PECosmic

As I rolled along in 2022, I thought I had moved forward in my writing practice. I felt like I’d faced up to my biggest barriers of reaching out online.  I’d wrestled with the concepts and craft of blogging, becoming somewhat comfortable working with a range of online and social media platforms, and the function and layouts of my websites. Optimistically, I wrote my first post in April 2023, boldly asserting that I was “ready to write”.

Offline

But I wasn’t ready. I was in the middle of a triad of family life events which dominated my psyche, triggering a shift back to the traditional tactile comfort of writing with pen and paper.

I began journalling about the passing of my 99 year old mother in May 2022 and the daily ups and downs of my husband David’s struggle with metastatic cancer which was diagnosed later that year. A series of tests, treatments and surgeries on David’s colon and liver helped halt the spread enough to allow us to take a road trip to lake country in Manitoba – our home province – in summer of 2023.

Less than a month after that brief hiatus, David’s cancer resumed its spread so I focused on my role as “Care Boss”. Then my younger sister Terri passed away suddenly from unaddressed cancer. I began re-examining my early years in Winnipeg, the deep impact of Terri’s bipolar disorder on our family’s relationships and the paths we now tread.

“ … regardless of all beliefs, I am comforted by the knowledge that we do live on in each other.  This awareness has made me so much more aware of the effect we have on each other.”

Roz Bound, Aging Cousciously, Dying Awake

By the end of 2023, I was effectively offline and uncertain of a way forward. As David recovered from a traumatic liver surgery, I looked to establish a writing practice that helps me sort out and reveal my innermost feelings, support my caregiving role and my future as a memoirist.

Workshop

With David’s encouragement, I reluctantly signed up for a vision board workshop at Serendipity Yoga. I had a meagre understanding of what a vision board could do to help me chart a forward path and direction, likening it to a strategic planning session. 

When I woke to the bitterly, blustery snowy morning of the workshop, I almost bailed out.  After I confirmed that the workshop was not cancelled, David agreed to drive me to and from Bloomfield. I knew I wouldn’t face the unsettled weather alone.

Sharing my story at the beginning of the session felt a bit like boasting about the brilliance of our 2014 move to the County and the settling into a new community where we knew no one.  I thought it sounded like I was already living my dream life. After sharing out loud the triad of my recent personal traumas, I felt spent. I was unaccustomed to opening up to strangers.

I had some difficulty following the introductory concepts, but I became somewhat more confident when I discovered that crafting making a vision board was a creative exercise. This process wasn’t much like any strategic planning session I’d ever known; this was a personal reckoning.

As I listened and observed, I gained inspiration from the other workshop participants, each who had a fascinating story to tell about the vision dreams, goals, and aspirations they were seeking to crystallise. Some offered me images they found which aligned with my introductory story. Slowly, as I flipped through magazines and gathered images, I began assembling the collage of visuals, images and text on a blank slate. 

By the end of the workshop, I gleaned how my vision board might help me organise and integrate the challenges and experiences of County life for the past ten years. I waited for my ride outside, somewhat sheltered from the blowing snow, wondering how this exercise would help me get back on track with my writing practice and maintain a balance of doing and being.  When I got into the car, I shared my misgivings with David who comforted, and offered perspective, “It’s a new way of thinking, isn’t it?” I was learning that a good vision board depicts how you want to be and feel, not think.

My Vision Board

Although I didn’t yet have a clear view of my future self would feel, I had a framework for moving forward toward my dream of being a writer.  By the end of January, I’d positioned the few images and word art collected during the workshop at the top and bottom of my board. 

At the top are four word that resonated as constants – my north stars: Everything begins with a Dream; Create my Dream Life; Live in This Moment; I Have all the Time I Need; Time Well Spent.  

The bottom features symbolic photos relating to wondrous spaces – a eclipse, a satellite photo of the eastern Pacific Ocean, waves along a river – which reflect core components of the cosmos I share with David.  So much of our enduring relationship is about being together on or around water: our second date in Hawaii, officiating at regattas across Canada and eastern US, and sailing on our 31 foot sloop Panache.

Within this frame, I pasted several clippings collected at the workshop which converged around three thematic areas. These were content pathways for my writing journey:

• Creativity and Fibre Artistry

The leftmost pathway on my vision board captures my life as an emerging fibre artist. Images and word art along the left include: skeins of yarn with a caption “The Vibrant World of Fibre Arts”; my Cosmic Crochet logo; a colour wheel; a quote “I stitch a piece of my heart into everything I crochet”; and image of Cosmic Cliffs.  The most inspiring quotes are:

The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.

David Graeber

I always design in crochet.  It’s my tool for seeing.

Xenobia Bailey

When you buy something from an artist, you’re buying more than an object. You’re buying hundreds of hours and experimentation. You’re buying years of frustration and moments of pure joy. You’re not buying just one thing, you are buying a piece of a heart, a piece of a soul … a small piece of someone else’s life.

Susan Wallis

• Living Sustainably

Toward the right side of my vision board, my pathway to sustainability is again guided by word art – Home Grown, Mindful – and images of a butterfly and flowers including two of my garden. “Find Your Way” nestled beside images of a stylised compass and bicycles illustrate favourite vehicles for moving forward to experience the myriad micro-climates and eco-vistas of Prince Edward County, to find places to pause and reflect: “Pause in nature and bring mindfulness into the creative process.”

• Wellness and Relationships

Along the centre, spinal core of my vision board are images of the Enneagram, a Buddha with seven chakras, and my mala beads. As a practicing yogi, these continue to guide my deepening sense of peace and self-understanding: “Organised and in the flow”

Manifesting My Writing Life

Within three months of the workshop, my vision board was complete, resting at my left as I sit at my desk, continuously prompting and channelling my writing practice. In early 2024, I began weekly online workshops facilitated through the Writers Collective of Canada, which bolstered confidence in my craft. Writing with others and sharing my first raw drafts with others has helped me finding my true nature, and overcome the fear of being seen for who I am.

Vision boarding opened a portal to understanding my inner world, a route for practicing my own brand of creativity, and the way to live my dream life as a transdisciplinary artist. 

Finding and expressing my authentic self through my art may not have happened without David’s support and encouragement. We continue to live well even with cancer, uplifted by the love we share that grows deeper with each precious moment.

“Put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room. Life isn’t a support-system for art. It’s the other way around.”

Stephen King  “On Writing”