I’ve been mulling this over for the last few days. I finished the above drawing at 11 last night and sent it to my Patrons at Patreon telling them that this drawing was a preview for what was to come, but I also wanted to know who they feel they are now. I just finished answering a number of them and their answers were fascinating and I loved them. I appreciate, more than I can say, the financial support from Patrons which is enabling me to do this book, but I absolutely love the sense of community there, the sharing, and the emotional support we can offer one another. They are my tribe, my people, and I adore them.

Today I had therapy (online) and afterwards I was sitting here with my coffee thinking further about this, and something came to me that I hadn’t at first thought of, or not in this way, this deeply. I was asking myself who I am now, at 68, with pretty serious disabilities and a host of things I can no longer do. I am still me, still a woman living her way through her later years and life goes on for all of us.

But this morning I realized that this is always a question we struggle with at any age. When you’re 12 the world can seem big and confusing and perplexing and almost too many possibilities and they can feel lost. 20-somethings just out of college now have their education but oh my God, what now? Somewhere between or before 30-50 many have become families in whatever way that happens for them and dealing with partners, children, jobs and the world at large (And oh God help us all what a world it is today!) can be deeply perplexing, just managing it all, just carrying it all, with so much going on it often feels like too much, and when we enter, as I have, our later years, other things come up. We’re all, at any age, dealing with the world at large, but closer to home, and in our personal selves, our own worlds have shifted from the beginning of life when we had our whole lives ahead of us and too many decisions to make and Lordy, whatever do we choose? What DO we want to be? to these later years when our world may have become much smaller and more limited. Many people well past my age are very active physically and traveling the world. That is not the case for me.

I had no idea that by the time I was 68 I would be so disabled and living with chronic pain, but the thing is, though my physical world has grown smaller I still have whole universes inside of me waiting to explore and examine and play with. Earlier this week I shared a funny messy little drawing that I did just kind of doodly-dooing around in my sketchbook and while I was laughing I realized, after a Patron (I had at first only shared it at Patreon which I do most things, some end up on social media but at Patreon I share long posts and thoughts about the work.) wrote in saying what I’d said meant so much to her and really helped her a lot, that this really is what my life and work are all about, which is learning to live the best possible life we can under whatever circumstances we find ourselves in. For fun I will share the image with you. I wrote: “𝐉𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐚 𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐟𝐚𝐬𝐭, 𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐦𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐲, 𝐝𝐨𝐨𝐝𝐥𝐲-𝐝𝐨𝐨 𝐭𝐨 𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐰𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞’𝐬 𝐛𝐢𝐠 𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐚𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠… 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐒.⁣”

After the picture I wrote…”

“I had this funny thought that went something like “𝘚𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘴 𝘐 𝘨𝘦𝘵 𝘴𝘢𝘥 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘐 𝘤𝘢𝘯𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘥𝘰, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘐 𝘯𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘥𝘰 𝘢 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘸𝘢𝘺…” And for some reason it made me giggle. It made me giggle because sometimes I get depressed about 𝐀𝐋𝐋 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒 𝐈 𝐂𝐀𝐍 𝐍𝐎 𝐋𝐎𝐍𝐆𝐄𝐑 𝐃𝐎, but the point is how many of those things tumbling about in my head did I ever really care about anyway? Not many really.⁣

⁣This messy happy little drawing made me happy and really a happy heart matters more than the things we can no longer do. I just thought I’d share this with you, for what it’s worth…”

So, who am I now?

Well, I can’t do headstands, that’s for sure. I can’t get up and down out of a chair without a lot of pain and I now do my dishes, slowly, over hours, sitting in my rollator walker pulled up to the counter. I can’t stand for long without a lot of pain. So no, I can’t do cartwheels, and I’ve never been up in a hot air balloon and that’s just fine by me. BUT I have a cozy little home that I rarely ever leave (Except for the doctor for me or the vet for Molly and then the vet tech comes out to the car to get her so I don’t have to try to come in. I can drive but getting in and out of the car is excruciating.) No I am mainly only at home but that’s no big change for me because I have been agoraphobic for decades and have rarely left the house in 20 years.

I can no longer garden, which was a real blow, but I can grow things inside and here in my studio I got inexpensive plant lights and am growing a number of wonderful things indoors, and the cottage garden I designed and built over the last several years is just beautiful and manages to be kept up by my dear Eleanor who helps me twice a month, mostly in the house but she cuts things back, deadheads, and weeds a little, and my grandson cuts my grass, and for the very first time I realized, rather startled really, that I had finally come to acceptance with not being able to garden after being a lifelong gardener, garden designer, and garden writer, because I can look out at the cottage garden that wraps all the way across the front of my house and around both sides and feel great joy just because it’s there, just because I DID it! I look out now at countless roses, hundreds of lilies everywhere, all manner of perennials and things that are coming back again and again from their own seed and I just feel happy. I honestly never thought I could come to this place, and it is a gift.

I move very slowly when I get up in the morning when the pain is worst and I am most likely to fall. I have to take care of my little Molly, a chihuahua/corgi mix with one eye! And there are the parakeets, Franny and Teddy, a 65th birthday gift over 3 years ago from a dear friend, and I get life started here at Dragonfly Cottage, turning on lights, opening the blinds and having a look out onto the garden, and when everything is up and going I make my coffee which I now have to do sitting in my rollator but that works just fine. My decline in the last year has been startling but it just is what it is and I am making the best of it. I will be starting in-home physical therapy again soon which I had to stop over the holidays when it turned out I had a major blood clot in my leg. It will be good to get the PT because I have been frightened by how much weaker I’ve become from the inability to be mobile almost at all. And yet…

Once coffee is made I settle in here at my big work table (It is an antique 9′ long Farmer’s Table found in a barn that I bought very cheaply when I moved in here 12 years ago and it is just massive and took 4 guys to get it in the house. The legs are enormous, and here, at this table, is where almost my whole life takes place. There is not an inch of spare space, my big desktop is in the middle and I am completely surrounded by books, notebooks, journals, sketchbooks, art supplies and more. If Molly is not in my lap which she often is…

… she is on her bed beside me, and Franny and Teddy, the parakeets, are in their big cage on their table about 4 feet to the left of me. They chitter and chatter and carry on and get all moony and then fight and on and on all day and are the most lively, cheery presences in the house! There are lots of plants, strings of twinkly lights everywhere, candles, fiber art, little gnome people and their little villages set up all around the windowsills and plants that I bought a little at a time over several years at the $1 store. I have an altar on my worktable and the room is so enchanting it is my happy place so the fact that I spend most of my day right here in a very comfy oversized desk chair is really a dream.

And as my world has narrowed the work that I have always done, and now my art are what most of my waking hours are about, and everything has gone fathoms deeper, and is deeply profound. I live in silence and solitude and spend my days praying all day long, quietly, to myself, and meditating, and resting snuggled with Molly, and reading and then back to drawing. After years of trying to write my book many different ways I have settled on a format that is right, and my art has found it’s place. I now draw with dip pen and ink and use watercolors, gouache and colored pencils which are all around me here and fit in this tiny cocoon I inhabit.

Had I known that my life could be so limited and yet so full I wouldn’t have worried about aging, in fact I never have worried about aging. I loved turning 40, 50, 60 and on. But I didn’t know with age the physical disabilities would be this hard, and as I have lived with lifelong mental illness that has to still be managed by medication and weekly therapy it can, at times, feel like a lot to handle.

But I am lucky, I know how lucky I am and I am deeply grateful. My children and their children are healthy and happy and what more could a mother want? And I am very close to all of them and we talk and text and stay very close in touch. 2 of my 3 are out of town but we do the best we can to stay close. And my wee girl Molly is the love of my life and I never stop drawing, and sometimes the drawings, like the messy one above, make me giggle, and there is just so much joy in it all. If I have had to just take Tylenol again, and winced when I had to get up out of this chair and came back and sat down on 2 heating pads (One under my thigh where the pain is the worst, and my back.) I come back to this table and dip my pen in ink, and makes notes as I draw for what I will be writing to go with the art and vice versa, and, well, I think I’m a lucky old lady and I thank God everyday.

I’d love to hear who you feel like you are now, and how you are managing, and managing to make the best of the situation you’re in. I’d love it if we could share and encourage one another. And I send so much love, and prayers, and gentle thoughts to each and every one of you. And finally, I would not only love to hear from you in the comments — I always answer — but I would like to hear, for the sake of my book and wanting to be of service, what I could write about and share that would help you. Don’t be afraid to ask. It would help me a lot.

Life goes on and so shall we. Onward!