Put the Big Stick Down

It’s January.

The middle of January.

It’s the time where every one you know (and maybe even you) has made and abandoned at least three resolutions. January has become an annoying refrain of “be different than the you you’ve been for the last 365 days because the you you’ve been is just not quite up to snuff.” Gyms have thinned out, new habits hastily jotted down on January 1st have probably been amended or maybe even forgotten.

I gave up resolutions a long time ago in favor of “intentions” to mark the descent into deep winter. The word “Intention” gives me a little more breathing room to adjust as the weeks flow throughout the year. My primary intention is to put the big stick down that I routinely use to beat myself up about all the ways in which I perceive that I fall short.

Growing up in a vat of toxic soup, I learned at my mother’s knee how to admonish myself into oblivion, and as an adult I’ve made self castigation a near full time job. In my early 40’s I realized that the circuitry of my brain needed a remodel. However, even with tools learned in therapy, I routinely revert to old hardwiring when I feel overwhelmed. My studio is full of two very large unfinished paintings (one that’s not even started but because it’s sketched out in my mind it’s categorized as unfinished), a fully warped loom abandoned without its weft, several partially filled sketchbooks, a portfolio that needs culling and curating, a very, v e r y small business that needs some tending to so I can continue to live my hippie-artist-agenda until I reach global domination, or 2k followers on Instagram (which ever happens first).

Anyway, I was in the midst of an A-Level self rebuke, listing all the ways I was falling short, when the bored voice of my inner being (I call her Doreen), pointed her mid-morning cigarette in my face and said in the voice that only lifelong smokers know, “Honey, for Christ’s sake, put the big stick down.”

Put. The. Big. Stick. Down.

I breathed that in and thought, “Put the big stick that you use to beat yourself with DOWN. Toss it to the ground. It’s okay. Everything is okay. You haven’t missed your shot, you haven’t even taken it yet. Since you quit teaching to pursue illustrating full time you survived a major health event in the midst of a global pandemic, supported two children through their college and high school graduations, started a small business, supported your partner who was unemployed for over a year due to Covid-related layoffs, built a body of work you’re proud of, and survived. So what if you’ve got projects undone and waiting for your attention? Yes, yes, you feel overwhelmed, pressured, underwater, paralyzed with procrastination because you don’t know what the next move is. So what? Just put the goddamn stick down and stop berating yourself for surviving. You did it. YOU (and everyone reading this) win at life because you’re still here. Be gentle with yourself, and put the big stick down.”

Doreen doesn’t usually speak to me in such plain terms, she’s more of a lurker of an inner voice. She’s the one who gives me the courage to wear the new outfit, say the thing, create the boundary. And before you think that Doreen is an actual voice, no, no she is not (not that there’s anything amiss with having some voices in your head) but she started as a character I created during radiation for breast cancer. Before I’d enter the radiation room I’d say (in Doreen’s grizzled native New York accent), “Chin up, tits out, it’s showtime!” Then I’d pantomime taking a long drag off of a cigarette, flick it, and walk in the room where three radiation technicians positioned my topless torso on a cold, hard, metal table beneath a massive particle accelerator, which was mathematically programmed to aim its beam at the tumor bed in my right breast every day for six weeks.

I created Doreen as a cushion to the reality of what I was going through during breast cancer treatment. Someone to deflect the fear ? Yes please. An inner old lady with attitude who doesn’t give a shit about anything but her next martini? Sign me up.

Post breast cancer Doreen’s morphed into a kind of mother-mentor. In my imaginings she frequents her local bar, clad in a muu muu, with sparkly shoes and a tiny dog in her overpriced (now vintage) handbag. She’s good friends with the bartender and is a generous tipper. Perched on a stool at the end of the bar, Doreen pops in to comment on this and that, re-applying her bright red Chanel lip stick in between sips of her drink. Doreen’s seen some shit and she’ll let you know it, so it’s no wonder she showed up this morning in the middle of my downward spiral. January is hard on the spirit and the bones, my friends. Most people I know have been sent reeling from the last few years. Some days it feels like we’re all barely holding on, and yet…we’re holding on. May you, too, put the big stick down so you can grasp your life with both hands.

(Lights a cigarette and takes a long drag.)

Flick.

“Chin up, tits out, it’s showtime.”