5 Years of Work
Lately I’ve spent a lot of time away from painting. I’ve been in big editing mode! The book is almost done. I’m anxiously waiting on proofs now. Sorting through hours of audio content and turning it into videos. Making playlists. All to support my new book, The Mysterious Gifts of Grief.
About five years ago, I began writing poetry accidentally. I didn’t set out to do it. I didn’t intend to process my deep grief over losing my late husband by writing poetry. Much to my shock, that’s just what came out.
It started on a whim. At the last second, I was invited to join a writer’s circle hosted by one of my dearest friends. We wrote for 20 minutes that first night and what came out was surprisingly well formed and it made me think maybe I should attend again. I didn’t yet realize this started a faucet of poetry that burned to come out of me.
It was fits and starts at first, but the work demanded my attention. It was relentless. Journaling hadn’t worked for me. It felt like a waste. I could never give words to the reality of my experience, my experience was far beyond my words.
Poetry was about imagery and metaphor to evoke feeling. The more I wrote, the clearer the direction I was heading revealed itself. There were certain incidents or things that happened that I knew needed to be documented with a poem. I started with whatever came up. Later I made a list of what I thought I might need to write about and started crossing them off.
I noticed that if I captured my most important images and feelings in poetry if I managed to be hyper-accurate, it would provide the slightest relief to my grief.
If the poetry wasn’t “right” or “good enough” it didn’t work at all. I had to keep swinging at it until I stumbled into something that felt right and then, a bit more relief. Like pouring a tiny bit of the heaviness of grief into a bucket or a container so I no longer had to carry it myself.
I shared some of the poems with my closest circle. My people encouraged me and said that it might help lots of people. I still can’t understand how.
But one of my closest friends is a commercial visual artist of 30 years or more, and familiar with my paintings, asked where the paintings were that went with these poems. He said poetry is about imagery with words and equally, abstract paintings are visual poetry. I was stunned. It made total sense. Of course, I had to paint abstracts to go with these poems.
I would love to tell you the paintings poured out of me the same way the poetry did, but that would be an out-and-out lie. Grief stilled my painting—stifled my painting for years. I was paralyzed by my grief and fear of grief. I didn’t want to go back there. I hired a new therapist and the paintings started to come.
It took years for it to dawn on me what this project was really about—documenting the strange and mysterious gifts that grief brought to me. It’s been an amazing journey to be on. I’m so proud of this work. I’m so proud of myself for finishing this even though it feels like it’s taken me forever. Most of all, I know that my late husband Dan would be proud of me for taking my grief and turning it into a thing that will live in the world. Equally so, my now husband, Edwin is proud of me for building a new creative life that I share with him.
I’m humbled by this holy work. I can’t wait to share it with you. Check it out at wayofjen.com/pre-order.
