Somehow I’ve broken my habit of writing. There were times this past year when I wrote every day, not wanting to go through what I was going through on my own, it seemed the only way to stay present, to process, to understand the complex feelings I was experiencing. The day my mother died, the day after, the day I was homebound – these were all such intense, peculiar times that I did not want to let them pass without documentation. Now, it is December 18th, a day like any other, and I am sat down to write. I am lying down, to be honest, on top of a made bed. It is cold outside and I am, happily, still in pajamas. I will sleep again, and am looking forward to the exhaustion that only a good writing session will bring. Looking forward to reaching into wherever this exercise takes me, I realise there are certain things that I am not quite ready to deal with. I don’t know if I ever will be.

I am haunted by the memory of the madman that my father became when he got sick, in the short years before he died in 2008. Stripped of his jolly, fat exterior by a bad gastric bypass surgery, he had become a skeleton. His behavior was erratic, as though the loss of the weight that had grounded him for his whole life had suddenly let him fly any which way as the wind gust, fully untethered. He had turned into someone that none of us recognised. This transformation has made me wonder who he really, truly was, in fact.

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Now, it is 4 hours later and I am awaken from a very long nap by an alarm that I set on my phone to insure that I did not sleep through the entire day. The last thing I remember dreaming is not at all about my father or my family. No, it is about me, and my questioning of my self. I was standing in a check-out line, buying art supplies. In the line next to me, there is a woman who is buying a book on Urban Architecture. I see this, and I start to cry. I am sad that I am checking out to be an artist, that I didn’t choose what she did.

I should begin by saying that at one point, I thought of my self as an Artist, capital “A”. I wanted to be a exhibing artist, having shows, selling work, getting paid to do something that I was really quite good at, and most importantly, enjoyed doing. I have always had an eye for aesthetics, but it was more than that, being an Artist. It was about communicating something at once personal and universal. Communicating without words. Expressing meaning in the ambiguous. As emotions are not always clear, it is possible to visualize the same alchemy, the same experience. It was something that I liked and something I was good at. But the strange thing is, I never actually tried to do what I wanted to do – to become an exhibiting, selling artist who lived of the sales of their work. I never actually got myself together and did the leg work it takes to become what I wanted to be for just one reason – I was so afraid that I would fail that I never actually tried in the first place. I never put my understanding of sales and marketing towards myself. I wasted it on others’ products, as those were easy to pick apart, to judge, to frame through a commercial mindset. In thinking back I wonder just how I wasted my opportunity to make this a reality. Thinking back, I remember the reality of my life, then. After school, living in Washington, getting back to my art, when I got into printmaking, my life was kind of perfect. I had a job, had an apartment, and lived on my own. I found my stride in taking a class at the printmaking lab that was down the street. Just off of Wisconsin Ave, there was the Georgetown print lab, which at that time belonged to The Corcoran. It took just a short walk to get there. On my days off, I would go there to continue my work. I steered away from the self-indulgent self-portraits that I had lovingly made in art school. I left behind the performance art that I toyed with after, the latter an extension of the former. I wanted to try something new – I wanted to focus on beauty, and on seeing.

Before arriving to the street on which to turn to find the print lab, there was an old cemetary. It was a little unkept, which only added to its charm. In the early spring, in those first days of warmth and sunshine, I would stop there to enjoy the patchy meadows of wildflowers. It wasn’t mowed often, just enought to keep it from going completely wild, so these lovely little clusters of flowers would appear. With my compact digital camera, I would take close-up pictures of the flowers in this urban pasture, where it seemed that tiem had stopped. I would sit there, enjoying the first warm breezes of the season. I decided that this woudl be what I would print, making abstractions and patterns first in the computer and then printing them with silkcreens into lovely works on fine paper. I wanted to emphasise the beauty of these simple flowers by looking closely at their forms and blossoms, by venerating them, lifting them up in an almost ecclesiastical way. They were miracles of nature, how could we just pass them by, on our way to something better? Stop, look, and witness the divinity of these tiny little miracles. How many thousands of years did it take them to get here, to be so beautiful? How could we possibly just walk by them, unfased, on our way to something better? How could anything possibly be better than this?

Sitting in this cemetary meadow, amongst these tiny miracles, I felt at home. It remnded me of the same kinds of days I spent at home, as a child, in the country, when I had nothing to do but to be, to lay in the soft grass in the field behind our house, in a sleepy mid-afternoon haze, almost asleep. This bliss, this scene, is one that I think of often. I think that every time that I’ve reached for contentment, it was to feel this simple bliss. No where to go, nothing to do, no-one to be. Just laying down in a soft spring pasture of wildflowers, feeling the warm air and soft breezes, with a dog close by and the woods not too far away, in the center of nowhere special. Maybe this is my gift to share, this deep appreciation of beauty, of being still. In an world so busy and full of things to do, so full of burnout, maybe this is the thing to be found again, this simple bliss.

At the time in my life when I was making these pictures, I was content. Artmaking gave me something to love, something to make me feel good about, something to make me feel less lonely in myself. I remember I enjoying being alone and being around others that enjoyed being alone, too. These were my people. There is something special about printmakers. They share a love for art, and for process, for techique and also for experimentation. No matter where they come from, or what they make, it seems we all share a few common traits, enough that when together, there seems to be a shared common ground that we all stand on, together.

In asking myself why, why I never really tried, I think of what else was going on then. My father was sick. My parents were divorcing. For them, after so long, everything was all finally falling apart. Finally, when I was starting to find my stride, as a young adult (ok, I’d hit 30 but still felt so young), I was sucked back into their drama even as they were a world away, in California. My sister was finishing high school and had no plan. She at that time was living with my father. When I visited them for Thanksgiving, I was shocked at the state of their apartment. I can still feel that shock today. It was like a band-aid had been ripped off and denial was no longer possible; there was a pussing wound below. They were living in a cavernous apartment, overpowered by the antiques that my grandmother left to him. There was too much stuff in too little space. My sister’s room was that of a teenager who’d been left to fend for herself with piles of stuff everywhere, with a double bed and not much else in the way of furniture. My father’s bedroom was much more frightening, as the disaray was indicative of a much larger problem than what I’d been able to see before. It was squalor, there is no other word for it. He looked like a sick, destitute man, living the end of his life surrounded by poverty and filth of his own creation. It was clear to me at that time that he was not able to care for himself. That was the biggest shock of all. My father – the man who I was supposed to be able to turn to, to lean on, my rock, my Dad – was sleeping on a single mattress on the floor, surrounded by a mess created through a great disregard for himself. He could not take care of himself. Most likely, he never had been able to, he’d just been surrounded his whole life by people that made it ok-enough for him to keep going. Now, with a broken heart and a broken body, he couldn’t do anything for himself, anymore. I panicked, and while he pretended to be ok, he clearly wasn’t. I panicked, at at the end of that trip I ran away, back to my life, a life that I’d just been able to construct for myself.

The dates are still confusing to me, I’ve mixed up a few memories, that is sure. My sister was still in high school, which means she was not yet living with me. Maybe this was the year I had convinced my friend Lola to come stay with me, as we were together that Christmas. That was the same Thanksgiving that he came to see me and our family that was getting together in Baltimore. He met Lola then, too. He took us out to dinner and abruptly left the table to go out into the street, where he bought us a rose. Camille was there, too. Perhaps this home memory was the year before, or another holiday? It’s too much to try to remember now. Too many details, details that I have blended together into one large chapter that I’d just as well like to forget. Well, the body keeps the score, they say. It doesn’t forget. It remebers all too well, even if the memories are distant and foggy, it remembers how it all felt and it carries on feeling that way, deep inside. So I guess in order to move on, to let go of those bad feelings, I am going to have to remember. This is a good start, I think.

When I wake up from my nap, on this uneventful afternoon of December 18th, 2023, I remember this last part of my dream, in which I am crying about having chosen my artist dream, having seen the lady next to me with he books on Urban Architecture. How strange, I think, and yet how helpful. I pick up my phone, deciding not to fall back to sleep. I open Instagram and see a post, hear it say “You didn’t miss your chance, you missed a chance.” I don’t let it finish, I close my phone. I understand enough. This great disappointment I have in my self, in my life, I don’t need to carry with me. I missed a chance perhaps, but not the chance.

For years, for my whole life, perhaps, I have been unsure what to make of my self. I have been afraid to make a choice, to make the wrong choice. Art, design, commerce, or even Urban Architecture. For the past few years, as my childen have entered school and I’ve learned enough French to make it even possible for me to work here, I have wondered what I might do with the rest of my professional life, a good 20 years ahead of me. I continued to be unsure, then became almost too sure that I had, in fact, stumbled upon my new dream – to improve the town centers of small towns in France, to create new businesses and give new life to these downtrodden places. This is a gift of creativity – to be able to see the potential, the possibility of places and spaces. I became sure of this, began writing plans for where I lived before, and then again for where I live now. I was so sure of this new calling that I forgot to stop to think that maybe what was required to do this was an actual set of skills, not just a passion, a drive, and a slew of ideas. Again, I wished and wrote instead of planning and doing. I wanted to prove that I could, tried to pretend that I was already, almost like I used to do when I played pretend as a little girl. What is this in me, to act this way? Emboldened by a fake-it-till-you-make-it, be-the-change-you-want-to-see, if-you-can-dream-it-you-can-be-it kind of culture, I thought if I said that I was, I would fall into a lucky break, somehow. I wanted to prove that I could do it, and with my ego front and center, I waited for someone to notice how special I was. Instead of asking smart questions, admitting what I didn’t know, asking for help along the way, I thought if I was clever enough, perhaps no one would notice that I had really no experience at all. What a silly fool I was. I realised this recently, after an exciting opportunity did fall in my lap and I realised, when a deadline made me face the truth, that I had no idea what I was doing. I was full of ideas but no method, no network, no skills, and no company behind me to provide the services needed to support my grand ideas.

And so, my ego crashed and crumbled. I had to admit, to myself, that I could not do what I so badly wanted to do. I felt like a complete failure. But also, I felt a great relief. I no longer had to go on pretending to be something that I was not. I could however, just be. I looked at a complex problem – an urban renewal project – for which I had so desperately wanted to create a solution and said to myself: It’s not my problem. I don’t have to solve it. I realised that there was nothing that I had to do. I have gone through hell, many times, to get to this point in my life and now, I don’t have to prove to my self, or to anyone else, that I am capable. I know that I am. I also know that there are things in this life that I cannot change, particularly the very real circumstances that make up the professional world around me. Most importantly, my value is not tied to my professional accomplishments. I don’t have to prove my value by doing something amazing. I am amazing. My life is a miracle just because it is. I am as much of a miracle as those tiny little flowers in the forgotten garden of the old Georgetown cemetary.

Here I am, on this ordinary day, now on the other side of this rupture. I am taking pleasure in slowing down. I have lowered my expectations, still burdened with greif, I have decided to be kind to my self. I am no longer denying the inevitability of my emotions. Why should I? My uncle used to lecture me about setting myself up for success. Oh, how he meant well. So now, I am setting my self up to not be disappointed, at least. Content seems a stretch – perhaps I am simply setting myself up for the season ahead, another season of hibernation, but this one much different than the last. This is one full of sorrow and grief. It will also be full of healing and change, and comfort. Filled with learning to love and care for myself, at last. No more running, no more denying, just feeling the feelings and giving myself grace. This is a time of knowing my own limit and of accepting the way that things are. Of giving the best of myself to others, no matter for how short of a time, and then resting up, knowing that I will be able to do it again, soon. Most importantly, this will be a time of respecting the needs that I have to be still and quiet, to grieve, to rest, and to recover so that at some point again in the future I will be again able to move forward. Yet this time I am determined, at last, to be whole in myself, radically accepting all parts of me as me. Loving myself as I would if I were my child. Caring for the basics first, shutting out the demands of the world, protecting myself. Lying in, as they call it, when you first have a baby, is that special time when the world stays at bay, so that the mother and child can bond, and be whole. I think I will do that with my self, for my self, this season, at last.