Miss Mabel Studio

Linda March 13th, 2007

    

  

Where do I go from here?

By Linda Hansen

www.missmabelstudio.com

             

 

     This past summer I turned 48.   It was not an easy birthday for me.  The big 50 is lurking large on the horizon and I keep finding grey hairs in the most unexpected places. And in the middle of all this, I find myself asking, what do I want to be when I (and the kids) grow up?

      Right now I home school our 3 kids, clean a high-end craft store 3 nights a week and operate as the domestic CEO in our home.  Some of this can be fun at times, but it is not my idea of a fulfilling “career”.  On top of this, our oldest child is 15 (the youngest is 10) and there is the realization that my job as mother and teacher will be ending in relatively few years.  (Motherhood is perhaps the only job that your goal is to work yourself out of a job!!!) 

     I listen to National Public Radio (NPR) in the mornings and one day caught the tail end of an interview with a writer who was discussing a trend in “middle aged” people (EEK!! can this include me?) who, at this time in their lives, feel the need to change directions in their lives.  A career that has been stifling, a job that is going no where, a dream that has always been on the back burner; these are things that inspire this change.  My life as a nurturer to others is coming to an end and the natural thing is for me to seek emotional fulfillment in another area. 

     I never did hear the name of the book or the author who was interviewed on NPR that day, but that radio show did prompt me to find other interesting resources. One was a book called, Work, Career and Aging by David Karp and William Yoels.  In it they state that: “…studies have shown that the push to compete and strive in the workplace, to “get ahead” on a career path, often decline for women during the years they’re having and raising the kids-and then may come to the surface again after the family intense years are past.”  Well that just about says it all.  We are exhausted after the days of driving the kids to practice and organizing everyone else’s life, so when we get a breather it is only natural to go back and concentrate on what we want to do for a change.  Again  according to Karp and Yoels, “…. when the majority of women with school age children are in the workforce, surveys indicate that their work pattern are different from men’s; they take part-time jobs, or drop out for a while, or remove themselves from competitive maneuvers.  But later, they see more options than did their mothers-starting a new job, returning to school, running the Senate.”  Can I get an “amen” here???

   I find it comforting that this change is a healthy part of the aging process.  I had always heard about the empty nest syndrome and thought it would never happen to me, but now I can see that I am already grieving the child rearing years, but at the same time, I can look forward to a new career (hopefully one that pays more and has better hours!!!).  My mom lived to raise my sister and me, and after we left home, she continued to clean house and shop as she always had done and became a very boring person…not very lively to live with. I think that was a contributing factor to my parents divorce after almost 40 years of marriage.  She remained stagnant, while Dad was ready to step into a new phase of life.

   In the past, as now, I worked at jobs because I had to, the orthodontist was not covered by insurance, the car needed repair, Christmas was just around the bend, well, you get the idea.  The money had to come and the job was the way to do it.  Did I like it?  No.  Was it fulfilling?  No way!  Did it add to my personal sense of fulfillment?  You’ve got to be joking, right?!  But hey, now I was being told that I can have a “career” doing something that I like and is enjoyable.

    In Stephen M. Pollen and Mark Levine’s book, Second Acts, creating the life you really want, building the career you truly desire, they give a list of 12 building blocks to head into the direction you want to go: 

          “1. Reach out for help-give back in return.

2. Embrace conflicting needs-don’t settle.  “Accept that there will always be tension and change….A life led strictly down the middle way may never leave you low, but neither will it raise you up.”

3. Cast lots of irons in the fire.

4. Go through open doors.

5. Don’t be ashamed of talents and short comings. Be candid.  “Besides being open to blowing your own horn, don’t hesitate to admit a lack of understanding or knowledge.”

6. Practice bifocal vision.  “The idea is to keep both short and long terms in mind.  In my experience it is a very rare situation when you actually need to give one up for the other.”

7. Just row—and leave the steering to God.  “Don’t try to predict your path through life.  Second acts are rarely straight lines or steady climbs up ladders; they are unique journeys into you heart and soul.  Just put one foot in front of the other.  There is no such thing as a wasted movement or going in the wrong direction.”

8. Embrace your incomparability.  You are one of a kind.  There is no one exactly like you.  No one else has dreams and hopes as identical to your own.  No one else comes from where you come, stands where you stand now, or will end up where you end up.  That’s why it doesn’t make sense to compare your success or progress to any one else’s or to some external schedule or checklist drafted to fit some non-existent average life.”

9. The keystone –have hope in the future.”

       I found that this list not only applies to me — a “mommy CEO” in need of a vocational change, but also to burned out and disillusioned wage slaves.

     Now here is where I step out and expose myself.  I want to be a fulltime artist.  I want to stop futzing around on the edges of professionalism and throw myself wholly into being an artist.  (Whew, I said it, my mothers voice is screaming in my head that I have no right to be presumptuous and silly—I tell her to be quiet.)  If I ask myself what my passion is, it has to be creating; creating with fabric, creating with paper-clay, creating with lots and lots of glue and mess.

    In Joshua Priven’s book, Escape Artists; True stories of people who turned their obsessions into professions, he points out that, “Some people find their escape after years of searching.  For others, however, their passion seems, in one form or another, to be with them always or at least as far back as they can remember.  The Trick for these people isn’t necessarily figuring out what they want to do with their lives.  The challenge is turning that passion into an escape, a fulfilling career, and it’s often a matter of the right set of circumstance or the right person to influence a decision.”  And this is where I have always been, but had not been  ready to admit it.  In school, art time was for me the dessert of the day.  All the rest of the learning was the meat and potatoes—healthy, necessary part.  Art, any art, was too much fun and work can’t be fun, right??  The idea that I can make a career out of making and writing about art, having fun doing it, seems to good to be true.  But now I am being told I can do it.  My inner editor says that I have no formal art education—well neither did Grandma Moses who I might add, did not start painting till she was in her 70’s.

     So I have stepped out of my comfort zone and showed my bead work to a gallery—guess what?  They loved it, so now I have the joy of say (waving my hand airily), “my work can be seen in a small gallery called “Art and Soul”.   I approached an on-line art and fabric store if they wanted to carry a pattern for an embellished purse I created.  Guess what, they turned me down (can you believe that!!!)   Ouch, that hurt (and I did grump around the house for a while feeling sorry for myself) but instead  of  deterring me off the path it made me more determined to step out and risk some more.  I’ve opened up an ETSY shop and have sold some stuff there, but not lots, oh well.  I am going to be teaching an on-line beading class (and people have actually signed up!).  I have written articles, some were accepted some were not.   I was approached by another artist to be in her book and it was published last year—I sent in photos to be in another book and was sent a polite rejection letter.  I have come to realize that this journey is, “two steps forward and one step back”, and as long as I keep going forward I am progressing.  I remember the steps that I mentioned earlier and know that it is my journey and will look different from anybody elses and that is how it is supposed to be.

       I keep my business card and a small photo album of my art, in my purse.  I have even gone so far as to buy one of those Starbucks mugs that you can put pictures in and have put photos of my artwork in it instead.   Probably the hardest thing for me, is to say that I am an artist (with out mumbling or feeling the need to apologize) and to explain what kind of art that I do.  My kids are proud of me and don’t hesitate to sing my praises to others.  My husband, is vastly supportive (he cheers me on constantly) and patiently loads photos on my website for me, edits my writings, does not flinch when I say that I need to buy egg fabric for a project that I have in mind (but this could be perhaps because he is a quilter and jumps on my scraps like a vulture). Best of all, he thinks that everything I do is just brilliant.

      Pollon and Levine remind us (and me) that, “Just don’t look for a perfect moment.  At some point, in order to launch your second act and live the life of your dreams, you need to step out from the wings.  Sure it’s a risk when you finally hit your mark and the stage lights go up.  But if you don’t take that risk, you lose your chance at happiness.”   And I am determined to grab that moment and give it my all.

 

 

     Below is a list of books that I found both helpful and encouraging: 

 

Escape Artists (True Stories of People Who Turned Their Obsessions into Professions) by Joshua Priven

 

Second Acts-creating the life you really want, building the career you truly desire

by Stephen M. Pollan and Mark Levine

 

Is it too late to run away and join the circus? – a guide for your second life

by Marti Smye, PhD

 

What do you want to do when you grow up? Starting the next chapter of your life

by Dorothy Cantor and Andrea Thompson         

 

Work, Career and Aging

By David Karp and William Yoels

                                             

                                                       Healing Art Doll Journey

                                                   by Linda Hansen

      In 2005, I was privileged to be part of an online group hosted by Barb Kobe. It was to be a healing doll workshop. The invitation was given on-line, and those who wished to participate were instructed to email Barb. We were then given an introduction in which we were told the workshop guidelines and the required time commitment. In the workshop, we would be making 4 different dolls with 4 different healing intentions over a period of several months. Barb explained that part of the requirements/commitments to the group was to do our homework using various tools such as journaling, collage, mind-mapping, and doll making. We were also to communicate to the group what we were experiencing as we went through the guided healing doll process.

     I signed up for this group for two reasons. The first is that I had heard of Barb and had read several positive reviews of her work and therefore trusted her intent and credentials. It also came at a point in my life when I was going deeper into my own emotional healing and was finding that the traditional emotional healing channels were not touching me as an artist. I needed the whole of me healed, and my art is a major form of how I communicate. I believe art is a form of language, and I needed all my communication skills to heal the whole of me.

     Our group moved through several preliminary steps. We were given suggested readings, artistic exercises, and journal prompts all designed to help us define our “healing intention”. We were “defining where we want(ed) to focus our healing energy.” 

     The first of four dolls was to be a guardian/believing mirror doll. This doll was to be a “witness who supports you through the process.” I homeschool my kids and my oldest child loves Greek mythology. We had been spending a lot of time reading and learning about Homer’s story, the Odyssey. I felt that rather than having the typical guardian angel, I needed to have a strong female figure to watch over this part of my journey. I envisioned a female warrior, such as Athena. She guided and protected Odysseus on his journey. Not just someone to protect me on my journey, but to also battle on my behalf. I sketched out several shapes and came up with one that I liked. The body had a shield shape. I then went on to make the main body out of a multicolored batik fabric. Her wings were hand-quilted gold fabric trimmed with vintage bakelite button hands. Her face was a molded clay piece that I had bought a long time ago, and I crocheted her a helmet that looked much like a chain mail helmet that crusaders would have worn. She has a copper mesh shield on her chest with various personal symbols. She also carriies crocheted bag and sword.

 

                                                            

      The next doll was to be a scapegoat/shadow doll. It was meant to “define and befriend the problem.” This doll has in fact changed my art and my life. As I meditated on how I wanted to do this doll, all I could envision was a big mouth like a whirlpool. I just couldn’t get this image out of my mind and actually avoided doing it for several weeks, all the time aware of the commitment I had made and that I had an impending deadline. Finally I told myself, “Oh heck, just make the darn thing.”

     He came out egg-shaped with a huge black mouth—small worry dolls were in fact floating into it. The face and body are only a suggestion. He is very stark in black and white and in fact freaked my children out. I finished him in one session and he “felt” done. I emailed Barb and asked, “What is up with this thing I made?!” She reassured me that I was on the right track and at some point the doll would reveal itself to me. A few days later I kept hearing in my head a line from a song, “Caught between Sycilla and Charybdis.” Now what did that mean? Oh my, I thought with a sudden jarring revelation, the meaning had revealed itself. In Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus has to sail on his journey home, between two sea monsters, Sycilla and Charybdis. If he sails too close to one side Scylla, a many headed, snapping, devouring monster will consume him and to the other side is Charybdis, a huge sucking whirlpool mouth/creature which will suck him in and drown him.

     I saw in my doll that I was Odysseus, a small child who had to journey between one parent who loomed large and would snap at me anytime and another parent who was emotionally sucking, drawing energy and identity from me. In this one doll, I had unconsciously reproduced that drama. There in fabric and paint was my childhood. Remember the first doll I mentioned, the guardian doll? I named her Athena; she was Odysseus’s guardian/guide. I realized I was on my own odyssey/journey. The journey to healing.     

                                                    

     The third doll was called the Talisman doll. This doll was to represent the “wish, want, healing, goal, or desire.” It was “to be the other side of the wound.” This doll was easy to do. I knew what I wanted. I wanted to feel: loved, cherished, heard, safe, and home. The doll itself was a simple body with 2 arms crossed over a heart—hugging and protecting it. The face is serene and relaxed. On the bottom are letter beads spelling out those 5 important words. It was to represent me at rest, no longer striving, but resting in the assurance that I was loved, cherished, heard and safe.   

                                                      

      Our last and final doll was the “inner healer.”  It was to “celebrate the lessons learned and bring closure to the process.”  What was it that I had learned?  I had learned to trust my inner art voice, to ”surrender to the symbols as the images bubble up.”  I learned that when I silence the inner critic, and don’t edit my work as it spills out of me, that my art has much power and is capable of speaking volumes about issues that I didn’t even consciously know were there.

     The question was how to represent this in a doll.  While on a family vacation at the beach, I found a child’s plastic doll body washed up on the shore.  My husband and kids, who had watched me go through this process, agreed with me that this doll body was the start.  I sculpted a paper clay head and attached beaded arms and legs.  On its body I wrote “trust” down the front of it–my most important lesson learned.  I continued by writing the following on the body: “ask”, “seek”, “listen”, “growing”, ”hearing”, “letting go”, “I can”, and “I am a healing artist.”  

                                                     

 

     Through this whole process we were encouraged as we shared openly and fearlessly, mourned and rejoiced with our other travelers in the healing journey. Some of the women could not complete the process because of either unscheduled time commitments or it had become too painful. Barb watched over us on our individual journeys, offered us resources, good wishes, and words of wisdom. She was a trusted nurturer/advisor and I am profoundly grateful for that group of women. What I learned is this: to trust my inner voice in my art; that art is a powerful form of communication; that in order to heal our inner wounds we need to let them out to be exposed to the light. Art is a viable means of doing this. Art is a vehicle for healing.

     To learn more about Barb, her art, or her workshops go to: http://www.barbkobe.com.

Copy of Article that appeared in the zine: Art and Life 2006 issue 5 pages 47-49

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