Watching Love Return
New life started long before I could see it. It might even start before you’re aware that your old life is over. It’s shocking, overwhelming, and uncomfortable to get thrown out of your old life. I knew the moment my old life was over.
New life starts instantly, but it sure doesn’t feel like it. It feels like the deepest freeze of winter. The future feels locked far away and impossible. It feels like barren sticks, sharp and pointy. Everything died off and got windswept away as new life pushed me into a season of nothingness. It was nothing as far as the eye could see. I had nothing to talk about. Nothing good had happened. No distraction was strong enough. I was bitter and angry. New life offers no hint of anything future. I just sat in it and trudged through my days as best as I could, honestly with no hope of better.
That season of nothing was an incubation period. Slowly, without my even noticing, new life was growing. It took time. I started to find small ways where my grief eased up the tiniest bit. I felt a hint of a tiny thaw. Before I could even take that thaw in, unbeknownst to me, new life had quietly been filling in some of the scarred and empty space. And then new life blossoms. In a shock of color and action, there it is. New life.
Sitting for hours on the beach. Parking myself in a lawn chair in the woods. Staring at the stars or the clouds, I was surprised to discover I could still feel awe. Chasing awe was one of the first ways I could sense my new life coming into focus. I followed the breadcrumbs of this new life. Without even knowing it, I changed my life over and over as I practiced chasing awe.
I tried to find and collect people who also seemed to have a sense of awe. Sometimes that worked and other times it didn’t, but I kept following the path of new life, eventually more than I dwelled on my old life. I was rewarded for this.
I had been steeped in death so long after my late husband died, I was shocked by a flicker of recognition of actual life. The contrast was so sharp it took my breath away. I was delighted by the mere presence of life. It felt like a miracle that I could feel it. That I could find some slight pleasure, some small direction or progress of something. I found it through my people.
I have a deep love for these people, these dear friends who carried me into my new season. They brought new life to me. It was such a miracle.
I couldn’t DARE to think I would ever feel such happiness, such love ever again. Those around me worried I was lost and never coming back—and the old me never did come back. But then new life blossomed. It’s a new me, I quite like the direction I’m headed. My art documents this journey. It reveals to me where I’ve been and where I’m going.
These paintings capture things I want to never forget. That’s one of the reasons why art is so important to me. Surrounding ourselves with evidence of how far we’ve come can fuel us to move forward. If there’s a feeling you get from a piece of art, I encourage you to collect it. Use that work as a reference point, something that helps you to instantly recall what you learned or what you need from that time or place or painting. Art is so powerful.
