Spiritual Journey :Part 8, Final

There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.

Louis 'Amour

My two dreams have always been to have a family, and to Make Things. Having 2 busy busy boys left me exhausted but I realized the only way I could process my world and feel completely full was to paint and create every day. I still got sick once in a while but by now I knew what caused my flareups (stress/excitement and exhaustion) and worked hard to avoid getting sick. As my boys went off to preschool I treasured the time that I had to paint while they were gone. But I craved more. And I realized how important to my well-being this time was (is). Five years ago we moved to a bigger house with a huge yard (to run these boys every day) and at last I had a real and separate studio apart from the rest of the house where I could make a mess and leave a mess and have enough room to put it all. We have a walkup attic that is a perfect workspace for me. It was insulated with the new "green" white foam before we moved in that covers the ceiling -- it looks, fittingly, like creamy icing or whipped cream. We put some air conditioning ducts in and I moved in. I feel very very lucky to have the space and to be able to stay home with my children, and at this point help support the house a great deal financially. When I'm not up there I feel a very strong pull to be there. Luckily I am very disciplined and remind myself to live in the moment, try hard to ignore the pull. Ironically, ZouZou's Basement is in the attic.

Happiness

Spiritual Journey: Part 7

I do not claim that I can tell a story as it ought to be told. I only claim to know how a story ought to be told.

Mark Twain

After giving birth to Raine, my disease had gone into relative remission and my doctor(s) advised me to get pregnant again pretty quickly; if I got sick again it might be a few years until I got my system straight again enough to carry another baby. So when Raine was 6 months old, we got pregnant again (we didn't think it would happen THAT quickly). Before we knew it, Rye was born and I was now a Mother Of Boys. Months later, after we talked about losing 2 and then having 2 healthy boys, added to my age and medical issues, we thought it best that we declared our family done. I had always wanted at least 4-5 children, but that was in my 20s and before I hadRye. HA. This realization came with more changes in my artwork.

Unconsciously, I began embracing my feminity fully, and began a series of Dress paintings called Dress Me Up. The first of these I sent to a magazine, and relatively easily, was published.

I had always surrounded myself with strong women -- I always appreciated having a lot of girlfriends --

and began to express these prized qualities in another Dress series, called You Wear It Well.