The Wesley

My work is hanging on the wall of a lovely nursing home in Saratoga Springs, NY called the Wesley.  Yesterday was the meet and greet for the opening of the show where my work is featured with Carol Hesselink a lovely and very talented quilt artist.  It is an honor to have my work featured with Carol and to have listened to her talk about her process and her work.   Many thanks also to Janet Tanquay from Art n Soul who set up this wonderful opportunity. 

Yesterday may just be the day that turns around my artistic career.  I realized just how far I have come and just how far I still have to go all in one afternoon.   I have learned to appreciate my work and talk about it in a way that values the work, the inspiration and the ability I have been gifted with.  I talked about my process and the inspirations that start the moment an image comes into my head until the moment I put the last stitch on it.  The ladies were very knowledgeable and a joy to converse with.

At the end of the meet and greet two lovely ladies stayed behind and they spoke to me in a way that very few people do and it was very impactful.  They spoke to me as my mother would have spoken to me.  They told me my work was beautiful, that I should follow my dream and live my life on my terms.  When you have been floundering around for months in the wilderness trying to keep your head on straight people have a tendency to forget who you are, they just want you to figure your own life out and shut the heck up.  If you don’t get the message, they make sure you do by disappearing out of your life.  People who know you and who care about you always want to fix you or they want you to fix yourself, as they can’t watch you circle the drain.  Angels who you catch unawares seem to know exactly the words you need to hear that will help you carry on.  They haven’t heard your cries for help and they just offer solace in the moment.  I am very lucky that God puts them in my path.

God has been putting angels in my path for months now; I just have been so lost that I haven’t listened to them.  I have been so stuck in grief and fear that I have stopped being an artist and stopped writing my blog.  That is career suicide for an artist and a writer and metaphorical suicide for a person.  When you stop doing that which makes your boat float you might as well just roll up in a ball and die.  That is where I have been most of the last few months, rolled up in a ball waiting to die or waiting for the jailer to bring the keys out of my internal prison.  But then there is God who always seems to find the angels to save me from myself.  An angel who tells me to go to school, or that my work is beautiful or that I can do anything I want to do if I believe in myself. That is the voice I have to listen to, the voice of God.  All the well-meaning people in the world cannot give you the answers you need to be who you want to be, you have to listen to yourself, to your God and to your angels. They know what lives in your heart and what keeps you alive.  So onward and forward, no more promises, no more excuses, no more explaining myself anymore.  I will be busy being an artist and trying to find a way to live my remaining years in a way that honors the gifts and the angels and the wonderful ladies at the Wesley so that perhaps one day I will be able to be an angel for somebody else.

Thank you for reading, thank you if you are well meaning friend, thank you if you are an angel.  Thank you God.