Unfurling

It’s an in-between time of year. There was a freeze last night and my outside plants are now surrounding me inside my warm home. They think it’s Spring. They’re  eager to grow and bloom. They are unfurling into a new season.

Liminal Space is a concept I learned about this past hurricane season. It’s a time of in-between. It’s a sacred space. It’s a time of waiting, when you know things are changing, but they haven’t changed yet. It is often a time of discomfort, because all you know is that the life you know is unfurling. And you don’t know what the present is going to grow into.

I am in a season of unfurling. I am on the eve of retirement. I haven’t picked a date, but it is coming. I am not sure of what it will look like for me.

We measure time in hurricanes down here in the Deep South. August was the 16^th Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. A storm that permanently changed lives forever. We eat and drink and dance to excess here because we know it could all be blown away tomorrow. I came across the following words I wrote on the hot August morning after Hurricane Ida blew itself across Louisiana.

“I’m sitting on my front porch in the early dawn hours. The storm has moved on. It is quiet. The power is out and the sound of generators have not yet filled the air. The yard is filled with layers of green debris. I see my neighbor’s home has lost a bit of roof, but no blue tarp is needed. Another’s siding has come loose and is making a crackling sound in the wind. I can now see the studs on the fireplace chimney of the neighbor who has let his home decay over the last decade. A few industrious neighbors have already drug tree limbs to the front yard to eventually be picked up by some city service.

There’s no phone, no internet, no work today, no one walking or running by, no walking of dogs, or visiting of neighbors with new babies in strollers. I see my zinnias have been flattened to the ground, bringing a premature end to their summer glory. All I really know is how lucky I am.

I do not know how bad things are yet in Louisiana. Or if we dodged yet another bullet. So I sit in this quiet, sacred time, and am thankful for this present moment.”

We are all living in a Liminal Space.

When the pandemic eventually blows over, no one knows what the world will look like. It has been an unsettling time to work in healthcare. My life in unfurling as I transition from work to retirement. I feel great relief that I am leaving that work life. It is a sacred time as I imagine where my creative journey will take me.

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Saying Yes to Your Dreams

I knew the process of creating and publishing my book would evolve in unexpected ways. One of the main takeaways that I write about in the book is to follow the path where your creativity guides you. It’s good to have a plan, but your creative spirit may alter the plan in surprising ways.

I just wrote the 6-week process book on this, so you think I’d really understand this? Right? Well…I had to relearn it this past week. It can be challenging to accept the gifts the Universe tries to give you.

Growing Your Creativity, The Live Your Life with Joy Workbook is about to burst forth into the world. I had the final details to put in the book, which I was going to do this weekend, in order to give my printer, plenty of time before my December 1 deadline. I had just promoted my book launch and party on social media on Tuesday.

On Wednesday I got a call that my church was having an Artisan’s Bazaar on Sunday and I should be a part of it. My immediate thought was, “No, my book isn’t ready.” But I ran to my printer to see if he could rush out a few copies and he said yes. That evening I made the final edits and prepped the files for printing. On Thursday morning, before I had even brought the files to my printer, I got another call from another friend. She was unavoidably out-of-town and did I want her exhibition booth at Saturday’s big event, the Louisiana Book Festival!

Wow! I knew this was a gift and still surprisingly my immediate thought was, “No, I can’t”. I didn’t have enough books and I had a weekend packed with chores that needed to be done. But yet again, I ran to my printer to see if I could get enough books and again he said yes.

I’m one of those people, who doesn’t know what they are thinking until I say it out loud, so I voiced my concerns to my co-workers, who know my book journey. I was told, “Connie, you’re ready, your next year plans have just started early, forget the weekend chores, follow your dream”.

So, I said yes.

Because I had done the prep work, I was able to make it happen.

That prep work included having real relationships from networking, real relationships with my vendors, and friends and family who want to help me make my dreams happen. I have people in my life like my sweetie, Steve, who thinks of practical things like buying a cart to haul everything.

So, I showed up.

People who didn’t know me bought my book! I was also glad I was able have my friend Dima Ghawi’s amazing memoir, Breaking Vases for sale too. I had written a rare book blog review for her book last year, so I knew her story. Since I was sitting under a sign that said Breaking Vases, A Middle Eastern Woman’s Story, I needed a connection between our books, because people read the sign and then looked at me slightly confused. I realized our seemingly different books shared a similarity. They are about creative journeys. Both stories resonated and both books sold.

The weekend was a real gift, made possible by a cosmic push. I had deep, meaningful conversations with so many people about how life and creativity are intertwined; about paying attention to the coincidences that happen to you; about how you need to tend to your creative roots so your life can blossom. I know the lessons from my book can be transformative and sometimes, you have to get out of your way and weed the negative thoughts that say you can’t follow your dream.

Say yes to your dream. Say it out loud. Do the prep work and create a plan that you can make happen. Plant your creative seeds and watch them grow. You can do it.

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Here’s my website, preorders for Growing Your Creativity, the Live Your Life With Joy Workbook are being accepted.

I Wrote a Book

A year ago I got up early in the morning, grabbed my coffee, and sat in my garden to put the finishing touches on the first solid draft of a book. The morning writing pattern has repeated itself on another beautiful autumn day as I write this update to let you know where My Creative Journey has taken me.

My first copy, The post its mark the typos that were immediately found!

I started this blog a little over seven years ago. I needed a place to be creatively free and separate from my day job as an art director. I found a community of writers who welcomed me with open arms and most surprising of all, people wanted to read what I wrote. My Creative Journey took me to unexpected places and my blog evolved. I started to write more about people who inspired me and who lived their lives creatively. I started a new section called Creative Heroes and my sweetie, Steve, filmed the interviews.

Two years ago an election happened that shook up the world. I started to ask myself, “What can I do to make the world a better place?” The answer that came to me was to write a book and write it on creativity. I believe creativity can fill your life with joy. I also believe it can make the world a better place. Understanding one’s creativity allows one to see things from a different perspective and that can prompt change.

“Growing Your Creativity” is a 6-week process book. It’s like a curriculum where one week builds on the last. It takes you step-by-step to understanding your creative roots so your life can blossom.

In the last year, I’ve had editors and friends read my draft. I’ve had a focus group go through the process. I incorporated the input and added stories, some of which I wrote in the Creative Heroes section of this blog. This Spring I put my art director hat on and designed it. It organically grew into a workbook.

I’ve now got a website to help spread the world, conniemcleod.com. I printed a few advance copies and I’ve started to put it out into the world. The seeds have been planted. I’m starting to book speaking engagements, guided book groups, and there’s even the probability of a creative retreat in 2019.

“Growing Your Creativity, The Live Your Life with Joy Workbook” officially goes on sale December 1. It can be bought on my website and I’ll mail you the spiral bound workbook or you can download a pdf ebook. Preorders are now being accepted.

In a few months my website will have more bells and whistles and I will move this blog to the new space. I will, of course, keep you updated.

The thing about creative journeys is that they make sense in hindsight. A need for creative freedom led me to blogging. Blogging turned me into a writer. A need to make the world a better place led me to write a book. A passion for gardening gave me a metaphor for my book idea to grow. My creative journey gave me the healthy roots to make this happen.

You can go to my website and read the first chapter for free. I am booking speaking engagements for 2019. You can contact me at connie@conniemcleod.com. I’m still polishing up my social media pages, but you can find me on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, or Twitter. If you’re in my area, I’m always up for a cup of coffee or a glass of wine.

Thank you for being a part of this journey of mine.

Breaking Vases

The personal is political. Dima Ghawi’s deeply personal memoir proves this point even though her courageous journey happened decades after that phrase was first uttered. Breaking Vases is a book that can change how you view the world and how you view yourself. It is a woman’s story of breaking out of a repressive culture and living a life that was once unimaginable. But it is more than one woman’s story.

Dima was born into a somewhat typical Middle Eastern family in Amman, Jordon. As a young girl, her beloved grandmother told her a woman was like a glass vase, beautiful and fragile. A woman must stay perfect; everyone would see any scratches or flaws in the vase…forever. Those flaws would bring shame on herself and her family. It was only after Dima shattered that vase that she discovered it was a glass prison. Her journey of how she broke free is one of true courage and transformation.

This is a book whose words have stayed with me. While her personal story of breaking out of a violent, patriarchal family is Dima’s unique story; the book’s takeaway is one that is enlightening to us as individuals and to our current geo-political landscape.

Breaking Vases brought insight to a different culture. It allowed me to see the Middle East with new vision. Not only are women trapped in the perfect vase illusion, so are the men. The need for everyone in the culture to appear perfect and not authentic to who they truly are, is keeping an entire culture trapped in a glass prison. What is keeping the culture trapped is the fear of the unknown. The simple key to releasing themselves from this trap lies within their imagination to just see past the illusion and truly see the individual.

Dima’s book made me look at my own culture. The book does not mention the #MeToo movement that is transforming this country. But the parallels are easy to see; an abusive patriarchal system that stays in place because those trapped by it are scared to speak out. The fear is real. The repercussions can shatter your life. Like Dima, it takes tremendous courage to break your own culture’s glass prison. Yet, the shattered prison is what will free us to live our true destiny.

Time’s 2017 Person of the Year features the Silence Breakers. The cover shows six women. One woman is cropped out of the cover with only has her elbow showing. Time said, “the anonymous woman’s arm represent the many women who are afraid to come forward with their own stories.”

Dima is also a silence breaker. We all must continue to break vases until all our voices are heard and we all have equality; until we can all live an authentic life, with all it’s flaws and cracks. And amid the broken shards of the past we will have changed the world.

Click here to discover more about Dima Ghawi and Breaking Vases.

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My Mother’s Hands

I inherited my mother’s hands. I got my father’s short and stocky build, but I’ve got the long, tapered fingers with strong nails from my mom. I’ve always considered my hands my best physical feature.

I’m at the beach now to recharge and refuel from a busy summer. I’ve completed a solid draft of my book, Growing Your Creativity. A key component of the book is to do things outside your comfort zone. I’ve enjoyed watching the Para gliders on the beach from my condo balcony, but doing something outside your comfort zone can be much smaller. These small or large nudges allow you to look at something differently and it feeds your creativity.

This vacation is about doing as little as possible. Giving myself a manicure fell into that category. At the store to pick up some essentials, I look at the nail polish. I’m ready to wear a color I’ve never worn before. No reds, no pinks, no tans. I reach for blue because I’m at the beach. Then I notice a blue that’s sparkly. I love sparkly things. Without more thought I put the polish in the basket.

It’s November and still delightfully warm at this Gulf Coast beach. I sit on the condo balcony where I’ve watched the sun rise and cast her white blue, soft pink, pale yellow where the sky meets open water and the snow white sand.

I’m unreasonably excited about putting on the new polish. My sweetie almost pretends he’s interested. I put on the first coat and I’m so disappointed. It’s almost clear and you hardly can notice it. I wanted bold color that looked foreign on my hand. So I keep putting on layers of polish. I stop at four coats to sip my evening cocktail.

As the light changes I notice the new color on my nails change too. It looks like I have opals on my fingernails. The iridescent colors shift with the light. There are soft whites, pale shimmery blues, pale pinks and creamy glitters. I have the colors of autumn at the beach on my hands.

I’m unexpectedly warmed by a memory of my mother. We loved the girlyness of doing our own manicures. We shared our favorite nail polishes. My Mom’s nails were generally fire engine red, but I know she would have loved this color. She was always on top of fashion trends.

I’ve been coming to this beach since I was a child. There are high rises where there once were sand dunes. But the light has remained the same. Iridescent.

By nudging myself out of my comfort zone I’ve been brought back to the luminescent comfort of my past.

If you like My Creative Journey, I’d love for you to follow me. My posts will then arrive in your email and I promise no spam.

CREATIVE HEROES: Walker Thornton

Walker Thornton is a sex blogger. She’s a published writer and her writing on midlife sexuality has won awards and professional recognition. I know her from an online blogging group we’re both in. It takes boldness and bravery to live a creative life. She is a Creative Hero.

Living Outside the Comfort Zone
You have to be authentic to live a creative life. Walker has consistently opened herself up to new possibilities and amazing adventures have followed. A friend told her, “You play a big game of life, and you play a big game of business, and you integrate these so well.”

Walker grew up in a small, southern town. She was raised to be a proper, southern lady. She was taught that it was important to always look good and men would not like you if you did not wear makeup. Walker got her masters in educational psychology and married young. Her professional life was spent helping women who had been impacted by sexual violence and teaching women how to protect themselves.

Walker took a big risk when she divorced her husband of many years. She lost the support of family and friends because by the time she got her divorce, her husband was in a wheelchair with multiple sclerosis.

Emotionally she ended her marriage, but she didn’t walk away from her ex-husband when he needed help. They worked out an agreement that worked for both of them. They continued to live in the same home for a number of years until he went to an assisted living facility while she remained his primary care giver. She continued this care until he died.

Walker began her newly single life—and dating—while still living under the same roof of her ex-husband. Walker broke the rules ingrained from her upbringing. She did what was not necessarily considered proper. It was a huge, difficult step that led her to the journey she is on today.

A Pivotal Moment
After her ex-husband’s death, she felt truly free. She wanted to own her sexuality. She wanted to know how to feel pleasure in her body, for herself, not to please anyone else. She leapt out of her comfort zone again and flew across the country for a woman’s sexuality retreat designed for women to discover and embrace the divine, juicy woman within. It was during a massage that she began to feel the beauty and strength of her older body. When looking at herself she saw the extra pounds, the stretch marks from her pregnancies, and her aging breasts. The trained sexological bodyworker touched her belly and called out to the beauty within that had carried her children and to the beauty of her breasts that had fed those children. It was a transformative moment when she learned to cherish her aging, imperfect body. She embraced the beauty of the life her body had given her. She returned home with a newfound, radiant confidence.

Walker had long been a sex educator and women’s advocate. She realized no one talks about sexuality at midlife. How does one cope with what menopause, divorce, widowhood, the changes of age or illness can bring? How does an older woman embrace her sexuality when society pretends it doesn’t even exist? Always an educator and now a writer, Walker began to integrate her life with her business. She began to write about midlife and senior sexuality and she took another risk. When most sex bloggers write under a pseudonym, Walker writes under her own name. A lot of women don’t talk about sex because of shame. Walker can be who she is and knows there is no shame to living a full, creative, and sexual life. She can be the role model and take away the shame. Her audience can see themselves reflected in her.

Walker writes about sexuality frankly, honestly and in a non-prurient way. As often happens when we allow our authentic selves to shine, others are drawn to our light. Walker’s matter-of-fact approach to senior sexuality has brought her professional recognition; she has become an award-winning writer and sought after speaker. Her journey is her audience’s journey and she’s become a published author with her book, Inviting Desire.

Taking Risks
Walker is a sexy, silver-haired woman. She continues to do things that she was once told she couldn’t or shouldn’t do as a proper southern lady. In a time and an age when women are often fearful of traveling solo, Walker flew to Portugal for a 2-week adventure. She learned that while not easy, traveling alone meant you could do whatever you want, whenever you want. And sitting alone at an outdoor café allows for flirty adventures that do not happen when traveling with others.

She owns her  power. In addition to writing, she is drawing and painting. She’s taking online creative classes. One assignment involved taking self-portraits. Early one morning, she rolled out of bed and snapped a selfie of herself still disheveled and makeup-free. It made her laugh and the image captured her delight. She soon saw a casting call for women who are aging naturally. She sent in the photo and got the gig.

As I write this, Walker is expecting a visitor. She’s been in communication with a man who is flying in to meet her. That fluttery, excited, anticipation of possibilities is the same for all ages. She doesn’t know what the future holds, but she’s always going to take the risk.

Walker continues to step out of her comfort zone, to live a fully creative life. It has not been easy. She has been the wife, been the mother, been the PTA president, and she is now being her own authentic, creative self. As she said, “This is me, coloring outside the lines.”

Click here to read other CREATIVE HEROES stories 

If you like My Creative Journey, I’d love for you to follow me. My posts will then arrive in your email and I promise no spam.

CREATVE HEROES: Alicia Searcy

Alicia Searcy is a fashion and style blogger. I met her at a blogging conference in her hometown of Nashville a few years ago. Her spirit and purple hair made her stand out in the crowd. Her creative voice and passion inspire me. I am thrilled to add her story to Creative Heroes.

Wabi-sabi is a Japanese concept that embraces transience and imperfection. When creating art and an imperfection appears, the idea is to use it to make the art more distinctive. Alicia Searcy’s life embodies that concept. As we strive to live a creative life, we all face obstacles. Instead of being defeated by the obstacles in her life, Alicia has embraced her authenticity and is transforming the world.

Alicia was born with choreoathetotic cerebral palsy, which gives her mobility issues. Additionally she had to fight her way out of an isolated childhood. She overcame an eating disorder and is a suicide survivor.

Alicia survived the isolation by having a vivid, imaginative, rich, interior life. Alicia embraced her creative side, got a degree in Journalism, found love and married. She believes everyone is creative; that you just have to envision what you want and then have the drive to make it happen.

Alicia makes it happen. In her wheelchair, she has rolled over the obstacles life had put in her path. She owns the woman she is and the disability she has. Her CP means her movements are jerky. Because of CP, it takes her longer to do things. She is determined to do the things she wants to do and her CP makes her do it differently. It takes creativity to figure out how to do it. Her restless, creative spirit also means once she masters something, she moves on to the next project. She’s been an artist, a writer, and is now a fashion and style blogger with an impressive following.

She was frustrated that she was often invisible to people who assumed that she had mental disabilities because she was physically handicapped. She observed that when she paid attention to her appearance, people’s reaction to her changed. She is no longer invisible.

She and her hometown of Nashville were hit with a devastating flood in 2010 and she lost all the contents of her home. Again, she turned an obstacle into a creative turning point. When she rebuilt her fashion wardrobe, she bought new clothes with intension.

She started a blog with a tongue-in-cheek name, Spashionisita. She loved the colors, the textures, the design, and the creative vision of fashion designers. “Our clothes tell the world who we are that day.” There were no models that looked like her. Despite this, she loved fashion, even though her movements were awkward and she was in a wheelchair. She realized that other disabled people often paid little attention to their clothes and became an advocate for the disabled and those with different body types. She knew that when people are proud of their appearance, they start to feel differently about themselves. And that pride makes the once invisible, finally and truly seen.

With her creative wheels turning, Alicia created Nashville’s Fashion Week’s first Fashion is for Every Body fashion show this past year. The show included models of different ages, different shapes, sizes and abilities. The models were wearing designs by the area’s hottest designers and vintage boutiques. The concept was such a success that Alicia turned it into the Fashion is for Every Body non-profit whose mission is to eliminate the stigma surrounding people with non-sample size bodies in the Nashville fashion industry by serving as a platform for body-positivity, inclusion, and self-esteem while demonstrating their strong ties to fashion and design.

Alicia knows, “no matter what your circumstances, being creative nurtures your soul.” Childhood isolation taught her deep empathy and a passion to help those that society doesn’t see. A literal flood washed away all her possessions and made her start over. She rebuilt her life with conscious intent. The invisibility of being a disabled, middle-aged woman gave her a unique point of view that no one else in the image-driven fashion industry had. Her cerebral palsy makes her take a creative approach to living her life.

Alicia’s creative spirit saved and transformed her. It allowed her to roll over huge obstacles in her life. Her creative spirit is a shining beacon that illuminates not only those around her, but illuminates her entire community. She is the spirit of wabi-sabi. She took transience and imperfection, and turned her life into a work of art. She is a Creative Hero.

Click here to read other CREATIVE HEROES stories 

If you like My Creative Journey, I’d love for you to follow me. My posts will then arrive in your email and I promise no spam.

I Didn’t See This Coming

My creative journey meanders and takes me to unexpected places and gives me unexpected gifts.

There’s a point in most creative projects where the project takes a turn. An obstacle appears. It may be little or big. How you address the issue impacts the result. This is why it’s important to understand your creative process. It helps you with innovative problem solving. Understanding your process also helps when life throws you obstacles.

I also believe in observing the coincidences—which I call cosmic happenings—that go on around you. They are very quiet and when your life is loud, they are hard to observe. But they can guide you, and teach you, and gently push you in the right direction. They are gifts.

The Garden
My garden is a place of solace and joy for me. Gardening is somewhat new in my life. I don’t know a lot about plants and I have to rely on other’s expertise. It is winter. In Louisiana, that means things are brown and I miss the color. I’m able to find beauty in the season, but I have to look hard.

I drive to work in the morning in silence. I drive through a neighborhood without much traffic and it’s my quiet time before I start a busy day. I was thinking about cosmic happenings and how it had been a while since I had one. Over the cold weekend I found repurpose ideas for my garden on Pinterest. One of them was to put an old chair in the garden and have plants grow on it. I saw something leaning against a garage in what looked like a trash pile and I turned down the side street only to realize it wasn’t trash. So I took the short one block detour to get back on my regular path…and there they were. Two chairs that would look great in my garden this spring. I deviated from my regular path and found what I was looking for.

I am thankful for this gift.

The Creative Process
The chairs are not like what the ones I saw on Pinterest. They are not old and ratty. They are nice, formal, dining room chairs that simply don’t have the upholstered seats in them anymore. I put them in the garden and I need to readjust my idea because the reality of the project is a little different than the original idea—it almost always is.

If I put a bottom on the seat box, it would make a cool planter. My sweetie has wonderful practical skills and he does this for me. I put them back in the garden and the concept is still not working. The chairs are too formal and I have two chairs that are perfectly matched, not mismatched. So what if I join them and make it a planting bench. Again my sweetie helps me fulfill my vision.

The project is still ongoing. I know it will continue to evolve. It will also change with the seasons.

How Does the Creative Process Apply to Life?
I was asked to help with a newcomer’s meal at my church. So I volunteered my sweetie to make a pot of gumbo.

I do realize all my ideas eventually involve my sweetie’s practical skills. I laughingly tell him he’s a lucky man.

It’s Inauguration Day. I’ve avoided the news because I’m horrified and fearful about the new President. I envision an evening spent sitting around a table with like-minded folks talking about things that matter to us. But it doesn’t turn out how I imagine.

Because we’ve served the meal, we are the last to sit down. The other tables are filled with the newcomers and so we sit at a table by ourselves. The minister comes over and tells us there is a kind, but homeless, man who attends our church and he has shown up for a meal. “Would we mind if he sat with us?” “Of course he’s welcome to sit with us,“ we say. So he joins us and talks nonstop about his every relative going back to his dad who was delivered by a midwife in 1937 in a home with a dirt floor. He hardly touches his food. I realize he is there for another kind of sustenance. He’s hungry for people and community. I know I can provide that. I realize it may the most important ingredient I’ve brought to the meal.

I am thankful for this gift.

What’s The Big Picture?
I read an article on how our new President could actually be the change agent this country needs (link here). It showed up in my social media feed right when I needed to see it.

Things are not how I imagined them to be. I sure didn’t see this coming. I need to adjust my thinking and get innovative in how I’ll approach this new political landscape. I’m not sure what I’m going to do or what it’s going to look like.

With a little hindsight, I’ll probably be thankful for this gift.

If you like My Creative Journey, I’d love for you to follow me. My posts will then arrive in your email and I promise no spam.

Creative Heroes: My Junior Achievement Class

My Creative Heroes blog has been silent for several months. This past summer and fall my city has gone through trials and tribulations of biblical proportions. While I did not suffer a loved one’s murder or lose my home to a flood, I felt my community’s pain. I wanted to be part of solving the problems and healing the racial divide in Baton Rouge. I only realize in hindsight that I was given a gift to do just that, when I casually agreed to teach a Junior Achievement class. The students in that class are my Creative Heroes. 

I was given the entrepreneur curriculum for a high school business class by Junior Achievement (JA). The high schoolers learn about starting a business, create a product, and actually pitch it—like Shark Tank—in a competition with other schools. I was given a school that is closest to my home and work.

I quickly learned my school had spotty internet service, no software in which to create their product, no equipment for the students to film the required commercial. There’s no communications lab, there’s no theater program, there’s no speech department. It has none of the resources the private and magnet schools have, which is who we’d be pitching against.

What my students had was me. A middle-age, white woman, who had to acknowledge to herself that my comfortable, privileged life, was as foreign to my brown and black students, as their life was to me. And since the summer shooting of Alton Sterling, the racial divide in our community was strong.

JA paired me with a great, caring, experienced teacher. Her most important piece of advice was what the students needed most was for someone to show up. Many of those students don’t have adults in their lives that show up for them. They were also starting a month late, due to the flood. Many of them were still displaced from their homes and their lives had no normalcy. School was the one steady thing and for some it was their only hot meal of the day.

To understand the class I was assigned, is to understand one of the students I wanted on the Pitch team. She had come to class a few weeks after we started and her attendance was as spotty as the school’s internet connection. But when she was there, she was fully engaged. She participated with enthusiasm and was always throwing out new creative ideas when few in the class would speak. I learned that she had a transportation problem. She didn’t live on the bus route and no one would bring her to school. I didn’t see her the last five classes I taught.

Trying to understand how to best teach my students, my personal goal was to show the student’s career possibilities that they might not even know were a possibility. I consider myself a creativity expert, so I wanted them to learn and understand the creative side of learning; to know that there were jobs in marketing, advertising, graphic design, writing, video and more. I’m like a dog with a bone when I get my teeth into a project, I don’t let go. Showing up was something I knew I could do. I also knew I could recruit professional friends to help, including friends who were more relatable to the students than me. Every one I asked, showed up for the class.

The class came up with a solid product, The Education Change Card. It would collect your change at check out and then you could go back to participating stores and get discounts on educational products (school supplies, uniforms, computers, etc.) when you were ready to cash it in. After the horrendous summer, all the students wanted to create something that helped our community.

The Pitch
The day of the Pitch came. Two of the six students on the Pitch team did not show up; one had been suspended the day before and the other one—the strongest presenter— was a no show. One brave, unprepared, young woman took their place and the team of six became a team of five. I frantically pulled them into a corner and practiced as much as could be crammed in the 20 minutes before it was show time.

I’d like to have a fairy tale ending to this story. What quickly became apparent was the schools with the most-haves were crushing the schools that were the have-nots. And the school with the most-haves, was the school that won. The winning team did a great job. They were poised, confident, and they had a pitch with all the bells and whistles. My team looked like a young JV team up against the seasoned pros.

Lessons Learned
My final class was a wrap-up after the pitch event. I wanted them to focus on all they had learned and accomplished. What I quickly realized was that I was more upset about the inequity of the teams than they were. None of these students had ever spoken before a crowd and no one passed out or threw up! Everyone on the Pitch team said they would get up and present again if given the opportunity. They were so proud of working through the fear of public speaking. They also said they’d return next year to mentor the next year’s class. These students had rarely, if ever, worked in a group before. They learned about the creative process, and brainstorming, and the give and take of reaching group consensus. The learned how to take an idea and turn it into something real.

They got a glimmer of a different way to view the world and they learned of job possibilities they did not know existed. They learned about resources in our community that are available to them. They learned that success takes hard work. We talked about the advantages the winning team had and they understood how hard that team had worked outside of class. One student said that the winning team seemed so much older. I explained that what they saw was confidence, and confidence came with hard work and practice, practice, practice.

They learned that there are adults who wanted them to succeed and who would show up for them.

And they learned the importance of showing up for themselves.

I was reminded that the best product doesn’t always succeed in the marketplace. The best candidate doesn’t always win. Great businesses and great people often fail. There are big lessons to learn when we fail. But we learn those lessons and we move forward and we continue to show up.

Check out the video clip of my students talking about creativity and what they learned.

Special thanks to these pros for showing up:
Debra Wilkerson (the class teacher who taught me a lot)
Kevin McQuarn
Natasha Walker
Casey Phillips
Luke St. John McKnight
Becky Vance
Melinda Walsh
Jennifer Scripps and Junior Achievement
AAF-Baton Rouge

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The Chateau, The Flood and Me

A few years ago I saw a story about an Australian couple that had bought and were attempting to restore the 14th century French Chateau de Gudanes.  They recently shared a Vogue article about the Summer at the Chateau. I got lost in the stunning photography and found myself drawn back to the story over and over. It seemed so different than my life in flood-soaked Louisiana.

The photos showed antique chairs and a settee outside casually placed around a fire pit with a glimpse of the Chateau’s weathered wall; colorful summer wildflowers placed in front of a crumbling fireplace or artfully placed in a vintage china bowl. Centuries old bedroom furniture comfortably arranged in a room ravished by time; broken windows opened to a stunning summer mountain view unchanged by time; a stairway lit only by candlelight. As I explored this beautiful, other-worldly place, I found a blog post written by the new lady of the manor. She wrote of the Chateau as a real, living thing and she told of the gifts, as well as the difficulties that she and her husband had experienced in trying to bring life back to the crumbling structure.

She wrote of friendships that have been forged as people from all over the world were drawn to restoring this old structure that had survived wars, droughts, famines, and time. But it was her short mention about the frustrations of hitting government bureaucracy that made me see similarities in my seemingly unrelated Louisiana life. It’s clear in her writing that she doesn’t want to complain about her frustrations because it’s obvious that she comes from wealth and privilege to be able to not only buy the Chateau, but to attempt a restoration on such a grand scale.

My home did not flood, so I too come from a place of privilege. The waters crept close, but the house stayed dry unlike my neighbors a block away. I have a bit of survivor’s guilt and know I can’t complain. But loss and sadness hit me anyway.

 

 

The Cajun Navy rescued us when we thought we were going to flood. Click here to watch the video my sweetie shot of our boat ride out of my flooded neighborhood.

I’ve lived in my home nearly 30 years. The people that own businesses around me are my friends. The family that owned the best Chinese take out—whose children I watched grow up—will not be reopening, nor will the drugstore, or the dance studio in which a generation of little girls twirled and danced. My hardware store and garden center, where I bought my Christmas trees, my birdseed, and who helped me with my garden was swept away forever. My gym is gone, as are the three grocery stores I frequented. While it’s just an inconvenience to find another place to shop, I don’t know what happened to the people who worked there, that I knew by face and smile only. Did they lose their home and car along with their job? Or were they lucky like me?

House after house, street after street, neighborhood after neighborhood. Photography by my daughter, Jade Th’ng

 

Photography by Jade Th’ng

 

Photography by Jade Th’ng

In front of the nursing home where my mother use to live. Photography by Jade Th’ng

There has been progress made in the weeks since the biblical-sized flood hit south Louisiana. The trash piles that contained people’s lives in the front of their homes are starting to be picked up. By spring the trash piles will all be gone and new growth will erase the brown stained yard that’s left behind. But right now, spring seems a long way away.

Like the Chateau owner, I have many, many, friends frustrated by bureaucracy. Everyone is desperate to get normalcy back into their lives, to get back home. Only to be bitch-slapped by insurance, or FEMA, or this or that agency. They’re told their claims are being denied, or to start over, or to fill out this form, or go to that office, or to wait in that line, or to be put on endless hold.

So I continue to go back to gaze at the Chateau’s photos. I’m an art director, so I understand it’s the contrast of the time-damaged walls with the exquisiteness of hand-crafted antique furniture, or beautiful flowers next to crumbling brick, that makes the images so powerful.

I’ve now walked through friends flood damaged homes. I’ve seen the contrasts in their lives. These home are in the process of being restored too. I see their precious, salvaged items scattered out on tables in gutted homes. I’ve seen made up air mattresses replacing bedroom furniture on concrete floors. I’ve seen temporary privacy walls shielding bathrooms that have working plumbing. Like the Chateau, my friends’ homes are trying to come back to life.

Expert historians, artisans, and just plain folk are drawn to help restore the Chateau. The job is much bigger than the Australian couple can accomplish by themselves. Across the world in my beloved Louisiana, volunteers, faith-based groups, friends and family are helping each other try to bring lives back to normal. It’s bigger than any one person, or one family, or one town, or even one state can accomplish.

Life in south Louisiana is in a new normal. Many things we love are gone forever. They will be replaced with something new. It will take time, and patience, and money. Restoration has a timeline of it’s own. It may take another generation to see the fruits of our labor. But it will eventually be restored, just like the Chateau.

If you’d like to contribute to Louisiana’s flood recovery these are organizations that I trust.

Together Baton Rouge
Baton Rouge Area Foundation
Woman’s Hospital (where I work)
GoFundMes
A friend, Trent Bland and family
A musician friend, Joey Decker and family
Where my daughter and parents went to High School
For McKinley Senior High School students

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