The End of the Angry Quilt

A few months ago I wrote about the mystery of the quilt my mother wouldn’t make for me. She stopped and started the quilt for more than 20 years. The part of the story that confounded me was that for the years my mom was in dementia care and in the years since she died, no one has been able to complete the quilt. People want to take it, but once they have it, their energy wanes.

Double wedding ring quilt, from SarcasticBlogger

Something happens to each person who offers to work on the quilt. Months or years after I hand the quilt over, I get it back, stuffed into a black trash bag and handed back quickly, as if it were an illegal transaction. Or one of mourning.

After I wrote about the quilt, many readers made kind and thoughtful suggestions (you can read that blog post here) of what I should do with the quilt. Some offered to make me a new quilt, which was touching and amazing to me.

There were also a few mothers with difficult daughters who wondered if I might have been on the other end of the perspective. Maybe.  And at the end, I promised to tell you what I would do with the quilt.

I’ve thought about it for a long time. Here’s what we know: The colors (Williamsburg blue and milk chocolate brown with touches of ivory and burnt orange) are not a palette I’d choose. (Notice I’m not saying it wouldn’t match my walls or the couch–I don’t think art has to do that). The calico my mother used was not the cotton of today, and the fabric has degraded over the years.

I took the quilt to meditation and was struck by three shockingly clear facts:

1. The proof, rather than the quilt, was what I was after. I wanted my mother to love me, and prove it by making me a quilt. She made quilts for so many others, why not me? That idea set many years ago, and I never questioned it. When I did, the answer was–my mother did not finish the quilt. I need to accept that as I have accepted the other truths that didn’t taste great the more I chewed on them.

2. If the quilt were finished, what, exactly, did I want to do with it?  I did not want it to cover my bed. Don’t like the color, the design is incomplete, and it would be a reminder of the whole story of loss, every day.

3. The fate of the quilt would be to lie folded in a box in the garage, degrading some more until I pass it on to a relative whose history it doesn’t fit, and who does not need to continue the story.

It took a long time for me to mourn what I did not have and to decide on the next step. Part of my business is designing rituals for others. I join people in marriage or commitment; create and perform sacred ceremonies; end of life transitions; house selling, moving and new home blessings; even new job celebrations. What I needed was a ritual for letting go of the quilt. Vicky, one of my readers, has left the comment, “Burn it.” When I read it, I was shocked. And I knew she was right.

The quilt has served its purpose, and it is time to transition the quilt to another use. I am going to bundle it up, write a letter to my mother, releasing her go of the obligations to complete this quilt or  prove she loves me. I will then burn the quilt and letters and save the ashes. The ashes will be mixed with water-soluble varnish and distilled water and become ink. I’ll use the ink to record the history of the quilt in a journal. My mother was the quilter. I am the writer, and the quilt will find a purpose in the way I know how to use it. The lessons of the quilt can be passed on

• No one can be forced to love you.
• “If you loved me you would. . . .” is a sentence that is about control, not love.
• Loving yourself starts when you accept yourself and know you cannot change the past. Everything else comes after that.

When the day comes to burn the quilt, I will invite people to create their own ceremonies of letting go–of failed love, of regret, of a loss that won’t heal. Whether you burn old love letters or set your sorrows afloat, tied to a stick that you drop into a river, it will be a day to celebrate your own strength.

Take photos and write your stories, and we will create a blog chain of support and celebrate the power of letting go. I’m thinking that October is a good month to do this. I’ll remind you from time to time about your plan, so you will be ready. It will feel incredible light and right to let go.

–Quinn McDonald is a creativity coach and writer. Her word for this year is “let go.”

Look Where You Want to Go

I ride a motorcycle. Before I bought the first one, I took a class on how to ride safely. (If I’m going to do something that’s inherently dangerous, taking a class first makes sense). Our class was a motley crew of geezers, younger punks, wealthy touring bike-types and regular people who like to ride.

In these standardized safety classes, you don’t bring a bike, you ride a small provided bike. I had the odd feeling that these bikes were confiscated or had been ridden into an accident. Bent fenders, scrapes and odd color combinations attested to hard use. I was on a tiny, banged up model. I felt like a bear on a bike.

Helmets are expensive, but wear one anyway. Neurosurgery is more expensive.

Class rules demand that everyone wear a helmet, gloves, heavy jeans, a jacket, and boots above the ankle. Did I mention the class was August in D.C.? Even at 7 a.m., we thought we were taking lessons in a dog’s mouth.

The instructor said, “Now we are going to learn how to go around corners and make sharp turns. How do you think we do that?” Half the class turned the handlebars and  promptly fell over. A non-moving bike likes to lie down. That often comes as a surprise to the rider.

The instructor rolled his eyes, and said, “Never turn the *&$%&^% handlebars to go around a corner! You LOOK where you want to go. The bike will follow. Always. Look. Where. You. Want. To. Go.”

He was right, of course. When we look ahead to where we want to go, our body automatically makes small adjustments to get us there. On a bike, you lean into the curve, and your hand and arm closest to the turn automatically pushes the handlebars down on that side, guiding the bike through the curve.

Creativity works the same way. We make tiny decisions that take us where we look. We press down, our thoughts go where we look. That’s why it’s important to look ahead where you want to go creatively. Because looking at failure is as easy as looking at success. But failure is a very different trip.

What are you looking at on your journey today?

--Quinn McDonald rides a motorcycle. She’s also a creativity coach. Those two facts are more closely related than is obvious.

What’s Next?

My coaching clients know that question: What’s next for you?
So I thought I’d answer that for the blog–what’s coming up in the blog?

The cover of the new book.Yep, that’s a piece of my artwork on the front–as an extreme close up. © Quinn McDonald 2013.

First, some nice news: Amazon.com has the Inner Hero book cover up. And they are taking pre-orders–seven months before the book launch! I’m excited and shaking my head at the same time. OK, I’m more excited.

1. Announcing the winners of the coaching. Did not get to it tonight, will put it at the top of the to-do list for a Saturday announcement.

2. The poetry workshop. Still working on it. And alas, somewhere in Tucson, someone has found the book and the notes in the book for the class. The hand-written ones. The ones that were not yet in the computer.  I have no idea where I vanished it, but I did. Dropped it, left it, forgot it–it’s just as gone one way as another. So I’ve ordered the lost book and two more (I couldn’t resist) and will re-create the notes.

3. Book giveaways. I’m reading through two books for review and give-aways. One will be an art how-to, and the other a coaching book.

4. A few scattered quiet days. I’m re-designing the website and blog site to go with the book launch. It needs to be done, and when I’m doing that, I have set limits how many hours a day I work. Also on that to-do list is the e-book for creating a new habit (from a blog series on walking, meditating and journaling last year). Three big training projects are in the mix–in my life away from the blog. One is due in two weeks, and it’s a big book. The other two are in outline stage. Both need some intensive work.

5. An article about estivating in Phoenix. Estivating is the summer version of hibernating. I have a version of seasonal affective disorder that starts in summer, when being outside is brutal. But there are a few precious moments, and I’m sharing.

–Quinn McDonald is busy, but she’s smiling.

A Million Views–and a Giveaway

Photo: Lickthebowlgood.com

Yes, it’s happened. My blog passed a million views yesterday. That number sounds amazing to me. Oh, I know that the blog is six years old, and a million views isn’t record-breaking. Not the point. For me, it means that people keep coming back, looking at older pages, waiting for new pages. A million views.

It makes me happy and grateful that people have found me, stuck around, left and come back, and posted insightful, interesting comments.

So it’s time to celebrate! I’m giving away two, one-hour creativity coaching sessions. If I receive more than 60 comments, I’ll do one free coaching for every 30 comments left, and choose the winners from among the first, the middle and the last groups of comments.

Photo by Lynn Viehl

The coaching is not a demos. Real-life, get-down-to-the-issues creativity coaching session. Want to tackle your inner critic? Good idea. How about choosing your next project and starting it? Or taking a look at your perfectionism? It’s your choice. It’s a one-hour session, either by phone or Skype, and it is my gift to you. No charge, no sales pitch, just coaching.

If you’ve ever wanted to experience creativity coaching, this is your chance. You will experience the feeling of support and possibility, perhaps even a moment of clarity and a breakthrough. It depends on what you bring into the session, and I am excited to have the experience of free-form coaching again.

Here’s the small print: We’ll choose a time that works for both of us. You will initiate the call. If we use Skype, it will be computer to computer and without video. International entries are encouraged, if you have a computer and a Skype account (which is free).

Thanks so much for continuing to read my blog and celebrate with me!

--Quinn McDonald is thinking, “A million views. Wow.”

Photo credit: Cake:  Lickthebowlgood.com Spring challenge.
Sparkler: Lynn Viehl, photographer.

The Mother You Didn’t Have

If you spent more than 15 minutes looking for a Mother’s Day card because reading the sentimental ones made you feel like a hypocrite, sad, or guilty, welcome to today’s blog.

Prickly plant seedhead.

If your childhood was happy and you had a mother who gave you everything you needed and no card is sweet enough, today’s blog is not for you. And most likely, you are with your mom, being happy.

Anna Jarvis, who invented American Mother’s Day in 1908 was angered by the commercialization by the early 1920s. So you are not alone if you think the holiday is a lot of hype for cards and candy. Most likely, that’s not your heartache. You never had the mother you wanted. The one who comforted you and praised you and loved you when you were unlovable and  helped without anger when you sewed the pieces of your gingham skirt together backwards. Twice.

Maybe you chose not to be a mother and everyone asks you why, or you wanted to be a mother and it didn’t happen for you and you are still pretending that’s just fine.

It’s complicated. Whether your mother was cruel or uncaring or clueless, the pain is there. If your mother is still alive, you probably won’t be able to have the big turnaround, awakening and happy ending your friends keep promising you. If your mother is dead, you may replay scenes, wondering if you had acted differently, if the results would have been different. You’ll never know, but a wild guess tells me No. Some things can’t be changed, fixed, or healed. And never by one person. Two people, a mother and her child, might be able to cobble together a relationship, but it’s hard.

The relationships between mothers and daughters is always hard. There is unwritten jealousy between age and experience and youth and naivete. There is anger in lost opportunities and unmet expectations.  For some, the fact that you were a daughter was enough of a disappointment to fill a lifetime. I ran across this quote yesterday, whose poignancy was hard to read:

“Remember that every son had a mother whose beloved son he was, and every woman had a mother whose beloved son she wasn’t. ” – Marge Piercy

But here is a truth you might want to hear right now, today, on Mother’s Day. You cannot be anyone else except the person you are today, with all your faults, experiences, hardships, joys, stumbles, successes and backslides. That is also true of your mother. No matter what happened, your awareness and work brought you to where you are today.

And starting today, you can choose to be generous and kind and patient. Maybe

The long shadow doesn’t have to haunt you.

not with your mother, but with the women who surround you. The ones who work with you and don’t meet your expectations. The pretty ones who get promoted ahead of you.  The ones who don’t take the opportunities you wanted and they have the freedom to turn down. All those women you meet on your path during the day. You can swallow the angry remark. You can wish them well. You can choose not to judge. That is your choice now. And choosing that freedom instead of choosing retribution is worth celebrating. Today and every day.

–-Quinn McDonald’s mother has been dead for almost 10 years, and the shadow still falls across the path on some days.

Making Handmade Paper

Thistles are blooming now, but in a few weeks, the thistle down will be ready for gathering.

Note: The winner of the T-shirt from the Madeline Island School of the Arts is BirdingBesty! Congratulations! Thanks also for leaving a comment on the poetry class blog.

*     *     *     *     *
Up in the hills of Oro Valley, North of Tucson (AZ) in a purple and turquoise studio, we made paper. Handmade paper was my first real art love many years ago. I allowed myself to think like an artist. I became an artist.  Taking a class  all these years later was a wonderful experience. Val Bembenek is the Paper Art Lady, and she was our instructor. Val gathers desert plants–thistledown, yucca, agaves. When she travels up North, she gathers cattails , irises, and grasses. And she saves pineapple, cornhusks, onion skins, and artichoke to make paper.

Val had the vats of beaten fiber ready for us and for two days we made gourmet paper (hops and artichoke was lovely) and wild grass paper. It was pure satisfaction. She let us have the run of the studio. Our places were set up with everything we needed and we could make paper till the fiber ran out. And there was plenty of fiber.

L to R, bottom row: thistledown, iris, corn silk in abaca. Top row, L to R: ocotillo flower in iris, iris with silk ribbon bits, abaca with hibiscus flowers.

I made a whole stack of paper:

And when I got home and spread the papers on the hot patio to dry, one of the cats ignored the art aspect and just used the paper to cool her tummy:

I have some collage plans and maybe a book-making plan for the paper. Too many people never use their handmade paper, and the real beauty for art is to see it in use.

–Quinn McDonald has never stopped loving paper making or making bowls out of handmade paper.

Creativity and the Sunday Sermon

Meg is a creative force in my life. We’re not the same religion, not even close, not

The Mender’s home on Sundays.

even on the same planet, religion-name-wise, but we are sisters of soul restoration. Meg is deeply creative and stitches her creativity into the lives of those who pass by. She catches a raveled edge of fear and smooths it back into the fabric of a life. She sees a button of calm about to unravel and fall into anger and stitches it back onto the soul to hold the garment of strength buttoned to the edge of calm. Meg is a creative mender of souls.

Meg is a Baptist minister and I  . . . am not. I had quick ideas about what “Baptist Minister” meant, just like people had quick ideas about looking at me and thinking “fat, her own fault.” So I put down fast judgment and took a deeper look at the mender’s heart.

This morning I visited, via the interwebs, Meg’s church. I read her sermon, called God’s Laundry. And there I met healing for the Boston Marathon, for Connecticut’s dead, for the mess of killing and anger and hatred we are stewing in. I watched her mending needle darn its way between unraveled hearts and love. Meg’s dream, told, is what deep writing is about.

I struggle with Hope, as I think it gives false security. And I struggle with Faith, because it is hard for me to accept without question. But I did not struggle with this loving dream, told at the right time. I thought you would enjoy it, too, no matter what religion you are. Interpret it in your own way, it still comes out to creative love.

—Quinn McDonald didn’t ask Meg about this before publishing it. Quinn is vaguely aware that if she is struck by lightning today, it will be for her lack of religion. She steadfastly believes however, that she is walking in creative love because, while not religious, she is a believer in doing spiritual laundry.

Saturday Creative Stroll

Serena Barton has a just-released book on one of my favorite topics: wabi sabi. The Japanese esthetic honors the worn, the old and the weathered. Her book is on making art that honors wabi-sabi. It just arrived in my mailbox, so I have just glanced at it, but I’m already happy I ordered it.

You’ll find a nice selection of her art on her site, including some collages, encaustics and mixed media pieces.

Elizabeth LeCourt lives and works in London, creating quirky illustrations and some interesting fashions. After a fashion. She constructs dresses out of antique maps, and that’s always fascinating to look at. And wonder about.

One of Daniel Barreto’s houses embedded in a tree.

If you like small houses, you will fall in love with the art of 21 year old Boston, MA based illustrator Daniel Barreto. His houses are carved into hidden  trees deep in the woods. Their windows, glowing with light in the snowy forest night is mysterious and haunting.

If I thought I had trouble ginning myself up for a head shot, Wes Naman must have scared his subjects out of their wits. Naman is a photographer, and for this series on faces, he wrapped his subjects in Scotch tape, wildly distorting their faces before he grabbed the camera. It looks like collage of plastic surgery gone wrong, but it’s compelling. OK, just a teensy bit creepy, too. Art’s job is to upset the apple cart, not re-arrange the fruit plate.

Hong Yi works in . . . coffee. She does  detailed, realistic portraits in coffee stains. Prefer tea? No worries, she does those, too. Her name, Hong, sounds like the word Red in Mandarin, so her website is called Red. From her website: “Red is a Malaysian artist-architect.  She also loves how a colour can stir up conflicting emotions – one of love and passion, and of danger and sacrifice.” She has a big variety of art on her website.

Have a creative weekend!

–Quinn McDonald is at the Women’s Expo in Phoenix this weekend, demoing art projects for Arizona Art Supply.

Learning and Selling by Seeing

In another part of my life, I’m a training developer. I create programs that teach business people how to write documents, presentations, even emails. Of all the topics I get asked to teach, the one I never would have guessed is at the top of the list: grammar. Grammar is rarely taught in elementary or middle school

Diagramming a sentence from Homework Help at About.com

anymore, so tomorrow’s leaders have to learn syntax and grammar quickly. And that’s what I do–invent creative ways to make grammar interesting.

When I call the Inner Hero book “my second book,” it’s with a touch of irony. In the last year, I’ve written half a dozen workbooks on technical writing, grammar, email communication and creative problem solving. But they aren’t sold in bookstores, so I rarely mention them.

Last week a client said something that made a lot of sense to me. “We offer a lot of classes, and we want people to take grammar, but they have to see the value in it. And grammar sounds boring.” Yes, yes, it does. She said, wistfully, “I wish you could do a cartoon instead of the outline of what’s in the class.” What a great idea my client had! So I sat down with the “boring” outline and made it visual.

We are visual people, and looking at something colorful and interesting makes grammar less threatening. Looking at a busy, colorful “map” of the course is a better way to sell it than an outline.

When I was done, I did one for Business Writing, too. I hope it helps the visual people see the benefit of the class.

Using visual creative tools to explain everyday topics shows the utility in a new, fresh, appealing way. The client knows her audience. And now I have a new tool in my training tool box, too.

-–Quinn McDonald loves blending the different parts of her life through creative problem solving.

No Safety Guarantees

After the police arrested the Marathon Bomber in Boston, one of the students interviewed said, “Now we can go back to our life. We don’t have to be scared anymore. There is nothing to fear.” He’s so very wrong. The idea that two bombers caught make the problem go away is a false one. And every time a terrorist attack occurs, we (understandably) want it to be over so we can have our lives back. Go back to what we were doing before we had to think about dying. But that isn’t real, and our lives have changed forever already. There is no going back. There is no closure. People died. People had their legs blown off.

And still, there is a huge difference between living IN fear and living WITH fear. When we live with fear, we understand the world around us is unsteady and not in our control. We promote kindness, compassion and understanding because that is what we can do at the individual level. We understand that death is not within our control, and that someday we, our family and friends will die–maybe of old age, maybe of disease, maybe because a terrorist bomb found us.

Fear, from beaconblog.com

When we live in fear, we become suspicious, angry and controlling. We trade essential freedoms for the hope of safety, and wind up with missing freedoms and no guarantee of safety.  We refuse to think about death as anything except a cruel cheat, and something that happens to others. And we lose our creativity.

Fear is the big scourge of creativity. Fear robs us of flexibility, agility, choices, and the glory of uncertainty. When we live in fear, uncertainty is the enemy (along with almost everything else.) Instead of spending time in creative thinking, we spend time in isolation, developing rationalizations for “them” and “us” thinking. Anything different, unusual, or non-conforming is suspicious, maybe even dangerous.

The very root of creativity is in different, risky, and strange. There are many countries whose citizens have had to adapt to war–Somalia, the Sudan, Mali, Palestine, Israel, Pakistan, Afghanistan–all have innocent citizens whose lives are directed by war they don’t want, and don’t agree with. But yet, there they are, in the middle of a war, still trying to feed the family and provide a normal life for their children.

Creativity is both exciting and calming, involved in giving up and expanding anew. But let fear in the studio, and it vanishes. Fear makes you small. It takes courage to be creative. But it’s worth it.

—Quinn McDonald’s mother was lost to fear. She doesn’t want to follow in those footsteps.