Self Research to Design Build
The slow growth of re-emerging and rebuilding after Trauma and Motherhood (and a pandemic). + BIG news in the design foundation of my own life.
I am writing to you from my home studio. Freshly “cleaned” and new and in progress paintings hung. I tend to let the mess get so bad before I realize I cannot move freely within my own space. It is absolutely an outward expression of how I tended to let things get so messy and confused in my head before I decide to clean it up.
These days I am more like a Rooba than a hand vacuum. I am constantly attempting to clean up my brain space so the stories or looped thoughts can be released back into the ethers. Once released or in the process of release an understanding can be met with acceptance.
All my motivation these days are in attempt to synthesize my experience and transmute it into something of worth. For my own life marching orders or something visually beautiful or both.
Your life, Your design.
When designing a product, the first step is research. The history and the semantics behind the product we are working on and the market analysis of what is currently in production as well as the iterations that came before. This is our ground to start from. Our own individual history, our lives in self research are the starting point for evolving into a better version than before.
Then comes messy thumbnail brainstorm sketches. With these loose ideas we start to trial and error by expanding on the concepts. As we work through, we find the keys elements to keep and the faulty components that just don’t work. We begin to build out models and test them further. This experimentation is experiencing change and the outcomes of each shift. Does it serve or does it not serve?
With a few years of trudging through the mud of my past and very slowly meeting acceptance, my feet feel like they are on higher ground. More solid and sturdy. Less like wetlands or quicksand. I can tell the difference now in the texture of where I stand and when my footing starts to slip into an old design and pattern of behavior. Where I was before is comparable evidence for the growth in the now. More often than not, in the last few weeks, my steps are sure and stepping forward in more expansive experimentation.
The slow growth in healing connection
Over the last several months I have signed on for virtual communities and classes. Each virtual community making the next easier. Each call, the nerves becoming less shaky. When I started the Artist Way book club cluster, I did not know what I was doing but in week 4, I know why. The compulsion for me to start this small group of likeminded people, to save space for each other has led to a real, small, community. I am connected. With women across the world, who have reflected back their humanity and tidbits of their own shadows that so closely resemble mine and each others. Each with our own unique story but comforting in the similarity.
This group of women has showed me how my brand of being is welcomed and accepted. The gratitude they have for the group reflects my own deeply felt gratitude for them. For us all showing up. For all of our creativity that wants to be heard and seen. We are seeing it in each other and we are feeling it within ourselves.
The openness amongst creatives to look at process of things and the deeper parts of self is so refreshing and awakening. I have been in a consistent trial and error for connection and community, continuing to try and seemingly fall flat, but learning from the bruises. The failed design attempts were not failures but lessons. I have exhausted my resources within the town I live as much as I care to. Though beautiful and safe it lacks the texture and grit of a creative community. I just had to experience it all to realize it and then figure out where else to go to find it. But not before, no not before I practiced and felt safe and experimented again and settled back to observe. Not before I surrendered into my self and into my experiments would I be able to make moves to the potentially “right” experiment.
The space needed to process and synthesize my findings.
With CPTSD, Depression and Anxiety hanging over my head, the head of a mom whose duties seemed to far outweigh her capacities and the chaos of two busy kids that could trigger her and has. I had no spaciousness to see this clearly. In a near constant tangled ball of fight, flight, flop and fawn, I never stood a chance until one small change at a time was made.
While simultaneous experiments in creative community continued, our family went from 2 days childcare to 5. In this gift to both my children and myself, I found space where I could breathe again. Childcare and mothering are a comorbid part of the whole design of my life and needed its own set of design experiments.
In this new arrangement of space I could finally understand the contrast. Of who I am apart from being a mom. How my body state feels when I take care of myself in the ways I need. I could hear myself fully, finally. In this space is where I can regain myself to create art from myself. Not from the anxious exhausted version or the bitter and angry. Because in sincere honesty, I couldn’t and wouldn’t create in those states and if I did it was for the sole purpose of distraction rather than regulation. Once regulated, in this new schedule of spaciousness between myself and my children and yes my husband, I can create from the seat of my soul. At this point I know her well and I know how to get back to her, whats she needs and to claim it without guilt or shame. I know what she wants and she deserves it just as much as every human deserves to know themselves and claim their own lives.
The structure of spaciousness has been key to clarity for me. I need it to be well. I need it to be a good mom. And I need it to pursue the life I want to claim.
Wellness in my reality and experimenting with expanding.
What do I need to be well? I have given myself all I can give. My husband and family are supportive. But there has been a major design component still missing and that is a specific type of community for me. However, when you are attempting to heal trauma around connection this is a minefield and many things you used to think safe, are seen in a skewed perspective. Sorting through the triggers takes time and patience. In my attempts, I had trialed many wrong ways going about creating connection and gaining friendships. What I hadn’t tried yet was showing up in a space that I resonate with instead of trying to fit in to the existing, out here in the curated suburbs or within an already created social forum online. I needed to remember myself to rememberthe spaces I used to feel alive in, in reality. One step at a time, one virtual creative community to the next, has led me to actual real world steps. And now, we have the exciting news to share.
I have leased a studio in an artist community amongst 50+ other artist. A warehouse in the city full of texture and experimentation. Fueled by an inner force and propelled forward by external pieces falling easily into place, I was directed to the only studio warehouse with open studios. A space that offers workshops and monthly public open houses. A space to be me within my own studio with the vast opportunity to connect with others and grow as an artist. And as a human being.
I am nervous. I am a little scared but I believe that is just the nerves trying to masquared as fear. Because I am not really afraid. I am beyond open and feeling the expansion of myself. The full expression of me needs more than what I had agreed to. In my own evolution I had to trudge through the old stories and history of self perception to understand what components needed to be discarded and what I elements would make it all work better.
In designing anything, we need to look at the all the angles and aspects. Gaining different perspectives from different consumer groups. Observing the interactions around the product idea and the somatic responses within our own bodies.
This is the information leading to truth and the raw material for being my own teacher. My teacher, though berating and persistent has learned to be more compassionate these days. And finally, with that compassion I have opened the doors wide open to start building. What I want. What I want my life to be. And in that building we will continue to learn, break down parts and build back up to evolve with integrity.
Envisioning my future. Designed for me and by me.
In the time between signing the lease and moving in on August 1st, I have begun the wonderful process of envisioning my space. What I will need to set it up and how I want it to feel. It has gotten me into a place of acting like a giddy kid who is just so excited to go on their first vacation. But in reality, it is me, so stinking excited to pursue a dream of healing and of being an artist and for me, both are intertwined. My art is me, a representation. I am an art project, a messy evolving one with paint spattered on her clothes and she couldn’t be happier.
What would happen if we looked at ourselves as art or design project. The creation of which is in the process. The process of living and growing into the most authentic version of self. The process of owning and showing the deeper layers, ugly layers. In the process of taking responsibility for my own desires I am creating art. An ever changing, adjusting, layered, textural piece of art. With all its shadows and light and colors spilling out of my very own pores.
Living in this way, understanding my own backstory, lets me tell the future story. With past history and wounds defined I am free to redefine them. I am free to step out and past them and to use them as background information but to no longer use them as the mechanism that runs the motor. Replacing gears and switching the circuit board to reroute.
If we understand our past we can redesign our future. It takes guts and will and produces pain and tears but without which, those pains and tears are stuck in place. We do not want to carry them with us or use them for creativity. We want to use them for information for how we want to implement change in small ways to change the trajectory of our future.
Synthesize and Trust.
It in is the synthesizing of the past and our current that we can use the whole of it as a starting block. A blank canvas for new.
In the coming weeks I will be sharing about my new studio, the move in process and the “I don’t know” of the beginnings of things. I know in what direction I am creating. I know I want to be with creatives and I know I feel alive in the city.
I trust that my self perception is clear and I trust that I will return to that clarity when life shifts focus. I trust that in loving myself and pursuing my dreams, an inner rhythm will lead the way and life will show me the next right step.
I am taking a bet on me. I am investing in my work. I am trusting in the visions I have seen in my dreams and waking meditation. There is no wisdom in not trying and I am not giving up just as I have reached solid ground and a blank canvas.
Here is to trusting in the unknown. Here is to trusting in your knowing.
To you and your journey, I commend you persistence, your observations and your pivots. I honor the soul calling you contain within you and encourage you to keep going. The shadow history work will lead you back to you light in the most radical ways. We just have to trust our strength as we build structural bridges to the other side.
In reverence for all the humans doing their soul work and owning their story.
Rae