Dancing

with Everything

Grieving Our Covid Losses

Like many other writers during the Covid pandemic shutdown I decided to use the time I was being given to write a new book. For a grief advocate the situation was offering continuous, unprecedented, multiple examples of losses in need of processing. And, at the bottom line, that’s what grieving is. A year or so into the writing process, I shared the proposal for the book, “The Art of Grieving” with a publishing industry expert.  She assured me that publishers were no longer accepting any book that dealt with the pandemic. She said that by the time books currently in production would become available, people would have no interest in that topic. 

Here we are now, 4 years after the novel Covid19 virus unleashed a historic disaster on the entire world. And, according to two psychiatrists George Makari and Richard A. Friedman, in a recent article in the Atlantic, “America is in a funk, and no one seems to know why. Unemployment rates are low, and the stock market is high, but poll after poll shows that voters are disgruntled.” The physicians suggest that this funk is not due to the economy, but an important overlooked factor – “the country has not come together to sufficiently acknowledge the tragedy it endured.” 

Makari and Friedman point out that recovering from trauma does not happen by ignoring past painful events, and they offer evidence that COVID meets the clinical definition of trauma. It was, and for some, still is, an overwhelming experience threatening serious physical and psychological harm. As research with combat veterans has shown, this setting aside of traumatic experiences without acknowledging and processing them, leads to free-floating anxiety and anger–and to the malaise of our current cultural attitudes. It seems the prevailing attitude is “Life sucks!” And whoever is in charge will get the blame. 

I knew as a grief advocate 4 years ago what the publishing industry didn’t seem to–that grieving is an art we need to get good at–the vitality of our life depends on it. Many of us met online, a situation I never imagined would suffice, and in these online communities, even naming our losses, and witnessing others name theirs, offered respite and perspective. In our “isn’t there a pill for that?” culture, it takes some courage to process loss by revisiting the scenes and remembering what transpired during important and challenging times of our individual and communal lives. When we go back in rituals of remembering we discover not only loss but gift and gain. 

I’d like more people to know about the Reimagine Virtual Candlelight Vigils that have been happening monthly since COVID first appeared. People from around the globe have been honoring loved ones, holding space for grief, and using the arts to reflect on the possibilities of transformation. Checkout this amazing resource. https://letsreimagine.org/76768/reimagine-candlelight-vigil-with-david-henry-hwang

 Now that my book is about ready to come out, I’m eager to share what I’ve been learning about how the arts of music and storytelling, dance and writing, and visual art making can help us process and discover our best lives. For advanced notices go to http://lp.constantcontactpages.com/cu/aM1xtoL/artofgrieving

Revisiting together from the perspective that time provides, and with the wisdom we have now gained encourages post traumatic growth.   

  1. In revisiting the scene from the perspective of several years, keep in mind the gifts. No losses without gains – list 
  2. Reimagine Virtual Candlelight Vigil Let’s honor our loved ones, hold space for grief, and reflect on the possibilities of transformation
  3. The gifts 

 

Over a million lives were loss in the US, with family members denied the opportunity to say goodbye, while xxx others still bear the health challenges of long COVID. 

The Art of Dancing at a Memorial

My husband and I couldn’t afford the time to drive to Raleigh NC to attend a memorial celebration for a long time InterPlay friend, so we flew on the new Breeze airline. It definitely lived up to its name. The short trip had us relaxed and rested to participate in what we knew, would be an energetic, novel, and fun experience.

For an elder like Tom Henderson, we expected the memorial event to honor him and his well-lived life. We were surprised by what Tom had prearranged for us. You’ve probably heard the advice to pre-arrange your funeral and burial to lessen the burden family members. Let people know what songs you want sung, what poems or scripture segments read. But Tom went a bit further. He offered his own poems. The memorial was a community celebration of our own lives, of the times we shared with Tom and with one another through decades of tough challenges and play-filled celebrations.

Tom was a scientist, a chemist, but also a poet and musician. In this InterPlay community, whose forms are active, creative, improvisational ways to unlock the wisdom of our bodies, Tom was a dancer.  And so, we danced on his behalf, using the forms he recommended, in the timings that he wanted them to occur. You might say, he called the show from the other side.

As a white man in our western culture, it is no small achievement to become a dancer. I salute the bravery of Tom, my husband Richard, Billy Amoss and the men Tom and he gathered a dozen or more years ago to form a men’s InterPlay group. The performance of that men’s group was a highlight of our gathering.

Tom’s run of show asked me to lead the Pittsburgh form, a version of community dance and storytelling that many of us present have done with Tom and his wife Ginny, with their community performance troupe, Off the Deep End in North Carolina, in Oakland CA with the Wing It Performance Ensemble, and in Malawi, Australia, and at the Fringe Festival in Scotland.

By his selection of various elements, Tom ignited memories of the rich life we have shared together. We came to see different sides of his personality, through the stories of InterPlay founders, Tom’s students, mentees, and teachers. His saxophone teacher performed a tune from Tom’s favorite jazz musician, John Coltrane. In one of Tom’s poems he ended with the message, “do not waste time in mourning, look, see, create, and choose joy!”  Most everyone in that room understands that the dance is the most powerful path to joy.

If you are reading this on Thursday March 21st – join us online  for the Reimagine platform The Art of Grieving – Dance at 7:30 -8:45 pm, eastern, 4:30-5:45 pm pacific. Register here  https://letsreimagine.org/76768/the-art-of-grieving-series-dance

The Creative Process and What Keeps Us Going On

“When can I get an actual book?” my friends ask me, and it reminds me again of how long creative projects take. The ideas and inspiration can take seconds but the implementation–years. In fact, lots of things take longer than we can ever imagine, especially if interrupted by much that is outside of our control. It was a lesson I thought I’d learned during the pandemic. When it first appeared in March of 2020, no one had any real idea how long it would last. Looking back now, we see that the messenger RNA vaccines that became available in December took no time at all. In fact, that’s part of what created suspicion about them. How much testing could have possibly been done to make sure they were safe?

I came across a television interview with the two scientists who won the Nobel Peace Prize in October of 2023 for the Covid 19 vaccine and learned that after a chance meeting at the copy machine, it took Katalin Kariko’ PhD and Drew Weissman, MD, PhD 15 years for their visionary laboratory partnership to make an everlasting imprint on medicine. Dr. Kariko’ has spent her entire 40 + career on messenger RNA. And all those things along the way that interfered make Kariko’, just in time for Women’s History month, a poster woman example of what must be overcome to keep going on. 

Born in Hungary, Kati, as she is known to her colleagues came to the United States 40 years ago but for decades did not have a tenured position, working in “soft money” research assistant positions and having to relocate whenever the money or sponsor moved on. Her husband, who is not a scientist would tell her, according to an account in a terrific 2021 article by Gina Kolata, in the New York Times, “You are not going to work–you are going to have fun.” A businessman, he once calculated that with all the hours she put in at the lab she was earning about a dollar an hour.  Kolata’s interview quotes Dr David Langer, a neurosurgeon who has worked with Dr Kariko’, “When your idea is against conventional wisdom that makes sense to the star chamber, it is very hard to break out.” Her ideas were definitely unorthodox and ahead of their time.

 I wish someone would have told me, earlier in my own career, what it takes for a creative in any field to keep true to their vision and keep going on. The suffragette Susan B Anthony’s claim that “failure is impossible” may be true but pardon we women for wondering if such accomplishments will happen in our own lifetimes. Using Kati’s career as a model, the keeping on happens when you’re doing what you love and having fun in the process. I can agree with that and pass on to the next generation a trick I’ve discovered through my own career–just the right music, played at the right time can lift you up and carry you over the rough patches in the present discouraging terrain.  (Try the Keep Going Song by The Bengsons – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs-ju_L9pEQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs-ju_L9pE

The Art of Dancing on Behalf of Peace Part 2

“What is she doing? My 3-year-old grandson William’s voice echoed throughout the large meeting space at my 31-year-old son Kenneth’s memorial service. Hearing that voice, and the question that I imaged many other people were asking themselves, I stopped what I was doing. I went over to him were he was seated with his parents in the front row. “I’m dancing on behalf of Uncle Ken,” I said. “Would you like to dance with me?”  Without hesitation, he buried his head in his mother’s pregnant lap and shook his head vigorously no. But his 5-year-old brother Ethan, stood up, took my extended hand, and joined me. We danced together in a circular pattern in the open space. I lifted him up and we twirled around together. My breath quickened and my heart filled with joy. I’m transported back to when my youngest son Ken was 5 years old. Here in these moments of my greatest sorrow, tears remind me of the tremendous joy that Ken’s life had brought to mine.

Dancing and grieving share a similar status in western culture. They are both to be avoided in order to maintain ones’ composure. That evening, I thanked Ethan for dancing with me. Will explained why he rejected my offer. “I don’t dance,” he said with firm conviction. I asked him what he does do. He said, “I golf.”

Many people won’t dance, refuse to dance, yet, in these hard times– Alice Walker maintains “Hard Times Call for Furious Dancing!” Those of us willing to dance need to dance on behalf of those who won’t or can’t. The popular notion of dance is that it is an energetic celebration of positive moments in life, like weddings, birthdays, and graduations. Less well-known is that dance can also be an act of mourning, a full-bodied communal expression of life’s challenges and ways to grapple with them. It is a dual strength of dance that it can help us navigate all our milestone events, which are often a mixture of joy and grief, laughter, and tears.

What does dancing do for the dancer? What will it do for those of us grieving losses, hungering for peace? War and conflicts force people to leave their homes, and all they’ve worked for. If they stay, a good night’s sleep is impossible due to the noise and danger from the bombs. So, if we are to dance on behalf of peace let’s start with a simple gesture, the body’s language for what we sometimes don’t have words for.

Let’s start by making a fist and raising it in the air. That gesture expresses our determination to recognize the injustices of war, and our willingness to stand against it.  Seeing other raised hands lets us know we are in solidarity with one another against injustice. To be a peace maker is to know that peace cannot be maintained without justice. But we must let go of the fist, shake it out, and dance can help us do that. That fist that may have become planted in various parts of our bodies, constricting our breath, creating pain, interrupting our rest. Holding on to atrocities and our reactions to them, keep them alive in the world. We must let go, but as Soyinka Rahim reminds, we must do it with love, and that takes dance.

We need rituals for peace so that they will change us individually and collectively. Let me offer a story. In the mid 1980’s a man from Germany visited India and was introduced to a simple ritual, A Universal Peace Greeting from the Gaudi Foundation.  The words begin, “I offer you peace.”

And the gestures that went along with it used universal sign language, not the sign language we are familiar with that expresses words in the English Language. Through members in the InterPlay Community, this peace greeting got to me, and I began using it to start and finish classes I taught at the university and staff meetings we held at our behavioral health care clinic in Fort Worth TX. We began by saying to one another, “I offer you peace.”

In 1988, a student of mine was involved with Vivian Casselberry, a Dallas journalist who had formed an organization known as Peacemakers, and they were putting together the First International Women’s Peace Conference. Laurel called and asked that I join them and bring that sheet with the peace greeting on it to the planning meeting. I did that, and each morning of the week-long conference a different delegation of women from one of the 57 countries represented led the conference community of 2000 women in reciting the words of the Peace Greeting in their own native language. We spent a lot of time that week, back and forth to the copy room at the conference center, making copies of the peace greeting for the women to take back to their countries.

The outcome of all this? Barely a year later, November 9th, 1989, the Berlin Wall, which has stood since 1961, came down. Of course, we can’t know for sure that the Peace Ritual had anything to do with that. But I can say for certain, in 1988, though we focused quite a bit on it in our discussions, nobody thought there was much change of that wall being taken down.

Tonight is the final night of Dancing On Behalf of Peace. The event is FREE but you need to register at https://danceonbehalfofpeace.org/

The Art of Dancing on Behalf of Peace

In the midst of these contentious and challenging times, the non-profit organization I have belonged to for over 30 years, Body Wisdom, has joined with other peace-building non-profits and artists to host Dances On Behalf of Peace, an 11 day, half-hour virtual international gathering. I am honored to be a community collaborator and invited speaker for this celebration of Inner + Outer Peace and the Physicality of Grace. The series began Feb. 19th and will meet every evening at 8 pm Eastern, 5 pm Pacific through Feb 29thhttps://danceonbehalfofpeace.org/ 

As you see this invitation you might think, as I often do, even after all these years of dancing on behalf of myself and people and situations needing healing, “Why dance? What good could this possibly do?  

Writer Alice Walker expresses it best in the title of one of her poetry books, “Hard Times Call For Furious Dancing.” She states something about dance that many people would say: “I have learned to dance. It isn’t that I didn’t know how to dance. I just didn’t know how basic it is for maintaining balance,” to have, what I call, a vital and satisfying life. And why is that? 

A visit to my massage therapist this week pointed out again, that knot in my right shoulder that I imagine would look like a tightly coiled fist if I could see it. I wasn’t aware that it was there, though it’s been there before, and it’s taken quite a lot of effort from her, and relaxation from me, to help it uncinch. I couldn’t feel it until her skilled hands found it. Tense muscles become numb, and feeling can only return when they, we, let go. 

I remember years ago accompanying Ilana Rubenfeld as she allowed what she called her “listening hands” to help a Jewish-American man release the tension in his back that had caused him a chronic 40 year, on and off, backache. When asked to remember when he first had the backache he related it to the time, as part of a military unit, when he helped liberate the camps in Germany at the end of World War II. The lesson I took from witnessing this session was– in order to have no more victims we must be able to let go of our reactions to atrocities and stop storing them in our bodies. It keeps the atrocities alive. Frequent dancing is one of the best ways I know to open our clenched fists, wherever in our bodies we have stored them. 

Last fall, I was out of the country, off the grid so to speak when war came to people in the middle east. A text from a student who lives in Israel and who regularly attends my online Friday InterPlay class alerted me. The other students and I were so relieved when he got on with us for a few minutes and he seemed delighted to see our smiling faces. After he left, we danced on behalf of David and his family and the dance and the lines of the song took me to a place that its lyrics suggested, “I decided to be happy, I decided to be glad, I decided to be grateful, for all I ever had.” 

That evening, I played the song again for myself and moved to it to reinforce those decisions that the song had encouraged me to make. “I decided to be happy, I decided to be glad. I decided to be grateful for all I ever had.” At first, I asked myself, how can you be happy when so many in this world are suffering? But as I danced, it came to me that how can we not be present to what everyone in the conflict is hoping for, for themselves, their families, their communities, and for the world. Could it be an obligation of those of us not living in the center of the storm to keep alive the loving, peaceful energy that the world will need in the future to get us all there? 

Join me this evening, and every evening at 8 pm eastern, 5 pm pacific through Feb 29th. The event is FREE but you need to register at  https://danceonbehalfofpeace.org/  

       

The Art of Grieving in Service to Love

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s the day after Valentine’s Day and perhaps the day didn’t go as well for you as the commercials and love songs promised. Your loved one may have spent too much money on flowers that will die rather than a plant you would prefer so you can plant it, or on sweets that aren’t on your eating program. Or you might be the one that was too busy to know what day it even was. In general, our culture makes a big investment in helping us communicate our love to one another. According to the National Retail Federation 53% of consumers in the US will spend $25.8 billion dollars this Valentine’s Day on flowers, dinners, chocolate candy, and cards. 

If you’ve been in a relationship for a lot of years you’ve been through some “rough patches.”  Maybe you’re still in one of them. Perhaps your relationship ended recently, or your partner is not able to know what day it is. Maybe you are grieving these losses and the secondary losses connected to them. Or you feel the loss of the dream of where you had expected to be in this phase of your life. Perhaps it’s future losses that loom large, so you are grieving something that hasn’t even happened yet.

As I have been researching and writing about grief for almost 10 years, I now ask several “what if” questions. What if we assume, in the art of living a life, that loss is a frequent, episodic occurrence, expected to happen throughout our years, and that grieving needs to be an art we practice and eventually get good at? What if we call on the arts to help us navigate the comings and goings in the love relationships in our lives?

In my family, greeting cards have been a way to honor the relationships we have with one another and to communicate our love. Our daughter Corinne, when she had lost her own hair to chemo treatments sent a Father’s Day card to her stepdad, which he still has on his desk after nearly two decades. The artwork, under the header of “Top Dad Hairstyles,” features cartoon images of men with various patterned baldness hair styles, to honor what she called, “we hair challenged individuals! 

It can take quite an investment of time to select just the right card for a specific occasion, or to create one, which becomes a gift of art to the receiver and the giver alike. The image is the message, along with hopefully, just the right few words. This year I re-gifted the card that I had given my husband last year. Like an artist who makes her art out of found objects, when I came across the card in my desk drawer, I knew it carried an image and handwritten message worth repeating. My husband’s card to me this year was a piece of artwork I will be saving, especially since, after his recent participation in a calligraphy class, I can actually decipher his handwriting. 

To let loved ones know of our love, we don’t have to spend money in response to the advertisers’ hype, on Valentines’ Day, or any other cultural holiday that ignites the business engines of our economy. The hand painted watercolor image of a butterfly on a get-well card sent to me by a young friend after I had surgery still broadcasts its loving message from the counter in my kitchen where it’s been living for years.  

 In preparation for next Valentine’s Day–can you picture yourself finding or creating a card to send to yourself as reassurance that you are loveable and loved. Don’t be shy about re-gifting a card that holds a special memory. And imagine playing the song that was always known to you as “our song,” and dancing to the song, either with your partner together in your kitchen, or dancing alone, with a celebratory stemmed glass lifted in honor of the love that began your relationship, and appreciation for your no-longer-present-to you-in-this -life-loved one and the love you shared. Perhaps it’s true that love is the only thing that never dies. 

Stay tuned for upcoming news on the launch of my new book, The Art of Grieving: How Art and Artmaking Help Us Grieve and Live Our Best Lives. With assistance from guest artists, I’ll be presenting an online five session course, The Art of Grieving Series beginning March 5th on Let’s Reimagine.org based on the book.  https://letsreimagine.org/76768/the-art-of-grieving-series-storytelling 

 

Art that Inspires Art and the Process of Grieving

Not being able to find an important citation online, got me into cleaning my art studio, which I hadn’t done for a very long time. I found the document I was looking for that had the information I needed and, a bonus gift alongside it. This rather crumpled yellow sheet contained handwritten notes and a poem I had written during a visit to the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan several years ago. I thought to myself, “What a fabulous example this is of how art helps us process our losses and our lives.” The museum was founded in 2004 and contains nearly 4000 Himalayan art objects spanning 1500 years of history.

Now to my history–when my husband and I visited the Rubin a few years ago we took part in an art activity that began with the docent helping us understand the art images of the protector goddesses that surrounded us in the gallery, Durga, with the power to destroy evil, Green Tara, mother of all Buddhas who helps us find liberation from suffering, and White Tara, known for maternal compassion and healing. The docent then left us to medicate, write and/or draw our responses. Each person brings to the experience whatever is up for them in their own lives, and with whatever skill we have, we create our own art piece related to its inspiration.

 

Here is the poem: Ode to Tara

When the demons overtook my beloved,

I became the grandmother goddess,

calling on all the archetypes of

Feminine Protection. First off to protect

myself, that I might survive the onslaught

of deranged forces. The test now is whether

love is truly stronger than hate, and

whether the forces of compassion can

outlast the forces of fear and dis-ease.

Oh Tara!

Fully enlightened being

Born of tears, now seated

in royal ease. Assist us,

emersed in our own vale

of tears, challenged by

many demons, of new names

and no names. Help us float,

as you do–– through

the dark times.

Fatigue and Grieving

Common causes of fatigue are lifestyle factors, according to the Mayo Clinic––not getting enough sleep, having an unhealthy diet, or not getting enough exercise. Common symptoms are trouble concentrating, very low energy, irritability, and being unable to enjoy activities that you usually enjoy.  My husband had elective nasal surgery last Friday and I’ve been near exhaustion ever since. 

 

While Rich has been intermittently watching television and napping off and on in the living room recliner most of the last four days, I’ve been doing everything else for our shared household. He’s an easy patient, not hungry or demanding of much but more ice and a refill for his iced tea container. So, besides tending to these few responsibilities, I was in my ground level studio for three days totally focused on getting revisions back to my editor. After making it to my exercise class on Monday morning, I got online with my colleague Christine, for a joint work session and my exhaustion caught up with me. 

 

How I knew it was exhaustion was because I was having trouble processing what we were doing, and this session that I had been looking forward to began not feeling enjoyable. I did recognize that my irritable attitude was taking the fun out of it. I know what a challenge caregiving can be, I’ve done lots of it in my life. Christine teasingly reminded me that I wrote a book about how to take care of yourself while doing it. But it didn’t feel like I could blame this fatigue just on caregiving. I did tell Rich that, the fact that everything has been up to me has increased my appreciation for how much he usually does around here. Running a household solo is a lot, and something that widows and widowers come to the hard way. This led me to think of the connection between fatigue and grief.  

 

The first time I made this connection was when I returned home after being with my daughter Corinne, through her death and with family members, after her funeral. “I know I’m supposed to eat to take care of myself, and I’m trying.” I told the acupuncturist. “But I’m too tired to hold my fork.”   

 

Grief is the response to loss or a reminder that a significant loss has occurred or is on the horizon. Grieving involves the processing of these losses, sometimes out of our awareness, in a pattern of spiraling reminders. I decided to dance on behalf of my tiredness, and when I did, other people and current situations of grief and loss came to mind. I remembered seeing on Facebook that Carol, a dear friend, and member of my women’s spirituality group was burying her son Chuck in Texas this week. Texas reminded me that I hadn’t heard from my sister Maureen’s husband, Roland, and how the plans were coming for her memorial in North Texas. Just them I noticed today’s date on the computer screen. January 22.  My sister Pat’s birthday. She would have been 81.  

 

“Grief takes your chi, your life force.” the acupuncturist had said. That’s one explanation for fatigue. Not exactly a lifestyle factor, unless we count how many people we are connected to who are dealing with their own losses, how many people we are traveling this road alongside. And yes, selfcare is a critical aspect for that journey.   

 

 

 

Grief and the Element of Space

Recently several people I know have had a loved one die in their home. This has caused me to think about grief and its connection to the element of physical space and objects that surround us. When my daughter Corinne was battling breast cancer and losing, she had young children. She was clear about not wanting to die at home. She said, “This can be the house where mommy was sick, but not the house where mommy died.” I had the sense that she felt the house would never recover from such an event and make it harder for the children to continue to enjoy living it in.

 

In the state of California, when you list your home for sale, you must disclose if someone died there. I was told that is because some people believe that the ghost of the deceased person might still be there to interrupt the buyers’ sleep. There’s little doubt that spaces, both indoors and out, can remind us of what has occurred there. When we had to let go of our dog Cody who had lived with us in our present house for 8 years, there wasn’t a spot on the three floors of the townhouse that didn’t carry a memory of Cody having occupied it. An image of him in the corner of the kitchen. A sense of his presence underneath a desk while we typed. Sitting on the couch watching television as though he understood the plot. 

 

To begin to reclaim the house as one that doesn’t have a pet, we took the objects that belonged to him–his toys, and crates, feeding bowls and the mat with his name on it, to storage. Whenever I look around expecting to see him, which still happens quite often, I reappreciate how intertwined he was with most everything we did in our daily lives. He was closer to us than any of our relatives and friends, a fact that many other doggie moms and dads confirmed by their empathetic expressions of sympathy and condolences, in person and online.

 

Since I see the arts as helpful to our grieving, I looked at what space means to artists. Visual artists might describe a space as “open” or “cluttered,” “symmetrical” or “shallow “each of which offers a very different experience to someone viewing it or standing in it. Architects know how to create spaces that feel expansive or cozy, comforting or inspiring. As a dancer, I can say we prefer “empty” spaces. My sisters could tell you how I always wanted the furniture pushed against the walls in our shared dorm-style bedroom so we’d have plenty of room to dance in the middle. Mostly the spaces in our homes need to serve what we want to do and feel there. 

 

Not everyone avoids dying at home. In fact, my friend Melody LeBaron, as a Space Clearing expert writes in her book, Transforming Death, of ways to create sacred space for those transitioning from this life and those caring for them. Using her experiences of midwifing 13 of her closest loved ones, she offers ways to prepare the space and yourself for a transformational experience.    

 

I visited an artist’s home recently after someone very special to her had become ill while visiting. The person was taken to the hospital and after a short while, died there. When I learned of this, I offered to bring some sweet grass and other herbs so that we could smudge the personal spaces of her home, a practice that my women’s spiritually group uses to change the energy in our spaces and in ourselves. Together we moved through the spaces and smudged the rooms including the pictures and art objects that represented family members and friends who have crossed from this life. Standing and moving through those beautiful spaces, with the light reflecting off the snow and streaming in through the windows, I felt gratitude that I could be a part of the clearing and reclaiming of this space of deep love and reverence. Remembering how much work it was for my friend to create these spaces in the first place, having downsized from a much larger home, I left inspired to see if I can unclutter my own living space to find mire emptiness or spaciousness to serve what I want to experience and feel there.      

 

 

 

The Gifts of Story, Artmaking and the Connections They Produce

My writer friend Linda Meadowcroft has just released her compelling and meticulously researched biography, Ghost Eagles: The Spirit Journey of Artist Jan Beaver Gallione.  I wish for better skills in what I call, “writing about writing,” to communicate my excitement and gratitude for what Linda has accomplished. I have been a witness to this material as Linda has developed it through the years and I don’t have words to express my admiration for, not only her skills, but the dogged determination she has displayed in persisting for many years through untold challenges to bring this beautiful volume into being. 

 

Linda and I met in Pittsburgh nearly 20 years ago in Oct of 2005 at an artist’s workshop titled My Own Spirit Art, organized by Dan and Patsy Siemasko. A dozen or so of us gathered in their home to focus on spiritual art, on what I would now call, artmaking as a spiritual practice. Linda’s established claim as an artist to that point was as a violinist, while mine was as a dancer, improv teacher and performer. Yet both of us were working on early versions of books–in my case the first snippets of Warrior Mother. I still have a mimeographed invitation to a session Linda was planning at the time based on an early version of her current book.

 

As Shakespeare has suggested, there have been through the years, “many forces operating besides our devotion” to our individual work. Linda begins the introduction to her work with “I never met Jan Beaver, though I suppose you could say we were introduced by my dog Roxie.” Then follows an endearing story of how Linda’s ill-manner dog pulled her into a section of recently introduced native plants in Mellon Park and a plaque honoring “artist, poet, and educator Jan Beaver.” The lettering contained a tribute to her work on the Ghost Eagle Mounds in Wisconsin which she is credited with resurrecting. Linda knew nothing of the artist or her accomplishments but, I suppose we could say, how forceful the power of curiosity, and the blessings that accrue to the artist who follows that force. 

 

Linda’s deep exploration of the extraordinary life of a single artist illustrates for me the paradox that the more personal the story, the more universal. Linda finds many similarities with her own story as she learns more about Jan’s and we readers will as well. Secondly, as we learn details of how the artist in Ghost Eagles used her art to process her life, and the losses and trials of her day, she takes us with her, encouraging us to courageously care about what needs to be most important to us in our own time.   

 

Linda and I have stayed in touch all these years not simply because of our mutual interest in writing, in preserving the natural world, and in Native American culture. Something happened the day after we first met that has insured our connection would be lifelong. It’s known as a “Pittsburgh Thing,” but another woman named Linda introduced me to her neighbor, Pamela Meadowcroft, and she turned out to be Linda’s sister, who became, with her husband, a member of my improv troupe and to this day, one of my best friends.  So, its’ really all these connections that help books happen and get out into the world, especially by people talking about them and recommending them to their friends and acquaintances. I hope you will check out Linda’s book for yourself and become part of spreading the word about this book and the needed messages it contains.

Ghost Eagles: The Spirit Journey of Artist Jan Beaver Gallione https://amzn.to/4aOou87

 

 

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