Staying connected to joy when the world falls apart // A Cheerful Print Shop Update

A week ago – real-time, not corona time-warp time – I had to cancel the shoot that would have turned into the next collection in the Cheerful Print Shop. (A little bit of backstory: At the end of last year, I shared plans in my newsletter and on instagram to launch four new collections into the shop in 2020. The first one, The Deep End, was launched in January.) This second collection was one I’d been dreaming about for a year, and had poured in loads of emotional and physical energy and resources to plan and produce.

The planning had even seemed serendipitous – which always feels equal parts exciting and reassuring that I’m doing the next right thing. The friend who was going to go with me to help make the photos and be in them happened to be available only two weekends in March, one of which was the weekend of my birthday and, I found out after making travel plans for the shoot, there would also be a poppy festival taking place in the town we’d be traveling to…and this year was supposed to be ideal for a lush poppy bloom to boot. In my head, I envisioned us doing the shoot and dancing in fields of poppies and frolicking in the sunshine we were both desperately craving and having a magical time.

So when shit started getting real last week (in Austin) and social distancing became a thing we were all doing, I fought internally and resisted canceling for several anxiety-filled days and sleepless nights, bargaining that we could still go and maintain social distance while traveling, avoiding restaurants and social situations because we’d be outside and in a remote place and could use Instacart to get groceries delivered and wipe down everything we touched with wet wipes (listen, my imagination is really, really good at working around obstacles and restrictions which makes me good at dreaming up new things to make but also can lead me to believe I can/should do things that are NOT RATIONALLY GOOD THINGS TO DO). Deciding what to do next felt like an impossible choice – was the tradeoff of risking traveling worth avoiding the grief I knew would come in a tidal wave if I gave up my carefully laid plans to be able to touch joy – joy I’d been living for for months?

I feel like this is where I have to acknowledge that there’s a part of me that sees how trite and petty this might sound. Logically, I know that my joy and happiness in traveling to make things, and even the success of my business, aren’t worth the societal risk right now. But the grief of letting go and canceling my dreams was real and hard and just as painful as anticipated. The sense of loss was all-consuming; all of the months of building up courage to create again, of shutting down resistance day in and day out to be able to keep going, of finally getting to a place where I felt excited and energized again by plans and goals, and then in an instant having to delete those hard-won plans and goals because they were for an alternate reality that didn’t come to pass, a future that felt full of being able to fulfill my deepest desires for adventure and experiencing the abundant beauty the world has to offer that now, at best, gets put on hold. I fully mourned that loss and shed buckets full of tears for it.

It’s a mighty challenge to try to continue building a new thing when the rest of the world is falling down and coming to a full stop around you. And I know that this is not unique to me – I’ve watched authors cancel book tours of their highly anticipated new releases, work they’ve poured months and years into making and fully deserves to be honored; other creatives canceling workshops that their hearts dreamed up as ways to help and connect with others; couples canceling and rescheduling weddings – celebrations of life and love that they’ve planned to share with their closest people. It truly helps, seeing that we’re all in this together, and I feel so grateful to everyone who has been vulnerable enough to share their heartache publicly.

Once I let go of the future I had imagined, it became easier to accept the one that was actually coming toward me. The first piece to deal with was finding a way to just create SOMETHING, to give myself a way to experience joy and fulfill my artist needs. I follow a local flower farm/florist on instagram (@Petals_Ink), who had an abundance of flowers to sell after SXSW and weddings were canceled, so I decided to order a market bouquet as a way to bring wonder and beauty and joy into our home – flowers are always the fastest way to that for me, most especially spring time flowers. And as a delightful synchronicity, they happened to include a small bunch of poppies as an added extra, which made my heart feel full even though I couldn’t go physically be with the wild poppies as planned. I arranged them on my birthday and spent an hour making photos of them that helped nurture the part of myself that needs to feel wild and joyful to survive.

I suppose this is exactly what I’ve been amassing tools for – how can I touch joy amidst grief and pain and suffering? How can I (responsibly) be or make something wild when the world screams BE SAFE? How can I continue to grow, while the rest of the world contracts? I cannot turn these deepest needs of my soul off. So, I have to find another way.

(AND. Here’s where I need you to know that you don’t have to force joy or force yourself to feel good right now. What I can tell you is that on the days that I felt all the pain and fear, I made a promise to myself that I would not abandon myself. I would do whatever felt comforting and nurturing and I would sit with the pain and the fear until I passed through it. And after a lot of journaling, and breathwork, and meditating, and reading fiction, and talking to actual humans instead of listening to the social media mafia, it did pass. I know that it will for you too – you will find the place of joy and happiness and forward motion again, and it doesn’t have to be today or even this week or even while this is happening.)

I don’t know when I’ll be able to make new collections for the print shop or even if I’ll be able to release three more collections this year. But as I was walking our dog yesterday (around our neighborhood and keeping distance), a neighbor’s bumper sticker caught my eye. It said, “Make things that make things better.” I may not be able to make the new things I want to make in this moment, but I’ve been making things that make me feel better all this time, and maybe those are the things that can help someone else feel better now. For today, it’s as simple as sharing these flowers and maybe, hopefully, these words that I dearly wish find and speak to the places in you that need to hear them to be less alone or sad or afraid.

More to come soon…