The Clearing

When I read my journals from thirty or more years ago, I've mentioned many times that I wanted so much to be a writer. That longing resided in my fingers while they twitched, words rushing through them like the blood in their veins, words that otherwise, would have remained trapped and invisible.  Words that my mouth and voice could not utter. My hands grasped at the pen and the notebook in those infrequent pauses when I could find time alone to write. I looked forward to those solitary moments when I could retreat into the quiet, my thoughts and feelings rising above the din, as I watched the pen scrambling across the page as though some other being had taken possession of my pen, revealing itself to me. Those blank pages were sometimes the only friendly place I could find, a safe zone, where I knew I would not be maligned or  misunderstood. I cannot say how I would have survived without writing given the challenges that were set the day I was born, and I am not being over-dramatic when I say that. So often during my young adulthood, like many people, I found myself doing jobs that I didn't necessarily want to do, nor were particularly edifying. Post secondary education was not an option for awhile, because all I could manage was just scraping together enough money for food and rent, which sometimes seemed impossible. Still, I was idealistic. I believed that one could make one's dreams come true, if one worked hard enough, if one persisted and at times, insisted. But also if one had the right intentions. Consequently I went on to art college (putting myself in great debt), and had decided that I'd become a tapestry weaver. Carole King's song and album, Tapestry, like the Pied Piper, led me to that path. Prior to graduation from the program, I was told that I could not make a living from it. Huh? why hadn't they told me that before? Yet, I did everything in my power to make that happen, and, when, as they had predicted, I couldn't make a consistent living with tapestry weaving, I went to the University of Guelph to get my B.A. , and then to the University of Toronto to obtain my teacher's certificate, put myself in even greater debt which took me a few decades to recover from. Immediately after graduating, I started teaching high school: Art, English, French and Photography. I lasted five years. The changes happening in the education system among other factors, including my introverted nature, created too much stress for me.  I was not the only one crushed by the pressures and demands. Surveys done by teacher unions at the time said that 50% of graduates from teacher's college would only last five years. Luckily for me, I found a well-paid part-time job teaching weaving to adults that permitted me to continue my practice as an artist and artisan, creating handwoven fashion accessories to sell at various shows in Toronto, such as the One of a Kind, Cabbagetown and the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition, but also to continue making tapestries and textile art which I exhibited around the world. Some of these tapestries were featured in books, such as the one published by Phaidon Press, Tapestry, by Barty Phillips and Micala Sidore's The Art is the Cloth which you can purchase here. 

The only place I wrote daily for decades was in my journal, and I have columns of journals to prove it, never thinking that what I wrote was worthy of being read. As my confidence and self esteem grew, slowly, tentatively, the courage to write for an audience emerged. I started with a few blogs, mostly about weaving and my art/craft events, then, for about ten years, I wrote about other weavers for the Ontario Handweavers and Spinners, based on interviews and visits to each of their studios, when possible. When I was no longer teaching, in 2016,  I began taking Creative Writing courses at the University of Toronto, including with Kim Echlin, Ibi Kaslik, Danila Botha, and David Layton.  In 2020, I completed the Humber School for Writers program with Camilla Gibb as my mentor, over which time, I wrote my first (and still unpublished) novel. In May 2022 I obtained my Masters with Distinction in Creative Writing and Critical Thinking from the University of Gloucestershire, in the UK during which time I worked on my second novel.  

And so began the long, obstacle strewn writing journey, the slow revealing of things I'd been too afraid to share, and too afraid to say, too busy trying to survive to find out, too ashamed to acknowledge and too much in denial to accept. Along the way, many people made me feel so small,  less than them, and I'm sure there will be those who will continue to do so. And yet I thank them,  because in the end, their hardness was the stone upon which I sharpened the blade of my words, not to maim them, but as an implement to forge a path towards a clearing, and in that clearing, the open sky of my truth , and the wide open fields of my self.