When the Trees Turn Green

“Sometimes you have to let go of the picture of what you thought life would be like and learn to find joy in the story you are actually living.” Rachel Marie Martin

This past month I have started to get back into my art practice. I started to realize that something was really missing in my life and I had a really rough bout with anxiety. That is always a cue to me that I need to get back to basics and routine. I figured out that that missing piece has been art and utilizing my creativity. Art is a way that I can process my feelings and figure things out that are rushing around in my brain. I can sit at my art desk for hours and play and create and eventually figure out a direction for my art journal or my life. My art piece that I have included managed to do both for me, create a beautiful page, although not the one I thought I was looking for, and also reiterate a life lesson that I have been fighting against learning.

This art practice started as an experiment. I have been a bit fixated on learning new art styles and was wrestling with image transfers using photo copies. After days of attempts, I thought I’d figured out- only to discover the transfer hadn’t worked at all. I was so frustrated I was going to throw out the pictures of the trees but they were soaking wet from the technique. I laid them out until the next morning when they would be dry enough to throw into the trash can. I went to bed annoyed and ready to give up.

I woke up in the morning, took my coffee to my art desk, and looked at my mistakes ready to trash them. But when I leaned in closer, they had transformed into something beautiful. The soggy black and white trees had taken on an eerie greenish hue. My husband came in and commented on how cool they looked. That’s when I realized this wasn’t a “failed experiment” at all. I thought about how it related to my life.

As someone living with a chronic illness, and really any human who has lived long enough, the lesson of the green trees is something I am always struggling with in my life. In my past working life, I was a teacher and principal who was forced out of the workforce due to MS. After that, having to stop driving forced me to stop my new life of running support groups. The life I envisioned for myself at 24 when I was diagnosed looks nothing like the life I am living now. I am not running a school or support groups and often look at my life now it is easy to perceive it as a failure of sorts. Yet when I look at my life through the lens of those green trees, I see something different.

Different doesn’t always mean less than.

I see a kinder version of myself. A strong marriage. A fiercely loyal community of friends and family. A new medical team that continues to teach me about my own resilience. I even see the stubborn streak that keeps me persevering in my health as well as my art practice. I also wouldn’t have my beautiful garden full of flowers and vegetables and yes even trees, if my life hadn’t taken the turn it did.

I hope you can find your own green tree – the unexpected turn that looks like a disaster at first. Different doesn’t mean failing. Sometimes it’s just a new colour you didn’t plan for.

Always looking for colour,

Christine