3 August 2012

Let your heart soar.

Things have been a bit quiet in the studio the last few months.

Chicken pox times 4, fractured bones times 2,
colds, chest infections and an asthma diagnosis
 all added to an already busy life.


Timmy recovering after sedation and plastering.

Sarah's fractured collar bone.


Amongst this chaos and busyness I was having a melt down.
I was burnt out.
I kept a brave face.
I kept plodding along.
I tried to keep doing all the things I was commited to.

Then one night I just knew I couldn't go on.

I couldn't keep that brave face anymore.
I couldn't keep plodding along anymore.
I couldn't keep doing all those things I was commited too.

I was going through my diary, adding things here and there.
Filling up days at a speed I had never seen before.

That is when the anxiety set in.

I began to panic.

How could I do all this?

I was empty and spent.

I had nothing left.

I cried.

I spent the next week wandering around in a daze.
So tired and lost.

I spent days sitting and thinking and just being.
I read and sat some more.
I made decisions that were hard yet necessary.

Through these days of wondering and questioning and trying to 'see' again
 I realised I hadn't been in the studio for a while.
The busyness and fullness of life had taken me away.

I decided I would go and make a start.
Maybe I could just paint a background in my art journal.
I took one look at my studio table and gasped.
Where was it?
Two months of dumping stuff on top of more stuff had made my studio very unfit for creating.

So I ignored the studio for a few days after that.
 I was too tired and overwhelmed to tackle that project.

My soul however wasn't ready to give up.
It kept calling and reminding me it had things to release.
My soul wanted to play and experiment and share.
My soul was crying out for me to create something.
Anything.

Eventually I listened.
I devoted some time to tidying up.
Putting stuff away and making my space ready again.



My soul was thankful.
My soul was grateful.
My soul was getting excited.

The process of preparing my creative space was therapy in itself.

It was good to create again.
It was good to put paint to paper.
It was good to write some thoughts and words in my art journal.

I had missed this.

My soul had missed this.


The first layer of a new art journal page.
 
It has been a few weeks since I first began to melt down and unravel.

Am I better?
Heck no.

Am I less tired?
Not at all.

Is the anxiety gone?
Not completely.
But my soul feels a little fresher.
My heart is seeing hope again.

My world is still busy and chaotic.
It is difficult to allow myself the time to just create and play.
However, I am finding little bits of time here and there to
express my soul creatively.

I am trying to give myself permission to play in the studio again.
I am slowly allowing my heart to soar again.

And I like that.