Acceptance + Happiness

I've been having a lot of big AHA moments recently. They are sort of intertwined, and I think they can all be traced back to Kelly Rae Roberts and Vitamins.

I talked about KRR, one of my favorite artists, a while back. I recently started taking her online class. It's really helped me explore new mixed media materials and also helped me tie up the loose end in my paintings. They feel more complete now. Not totally perfect, but much better. Below is the favorite I have done so far; I actually added in some more details after I snapped this photo, but you get the idea.

As I've been taking this class and following along with the videos, I've adopted a similar style to Kelly Rae, I think. That wasn't intentional, and I am really trying to find my own voice in all this. For now, my intention is to create happy, inspiring art.

This has really always been my goal, but it felt phony in a way, because I am not a happy person in general. I suffer from chronic depression and anxiety disorder. This is in large part due to malnutrition, as crazy as that sounds. Even though I eat extremely well, I have nutrition absorption problems, so I just don't function like I should. Not to mention I am always angry because I feel like I am starving 99% of the time. I recently started taking some high quality vitamins and that has helped a lot. I feel like a new person. But the art has helped too. I was in a fake it until you make it situation. I wanted to be happy, so I made happy art. The happy art made me happy. I hope it makes others happy, too.

When I was younger, I always fancied myself a very accepting person. Not in a hey you abuse your kids and that's okay with me sort of way. Just in a we are different and lets embrace those differences sort of way. Over the past 6 years or go I have become very rigid in what I will accept. Not necessarily in a person, but more in the way of art, style, and personal creative expression. If art didn't fit in a perfect mold of what I considered "good" (including my own art!) I couldn't find any positive value to it and mostly wouldn't even consider it art!

I've recently discovered Alena Hennessy. The image below is one of her pieces. A year ago I might have thought this piece was rubbish. A third grader could do it. But do you know how much abandon has to go into a painting to be able to paint like a third grader? That's a major accomplishment. It may not be photo realism, but it definitely has its own merit. It speaks to me so deeply. My soul responds to this piece and many others of its kind with acceptance, awe and gratitude.

It's simply beautiful.

 In a similar vein, I am learning to let go of all the things that cause me distress, like a dirty house, and focusing instead on the things that bring me joy. Like "wasting" the kids' precious nap times watching my favorite artists paint on youtube. This is a tough hurtle to over come for me. But in a way, looking at all the clutter and the mess in my house right now - which was sparkling clean two days ago! - makes me feel really good. Because it reminds me that instead of performing - albeit, sometimes necessary - labor that would only be undone in a day or two, I did things that helped me grow as a person, as a mother, and as an artist. And that is something priceless.

Can you say, AHA?

Intentions

I've been feeling really restless since we moved to OKC in late June. Though we have been living in our house since early July, in many ways it still feels like a hotel. So much of our furniture was ruined in the move, doesn't fit right, or doesn't even exist (Cambria doesn't have much to her name at all) that everything feels empty and disorganized to me.

I am the kind of person who feels very panicky when things aren't in their place. It truly causes me anxiety, and I hate that feeling brewing inside of me. I hate how it surfaces in the form of anger and discontent, and that I don't set a good example for my kids.

I struggle to create a place called HOME for them, where they are deeply rooted and feel content, because I never had that. Granted, my kids are 2 and 4 months, and there is time for that yet.

Every day is a battle between wanting to let things lie and not seem so crazy, and the deep need to clean clean clean.

My other issue is utter boredom. If you know me personally, you know how bored I am as a stay at home mom. However, I won't leave a babe to go back to work until they are at least one. To combat my boredom, I often go into a cleaning frenzy. It's like an endless circle though, because when I am cleaning instead of spending time with my kids, I end up feeling all this guilt, like I am neglecting them. I recognize that everyone has to do chores and get things done and can't hold their baby 100% of the time.

But mommy guilt still gets me.

If I am not cleaning, the boredom... I don't even know how to describe it. I don't want to move. I don't want to take care of my children. Each day I watch my husband leave with despair and envy. No, I don't have Post Partum Depression. I am just struggling to find joy in this season of my life.

When Liam was little, we were out every day doing things and having adventures. That is a rarity now. I am not sure where that got lost a long the way. I do know that I have anxiety attacks almost every time we leave the house, and it keeps sending me home to sit in boredom again.

I am ready for all of this to change. I am ready to be more intentional about how I spend my time, and especially how I raise my children. I feel like I've set an awful example, and instead of raising Liam, I am merely allowing him to grow up in my house.

Here's to being more intentional.

There is a time for cleaning. A time for relaxing. And most of all, times for adventure.

An End

It seems strange to be writing this post after my birth story. Going from talking about the birth of one beautiful soul to the death of another, equally beautiful soul.

My good friend Syble has been fighting brain cancer for about a year now. She has an awesome fiancé, who has sacrificed everything to take care of her and their beautiful 2 year old girl, and an angel baby that was lost at 28 weeks due to treatment. She is only 24 years old, and yet she is living out the last of her days.

Syble and I met in 6th grade and fell in love instantly. I practically lived at her house and we would stay up all night watching Night At the Roxbury and laughing our butts off. Then she moved away, and I moved away, and poor col change their number often and we were both that... so we lost touch. 5 or so years later we found each other again thanks to Facebook,  and next thing I know she is diagnosed with stage four brain cancer. Prognosis one year.

These are the kinds of things you see in movies and read about in those books that tug at your heart strings so much. It's always that one person that touches so many lives in such  positive way that gets sick, that has to suffer, and whose candle is snuffed out way too soon.

I firmly believe that if I were to get sick and die, not many beyond my immediate family would mind much. People would not be banding together by the hundreds to talk about what a positive influence, what a great person, what a happy should I was. They would remember how often I complained and how easily stressed I was. I heard Syble complain about cancer maybe 3 or 4 times. She never moaned and groaned or demanded to know why. I am sure she had her moments in private, but she didn't want to affect others with this kind of talk. She didn't want or need pity. She was and is strong in her last remaining days.

We al have regrets. We have moments we handle so awfully that we don't think anything could ever be worse.

My regret is not spending time with Syble outside of Facebook these last few months, when I still had the chance.  Last October, she didn't even know she was sick yet, and I was visiting Oklahoma from Florida. I was a mere two hours away from her, but I wouldn't go see her when she asked me to because Liam was being so fussy and I didn't want to do the 2 hour drive with him.

In June, we were house hunting in Oklahoma for the weekend and she was having a second operation done in Oklahoma City, and she asked me to visit and I just didn't have the time. I couldn't make the time.

In July, we moved back to OKC and Syble was still here, recovering. We set up a day to get together, but I had been whining about howI didn't want to bring Liam, and she never got back to me about where she was staying because she didn't want me to stress so much about the visit. Then she went back to Tulsa, and I didn't want to do the 2 hour drive with 2 kids.

Well you know what? I did that 2 hour drive with 2 kids on Tuesday. I approached with a positive attitude, I was on a mission, and it was fine. It was something I should have done months ago. When I thought it was more important to paint my new house, obsessively scrub floors, and whine about how tired I was. Instead of visiting my very sick friend who would not always be there.

When I finally did visit her, she barley looked like Syble anymore. She was a lot more lucid than I expected, although I was told today her communication skills are fading fast. She loved seeing my kids, and the first thing she said was "set the baby up here by me." She cuddled Cambria and kissed her and she wanted to snuggle Liam but Liam was scared. Her momma bear instincts came out, and she couldn't even have her own kids there with her. I am sure she was reminded of them then. She talked to me about breastfeeding, and asked me if it hurt. She loved my tattoos, and kept stroking them. She always wanted a hand to hold. When I kissed her good bye and told her I loved her, she said, "Love you, girl."

Just like the same old Syble.

But she is not.

And it's a damn shame.