On Being A Bi Polar Artist...

Dear Ones...

It is one of those days...

One of those days when I feel blue, when any energy I might have had has drained out of my body and I look around at the disarray in my studio and feel overwhelmed and helpless. Will I ever get this cleaned up? Will I have the will, the wherewithal to finish this book? I have received great encouragement from the people that I am working with, that the work is good, has meaning, could sell, and I have been very happy to hear this, comforted, hopeful, and then these times come. 

I can't write this. It is my dark secret, I feel ashamed, embarrassed.

I have to write this. Writing this is the only way to open the shades and let some light in. I need light.

If even one person reads this that needs to hear these words, who might feel less alone, then this is what I must do. Throughout it all, good times and bad, hard times and times of great happiness, I have shared it all here, and my role as a truth-teller is the most important role that I have with my work because at the very heart of everything I do is the desire to help others. I have felt so alone, so frightened in my life. I have read and reread and clung to books that gave me hope, that were life rafts in a stormy sea. If I can do that for someone else, I must do it.

The difficulty for me is not in whether or not I can write or create art, I can do both of those things and I'm confident in my ability to do so, no, the difficulties that I face are the roller-coaster ups and downs of being bi polar. As I have been in therapy for decades and now only require regular check-ins every 3 months or so to have medications evaluated and dosages tweaked, I know my body, and the medications have helped enormously, but they can't pave over the rutted roads, sharp curves, and landslides that my neural pathways and grey matter are wont to take. Things are much more even now, the swings between the poles are not severe ups and downs, but they come regularly enough that, though subtle to the outside observer, can keep me from being consistently able to get the work done at a pace and speed that I would like to maintain to finish any project , be it a book, the artwork, household chores, or other things. 

My saving grace is the living things around me. My animals are my dearest loves and always get the best of care. They are the reason that I get up many days, to feed, take the dogs out, care for the parrots, get in any and all food and supplies that they need, go to the vet, and so on. And the dogs are the reason that I stay as stable as I do. Animals have an amazing sensibility and understanding of what is going on. My 3 pugs will practically lay on top of me when I am slipping into a sinkhole of despair. The concern on their little faces touches me deeply. I reach for them and love them to ease their worried little hearts, and in so doing I am lifted up. Time and again they pull me back into the present moment and move the stalled engine inside of me forward once more.

Too, the garden saves me, especially at this time of year when so much planting is being done, as plants come and must get in the ground and be watered lest they die, and the seeds that I plant by the tens of thousands must be kept watered to grow into the lush cottage gardens that I create. I drink in the color, the life, the lively dance of the cosmos, the poppies, the thousands of zinnias, the fragrant herbs, and am nourished, healed, and calmed by nature, the living plants, the wild birds at my feeders, a squirrel frolicking on my windowsill, a mourning dove sitting peacefully in a patch of daylilies, these things, too, are saving graces. I can move to care for the living things. I will take care of the plants and animals who need me.

And then a tidal wave of fear comes again.

"What will I do for income, how will I support myself if I can't get this work done quickly enough?" shouts a voice inside of me as fear runs over me. During these times, on these days, I try to anchor myself in what is concrete. I get up and clean up the kitchen. I have been putting that off for days. I get the dishwasher going, gather the dirty laundry and get a load of wash going, do my rounds with the animals and sit down with coffee. I tell myself that my plan will be that every time I get up, to go to the bathroom, to go outside with the dogs, answer the door, whatever, I will do as many little chores as I can. Last time I went out on the deck and filled the three bird feeders and blew the deck off, something I do several times a day with the leaf blower so the pugs don't eat the fallen birdseed. I got another load of laundry going, checked on the parrots in the other room, and returned to the safety of my chair here with an urgency of someone who barely made it back alive.

That will sound like an exaggeration to you, perhaps overly dramatic. It is the often painful truth. It is my reality.

There are times that my blood sugar drops far too low and I become shaky because I can't get up to get something to eat. I finally got up and got hummus and rice crackers. I am okay now. This happens far too often.

At these times I feel that it is important for me to write the book I keep starting and putting off, about living with bi polar disorder, because it may help someone. I don't share any of this to frighten anyone, to try to garner sympathy, but because I know what it is like to be thrown a life raft when there is a hole in the boat and I've lost my oars and am about to sink. 

I am working steadily on my 100 Ladies and will continue to do so. I love them dearly and it is work that has really opened up a place inside of me where beauty grows, where hope has taken the place of hopelessness, where I see so many possibilities, but I think if I use the ladies in smaller books along the way, if I can publish, even self-publish, books of stories that people can read along the way but more to the point that give me a feeling of accomplishment, that show me that a project can come to completion, then it will keep propelling me forward. Yes. I think that's it. In the way that I have to take small steps each day as a way of getting things done and feeling the sense of accomplishment necessary to keep me moving forward, so, too, would publishing small books along the way. My ladies are coming. They cannot be stopped! They have a will and a life of their own. There is no fear that I will not finish this book, it is only a concern about taking too long to finish all 100 of the ladies. I needn't wait until the end. Just writing this I see a bit of light coming in around the edges.

I want so much to write a book about Dragonfly Cottage, about the road to Dragonfly Cottage, because it has been the road to a place where I could finally land, where I could nest and feel safe, where I could create a life that would make living possible, where I could grow and flourish, and I have been, and I want, so very much, to show other people that it is possible for them too, to find a way, a place, the necessary elements needed to create a life of meaning and substance even with the limitations of bi polar disorder or whatever else might feel crippling in someone's life. People despair when they feel as though they can't fit in. I think we need to be comfortable fitting out. Fitting outside the norm. Living outside the box. That is my message. That has been the road to Dragonfly Cottage. I have run off the road a number of times but always seem to find the path back. Dragonfly Cottage, creating this world here, has been life-saving for me. I will continue, all the days of my life, to tend these gardens, these animals, and yes, work with every fiber of my being to keep moving forward, to do my writing and my art, and hope it has some value to the world. 

I think I'm okay now. I just noticed that I took the first whole breath that I have in some time. My body is relaxing. I have made it safely to shore again.

I am bi polar. I am an artist. A writer. I will live my way through everything I need to to do my work. It's what I have to give in this lifetime. I will do it because I can. I will do it because I must. I will do it.

Thank you for being here with me, for listening. It is a greater gift than you could possibly know.

The rose in each of us...

When I started the book The 100 Ladies Project I knew that it would be both cathartic and healing for me, but I wanted it, also, to be healing for those who would read it. I regularly pray and meditate before my work on this book and when I draw, as I have said here and in my podcasts, it is a mystical experience. I sit with my sketchbook and pastels and I wait. Then the placement of the head on the page finds its form, and I sit with it awhile and then all of the features come very quickly. 

The colors that I pick up, without a plan, knowing not why, are called up by the lady waiting to be born, but this particular lady, Rose, wanted very few colors, very soft colors, ethereal, and as I began to draw her I knew who she was. 

Rose is the embodiment of all that is holy to everyone. An angel, the Virgin Mary, any of many Goddesses, Glenda the Good Fairy from The Wizard of Oz, and most importantly a wise woman, a healer, a teacher. I mention all of the above because I want her to be relatable to anyone reading her story, and she will, likely, be the one lady who will appear more than once throughout the book, with many different images, though still the same colors, the same essence. No matter what spiritual path you follow or if you follow none at all, in which case she may represent a much loved aunt or grandmother or friend who has passed on but was very dear to you in this lifetime, Rose is here to be a comfort and a guide for all. She is very much a spiritual guide for me. She took shape quickly and I just sat and looked at her as if I hadn't drawn her, and meditating upon her face I fell into prayer and a quiet filled the room. Even the animals were quiet. I feel that this particular drawing may appear slightly differently to everyone who views her. She came to me as a gift.

I think that writers write the book that they want to read, the book that they need to give birth to so that they may realize, on a conscious level, the wisdom that their subconscious wants to pass on. After 30 years of teaching journal classes to hundreds of men and women I saw the same thing over and over. As they read their stories out loud there would be a shock of recognition. When you write quickly without stopping to read along the way, a timed writing, you've really no idea what you've really written until you read it, and reading it aloud in a group is a very powerful experience. Often my students would cry, or tear up, or having trouble going on, or even laugh, surprised at what had come up. This is the way I felt about Rose, and every time I sit with her she has a different message for me. 

I see Rose as a gentle wise woman, living in a cottage on the edge of a beautiful wood, in communion with all of the animals around her, the deer and the robin, the dragonfly and the mouse, the snake and the bats, as well as the animals she shares her life with, her dogs and a cat, and she tends to all of the animals using herbs and natural remedies she concocts herself. 

Rose has a beautiful garden, vast, encircling her small cottage. She grows all of her own fruits and vegetables, flowers and herbs, and there is magic all around. People come to Rose to be healed, physically, emotionally, spiritually. She is a gentle presence, ageless, and indeed never ages. Once you come down the long road leading back to her cottage and turn into the lane something happens. 

There is a sign at the gate that asks that you leave your car there and walk in. As you walk up the long winding pathway the air changes, the powerful fragrance from the gardens fills your senses, tension leaves your body, your head clears. A peace comes over you. The closer you come to her little cottage the less you are surprised that deer are grazing with their young, very close to you, and do not look up, so used, as they are, to a safe existence with Rose, and you feel something shifting inside of you. 

Closer still you stop, trying to see all of the gardens in every direction but they are too vast and you wonder how one woman manages all of this amazing landscape of green growing things and flowers too many to count or identify, and the very size of everything that is growing is many times larger than anything you have ever seen.

Finally you see Rose on her front porch, smiling, her long hair falling in curls to her waist, her skin like porcelain, like cream shaded with rose petals, her long cotton dress brushing the ground just above her bare feet, and her apron pockets bulging with, what is that? a kitten in one large pocket and the other pocket full of herbs, lavender, rosemary, and sage with blue flowers showing just over the top of the pocket. She reaches both of her hands out to take yours as if she had been waiting for you, only you, all of her life, and as she embraces you you feel nothing but love, a kind calmness, affection, and compassion. You rest your head on her shoulder for a moment and she strokes your hair. She hugs you gently and then straightens up and takes one of your hands. 

"Come inside my dear, let me make us some tea and we will talk..."

No one goes into Rose's cottage and comes out the same. They have the answers to questions they didn't know they had, they suddenly know what to do about everything that has been troubling them, and they take herbs and oils Rose has made for gentle healing and to soothe, an armful of flowers and a basket of fruits and vegetables. When you were once home again and partook of the bounty Rose has given you you find that nothing looks the same as it once did, you find yourself wanting to reach out to others, with kindness and compassion, you want to heal and teach and spread the seeds of of all that Rose has taught you, quietly, and gently, to the world around you.

Rose has always been there, waiting for you. If you are one of those who has found your way to her it was predestined, and Rose has been waiting for you your whole life long until the moment you have arrived. 

No one knows why they go, or, after they return home, how they got there. No one can ever find their way back again. Such is the magic, the mystery, the miracle that Rose is, and in the end you don't know if she was real or came to you in a dream, but you are changed, and there sits the basket of herbs, vegetables, and flowers, and for some, some very few, they awaken to a mewing kitten, eyes wide, sitting on their chest, waiting to cuddle and be fed, and her fur has the faint smell of roses. 

Finally, it doesn't matter who Rose is, if she is real, if she even exists, because you know, now, what your purpose is, and you are ready to carry it out. People in the towns and villages far and wide are amazed and delighted by the gardens springing up everywhere, and by the gentle breeze that sweeps into their homes through open windows. Some hear a calling, deep in their soul, and they head to the hidden cottage to find the answers to their questions, and come back home to do the work that they were meant to do, healed and healer in one. 

No one ever questions Rose's existence, where she was or why she came. There is no need to know. They move through the years, their arms outstretched, and welcome those who come with love, and the cycle continues, the mystery remains. There is the possibility of Rose in each and every one of us. Your search ends when you find the secret garden within.