Last time a posted was two years to the date, and I talked about an ongoing desire to reinvent myself. I had been lucky in that through most of my life I had not much loss to speak of. That changed in the last two years in ways I could have never imagined.
My mother passed away last year, it was unexpected, which means she had not been sick and she ultimately died on her own terms and was never in a situation she did not want. Meanwhile, my husband had an Alzheimer’s diagnosis that hit our small family unit like a ton of bricks. After two relatively stable years, the illness progression accelerated, and he ultimately passed away a month ago, on the eve of my daughter’s departure to start her freshman year of college. To say it has been intense is an understatement.
During the last two years, my clay work took the second place. I kept my production to the minimum to keep the galleries stocked and to participate in the annual studio tour in Ojai, my home city.
I find myself now in a place of longing for a lost partner (I really dislike thinking of myself as a widow!) and as an empty nester. A place of void, a void that offers a world of possibilities to be filled with.
My sadness coexists with a renewed sense of freedom and the opportunity to revisit that desire of reinvention and to bring back my clay work to the first place.
I’m curious to see the effect that these life changing events will have in my work, and in the way I live.
Onwards!