k’s big bday gratitude: one year (and a bit) on

Last week I finished writing all my thank you cards, notes and letters to those who donated to the fundraising campaign I launched as part of my ‘Big Birthday’ celebrations.  To my utter amazement, we managed to raise over £950.00 for the charity Creative Response which has been such a crucial lifeline for me since 2010 (as I wrote in last year’s posts).  If you know you donated, and haven’t received personal thanks from me, please let me know, as it will have been easy for the financial director and myself to miss who gave how much, at what point last summer!  I am so very grateful my friends, family and precious supporters showing their love, care and appreciation for me in this way, especially since I know financial giving is such a sacrificial act for so many.

I am also hugely grateful that my first solo exhibition, ‘episodes’, at the Farnham Pottery in July and August last year, went well.  Several more homes now have my work on their walls, which is a fact of grace when my inner critic finds it perpetually staggering that anything I produce is ‘worth’ paying for!  The Pottery were pleased with the response from its patrons too, and I don’t take that kind of affirmation lightly.  But what was most moving for me was the sheer number of family and friends and fellow artists who came to see the exhibition, and took the time to tell me their responses afterwards.  At the private view, I was overwhelmed by the kindness of people’s comments, and I had a perpetual queue throughout the evening of folk wanting to talk to me about my work.  Amazing.  (And if you want to hear a bit of my story, or see some of my ‘episodes’ work, check out this short film I made to accompany the exhibition.)

As one gentle giant of a friend put it, “there was a lot of love in the room”.  I have savoured that love throughout the last year.  It has been a really rough time (hence why there’s been no blog activity), with the grimmest period of depression I’ve had in years.  And what I call the ‘lie’ of depression has been at ear-shattering screaming pitch for several months –  you know, that voice which insists:

you are absolutely on your own, 

that where and how you find are is totally your own fault, 

that it’s all down to you to fix/heal/help yourself, 

that no one loves you, 

and that essentially you are unloveable.

I am fortunate that I have done enough soul-work down the years to now at least recognise this voice as a liar, and I rely on having visual reminders in every room of the house countering that voice’s power with evidence that I am loved: a plant here, a postcard there, a photo tucked into the side of a filing cabinet here, a painting by a friend on that wall there, 

like this card my niece sent me several years ago

For in one sense (and one sense only!) is the voice correct: it is my choice whether or not I practice ‘living life loved’ (as William P. Young wrote in The Shack).  I have to keep making the conscious choice to foster that sense of community and connection which so feeds me and helps me feed others.  It means I have to keep reaching out to contact a friend when I feel at my most vulnerable.  It means I have to stand up and say “I’m not ok”, when everything in me wants to withdraw from being seen.  It means I have to keep turning up to face the blank page or the blank canvas (or just the blank) and express how it is with me, here in this now, in the hope that my expression will bring me some of the relief I need.  And it means I have to keep sharing those expressions in the hope that each one might reach another soul and provide a pause so they might receive whatever relief it is they need in their turn.

All of that needs courage.  And most of time I am very far from feeling courageous. 

So in belated celebration of my birthday this year, I am again asking for your help:  

please will you keep journeying with me? 

please will you keep reminding me I know how to practice love, connection, courage and community, most especially when I am at my lowest ebb? 

please will you encourage me to keep facing the blank and telling my story, sharing that testimony which declares over and over the stunning revelation: ‘I am not alone because the I AM is with me – God is in the details – in this here, and in this now’ however I may feel at the time?  

with all thanks in advance …

so the anger/pain beginning (above) became this

 ‘carnival’, which now hangs on an arts-worker’s wall.