Exertion

We’re lying on our yoga mats, inert, after 55 minutes of a low impact, high intensity workout.  This is the part where she tells us to do our favorite stretch, and switches to the soothing music like “Heaven in My Mind,” the song that always makes me cry a little bit. She turns on her voice of inspiration, reminds us that goals are achieved not by dreaming or thinking about them, but by doing.  She asks what action we’re going to take today to bring us one step closer to the goal we have for ourselves.

I’m instantly resuscitated, excited because I have an action I’m taking; a big, bold step I’ve never taken before.  I’m submitting a piece of artwork for consideration for the Resident + Instructor Exhibition at the gallery this month.

 

As I prepare to turn in my piece, thousands of doubts flood my mind.  How will my work compare to everyone else’s?  What if it looks rudimentary?  When I explain what this work is, will anyone understand?  Should I have put the name of the piece in the body of the piece?   Does the framing look professional?  Did I sign my name right?  Will people consider my work to be legitimate art worth showing?  Would anyone ever dream of buying it at the price I’m asking?  Or at any price at all?

I tell myself as I affix a big, fat price tag to my work, that this is a grand experiment.  It’s about having the courage to place value on my creation that is grounded in how much money I’d like to make in return for my investment of time, talent and materials instead of how much I think others will feel it’s worth.  It’s about wanting people to find the medium, the colors, the concept, or the application visually interesting, not whether anyone likes it or hates it.  At the end of the day it’s about putting myself out there.

If we’re moving forward in this life, we’re putting ourselves out there over and over again, countless times in a lifetime.  It never gets any easier for me, especially when it is something as close to my heart as my art is. I rented this studio not just as a place to store my supplies and make art, but to see what could happen when I immersed myself in a vibrant and diverse creative community.  I knew it would be messy for a while and I’d need some time to feel out of my element before I truly feel like I belong.  I’m still not there yet, but this is a step in the right direction, nudging that heaven in my mind out to the world. 

Understudy

She’s had me up and out the door before sunrise for the past four mornings, barely able, despite my insistent imploring, to suppress her growls of excitement as I get dressed in the sleeping house. The blast of cold air out the door threatens to take my breath away and the first few steps up the incline get my heart beating. I’m moving briskly in hopes of warming from the inside out.  When I realize she’s lagging and I don’t hear the tinkle of her tag on collar, I turn around, catching the view down the sweeping hill of the street, our bright orange port-a-potty a beacon in the early morning light. It’s a Christmas card moment, not really.

   

Our home this year is not what anyone would call a Hallmark image. We’re surrounded by the mud we pulled out of Mother Earth to carve a new foundation.  We’re locked solidly behind the confines of an unwieldy construction fence, lovingly referred to as our gated community. I did consider a wreath for the port-a-potty, planted right next to the dumpster on what’s left of the front lawn. Our highlight reel is slim because the messiness of real life is leaking out everywhere.

Transformation is painful; there is very little shiny and sparkly we can hide behind. Up until two days ago the house was devoid of anything resembling Christmas.  We couldn’t even dig up an ugly sweater from the depths of our overstuffed closets.  This is the second consecutive December my carefully curated collection of ornaments and adornments remain incarcerated in a storage pod. Now I’m wondering if I will ever need them again?

I’m grieving the old ways while at the same time taking steps to move forward.  The line between tradition and nostalgia can be a fine one. Somehow exchanging gifts in my son’s home, watching my grown children unwrap slippers and socks moved from easy laughter to awkward theatrics in the span of a year, my cheek stinging from the slap of reality:  These aren’t the gifts the mom gives anymore. And, I’m really not the mom anymore; I’m the grandma.  I don’t know how to do grandma.

It hurts to bring the fixings for ice cream sandwiches with the boys’ favorite homemade chocolate cookies and leave the gathering without enjoying them, but it’s not my kitchen and I am a polite guest now, not the host. Even if I were the host, the family home the boys knew and loved is now inhabited by the strangers I sold it to and any place I choose to live going forward will never be the hearth for them.

We are, very publicly and literally, creating a new home for ourselves with this construction project; and the ah-ha moment for me over this holiday is that my boys are doing the same, just more subtly.  How the holidays get celebrated isn’t up to me anymore.  And I will make more than one blunder, disappointing myself in the process, before I come to terms with the new normal.

I realize this is all goodness. I am very blessed to have grown children who are bold enough to live life on their own terms, moving out of state, having a baby. These are proud moments, and at the same time crushingly humbling.  The choices they are making for their own lives inevitably put me in new roles I didn’t ask for and am potentially unprepared to take on. But I guess I need to jump in, too.  The only alternative is unmet expectations and perpetual disappointment, and I won’t have that. 

  

We walk in the door to my son’s home Christmas Eve, and she is so excited to see us she can hardly contain herself, the morning walks of the previous few days fresh in her mind.  She jumps up on the loveseat, wedging herself between us, reveling in the displaced love I compulsively shower upon her to excess, while at the same time she shoots the evil eye to her parents and the newborn babe on the couch across from us. She’s struggling with the change, too.

This is part of my new role, to be ready to step in at any moment I’m needed, to make sure the tried and true, those who have come before feel as loved and attended to as the shiny and new. And I'm more than qualified. Motherhood is the training ground for every grandma, in more ways than I could ever have imagined.

Olana

Oh, girl, you are so wanted. She is coming to us in the autumn of our lives, later than we had hoped for, but maybe earlier than we could ever be ready for.  She’s been the twinkle in our eyes for a few years, an unspoken dream we’ve been afraid to pursue. I’ve carefully and quietly turned over her features in my mind, falling hopelessly in love with her imperfect beauty. As I allow this genie to slip out of the bottle inside my head and onto paper, I’ve surprised myself with how cleaved I am to the vision I’ve created, so quick to roar my objections in heated debate when he shares his equally earnest passion. His vision of her size, her shape, her prominent and delicate features doesn’t always match mine.

She is our house, and she’s proving to be as difficult to birth as a child, with the gestation period of an elephant and a due date we can’t quite pinpoint. Fraught with tangled, contradictory emotions and physical challenges, she is a huge leap of faith for us, a cliff we’re jumping off with hands clasped tightly together, a journey on an untraveled path full of unexpected events we can’t plan for, unforeseen conditions we don’t know how to allow for. This new alliance is transforming our lives:  On our worst days we can be awkward and hurtful to each other, on our best days we celebrate our violent agreement and express gratitude for such unfathomable abundance. Most days we are fumbling.

I’m learning that designing and building a home addition does not mean you get everything you want.  There are limitations everywhere; structural, financial, relational. There are code restrictions to meet, lot lines to stay within, and the realization when you stand on top of a tall ladder overlooking your property that the view you’re afforded won’t net an ROI that makes a second floor deck a good idea.

 

We’ve both compromised and sacrificed, behaving badly in the process. I’m not proud, but I’m pausing to consider how I show up differently in these situations. Neither petulant child nor selfless martyr look good on me.

What do you do when the truss factory scheduled to ship your materials on Monday burns to the ground three days before they are due to arrive on site?   You could lash out in panicked fear because it’s December and snow came early this year and you’re already behind the unwritten schedule you’ve set in your head.  Or you could choose to feel extreme empathy for the business that lost so much; you could pray everyone got out safely; you could wait patiently as a new supplier is sourced.

 

I’m not sure where we are in the process, as it all has taken longer and been far more complicated than I anticipated, but if I were a betting woman I’d say we’re starting our middle trimester, that place where morning sickness should be letting up, ushering in the return to more even temperament. We’re beginning to show. 

And we’ve picked out a name. It means “house of treasures,” after a beautiful song by Marc Cohn. We heard it for the first time together, played live in the intimacy of the Wentz Center by the songwriter who treated us to the story behind his lyrics.

She’s the masterpiece of an artist who turned to building when he could no longer hold a brush. He was lost until he found her; she was his north star, his one safe place. And she sheltered his most important treasures, not material possessions, but his family that lived inside. Olana.

Pantoum

I find it harder and harder these days to be surprised.  Maybe I can blame it on my age, or, more likely, a lifetime of vigilance over-exercised.  If I’m constantly trying to anticipate what will happen next, it’s nearly impossible to be truly surprised. In any event, pencil and notebook in hand, in front of works of art at a writer’s workshop conducted at the Art Institute of Chicago, I found myself very pleasantly surprised.

An experience I’ve wanted to try, this one was short and sweet.  Little more than a taste; a toe in the water with the choice to plunge right in or hastily retreat to the shore.  To be honest, it was a little of both for me.  I struggled in the first session, faced with imagining what was going on in the heads of subjects in paintings, famous and not.  But, thankfully, the instructors moved us around quickly, never left to stew too long in stagnant juices. 

The second session was a different story.  The beauty of one particular writing exercise being I had no idea where I was going with it, nor any expectation for an end product.  The instructors asked us to highlight words or phrases that spoke to us from the first week’s writing, and to combine them with the same from the second week, in the form of a poem with a very prescriptive formula for repetition from stanza to stanza.  The process left me free to combine thoughts from totally unrelated subject matter into a new message.  With a little editing and intentional application of punctuation, I present my poem; a testament to the moment we live in. 

A country erupts;

slaughter dresses the table.

Its humanity in chains,

voices dying to speak.

Slaughter dresses the table.

Bound together in shameful silence,

voices dying to speak

stories the world aches to hear.

Bound together in shameful silence,

tongues hang out in defeat.

Stories the world aches to hear,

never to be believed.

Tongues hang out in defeat.

Mirrors reflect indifference

never to be believed.

Vacant stares graze the horizon.

Mirrors reflect indifference;

a country erupts.

Vacant stares graze the horizon:

It's humanity in chains.  

-- Sharon Feller, October 6, 2018

Opening

It’s become my habit, after I flip the switch on the “OPEN” sign, its red light now glowing in the window glass, to spend the first few minutes of my front desk gallery hours taking in the month’s new exhibit.  Such diversity of media, composition and content makes my head and heart swell.  Amid all of this talent and creativity I’m finding it hard to hold at bay the pressure I’m programmed to put on myself. The urgency to get my act together quickly is palpable.  

I moved into my art studio about 45 days ago.  I’m still pinching myself, really.  Furniture pieces curated, ordered, shipped, delivered and installed, I’m unpacking, organizing and reorganizing, pondering how to create my identity, how to put my artistamp on my very own space.  

I vacillate between activities that all feel like fun yet crushing priorities:  Spending time designing and producing business cards and creating a signature piece to announce my identity outside my studio door.  Making baby shower invitations and starting on my annual holiday card to respond to the business of life.  Furthering the sketching techniques shaken out of hibernation through classes at The Art Institute of Chicago.  Working in new media and larger scale as I ache to one day exhibit in this extraordinary space. 

Turbidity owns the day these days. All at once I am paralyzed by the work I feel needs to be done to establish myself, intimidated by those who appear so comfortable with themselves and their art in this community, overwhelmed by the opportunity just standing in this space presents me, intrigued by the new and unknown path I’m sure will reveal itself.  I’m full of pride in finding the gumption to make this happen for myself, and oh so grateful for matriculation into this tribe. 

It feels like kismet, landing here in this beautiful 100+ year-old limestone building with its hardwood floors, exposed ceilings and skylights in the historic district of town.  The coincidence that the artist who labels her work “sea art” finds a home in a studio on Water Street is not lost on me. Yet I know it is probably time to reinvent my brand as the opportunity to broaden my reach presents itself in this non-profit with the mission to make the arts accessible in this community and beyond. 

I recently asked a subordinate for some feedback on my day job and I can’t help but draw a parallel from his response to my entre to studio life.  He’s been with me for nearly my entire tenure in this role.  He points out that he’s watched me grow tremendously in this position over the last three years.  It’s taken a while, but I’ve settled in and I’m now putting together a proposal to reorganize and expand my portfolio of accounts, something we both know I would have never been ready for when I started this job.

This awkward uncertainty is nothing more than the hallmark of the beginning.  It’s scary and exhilarating all at the same time to be the new kid on the block.  But what I’m slowly learning about this place is there is no pressure.  We are all here to do our own thing, to engage with the group as we see fit.  I will make friends.  I will be embraced when it is my time.  I’m not here to be anyone other than myself.  Assimilation cannot be rushed. I’m the only one bothered by the fact that I’m not yet ingrained. I’m the only one who needs to get comfortable allowing myself some time to steep in these surroundings and discover my niche. 

And so it is with anything new.  It’s expected we need time to get our feet wet, to learn how things work, to experiment, make mistakes, and experiment again.  To invent ourselves and intuit where we belong in the world our passion draws us to is what it’s all about. The gallery is open and so am I. 

Approbation

Her voice breaks as she elaborates on the story I’ve just summarized to explain why she is deserving of the recognition I announce to the team.  She “did it anyway” says the Everyday Bravery pin I present her with.  She held to her own moral compass and convictions, choosing to do what’s right instead of acquiescing to the client’s prejudice.  I’m struck by just how vindicated she feels to have stood her ground, to have this act noticed and celebrated.  

We call it managerial courage.  It’s demonstrated when someone is able to have the hard conversation, to speak up for what is just even when no one else is, to share the bad news in spite of the fact it may incite conflict, to admit to a mistake before it is discovered, to be the messenger who just might get killed. 

The concept of managerial courage extends far beyond the work of a manager. Hard conversations and hard situations are everywhere, every day, not just in our leadership at work, but in our relationships, our friendships, our parenting.  They are the choppy waters on the open sea disrupting the smooth sailing we think we’re entitled to.  And we like to avoid the choppiness at all costs.  Yet the windward souls who take on these encounters are so rarely recognized for their bravery. 

When I took the job I'm in today I felt ambushed by the number of hard conversations I was having.  They were presenting themselves multiple times a week.  I would tie myself up in a knot of anxiety, spending as much, if not more, time worrying about them than actually having them.  I thought if I planned out what I was going to say and anticipated what the other person would say I would feel more at ease.  But the reality is I felt worse.  No matter how much planning I did the one thing I could count on is the conversations would never go as expected.  I knew I had to either change my approach or change my job. 

My fever finally broke when I decided to accept that I was going to have a hard conversation every day.  I now make a practice of embracing them and as with anything I practice, I am getting better. I’m becoming acclimated to the business of exposing challenges and provoking tension in the name of positive change. 

“I am constantly amazed at how courageous and radical speaking the truth is.”  — Melissa Etheridge, singer/songwriter, activist

I shared this quote with my team of leaders when I added recognition of managerial courage to our regular team meeting agenda. As I reward them for their bravery and we start to dig into why straight talk is so hard I wonder if I am meeting my own high standards when it comes to initiating the hard conversations. While I’m ready to face them and more comfortable with my role I find there are some I’m still avoiding.  I’m questioning whether there are any limits on speaking truth.  Should we be able to broach any topic?  Am I being brave enough?

In the business world, the willingness to initiate hard conversations is tethered to our assessment of whether we’re putting our own jobs on the line or how empowered we believe we are to put a piece of business at risk. If we go out on this limb will anyone be there to catch us if we fall?   Telling a client about the dysfunction you see in his organization or sharing your assessment that his top leader is in over his head is dicey if your client hasn’t openly asked for such feedback.  Having those conversations could lead to the end of a business relationship.  But conversely could be the beginning of a trusted advisory.  It’s all in how you have the conversation. 

And that’s it really.  The preparation for a hard conversation isn’t laying out your exact words and scripting what you expect to hear in response, it’s in showing up with your perspective, a few really good questions, and an earnest desire to make things better. It’s in trusting you’ll be able to take the conversation in a healthy direction and create a safe place for your counterpart to let down his or her guard gracefully.  

The funny thing about hard conversations is they can be fantastically liberating. Every time I have one, even if it doesn’t go as well as I’d like, I am flooded with peace at having said my piece, to have put my position out there.  Hard conversations are the dam breaking. They move what’s stuck forward.  They plant the seed of reflection in those open to understanding.  Without them real change can’t happen.

 

The good feelings that come out of this type of genuineness really are enough; but I find calling out such authenticity and vulnerability inspires others to take the leap too. And is the spark I need to keep coming back for more.

Everyday Bravery pins, the brilliant creation of artist Emily McDowell, recognize that courage isn’t reserved for grand gestures, it’s mustered every day in moments that go largely unnoticed.  Don’t miss an opportunity to give yourself or someone you’re proud of some credit.