Your friends either suggest lithium or nod their heads and smile.
This is The Mountain that is the backdrop to the city of Hobart. I grew up under the shadow of The Mountain and one of the hardest things about moving inland was not being able to see the changing moods of The Mountain every day.
I haven’t been up the mountain by myself for a long time. As a young teenager I used to ride my horse all over the mountain, from Lenah Valley to Fern tree and back again. As an older teenager we used to drive up the mountain and light cooking fires with the wood provided in the huts. We would drink cheap wine and try to count the lights of the city below, before turning our attentions to more serious teenage concerns.
I have been feeling restless lately with a wistful yearning in my soul for something. The practical side of my nature ignores the fanciful and mockingly whispers that a midlife crisis isn’t a good look. Whilst a small part of me feels like crying out, “Can you see me? Can you tell me that I am not invisible?” I push the thought of any sort of crisis away and ponder instead what it means to be 45 and overweight in a society that worships at the altar of anorexic youth.
I am teetering here on the precipice of my next great adventure and as I spread my wings ready to leap, I am filled with an unbearable sadness that my mother isn’t here to help me on my way.
Mum would tell me that it is normal to feel like this at 45. That it is normal to have quiet moments where you feel old and ugly, withered and useless. That the drumming I hear in my ears is my biological clock banging away erratically and that I need to get my shit together and just ride it out and to remember that I am only invisible if I choose to be.
My grief has settled into a cycle, in tune with my own lunar cycle. The grumpy irritability of PMS has been mostly replaced by a week of tears and longing and introspection,which is annoying as I would much rather slam a door in anger and be done with the shitty mood, than reach for a box of tissues and cry like a child for my mother.
On a whim I drove up the mountain and had a good talk with the stones. I let their ancient energy wash over me and I opened my mind to who I am and what I do.
The stones told me that it is okay to feel old as long as I don’t act old. To remember who I am and where I come from and to not lose sight of where I am going. To remember the ley lines and to feel the power of the earth through my bare toes. I think that is half the problem, I have been wearing shoes for too much of this year and I am losing touch with that energy that only comes from walking barefoot in the garden.
I bought a small stone down from the mountain with me and I think it will make nice marks in the clay. I met a twitter friend the other day who gave me some bones to use as tools, in return I am going to make her a ceramic altar to hold her offerings from the sea.
This feels good.
When I just do what I am supposed to do without thinking too deeply, when I let the clay guide me and I rest in that sweet spot, that silent intuitive space, the work just flows and I feel complete.
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Trusting in yourself is often not only the right answer it is the only answer that will work for you. Nonetheless it is not an easy answer. It is so, so hard to do sometimes. As you say, as a culture we worship at the shrine of impossibly, unhealthily thin youth. And knowing it is impossible and unhealthy doesn’t change the culture.
From the outside you do amazing, creative and beautiful work. I hope your insides can mirror that image more often leaving you proud of your achievements. Hugs.
Thank you.
95% of the time I am fine,in fact I was told last year, that I needed to temper my aggressive overconfidence by one of my teachers lol. But for the other 5% of the time I just want my mum to tell me that my work is nice and that everything will be ok. I am also doing a research project on myself and in order to do the project justice I am examining myself closely, rather than doing a “Scarlett O’Hara” and declaring that I will think about that tomorrow.
I feel that way about trees. Finding time to go for a walk where there are trees is really important to me.
I am glad you had some time to go speak to the stones.
I understand that Marita, I like the trees as well (very much in fact) but they are a bit whispery and hard to hear.
Well your blog has not been appearing in my reader and I am sulking anyway I have found you have arrived in said reader in a very odd way so will have to look and find out what is going on.
I am 47 this year. I still get PMT but not period. Not for a couple of years. Blood work says I am not menopausal I don’t believe it to be true and think of conspiracy theories, from crazy doctors, the working mind of a peri menopausal woman. You do very much more than I but I get that, need to flee feeling, sometimes I suffocate with it, if that makes sense. I miss my grandmother she would have told me the same as your mother would have told you. Its not fair is it that neither are here.
How odd that at this age one craves the places frequented when young. I have an urge to sit on top of somewhere we called telegraph hill. I doubt I could get there now but the urge is still strong. To sit with the wind in my hair, breathing in life I suppose. I rarely talk of my other half on my blog as you know. I love him a lot but truthfully sometimes I want to scream at him, do something spontaneous, lets laugh together, notice ME. I look at myself in the mirror and see the middle aged me wondering how I have become so ……… My guess is a lot of this is hormonal, some of it is the acknowledgement that probably I have more to look back on than time left on the earth. I worry about wasting this time and want to throw stuff about the house, break a few plates but I don’t, anymore. There are places I will never go I know that now but I think I need to deal with a little bit of resentment towards my OH. Its not his fault I feel this way, he is happy but sometimes just sometimes I want to shout very very very loudly, lets do it differently lets spend the rest of our time together having loads and loads of fun. Apart from that things aren’t too bad.
So I understand this post. But then I am blessed to have found it in the first place.
The rocks are amazing. truly amazing. I spend quite a lot of time wondering if it would help if I had a creative outlet. Then I wonder if a bit of me is scared that to start would reveal, the real me. My sister gave me that book, you know, feel the fear and do it anyway. So I have some goals, which are supposed to be after a pain management course, achievable! Keep writing all this it helps me to creep nearer to letting out the creative monster inside me out!
I knew you would understand, we are soul sisters you and I. I will email you.
That was really powerful xoxox
I live not too far from the infamous Hanging Rock and it’s a very spiritual place for me. After losing two babies in a row I found myself up there after each separate event and left flowers each time to signify their existence.
I think the rock listened to my grief.
I have heard that Hanging rock is an incredibly powerful place. I am glad you found some sort of peace there Shae.
Oh wow! I read your post this morning and then later on today for no particular reason I found myself in the Goulburn St Gallery & I was struck by how many of the pieces hanging in there feature stones. I don’t know if I noticed them more because I’d read your post or if there just are a lot of stony pictures in there. One that really caught my eye was this photo http://goulburnst.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/binalong.jpg by Ian Jeanneret. i have neither the room nor the money for the full size version, so I bought the image on a card because I loved it so much.
I’m glad you’ve been able to find that ‘sweet spot’ where the work flows. It’s the best feeling isn’t it?
Synchronicity Barb. I am also into the boring bits of the work at the moment. Glazing and packing the kiln, working on new moulds, all the grunt work that goes on behind the scenes 🙂
Beautiful honest post, reaching the hearts of many I imagine, women who like you and me are travelling through the next phase of life. xxx
Thanks. I was interested to see what women my age had to say, if we were all feeling invisible? Or if it is just me being fragile.
This is a beautiful post and a beautiful place. I hope one day I can visit and hear the stones too.
I’m glad you listened to the stones. It is good that you are near them.
I can’t hear them, I wish I could.
One day I will come to England and Scotland and visit your stones.
It’s a very strange thing, the connection that we tend to form to the natural world around us. I have to confess I don’t really understand why it has such a powerful pull. When we came home from living in London we went to a local park with the kids. It’s a very special park with massive old gums (some of them so old and so rare in this land ravaged by the city built all over it that they have fences around them to protect them). I stood there, amongst the gums, breathing in that smell of Adelaide that I had never realised I was missing. A kookaburra sung out with it’s iconic laugh and my husband and I both turned to each other and said “This, this is what we have been missing, this is home, this is right”. We couldn’t get over how nourished our souls felt from being surrounded by those fragrant gums and the calls of the birds. It was magical.
I wonder, too, if I’ll ever be at peace with the workings of this woman’s body that I live in. My body is an unpredictable and badly behaved machine and just when I think things are settling into a familiar pattern something changes again. I am hoping that this last ovary surgery I had in Jan will signal the start of a long settled period. Women’s bodes are always in a state of change though, aren’t they?
To me you seem so in control of your journey. I know you’ve been through a lot in recent years that is sooo out of your control but I admire the way you express yourself through your art and focus your energies into that. I don’t think many people find a channel for self-expression like that in their lives. I hope you remember that each piece you create you put a little of yourself in. When you share them here they have a definite “Kim” feel about them (says the woman whose never actually met you) in the layers of colour and texture you give them. I hope that each one you give to makes your presence in the world a bit stronger and brighter.
I feel that whenever I fly back into Tassie, those first couple of breaths of cold Tasmanian air tell me that I am home. Mostly I am in control Ali, I am a very private person and the obvious incongruity of telling my secret fears to the internet isn’t lost on me. I needed to hear your thoughts about my work as you have one of my favourite pieces. Your response to my work is what I was looking for when I said I missed Mum telling me something I made was nice. Thank you Ali. I hope your body decides to behave itself but with EDS it isn’t always the case 🙁
You are so in touch with nature it makes me a little bit jealous. I also need to follow my intuition more often, I think. This little journey has given you peace of mind, and I’m sure it will inspire you in your work. I like that. The loss of your Mom still weighs heavy, doesn’t it?
Being in touch comes from living where I do Jientje, As well as wanting to be in tune I suppose. The loss of my Mum is horrible Jientje. The year of seconds in many ways has been much harder than the year of firsts. Though I am not crying myself to sleep quite as much as I did in the first year. I miss my mum dreadfully. I miss Mum’s energy, the way we would brainstorm and work out solutions to problems. A good example being when Amy was unable to eat gluten I know that Mum would have found a million new recipes for gluten free cakes and other yummy things that little girls like to eat. Mum was very proactive and hands on. It hurts me that Amy and Isaac wont know her and that Veronica doesn’t have that extra support.
Nature always has some good advice 🙂
Yes she does, Mena.
I know that whispering. I’ve been gone from my stones far too long.
Heavier than I’ve ever been, alone, and working to the point of .. well, I’ll leave that one alone.
I think it’s normal for women to feel this. And we should listen. Sometimes you have to follow your heart, even when everything typical of life says you shouldn’t.
I’m still running away. Come June I’ll be running away again, because my heart needs it. … needs something.
When rocks whisper to you, be glad you can hear them, because far too many people can’t. I feel bad for them.
There are places that bring us peace. As much as I love and crave the sun, Ireland is one of the places for me, especially in it’s farmlands.I cannot say why. Perhaps its the tales my mother told me when I was a child.
Here, it is Wollongong. From the day I set foot in its long, narrowed land, I knew it was home. It was where I healed, where I moved on from when I thought there were “riches” elsewhere. And whilst I would never have met my GOFA had I not moved, I miss it, that little piece of paradise and I cannot tell you why.
As for feeling old, just few years younger than you I am looking at myself wondering how I became this size and admonishing myself for letting it happen and becoming so unfit. Despite that, I am becoming kinder in letting myself realise that I am not Superwoman and that it’s really a choice about what is most important in life – exercise or the myriad other things. Everything is a choice and I have the controls.