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Discovering themes in our choices

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A few weeks ago, in my graphic memoir course, I was asked to reflect on books I read when I was about 8 to 13. It was a surprisingly daunting task for me. I remembered some books, including a series, but I was surprised by my short list as I had a bookcase full of books!

I enjoyed reading, although as a kid, I also loved playing outside with friends in the neighborhood, going for long walks with my best friend and my dog, doing craft projects, and going to new places. I felt like I must be forgetting some important books because I really did love reading. 

We were to create a zine/tell a story about our discoveries… Initially, I was stymied!

So in my effort to discover more books, I posted about the challenge I was having on Facebook. And happily, many folks responded, refreshing my memory and expanding my list a bit, which now includes:

  • Pippi Longstocking
  • Nancy Drew
  • Walter Farley series about horses
  • Misty of Chincoteague
  • Winnie the Pooh
  • Peanuts comics

I would certainly have more titles to add to the list if I visited the local library…

Perhaps even more important than the list’s creation was identifying themes in reviewing the books that mattered most to me. The theme that stood out for me was that of girls having adventures. It is truly one of the threads in the tapestry of my life. I am a girl who is continuously seeking and having adventures!

Whether you are thinking about your youth before adolescence, the books you’ve read, and their influence on your life, or choosing to reflect on the same questions from your reading over the past few years, what do you discover?

What themes or threads weave together to create your tapestry? 

What do you make of your answers? What intrigues you?

The books I’ve been reading over the past few years, spanning my professional and personal lives, reveal additional themes. From a quick mental review and glance at my bookcase, I discover new threads:

  • my continuing interest in education, neuroscience, interpersonal communication, compassion, resilience, healing through breathwork, Emotional Freedom Techniques, and meditation
  • my search for meaning
  • ways to increase connection with myself and others (Nonviolent Communication)
  • spirituality and Buddhism
  • living life to the fullest/living life every day, dying, death, ritual creation
  • creating a daily practice, both in my professional life—around drawing—and in my personal life around spirituality
  • different facets of writing—haiku and graphic memoir
  • in fiction, memoirs, autobiographies, and novels, I choose to read women authors; in nonfiction and poetry, I read a diversity of authors

If I go further afield and consider videos and podcasts, that might include learning more about different forms of craft and art—Zentangle, bookmaking, watercolors, and fluid acrylic painting.

I am delighted to focus on the details of periods of my life, reflect on the subtext of what appear to be almost random choices and dive into a  more rich understanding of who I am in the world. 

I wonder how books have influenced you at different times in your life. I hope you will share your insights with me. 

What fills you up?

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 I am surrounded by books and have a zillion tabs open (okay, I am exaggerating a wee bit). For the past few weeks, I have been sussing out resources for the graphic memoir writing course I am enrolled in. It’s both a blessing and a curse when the folks taking the course are as avid as I am about sharing book titles, podcasts, and videos. Granted, I don’t HAVE to track them all down, yet… Happily, the county in which I live has a robust collection of graphic memoirs and resources for writers. (Oh! I didn’t even share the book titles on my Kindle!)

Resources, opportunities to learn from others—from their knowledge, skills, and experiences—

are exciting, thought-provoking, and galvanizing to me! 

What is inspiring to you?

Are you up to your eyebrows in resources, considering taking a new course, reading a new book, or enhancing your practice in another way?

One of the resources suggested by more than one of the women in the graphic memoir group was the work of The Sneaky Artist. I was intrigued, as I am always looking for other ways to draw figures—something totally different than my style. I did a bit of reading and listening to Nishant Jain… And signed up for an outdoor event in Brooklyn hosted by him and Samantha Dion Baker on March 5th. I believe it’s a creative experience that will support me in trying something really different. (And, it turns out that two of my colleagues from the graphic memoir group have decided to join me for Sam and Nishant Draw Brooklyn! We will meet in person for the first time—so awesome!)

If I expand my thinking to include more adventures in visualizing/visual thinking/visual storytelling, then my stack of books grows! Reading sources on end-of-life issues and concerns informs my work in the areas of creating visual obituaries, and working with individuals on their advance care planning.

My final year of chaplaincy training involves a capstone project—I am in the throes of crafting my proposal. Ever the curriculum designer, it’s my desire to design a program/book that creates alchemy between contemplative practices and creative processes. I am exploring several ways in which use my expertise in Appreciative Inquiry to develop a program full of experiences in which people find ways to increase their awareness, mindfulness, and equanimity. In engaging in such practices,  they can more readily and easily plan for the lives they wish to live and the ways in which they want to live their final days. There are many wonderful resources for such work (another stack of books and list of websites) yet I want a comprehensive guide to processes that folks can work with on their own, with a partner, or me/a professional skilled in accompanying individuals as they work through their thoughts and feelings, and imagine their lives.

I’m also starting to work as a teaching artist at an agency that serves survivors of human trafficking. While I devoted more than twenty years to volunteering and then directing programs for survivors of sexual violence (and their families), the world has changed and the two fields are related yet different. There is much for me to learn. I am delighted to be stepping back into this work and using art and craft to support creativity and healing. (Have you read about “craftivism”? It’s fascinating!)

What are the areas of your life that call for more learning, something new and compelling, or perhaps challenging? 

What’s your stack of books, podcasts or videos look like? I’d love to know!

 

If you’re feeling in need of a spark and not sure of your direction, let’s talk! Appreciative Inquiry coaching is an engaging, generative, and delightful process.

When the path is clear to me, the project gets done

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I’ve been musing about several projects… Why is one at completion, another a bit of stop and go, and a third feeling both exciting and daunting?

What’s your style of working?

Do you live the adage, “How you do one thing is how you do everything?”

Is your style of work the same across the variables of

  • size of project
  • timeline
  • complexity
  • need for research
  • collaboration
  • perhaps, final approval? 

While I can make generalizations about how I work, I chafe at the literal meaning of the saying.

As I complete a project today that I started in September, I am making time to reflect… as it’s my intention to teach folks how to do what I have done. I want to be able to support them through the peaks and valleys of the process and so I am taking a magnifying glass to my journey. I think it’s also helpful to me to stand back and look at how I do what I do—there are lessons in it for me. 

When I realized how many photos I had taken of the process (who doesn’t love a photo essay?) I decided to quickly make an annotated visual timeline —such fun taking this walk down memory lane!

How do you review and reflect on your projects—appreciating and celebrating what worked well and learning for the future about what might be done differently?

Honestly, I don’t always take enough time for such reflection… Note to self, build in the time!

For my other projects, I’ve discovered…

My fifty stories/sketches about experiences with patients… I have 50+ more about my reflections

The one-page visual I am creating around how chaplains work in a hospital grew out of a need I saw in (you guessed it) my chaplaincy work… In my effort to address the need, I decided to create a useful resource for patients in hospitals (and their family members). As it turns out, this is just a bit complicated to achieve in a visual storytelling style, on one page—there’s a lot I want to say! So this project is a bit of “stop and go” as I navigate my thoughts about how to share information in a fun, accessible, visually appealing style. As time marches on, (and I do love a deadline), it will be done in just over a week so that I can put it aside, review it again in 10 days or so, make any minor revisions needed, and enjoy sharing it at the Graphic Medicine conference.

Here for Good, my graphic memoir project feels a bit like reaching through the fog at times. since I started the actual work of writing and drawing. I have never told a story this big or this long nor am I very familiar with the genre. I have lots to learn and do and sometimes I am uncertain as to my path:

  • What do I do first?
  • Which tasks can be done simultaneously? 
  • Which books will support my process? 
  • How might a mentoring group work for me? *SAW—Sequential Artists Workshop
  • Shall I seek an accountability buddy?

As you muse about my stories, what have you realized about your way of working and playing with projects?

I’d love to hear how your style or styles of work both enhance your experiences and also get in the way—there’s always something to be learned! 

286 hours…A Time of Transition 

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I am about to complete, a long, intense, and deeply satisfying internship. Now is the time of transition for me. The change—from being in the hospital seeing patients and in-class wrestling with thoughts, feelings, and questions—will end next week though I have been on the emotional roller-coaster of the ending for a week or so—that’s transition.*

I sat with my preceptor on Wednesday and said, “I am still here and I already miss being here.”

Do you ever have those feelings? You’re still in the experience and yet mourning its end?

And then in class last night, I also welcomed the change of pace that will occur as soon as I am done, as it’s been just about 35 hours a week of placement, classes, readings, and papers—in addition to my everyday work that I also love, and making time for family, friends, and self-care.

The true dichotomy of wanting to continue the experience and also the sense of peace (and relief) that settles in when a “chapter” is complete… 

Have you had experiences and feelings that are similar?

What is it about certain experiences that makes them qualitatively different?

Happily, in my class, I was assigned the last slot of the semester for the delivery of my presentation/“Didactic & Dialogue.” I took the opportunity to tell the story of my lived experience over the months in pictures and words…what I learned about myself, people as individuals and in relationships, life, death, pain, suffering, happiness, connection, power, self-care, silence, the systems within which I was working (hospital, department, university, and class/group), and more. It felt big. It was big.

While I do a lot of reflecting on my learning and life through drawing my thoughts, wonderings, opinions, and plans, I don’t often do so religiously. Over the course of 16 weeks, I filled a notebook and then culled over 100 ideas that I want to explore more deeply. I’ve started creating diary comics to further process and then share my musings…  I think I will discover even more through this process and perhaps it will become a graphic memoir. 

This finite timeframe certainly made it easier for me to capture the dynamic and multi-faceted nature of this great adventure though I am taking with me a newfound love of creating containers around experiences and finding simple ways to memorialize them.

I’d love to hear the ways in which you choose to capture aspects of your life and how you carve out time and space to reflect upon your journaling, drawing, artwork, or… I hope to hear from you!

 

*My favorite resource on this topic is Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes by William Bridges.