is a bad omen in his country. A goddess as powerful as Kali will, of course, run up against every misogynistic trope possible. Those who bother to learn of her power and the balance of the feminine and the masculine learn to respect the power of Kali and how she is the ultimate transformation. She is the ultimate reality. She is both life and death. She is black, white, and all the grey in between. She is creation, preservation, and destruction and she does not allow the ego any quarter. She forces one to live in the moment, accept what is, and then expects you to move though the moment whatever it is. Because that is what we are doing here. We are learning to live in the moments that are handed to us without shattering ourselves to pieces trying to make it some other thing or some other way.
I know Kali is the first true exploration of harnessing my feelings then allowing that electricity travel though my body and consciously transfer outward though my hand.
In this painting exploration I have realized that I tend to ignore that I am already a full time artist that runs a firm full of other artists. That is already a lot on the plate before even getting to the part that I want to “do something new”. The painting exploration isn’t really “new”. It is just a continuation of my artist exploration- painting just happened to be the medium I chose at the start of this journey to get me moving. Paint was my curiosity, my ignition point to begin again. What I am “becoming” is a my true artist. In fact, I don’t need to become it- I am it. I am learning to parse though and process all of my feelings in my head and transmuting that energy onto a canvas, or a room, or sculpting clay, or an experience I create. All I am is now conscious of that fact. And with that consciousness can come even better intention.
I forgot it was my half birthday on October 20th until I sat down with my therapist late in the morning, amused at myself for realizing it was a self-imposed significant day to write my “intention”. Not intending this theme to be our session, I mused how appropriate it was to be speaking with her this day of all days and how I felt an intense creative shift over the past week. I had broken through on a painting project I had been contemplating all summer and found myself sketching the concept the weekend before. I was closing up my biggest, most creative and most stressful design project of my entire life. A deep need to start working with clay (the earth) was emerging and I decided to indulge it. Mercury was just coming out of retrograde. It became clear that my half birthday was not an a self-imposed date at all, but the pace my creative-self needed to process the past nineteen months and how that has affected me. Through these affects I was able to effect my creative process which is not a thing I can always directly target but somehow it was happening. I was awoken to a new layer of my creativity.
We talked about anger and how I wish I could release the anger that wells up in me about several issues in my past. She laughed. She asked me what I thought I was doing all these years? When disappointment and anger arises she reminded me you really have two choices……
-You can swallow it and let it fester and move you into negative space.
-You can let it wash over you and use the fuel for something else.
I’ve been fueling other things- my creativity, my business, and my life goals. My Kali has always been with me, and I had been already harnessing her energy but this year she wanted to reveal herself to me. She wanted me to be conscious of how she is always present by my side.
On the evening of my half birthday I attended my regular yoga class where my instructor, Juli, read aloud a Dana Faulds poem that summarized my path to “Becoming”. ( I love the universe.)
Sweet Time
***
Great nature takes
her own sweet time.
No one can hurry
Sunrise; migrating birds
Arrive when they arrive,
Trees grow and leaf on their own unique
Schedules. We are
The only creatures with clocks, minute
hands marching in
tight circles, seconds
flashing past. Think of
the inner peace
if we woke one day
To find that all the
Clocks has turned into
flower pots filled with
buds that bloomed only
when a power greater
than the calendars or hours
coaxed their petals open.
So here I am- ready to declare another “theme” for my year 8 months passed my self-imposed “deadline”. But this one was easy- as I think I unintentionally fell into my intention and have been in the midst of it all along. I have been listening to this wonderful podcast, Philosophize This for several years and I always keep coming back to the same 4 episodes about Deleuze & Guattari- probably a dozen times at this point. The host, Stephen West, has a way with explaining concepts that in most cases, would have been way over my head. I talked about Becoming and about Rhizomes in my past intention, both critical pieces of Deleuze & Guattari’s work- and so I keep going, looking at Desire Production and my part in the many art machines I drive and are driven by………
Episode #127
Gilles Deleuze pt.3 Anti-Oedipus
I am curious to understand more about my “desire” and how it has, is, and will keep driving me into this exploration. Understanding how the concepts of Kali and Desire Production mold each other as the words “desire produces reality” hold a lot of weight in my heart at the moment. I am curious to keep exploring my “production” in relationship to my flow state as I see flow state as the lubricant that keeps a machine moving. And maybe, just maybe, I will be able to post in a timelier manner or not.
PS- The podcast above was wonderful exploration of philosophy. I enjoyed every episode and found myself reading and wanting more. In 30 minute increments, Stephen West really digs down to the deep parts and created a wonderful timeline of civilization though the lens of Philosophy.
A painting I began after my return from Africa in 2020. My first few weeks of Covid were spent figuring out this painting from a photograph taken by my dear friend Shalani.
4/20/2020 Year of Becoming
47.
So here I am, leaving one year behind to begin another. How do I say goodbye to such an intention as “Radical Self Love”? Easy: by not saying goodbye but by embracing it as yet another mantra through this mystery of life.
For those of you just catching up, three years ago I declared:
As an artist I am intentionally going to approach the next five years as an exploration. I am aware of the place I hold right now. Single, never-married, childless female who is shaping her own destiny. I lead proudly and have never looked back or regretted any choices in my life. We are truly the first generation of women to explore this space without those regrets and expectations. We are the first generation fully allowed to own it … spiritually, financially, sexually, mentally. What does that look like? Whom will we become? And what does it look like free of the patriarchy?
I declared my first year as “My Year of Art & Sex.” This past year was “Radical Self Love.”
Over the past year I delved deep into my art, making painting a more regular part of my daily meditations. I used many modalities to explore, from yoga, meditation, breath work and Tantra to exercising and eating clean. I took a few plant medicine journeys that helped me exorcise some deep pain bodies within. I have (finally) experienced an extended period of time (weeks) where I have been in no physical pain, as I have spent the past eight years in constant neck, back and leg pain down the left side of my body. I went back to therapy after a break because the stress of moving my interior design business made me realize I had some unfinished work to do. As an artist I have excitedly watched my “fine art” as well as my “business art” develop. I don’t see many differences between interior design and painting; I just see them as different mediums. I did all of these things with the outlook of Radical Self Love. I embraced wholeheartedly all things that came to this year, both good (progress in painting) and bad (Covid Crisis). I saw each side of the coin as part of who I am and learned to sit in the discomfort and to question those things that did not serve me anymore but were held onto as crutches. I learned not to take those questions on as a judgment but instead to take them on as a learning tool. I learned to let a lot of things go so I could make room for a bunch of newer things I wanted more.
I have been introduced to the philosopher Gilles Deleuze over the past year. And though I am new to his ideas, one that has resonated with me is the “Process of Becoming.” Authors Biehl & Locke say it best: “In becoming, as Deleuze saw it, one can achieve an ultimate existential stage in which life is simply immanent and open to new relations, camaraderie, and trajectories. Becoming is not a part of history, he wrote: ‘History amounts only to the set of preconditions, however recent, that one leaves behind in order to ‘become,’ that is, to create something new.’” (Deleuze 1995:171)
This idea of process and creation has always been a huge theme throughout my life, especially in relation to patriarchal limitations set on the female. Why do you think I own my own business? I like to spend the year “Becoming” more. I feel like this was already the path I was on, but Deleuze encourages me further. I want to be a rhizome (think of mushroom roots). I want to connect laterally and grow my root system into a tangled maze. Where does it go? Well, that’s the beauty of Deleuze. You can never be really sure of where it is going to go. … that is the whole point. Embracing the change is part of the journey, and the journey is the change.
So here’s to a year of Becoming. See you on the other side. Happy birthday to me!
P.S. A not-quite-finished portrait but one that I have only worked on since I returned from Africa. I have a secret Insta account. Feel free to follow @illcrossthatbridge.
This was the first self portrait I painted where I feel like I got somewhere different. Not perfect, not exact, not even good … but it was progress.
4/20/19 Radical Self Love
46.
This last year has been an intense exploration in opening up! I explored the depths of me in ways that I have only read about. Creating an intention last birthday allowed me to focus on projects that have been near and dear to me for several years, but I had trouble getting this started. Nothing like “putting it out there” to get kicked in the ass. I loosened up a bunch of chakras and got them to line up a bit (yeah, I said “chakras”), and look what happened to my creativity—I feel as if it soared! I am slowly learning how to paint, a dream of mine since I was a child, and one that has always given me pause. I have been an artist in search of my medium my entire life. The painting cave has been one avoided. I am in it—watch out! As for the sex part, well that has been another exploration that you won’t have the honor of reading about just yet. You may have to wait for the book. I don’t see my Year of Art and Sex as over, just evolving in a way that allows me to explore the next phase of my project.
I have come to realize I started this journey about six years ago. After a very disappointing break up, I spent two years with an amazing therapist parsing through my life. My conclusion: I’ve been doing damn good! Regardless of the all the curve balls I have been thrown since I was a child, I have had the ability to navigate life in a positive way. Have I always been great at it? No way! Who is? But it taught me to trust myself more and my abilities to support myself both emotionally and physically. I didn’t need someone else to do those things. Once I acknowledge my capabilities to care for myself in a truly meaningful way I only get better at doing it. I trust myself in ways I never thought possible, and the trust is so deep that it drives out fear. The recognition that I am the only one to make things happen allows me to do just that. Yoga and meditation support this mindset, along with a deep well of friends who see me the way I want to be seen. They believe in me, and in return, I believe in them. The gift of this mindset is the endless possibilities that life has now rolled out before me.
I want to spend his year continuing this exploration I have begun but with the intention of Radical Self Love. I have already done radical self-doubt, mediocre self-doubt, and just plain old loathing of myself at different phases of my life. It’s time to take it the other direction. As a woman, I don’t believe I was ever taught this fully, and if I was taught this, the pace of consumerism and media feeds women a totally different message, one that seeps deeply into our cracks where it then hardens. When we finally wake up (if we ever do), the process of chipping it out of us is painful, as it strips down and creates voids in those fissures. We need to find other things to fill it with, and it’s really hard to create new spaces that are nourishing when all you are used to having is a constant crisis—be it about your body, your family, your lovers, or your friends (seriously, this list can go on). The mind loves to tell us stories, and the majority of them are just not true. When I stop allowing drama (my mind) to dictate my empty spaces, I find a peace that allows opening to my boundless creativity. It’s truly an uncomfortable state, especially when it was new, but not allowing my mind to create drama that doesn’t exist is a meditation. It is that drama that moves me into self-doubt that in return takes away from my self-love. There will be no more of that this year. My tool box is deep and tested.
Happy birthday to me.
One of my first attempts at self portraiture in 2017
4/20/2018 My Year of Art & Sex
45.
My life has never been more infinitely possible than it is today. We could not be living in a more incredible time. Women are rising. Minorities are rising. New voices are drowning the dull, closed minds of the past. Truths are now heard more vividly than ever before, and they are not willing to be put back in boxes, corners, or closets. Creativity abounds through clarity and reasoning. Truth speaks volumes, and once it is spoken an internal shift occurs, allowing the self never to go back.
As an artist I am intentionally going to approach the next five years as an exploration. I am aware of the place I hold right now. Single, never-married, childless female who is shaping her own destiny. I lead proudly and have never looked back or regretted any choices in my life. We are truly the first generation of women to explore this space without those regrets and expectations. We are the first generation fully allowed to own it … spiritually, financially, sexually, mentally. What does that look like? Whom will we become? And what does it look like free of the patriarchy?
So here I begin. This first year I have christened “My Year of Art & Sex.” I do not know what this exploration will bring, but I am looking forward to how my artist will reveal it. Happy 420 to me.