In late 2010 a young friend of mine who lived across the country asked me if I would like to do a creative project with her … for the whole year of 2011! At that time I had been a widow for four+ years and sole support of my youngest son who was in high school. I worked at the local university as an administrative analyst for the Dean’s office of the school of Arts and Humanities. This is the story of one choice I made, a tiny transformation, that brought expansiveness and creativity back into my life after a long drought.
In 1994 I graduated (as a 38 year old) from a private university in Pennsylvania with a BFA degree in Art (my then husband was an instructor there). And soon after, our family moved to California as hubby landed an assistant professorship at a state university. We began working towards our shared dream of the “white picket fence” family. Hubby had a good job at the university and I jumped aboard as well working 9-5 and we built a home and had nice cars and took our two boys to Disneyland often.
Yet while I was living that “shared dream” I felt like an imposter. I had never actually contemplated why I should want a house in suburbia with a landscaped pool and season tickets to Disneyland. I just thought it was what I was supposed to do… it’s what was expected of me… it was supposed to make me happy. Yet I never did any art anymore and I desperately missed it. I didn’t do anything creative at all, hubby got to do all that in his job as an assistant professor of theatre. I was stuck in an office making spreadsheets and writing documents.
Right before 9/11 my husband lost his job. He was never a good team player in a hierarchy and his scorn for his department chair eventually led to his downfall. The events of 9/11 and losing our house in bankruptcy brought a newfound sense of gratitude to me personally. Gratitude for our health and our family unit. It brought anger and despair to my then husband. Over the next years I kept our family housed and fed as he tried to find work in his field while suffered from depression … any work he got was never fulfilling enough. In 2006 he died suddenly of cancer but I think he really died of a broken heart.
When my young friend invited me to help her commit to a creative project for the year of 2011 I thought Why Not? All I had to do was take a picture each day and post it on Facebook. And of course view her images and cheer her on. Little did I know it was the beginning of the unfreezing of my creativity. My grief had abated, my art skills of composition and visual storytelling were invited back in, and I added to the project by describing my images with self-reflective thoughts. I was turning the mundane into the magical.
Early on I bought myself a digital camera and made a place for it in my purse. I carried it everywhere I went. I took campus pictures (I loved reflections and shadows), I took pics of my feet, I took nature shots and selfies, I took snaps of our apartment and pets, and the daily goings on of a single mother with a teenage son.
Instead of the drudgery of a nine to five job and the politics of work, my imagination was captured by all that was around me. I saw everything I looked at with an artist’s eye… as if through a viewfinder. My whole life became beautiful, a photographic patchwork quilt. And little by little the creative river that had been dammed up for almost two decades began to flow.
During 2011 as my creativity expanded, my heart did as well. I welcomed a new kitten into the family, Buffy (who is still with me). And as the year went on I began to date again and reconnected with a man I had met two years before on a dating website (a story for another time). The last image below reflects our engagement at the end of the year. We’ve now been married over a decade.
Was my photo a day project directly responsible for my open hearted readiness for a new relationship? I don’t know… but I do know that it was an incredibly enriching year and I’m so glad I took that courageous step and said yes, and continued to take brave steps every day to fulfill the project. The creativity that was released from that project has expanded over the intervening years into many many creative projects in the areas of art journaling, videos and even this website.
That 2011 project is now housed in six hardcover books, with every photograph and the exact text I used in the Facebook post. It is a combination of a visual diary, an art project, an inner musing and an historical record 😉 . Since then I have done the photo a day project twice more, each time on Instagram: once in 2017 and with a twist in 2021, a photo and “appreciation” for each day (a shot of hubby using the snowblower and me appreciating his effort to make the path to my studio). And they are housed in books now as well. Writing this article has me considering if maybe it’s time for another photo a day project in 2026. We’ll see.
I tell you this story as a way for me to celebrate a choice I made that became not just a tiny transformation but, looking back, quite a major one. I re-owned my creativity. I also hope that by sharing it you might find places in your own history you can point with pride to and say “I was courageous and DID that”. And of course I wish for you to go forward and make more tiny transformations with a brave heart. This whole website began when I asked Lizzie if she wanted to make a blog with me, and she said YES!
One of our features here on A Cauldron of Crones is called Bite-Sized Bravery. You can join us every month as we offer a question or two to our readers and then four layers of resources related to the questions, allowing you ponder at whatever level feels comfortable.
Discover more from A Cauldron of Crones
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Pen a Missive