I took my first art class.

When it was my turn to introduce myself to the class today, I took a deep breath and exhaled jaggedly, “I finished my Camino de Santiago two weeks ago and don’t really know who I am anymore.” As unexpected smiles broke across the faces of the women perched on art room stools, they leaned in to get a closer look or so it felt. I explained my decades long crush on printmaking, the lore of starting a sewing business at 22 and running a craft show that traveled around the city, the hope that tapping into a new season of creativity on the cusp of my fortieth birthday would help me leave my work at work and fill my evenings with something soulful. The part I didn’t say out loud? I’m looking for artful rebellion, daily acts of resistance as compassionate combat in a hopeless world, community built by rooms of women as I decenter relationships with men to build a life that’s sustaining and self-inspiring, and rest for the conflict between me and, well, inner me. At the tail end of my thirties, I’ve ended the war within myself. I want to feel joy.

The days since I returned from my 200 mile pilgrimage have been quiet, blurry from exhaustion and disoriented from jet lag. Daylight Savings Time happened in North America while I was away, bringing me home to afternoon darkness and all persistent gray during the day. Not remembering the last time I saw the sun, I start taking Vitamin D again, tiny translucent tablets that stick to the sides of the bottle and roll out of my hand and onto the floor when I try to shake them loose. I woke up last Sunday morning and made a pair of pants, drove to the chiropractor before work yesterday, cracked open the book Wintering by Katherine May that’s been sitting on my bookshelf since spring. I move through my home tenderly, test the recovery of my battered feet, and crawl into bed just after dinner with my elderly cat tucked into the crook of my arm. My routines have freshly found me, but nothing’s the same. I lost my sense of identity somewhere early on, perhaps on the boardwalk, on the breaker wall along the coast of northern Portugal where I cried one morning into my coffee watching rainbows rise from the Atlantic Ocean wearing my ex-boyfriend’s gloves.

My relationship to perfectionism comes into view on my walk, the paralyzing fear of not knowing how to do most things right, of needing to visualize the end result in my mind’s eye before I start the process, of finally realizing that the process is the end result. Myself as a little girl walks along side me, I recognize her soft features under the heaps of praise piled atop her, weighing her down with amazing, creative, inspiring expectative, performative adjectives. I grab her hand and pull her to the surface. She’s only ever wanted to be noticed, loved for being ordinary, helped without begging. Before I left for this trip, a close friend told me that people don’t know how to love me, later tells me that the writing I share sounds extractive in an attempt to sell my authenticity for a profit. I cry softly in my car, feeling sorry for my inner child telling the story that even telling the truth about how she feels isn’t executed quite right, that the honesty she offers relationships is too direct, confronting, perplexing. Do things less well so people feel like they have a chance with you, I’ve heard through the years. “Do things less well” I thought as I rolled ink across the plastic square, the makeshift linoleum block, and traced a flower outline with a q-tip. As if I’m not making everything up as I go along.

This morning I slide a knife gingerly down a bar of cacao shaving little bits into a pile that will melt with intention in a mug of hot water. I add a dash of cinnamon and a swirl of maple syrup, inhale its earthiness deep into my lungs and let it out with an open-mouthed sigh, a breath I’ve been holding for years. Cupped into both hands, I close my eyes and see a quick image of myself wearing imaginary glasses, feel into the sensation of the steam fogging the lenses and smile. Mentally, I track the ebb and flow of my breath, a mindfulness practice I offer at the start of each yoga class I teach as a means to quiet the world cartwheeling outside of the self. A train rumbles by, but I wear earplugs these days to muffle extraneous sound so it sounds like a tremble instead. The mug is warm. The cat asleep at my left knee snores.

What if I got really honest with myself about my capacity to show up in the world wholly and, well, fragmented too? I’ve been turning the edges of perfectionism gently in my fingers. Recognition of its protection, its safety as I consider the rebellion of unmasking, the vulnerability of exposing myself as someone whose needs outweigh their resources and energy. If I’m honest about the help, assistance, accommodation I need, is there anyone willing to listen? Fear arises from a place deep in my belly like that thick smear of black ink across the glass in that printmaking class. Do I actually know anyone capable of, resourced enough to accommodate me?

Internalized ableism.

I watched a tiktok today where the creator writes that she prioritizes un-productivity. A friend posts a reel asserting she wants to be unhurried when she grows up. Last night, in a friend group face-time, we shared in the analogy that healing feels like peeling back the layers of an onion to reveal more tender and flavorful parts. I think of onion skins I discard in my compost, the shell they provided to protect those parts, how I give no after thought once their usefulness has been spent. The skin we shed feels painful to strip as well, but the revelation of the tender layers inside bring us into new connections, states of consciousness, revelatory existence. We blossom when we’re not pushed to prematurely unfurl and that Divine timing is the pace of nature.

I google images to carve for next week’s class, answer the backdoor when the landlord comes to check the heat, marvel at the first snow falling purposefully towards the earth where it will lay protectively over the fallow ground. “How’s the post-camino abyss?” a friend asks as that face-time starts last night. They smile as I share. “You’re right where you need to be.” It’s all surrender from here.

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