Recovery to Creation

The days are getting better.

Some days.

I wake up some mornings with ideas in my mind like I used to have. How to improve and make easier the yard work fast approaching. How to plot out the next chapter of a book I’m currently trying to finish - for the last ten years. Ideas of how to live again.

2020 is a year that destroyed so much for all of us.

For me, it shattered everything I knew of my life in just seven months, and none of it had to do with a virus. I fought hard, to no avail, for my Mom when cancer was found during chaos and took her faster than a wraith in the wind. I fought to hold onto a 28 year marriage I should have given up earlier. When 2021 started, I had fallen into a void, life foundations gone.

Now, I wake and struggle out of bed. I tend the dogs, maybe tidy the kitchen, maybe shower, maybe train a bit with my dog, Pippin. He came into my life in 2021. He has a big job and is training to help me deal with the parts of me that broke.

I go to the office/studio. Maybe. Back the hallway, about 20 steps. I get there and… sit.

I’ve had spurts. I painted chickadees in a bush after watching them dance in the back yard Barberry, a wicked thorny bush. Birds love it. There’s even a nest.

But most days, I sit. I sort papers. Pay bills when needed, terrified I’m going to miss something because I can’t keep straight what day or month it is.

I review orders, so very grateful to know people enjoy my art and books during these crazy times enough to spend their hard earned money. I'm so appreciative and can only hope my work brings them joy for years to come.

But I still struggle. My daughter tells me it's a form of executive dysfunction. A peek of the capable me will pop up in the morning and then the weight of… breathing, thinking, anything makes even reading a hard job.

Dealing with others, companies and individuals alike, tells me I'm not the only one.

I pretend to be productive. I study dog training techniques. I check email. Ultimately, I stare at a tv show. And I wonder when the peek of me will grow into a full view of me behind a window, then to an open window.

It’s not writer’s block that keeps me from writing. It’s not a lazy muse keeping me from painting. It’s the complete soul crushing mountain of debris from the life I knew and lost, that I’m struggling to dig myself out from under. Maybe not unlike you.

I get a little farther every day. But it’s slow going, for sure.

And I'm hoping maybe sharing my recovery will help you too.