Vivid Living

Spring’s here, and I’m feeling a burst of creative energy.  Who better to turn to for advice on how to unleash that spirit than my friend Robin Glickstein, who holds an Ed.M. from Harvard.  For 11 years, she’s taken a creative approach to market research by helping people and businesses hone their stories and ideas. Finally, Robin shares her experience and thoughts with readers in her new blog, The MindFULL Creative.

Here, for Vivid Living, Robin shares three ways she jumpstarts her own creative process.  Try them out.

1. Take yourself to the movies and pay attention to what the actors are wearing. Robin gets ideas on how to mix and match clothes as well as ideas for arranging bookshelves and flowers, and the use of color for her home.  She’s also discovered new music this way by tuning into film soundtracks.

1. Start a journal to observe your “daily” travels.   Go to a craft store and purchase a blank journal, some watercolor pencils, a jar of Gel Medium (it acts like glue, only stronger for heavier objects) and a glue stick (for pictures and lighter finds). Look for and collect photos, napkins, business cards, coins, stones, and anything that speaks to you.   Glue them on the page and then write what comes to mind.

3. Clean out your closet.  You know the rule: if you haven’t worn it in two years, let it go.  Have a purge and swap party with a girlfriend: discard the old and tired, and trade clothes, shoes, and jewelry.  Commit to adding one colorful accessory each time you get together.

Sometimes, creativity takes courage.  Let yourself take the journey however you see fit.

“Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.”  -George Barnard Shaw

My last post generated some bold e-mails, enough to warrant a second glance at the concept of marrying your life.

It occurs to me that too often we squash our dreams.  The dreams that keep us up at night, gnawing at our subconscious because they are so revealing.   I’ve had a recurring dream of writing a book under a cherry blossom tree in Italy.   In the dream, I was alone, relaxed, mindful of the blush of pink flowers above me, the sweet fragrance in the air, and the pleasing view of the green and terra Italian countryside.  I wrote longhand. Imagine.

Two things have come of this dream:  my husband and I have decided to travel to Italy in June; and, I’ve decided to get my MFA in creative nonfiction writing at Goucher College.

How much simpler to follow the path of least resistance than to buck convention.   There are plenty of reasons why we probably shouldn’t go to Italy this summer, chief among them money.  And yet, what are we waiting for? Steve is celebrating a zero birthday. For a new couple with four kids between us, we’ve earned this romantic getaway.

As for the MFA, I’m ready.  After many years of juggling various responsibilities, I  yearn for focus and structured time to write.  In the quiet of the evening and the time-robbing bustle of the day, the vision has come to me slowly but convincingly.  At first I couldn’t embrace it.  Could I really make this sort of commitment to myself?  I worried about giving up consulting work; I worried about who would help with the kids during the annual two-week residency; I worried about balancing the demands of the program with those in my life; I worried about making a mistake.

But the greater part of me, the part that is married to my life, began to pay close attention to the voice inside saying “yes.”  This is the same voice that led me to recast my life nearly four years ago by moving to CO, and it’s clear for all to see what a positive move that has been.

If not now, when?

What dreams are tugging at you?

I recently finished Elizabeth Gilbert’s new memoir, Committed.  As you probably know, she authored Eat, Pray, Love.

In Committed, I particularly like how Gilbert wrestles with the idea of love:  What if love never finds you?  What if you never find love?  Can you marry your own life?

It’s this last question that really leaps out at me.

Gilbert explores this scenario through the eyes of her 40-year-old friend, Christine, a single woman who decides to forgo loneliness for life.  She sets a small wooden boat adorned with rose petals and rice on fire. Then, she let it go – “releasing along with it her most tenacious fantasies of marriage as an act of personal salvation…She had finally married her own life, and not a moment too soon.”

I love this image of Christine transcending her perceived tyranny, and moreover, the notion of her “marrying her life.” To me, this concept means many things: stepping out; facing fears; plunging forward; accepting what is; celebrating the everyday; and having faith.

I have many single, fabulous women friends, some of whom marry their lives without ever realizing so.  They plan trips, take classes, make dinner plans, and run marathons. Yes, they bemoan not having a life partner, but this sense of loss doesn’t prevent them from living.

I lost my first life partner, and now I have another.  And yet I, too, am married to life. It’s the commitment I cherish most. My experience has taught me that when I nurture all that I am and all that I aspire to be, I am the best woman, wife, mother, daughter, friend and colleague that I can be.  This is a vow I’ll be glad to make daily.

It’s rather serendipitous that my husband, Steve, bought me a card today with this perfect quote from Thoreau: “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined.”

Yes!

Sunday’s Denver Post ran a cover story about female genital mutilation. The article featured a 43-year-old woman from the Ivory Coast who was cut at 11 and a 26-year-old from Guinea duped and then defiled at eight. I’m very culturally tolerant, yet this type of depravity leaves me, a writer, beyond words. What struck me most about the piece was the survivors’ courage to escape their past and renew themselves through a radical reconstructive surgery performed by one very extraordinary doctor.

Courage has many faces, and I’ve been thinking about them ever since reading this story.  Courage is my new friend, Liz Holzemer, who was diagnosed with a meningioma brain tumor in 2000, underwent extensive treatment, wrote a book about her experience, Curveball: When Life Throws You a Brain Tumor, and founded a non-profit called Meningioma Mamas to raise awareness and funds for this common cancer affecting women. Courage is my closest high school friend, a pediatrician, who is battling a very serious brain tumor.  Years and states separate us, but I’m lifting her up in my prayers along with her two children and husband.  Courage is my friend in Denver, a wife and mother of three young children, who contracted Hepatitis C from a drug-addicted nurse.

Beyond illness and grief, courage is the face of a young girl who says “that’s not nice” when her peers tease her because she can’t run as fast on the playing field. She has a mild disability but doesn’t want to appear different than others. Courage is the boy who comforts a crying classmate; he sits with her alone under a tall tree.

Courage is my friend in New Jersey who is raising a baby girl from South Africa literally placed in her arms.  ”Take her,” the child’s grandmother said, “you can give her a better life.”

Courage, I believe, is having the pluck to face your fears, the grace to make unpopular decisions and the bravery to live your dreams.

I’m not sure how these seeds of valor are sown.  But we all have them, this I know for sure.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about perseverance.  I love that vowel-packed word and all that it implies.

Perseverance has been on my mind for a few reasons.  About a week ago my 8-year-old-son announced that he had tired of Tae Kwon Do. “It’s too hard, Mom.  Wednesdays are the worst day of my life.  I want to quit.”

I’m no sadist, but Paul, the Tae Kwon Do teacher, has only recently begun to push Casey harder…and it’s good for him.  Because my son has both confidence and motor issues, the tendency is to be extra lenient and accommodating.  This serves a purpose, but so, too, does instilling the idea that hard work can yield great rewards.  By which I really mean: “work your combinations Casey and the triumph is all yours.”

My son loves heroes like Martin Luther King and Ghandi.  “What would have happened if they gave up their fight when under pressure?” we asked over dinner that night.  Think about how they persevered, we told him, when so many people were against them.  His big brown eyes widened.

And then we brought the conversation closer to home.  Paul has cerebral palsy. He’s had 13 surgeries, his body is contorted and he needs crutches to walk.  And yet each Wednesday he shows up at our house ready to share his passion and expertise.  He’s a double black belt in the martial arts: he earned his first black belt in Sun Doul Soul and the second in American Karate.  Paul may have a profound disability, but he’s an absolute lion in my book.

Up until now, Casey was more fixated on Paul’s bird tattoos than his inner strength.

“We know Paul is driving you harder,” my husband and I assured him.  “But can you imagine how difficult it must be for him just getting out of bed every day?  His muscles are stiff, he can’t run or jump the way you do, and he’ll never walk on his own. “

“Alright, I’ll do Tae Kwon Do,” Casey sheepishly decided.

And so he is.  My boy still kvetches (that’s Yiddish for whines) but one nod to Paul is all it takes to convey a little perspective.

Perseverance has also been on my mind because of Hanukkah.  Today is day six.  My children are now old enough to understand the significance of the holiday beyond the eight days of gift giving, which, much to their dismay we don’t adhere to religiously.  We do, however, light the candles and make it a point to talk about how the Jewish people of ancient times persevered amidst great hardship in order to reach freedom.

These are teachable moments, for my son, yes, but for all of us.

Think about it.  We persevere every day and in so many ways — exercising because it’s good for us even though we’re tired; raising confident, self-directed children; proving our mettle at work; waking up to write at 5am because that’s when the house is most peaceful.

Take stock of how you persevere in your life.  For all that you do and all that you desire, let it guide your path.