A Place Where I Love and Accept Myself Totally

Do you go on intuitive walks? Where you set an intention and then follow your intuitive urges and see what happens? This is one of mine…

photo shows cherry trees blossoming at the top, with ivy covering the trunks

My intention: to find a place where I love and accept myself totally. The walk took 44 minutes but I didn’t set a time limit. So much happened. Outside my block of flats I found a Cherry blossom sprig on the grass and felt an urge to pick it up. I followed my inner compass to a road where a line of Cherry trees grow (I wondered if it had come from there). They are covered in Ivy – kind of being throttled by it, yet still blossoming, but not as much as usual. I was reminded of my internalised mother, who is throttling me at the moment as I feel stressed moving into a new version of myself. I am receiving a lot of love from people in my life and that is resetting my nervous system, which sparks off old coping mechanisms of embodied self-criticism in the form of headaches. I am appreciating the protective, albeit misguided, nature of this coping mechanism.

Continuing my walk, I came across an uprooted shrub and I felt shock and sadness. It reflects my sense of trying to settle back into my home after 3 years of living in my van up North to complete my Master’s, where I slept at the sides of canals and regularly immersed in other-than-human nature with limited time in the greyness of towns / cities. I think it may also reflect how a lot of people on this planet might be feeling right now, with the craziness of war and unprocessed trauma being exacted on innocent people. Of course, it also reflects how we’re living our daily lives and how that is choking the planet, although if we make ourselves extinct, she will recover and thrive.

I moved on and, wandering slowly, noticed how life grows in so many places it’s not ‘supposed’ to – every nook and crack is home for a seed to grow.

Nearing home and I see a piece of Ivy laying on the pavement. It seems symbolic, although of what I’m unsure. I lay the Cherry blossom I’ve been holding next to it and leave it there. Two, separate, no longer entangled, yet held in the same place and I feel an internal shift.

I follow an urge to go to the Level (a park near my home in Brighton) and walk near the trees. As I reach the North East corner, my heart swells and I suddenly feel a sense of everything being okay, even in the messy, grittiness. As I leave the Level a song comes to me and despite, my chesty cough, I hum it, sending my gratitude through it to the Earth.

I arrive at my block of flats and the Caretaker is there, chatting with a man I don’t know. When he asks how I am, I tell them I’m poorly (I have a cold). They ask about my symptoms and we briefly chat before he makes a joke about man ‘flu being 10 times worse than childbirth. I shake my head and say I’m sure the population would be less if men gave birth. He talks about disease and war adjusting population size and then asks, “But why do we have war? Is it just in us to be this way?” I say, “No, it’s because of unprocessed trauma passed down through the generations.” He says, surprisingly, “Thank you. I’ll think about that today.”

I omitted to say that we don’t have rituals for people to act out war or initiation ceremonies and such; but it didn’t occur to me at the time, and that’s okay.

Home is where the heart is?

picture shows a tiny home shape made from cardboard
Cardboard Home, 2023, Cardboard, glue, oil pastels, string

Home, according to Mole in Wind in the Willows, is a place filled with “familiar and friendly things which had long been unconsciously a part of him and now smilingly received him back.” I read the passage this statement comes from aloud at the start of the Home workshop I facilitated for Outside In at Hove Museum on 9 December. We all shared gestures, sounds and a word to get a sense of what our homes felt like before creating artworks that depicted this feeling(s). Conversation flowed between strangers as their hands busied, and I felt delighted to sit with each person and get to know them a little bit as they made their home. You can see an image of our homes formed into a group below – a village perhaps.

picture shows several tiny homes from soft material or clay or cardboard or card and stuck to a corkboard with string and pins
A ‘village’ of homes at the Outside In Home workshop at Hove Museum on 9 December 2023

I feel the wisdom of Kenneth Grahame’s words about things in one’s home being friendly and welcoming. That is my experience and, as a neurodivergent person, I form a strong bond to things, like my drum, my Grandma’s jewellery box, my Macaw cushion cover, and the newest addition, my unicorn cat candle holder (see photo below). They have their places and I would not like anyone to touch or move them. I have a strong aversion to people touching my things, and if someone moves my things in the communal part of my home, well, I have to employ mindfulness of my thoughts and feelings with grit and determination. Thank goodness I know how to do this!

picture shows a painting with a cushion cover with an image of 2 parrots on it draped over the painting, with a shamanic drum resting against the painting, a black jewellery box, a drum beater and a candle holder in the shape of a cat face with a unicorn horn
My drum, my Grandma’s jewellery box, my Macaw cushion cover and my unicorn cat candle holder

Not all things in a home are friendly, however. I suppose it depends on the kind of home they’re in, or were in. I’m referring now to a recent trip to Hastings to visit a friend. There are many second hand shops selling ‘vintage’ items there. As we browsed, I was transported back in time to the 1970s, which was a deeply unpleasant decade for me, not least because of the horrible aesthetics that permeated everything – haircuts, buildings, decor, and home things. Things appear less than friendly in a home where a child is hyper vigilant for signs of attack from the parents. Being around so many things that reminded me of that time made me aware of how lucky Mole, and indeed, Kenneth Grahame, was to have the experience of a safe and friendly home. I am glad I now have that experience too.

The photos show the little homes I made in preparation for the Home workshop. I enjoyed making them immensely. They’re an excellent way of meditating on what home is like / means. What does ‘home’ mean for you?

Othering Me, Othering You

Image shows strands of finger knitted wool of differing lengths arranged in a circle with the ends at the centre in a spiral. The wool is multi-coloured.
Othering Me, Othering You, 2023, Wool

I created this piece using wool. The wool came from a cardigan I made where I found the seams to be too irritating so I unpicked it. I am very sensitive to seams and labels in clothing. I was left with lots of small balls of wool in varying sizes and I followed an intuitive prod to finger knit each ball into a long strand. This took a few months and during this time I was working on my dissertation for my creative psychotherapy master’s, which was a heuristic inquiry into the experience of othering people different from me.

This piece is a creative synthesis of what I found out about myself in the research. It became clear to me that othering people, for me, is a somatic response to being triggered by people that somehow remind me of the people that abused me in childhood. The somatic response of a tightening in my solar plexus then kicks off anxious thoughts that circle in my head. I came to this awareness through creative workshops that I held for myself in which I followed intuitive urges to move, be still, make things, or write. I sometimes found myself walking in a spiral and coming to stillness in the centre, where I would feel and notice.

The space created to feel and notice is depicted in the spiral of wool at the centre of the image. Othering happens regardless of whether I want it to, but I have space to observe, rather than act on it.

Golden Triangles (2023)

Golden Triangles (2023), acrylic on canvas, 22.5 x 31 cm

I made this as a way of coping during winter living in my van in the North West. I wanted something to do whilst sitting in the library or the faith room at Edge Hill university in the evenings, where it was warmer than sitting in my van. I attached pieces of cotton thread to create the shapes and then meditatively placed dots either side of the thread. I enjoyed this and I could see how agitated or calm I was by the size of the dots.

Feeling Small in Awe and Vulnerability

Sunset Teardrop, Acrylic on unprimed canvas, 60 x 80 cm
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Artists Responding With Love

Breakthrough, Acrylic, chalk pastel and ink on watercolour paper, 14.8 x 10.5 cm
Continue reading “Artists Responding With Love”