Comics, Womanthology, I heart you

Today my copy of Womanthology arrived in the post. It was excellent timing as I have been having a few days of feeling rather unworthy of the fields I am most passionate about. I’ve recently begun writing two new comic projects, but am feeling slightly bewildered due to the break I’ve had in writing (due to the soul sucking job, which I am thankfully now free of).

Getting my hands on Womanthology has reminded me of how very much I love writing comics and how much joy my first (and second) comic script brought to my life. The medium of comics has brought such elation and delight and inspiration to my life as I have read them, gone to Comicons in San Diego and Toronto, and looked at the wonderful artwork of comic illustrators online. There’s something incredibly beautiful, evocative, tangible, and creative about comics that isn’t like any film, TV show or radio play. I love comics.

So as I sit here with the spring sunshine on my shoulders and Womanthology beside me, I am inspired: to dream without boundaries, to hope with abandon, and to write boldly, without comparing myself to others.Writing for comics is a gift, a collaborative process that unites and brings freedom to voices. I’d like to declare to the world that I hope one day soon to contribute my own stories to the wonderful community of Womanthology, just like my friend Jody Houser has.

Dear Womanthology, Renae De Liz, et al… please let me join your courageous ranks and write with you, for you, and create stories that move others as your stories and art have moved me.

Here endeth today’s post. 🙂

Taking Chances, Changing Circumstances

Once again too much time has gone by since I last wrote, and boy have things changed.

My husband and I have moved out of our flat in Chichester and back into the cottage in Flansham, where we are sharing with his parents. This move came out of a decision to reduce our outgoings so we can save funds for our much desired move to Canada, specifically Vancouver, the city of my birth.

Moving here seemed logical and good, but being here is proving a gift already. Having the financial pressure lifted off us so that we can live in this transitional place while we prepare to take a big leap and move across continents is freeing us up to focus on the hope and plans we desire to see come to fruition.

But even more than that, I have now an opportunity to do what I’ve always wanted to do. I’m venturing out into the world of being self employed. So far it is proving to be a wide and strange and exciting world. One in which I can be fully myself and structure my life how I want to. It is incredibly freeing this life, though I will be more pleased when the cash starts coming in! 🙂

It has been months since I have felt this free, optimistic and alive.

I am incredibly thankful and full of excitement for the future

When music is serendipitous

I’ve loved Greg Laswell and Sara Bareilles for a while now but put them together and WOW you have something incredible. Also, it’s not lost on me how strangely appropriate this song is…

A strange victory

Yesterday I returned to the office… for 30 whole minutes before being let go due to my illness, despite the fact that I am now well. It’s strange, being fired is never fun. It hurts and self doubts creep in. I know I wasn’t let go due to my performance or ability to write well. Still, there is hurt there. A feeling of betrayal.

And yet? The job was sucking the life out of me. It was taking more from me than it gave me. I was a shadow of myself. And so it is a strange sort of victory. No longer will I have to get up at 6:30am and not get back home until 7pm. No longer will I have to use my talents for work that undermines it.

It is a chance for a change, a new beginning.

Perhaps the universe is more on my side than I thought. I will miss the pay, but little else. So here’s a toast to new beginnings, strange victories, and starting over.

Depression, and not being owned by our circumstances

I really meant to write more over the last month.

I couldn’t find the words.

Burnout, depression, stress, these are terrible things. Learning to give voice to them, a voice that is not just perpetuating their existence, it’s hard.

After 3 weeks away from work I am beginning to feel that I am returning to myself. I’m headed back to the office tomorrow and the nerves are nothing compared to the determination to not let my day job steal the meaning and worth of my life again. I am not defined by what I do for money.

At least, I don’t have to be – not when what I do right now isn’t the dream, when it is a job that taps into my talents while not allowing me to fully live in them. I’ve thought quite a bit while on this time of rest. I’ve spent many days not thinking at all and simply devouring The Hunger Games, playing Super Mario, watching films and sleeping… but other days I have thought. I’ve thought about how work can own us.

My work has been destroying my spirit, slowly but surely because I put too much stock in it. I let it own me. But your day job can just be that. I know now that I mustn’t let it have such a strong hold over me that it stops me from dreaming. I long for more time to write the kinds of things I enjoy writing, to tell stories that fulfill me and give me life. But simply dwelling on the negatives of the current situation doesn’t help.

I need to break free of expectations I put on this job, on myself right now and just embrace what is. This is a job, which I am fairly good at most of the time, where I am valued even though often I don’t feel it, and it is a job that provides a means to an end. Money. All of this is good.

Depression is not a part of me. It is separate from me, something that has happened because of circumstances, because of thoughts that have descended and owned me and held me captive. It is also in part due to a lack of serotonin. But it still does not own me. I am not my depression or even my stress. I am bigger than that. I can take my life back. I can live again as Kimberley, not some oppressed shadow version of her.

It’s been 3 weeks. I return to work tomorrow.

I’ll try to keep you posted on what happens next.

Creating

Today I worked from home, which was good because lack of proper sleep and a general feeling of being under a grey cloudy sky threatening to sleet all over me meant the extra hour spent in bed grasping for rest was much needed. Sitting at my own kitchen table with a view of the Chichester sky, made it even better. I may not feel particularly at home here right now, but this is a gorgeous city.

This evening, on the way to somewhere else, I ran briefly to visit a friend and offer a hug. I ended up talking about me… which is something I haven’t done for a while, though I felt sad to not have asked more about her – or at least to not have had the time to properly share our “where we’re at” monologues. It was one sided, because she is gracious and she asked and made me feel safe to disclose my discombobulated brain and heart and thoughts. That is a good friend!

In the midst of this day, the feeling unwell and the work and everything, seeing her reminded me that the sorrow I feel sometimes lately is not everything that there is. There is more.

I have been dreaming of babies. My own, other people’s, praying for life and life abundant. All sorts of ages but generally under 5. Babies. I think this is two fold: I’ve been dreaming in the daytime… of creating… stories, people, all of it. I want to be a Mum, as soon as possible and I want to tell stories and write stories for my children – little ones written in small parts spread out over lunches and before bed… I want to create a house that is a living story full of fables and tales and adventures big and small.

I think the process of this current transition to a life where there is time for stories and scripts and imagining again, anew, is going to be an interesting one. I can’t imagine a better way to be.

Time to take control

“It’s taken me a long time to get back here…”

I recently heard some great news. A friend of mine is one step closer to living his dream. A dream, which is very similar to my own. The difference for me this time was that I did not feel the old sting of jealousy or hear a voice inside my head telling me that “of course someone else got their dream” and surely I never would because I’m “not good enough.”

This time instead I felt a deep ache awaken inside me. An ache which said… I can do that too! I am just as capable as he is of making the dream come true. I have talent, and the ability to create good stories. I believe I was put on this earth to write stories. Scripted stories in particular – for the screen (both big and small and comic).

The problem is I am not writing.

Or when I do it is only in small spurts of desperate ink. I haven’t spent a whole day just creating in far too long. I have been lost in this notion of being “normal.” Of being responsible and doing the right thing – as the world would dictate. As my parents would dictate and think good… making money just for money’s sake… not making art. Living a life lead by fear instead of joy, hope, positive expectation and wonder.

THIS has been destroying me.

I don’t want to wake up when I am 40 or 50 and realise I never really tried hard enough. I never made myself able to have the time to write and really have a go at seeing my dreams come true and really sat down and worked to allow for me to enter into the life I so desire.

Things must change. As soon as possible or I risk shrivelling into inconsequential living and one which exists solely to make money. I need to tell stories. I have a voice that needs to be heard.

I am fighting with all my might to destroy the dragons that are holding me back so I can arise victorious and start over as myself, and as the storyteller and human I was born to be. Without all this gunk I’ve been wading through for years.

Returning

How long?

How LONG…

I don’t know where to begin.

It seems many people have been projecting ideas about me. About who I am, what I’m like, what I want. Past friends, family members, even myself. There is this idea that I am… decided. That I know what I want.

The truth is I have been of many minds for the last 8 or so years. And how can you know who I am, what I want, what’s best for me, if I don’t even know?

I have been running. Running from my heart, from my dreams, from my own fears. I have believed a lie about myself. Well, I have believed many. But one lie, one narrative has resounded louder and more clearly than any other:

“Not good enough”

Everything I have done has been under this guise. I have believed in failure and not success. I have believed that others would win, others would be chosen, others would have their dreams come true. But not me.

No longer. I have had enough.

I was born in one of the most beautiful places on the planet. Vancouver. Yet I have been running from that city, thinking I did not belong. I do. I know now that I do belong on the West Coast of North America in the city where I was born. But this is a scary revelation and many people do not seem to understand it. The returning… it is complex and a long time coming. I need to return to where I began so that I can find my true self. I have been lost, forgotten inside my own self. I thought I could find myself and my joy elsewhere… in Scotland, in England. I could not. I have also been running from my own dreams and desires.

I am a storyteller. This is my core, truly. It is the one thing I do know about me. I ache for telling stories. When I am not writing scripts, stories, and creative tales I am not fully alive. I shrink back and shrivel. I haven’t been writing properly, full, and with all my intention and heart for years now.I have been afraid and sheltered and living in apprehension of failure.

I am now anticipating success. I was born to tell stories. I was born to create. No more soul destroying jobs that have me write nonsense and drain my soul and self worth. In a few months time everything will be different. I declare it. Success. Joy. Happiness. Wholeness and home.

I don’t know how… but I believe it is time for me to find a new narrative to replace the one that told me I was never going to be good enough for anyone or anything.

I am MORE than enough!

Re-emergence

It’s been a while.

Smoke and ashes waft through valley. I walk through these woods where we have met for years. I see the last remaining cinders breaking off trees that are now little more than black narrow skeletons crumbling in the wind. The last remnants of heat and embers burn away. I cough. I begin to fear. It has been a while since we met here and now the forest is gone. Have I lost my chance? Is He gone from this place? Have I left it alone for too long?

No.

He meets me on the other side and takes my hand. He walks with me to the cliff edge where we’ve sat before, where He has told me many things and encouraged me, often inspired me. I ask about the burning trees and devastation.He puts his hands on my shoulders and says simply:

“The past is gone and all that went with it: the doubt, the fear,
the loneliness, the hope deferred…”

He points. In the distance, I see the shape of a city rising out of the haze. When I look back, He hands me a baby girl wrapped in white linen. I start to question but He doesn’t want to answer. He kisses my forehead and starts to walk off.

I call out to him: “What about my writing. I feel like I am fighting against a barrier. When will a breakthrough come in my career? ”

He draws a TV in the air and drops it at my feet. On the TV screen is written, scrolling… “soon”

I stand in this firey haze holding the baby and looking between the burnt trees and the city feeling like some kind of a mystical warrior, and very strange.

For a long while now I have been in mourning for my faith, a result of many changes, a new relationship, and starting from scratch. But in the past month I have discovered a renewed joy in the power of prayer, a wholeness in my relationship with my future husband and new friends in England, as well as an awakening and awareness of a new season about to begin. I don’t know what this entails but one thing is for certain.

It’s going to be new. And it’s going to be bold.

I’ll keep you posted.

I am a heretic; I am loved

I’m standing naked on the lawn, my heart in my hands pumping, blood spilling over, between my fingers and dripping down to the green grass and my toes. Some people tell me I am lost… conflicted. I am (apparently) lost to the carnage of my own actions, to the decisions I have made of late, to the questions I have asked and continue to ask.

I am not conflicted or lost. I simply cannot settle. Not now. Not here.

For too long I have been comfortable to be reigned in and contained but the time for this containment is over.

It hurts. It hurts to hear the voices of friends cutting in, telling me I am lost because of my questions.

I walk a tightrope but my heart is exploding with love. Too long have I held myself back like a thoroughbred contained when I am meant to run wild, free in open plains (where the streets have no names).

The blood drips. The heart pumps.

There is no sorrow here but for the lament over things past and friends who cannot walk this way with me. I want to know that God is with me and I do. I do when I stop to take a deep breath and when I feel Him touch my heart and put it back inside me where it’s safe, where only the trustworthy can touch it. I can bring it out again for the needy and the broken, but the sure do not need to see it right now.

I am done. I am finished with the simple answers, and conformity that held me and hurt me. I am naked and gaping on the lawn with a smile on my face. I am here with red stains on my fingers and words on my tongue.

I am ready to keep being surprised. By love.

I cannot stop asking questions. I cannot stop here on the edge and jump to safety, not yet. Not now. I have to keep going. Because the way is where I discover beauty, truth, freedom… and all that has been hidden by rules wrapped around me.

I cannot stop.

“The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.” – Helen Keller