Ending an unintended pause.

A life update and an apology.

It’s so weird trying to come back from the void of publishing for you in these times. Obviously there is no time like the present, but jeez. It feels a little unimportant in some ways when the danger and tyranny have come so close that we may be the ones who need to hold our own peace instead of in some far away place. Here in Canada we held our breaths this week because the outcome of a hockey game surely forecast our fate (we won that one… and remembered to breathe and get busy outside the arena this time no matter what Brene Brown says :)

But I’m sorry I haven’t written for you. I haven’t abandoned this project by any means, and that’s the funny part. I just haven’t been able to talk about it for a while? I’ve been thinking about all the why’s of that and thought I’d start there.

I’ve figured out that this project is so big and fiction is new and important to me that I need to feel safe to share about how I’m getting on—especially when it is hard. And I’ve been struggling since I moved back to Canada from Scotland, unfathomably almost two years ago now. I swear time does not move inside me according to the standard version. I came back full of ideas and things I wanted to do and to be brutally honest it has been a financial train wreck. I was naive when I planned. And struggling is not a place conducive to me doing creative work that frightens me. I’m sure that will be familiar to some of you.

I realized that I also cut out one of the more comfortable parts of writing for me, that served as a gateway to working, which is the part where I wrote about the context of me and process for me. Even the shitty bits where nothing is happening. I felt like I had taken that groove of writing away from myself. I kept telling myself that you didn’t subscribe to hear about a 52 year old woman newly confronting poverty and the difficulty of pivoting life experience and industries at this point in life. As an over achiever my whole life it has been such a blow to not have my other work skills translate. It’s also been a blessing because of course I don’t fit! And I’m not supposed to. I’m the one that got three feral years on the west coast of Scotland to connect deeply to myself and my generativeness. To become this version of me that has a lot to offer. Time to stop fighting that and make a living through new things. And recently I figured out how to do that through my work at Permission Granted.

And when I have not been able to write or speak instead I have been painting. When I was young and before I had words so conveniently at my disposal, I used painting for expression and processing and healing and silence. For some reason the voice in my head can’t speak when I am making things (or walking in nature). And many of you lovely people have purchased some of that work—thank you! It has brought the words back.

So I’ve been pulling myself out of this impact hole of rerooting myself in the landscape of my girl-hood through art and helping other people take actions in their own scary important work. And that has made things better. I’m focussing on getting through some health challenges (a broken foot that needed surgery and some early onset cataracts that called for brain scans and diabetes tests—all clear and grateful for universal health care). So like the exterior world it has been a lot.

But as CS Lewis wrote in the Chronicles of Narnia as the grip of winter was loosened from the land— “Aslan is on the move.” The sap is quickening and I feel more like myself than I have in a while. I have lots of wonderful research to share with you including lessons in medieval script making and some of the latest research about Iona and the artists of the Book of Kells.

Until next time, which will be soon, thank you for sticking with me.

Susie

One of my recent painting playing with Stonehenge and the Milky Way. You can see all of my available work at www.SLSourwine.com. I’ve made this one into a beautiful notebook too!