Taken By Surprise

With the summer solstice approaching, I feel our current season, as well as this season of my life, and I find myself being called towards coming fully alive; just as the fullness of summer calls the berries to come to fruition. In addition to this soul calling, I have felt ‘under water’ so to speak, in the day-to-day stresses of working, keeping a home and a happy, healthy 2.5 year old. Thanks to some quiet time away, and thanks to my loving husband who helped to create that time by caring for Eliza, I have been able to feel my aliveness and creativity flowing again.
 
As some of you know, when my 1st daughter Eleanor passed away in March 2015, our dear friend Peg Kotlewski wrote a poem as it came to her while gardening. I did some rough sketches of images as her written words spoke to me, and had hopes of finding an illustrator and then creating a book. I began the process and found an illustrator, and yet as I tried to plan with her it didn’t feel right. Nothing was clicking or igniting inside myself with her. And then I found another illustrator who felt right, and I absolutely love her art and inspiration! But time slipped away and it wasn’t the right timing for her. This all felt okay to me. I wanted this to be a fluid, organic process and I was not attached to who or when or how my rough drawings would begin to take a fuller form. 
 
When I completed my very first rough sketches three and a half years ago, I showed them to some friends within my community of the Hero’s Journey® Foundation, Jim and Edrianna Stilwell. They live in Asheville, NC. Jim is a professional artist and encouraged me, “Janet, these are great! You could do the illustrations yourself. You just need to add color.”
 
I had a million reasons why that would not work. “I wasn’t skilled enough. I wanted it to look good and I would only mess it up and do it wrong.” 
 
He continued to gently encourage me, “Really Janet. You can just use some watercolor pencils and then add water with strokes of a brush. Do some testing to see how it works and then you’re good to go to keep creating.” These may not have been his words verbatim, but it’s how I’m remembering the conversation in my mind at the moment.
 
While nodding my head, I was pretty sure he was crazy for thinking that I could be the illustrator. And yet, he is such a generous man, a few weeks later he also mailed me a little box and within that box contained a box of new watercolor pencils, a new large sketchpad best for watercolor, and a new small set of different sized paint brushes.
 
“How very kind,” I thought to myself and set it aside in the basement. And that’s where it stayed until recently. This past fall, two years later, something struck me deep inside. Maybe I am the one who needs to illustrate the book. After wrestling with it for some time, I remembered my conversation with Jim. I remembered the box of supplies in my basement. I retrieved the box and began.

Artist: Janet Wepner

I felt immersed in a new way and completely taken with the fun of adding color to my drawings! I did one page, which took some time, and then set it aside. Since then I have picked it up occasionally, and then set it down again. I feel taken and It takes me. I have to let it take me or else it doesn’t work. In that regard, it requires a significant amount of time for me to shift out of the busyness of my day and into a centered space of allowing creativity. It’s a significant project and investment of my time; time that I don’t really have in my life but rather fleeting moments. And yet, I’m committed to finding time as I can.

When I say “centered”, I don’t necessarily mean at peace within. I just mean centered with what is happening inside. Because every time I begin a page, within minutes of my first pencil strokes I’m fairly certain I’ve messed it up. To the point, that I almost put it to the side to start on a fresh page. But then I say to myself, well this will just be an experimental page and I’ll experiment with the different ways the flower or the trees can look. Inevitably, as I go through the pencil strokes and then the brush strokes with water, the image comes to life! I am taken by surprise once again! I fall in love with my art, and keep falling deeper in love with Eleanor. ​ 

It’s been four years since Eleanor rested in my arms and we gazed into each other’s eyes. And oh how my heart misses her! Even as I feel joy, my heart expands and I feel my pain and my joy co-existing. One recent example, of joy and sadness coexisting, is Eliza’s completion of her first year of pre-school (going twice a week to a local church pre-school). I attended the celebration where the children sang songs and the older children ‘graduated.’ I almost could not bear the tension of my ever-widening joy for my daughter, Eliza and the pain of missing my other daughter and dear-heart, Eleanor. And now, as I write this I find myself having a little more spaciousness as I breathe more deeply, holding both my daughters in my heart.

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Artist: Janet Wepner

​I suppose in following my own loving support for others, it’s time to love myself and honor myself in acknowledging and owning, and coming fully alive… I am a writer. I am an artist. It’s not something I do, it’s something that comes and I am taken by. I truly feel in awe each time I create.
 
As you can tell, my paintings are a slow and organic process. Since I began, I have completed 3 pages and started a few others. 
 
With the summer solstice approaching, I feel our current season, as well as this season of my life, and I find myself being called towards coming fully alive; just as the fullness of summer berries come to fruition. If you feel this calling as well, I offer this poem that I read last week to my yoga students and one that I return to again and again.

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​Come, come, whoever you are.
Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving — it doesn't matter,
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vow a hundred times,
Come, come again, come.
 
 
“Come, come, whoever you are”
~Rumi

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And thank-you. Thank-you for participating, as a reader, in my work.

 by Janet Wepner