A week or so ago I came upon the image of the sad, praying woman (I don’t know if it’s supposed to be Mary or someone else) in my pile of papers and decided that I wanted to finally glue it in somewhere as it has been floating around my studio for years it seems. I wanted to make a collage in my visual journal using cut up images from various books and magazines. But I couldn’t find any images that I wanted to use so I decided to just draw out of her head with markers, a ballpoint pen, and a pencil, instead of collaging images.
I have been listening to different podcasts about grief and sorrow- grief about our warming planet, grief over the wars that seem to lessen our humanity, grief over hateful rhetoric….well, this list isn’t very uplifting, is it? But what is uplifting is the idea that even in our grief, we do not lose hope. Finding or creating that place where we turn our sorrows into song.
Here are a few of the podcasts that I’ve been listening to. I promise they aren’t depressing, but are actually uplifting in a way. Giving space for grief is always healing:
EarthSpeak episode #102: You Are the Earth interview with Jacqueline Suskin
For the Wild: The Edges in the Middle, VII: Báyò Akómoláfé, Sa’ed Atshan, Cecilie Surasky
So why am I writing this on the first day of a new year….well, it is something I want to keep in mind for this upcoming year. There are so many things to weigh down on us, but instead of getting buried, I am going to focus on turning sorrow into song. Rooting down and lifting our faces up towards the light and then shining our own light for others to find their way seems like such a profound way of experiencing and walking through the world. I mean, isn’t that what so many creative people have always done?