Maitri — Page 75

The post was written for my Patrons at Patreon. I am sharing it publicly so everyone can see the fun I’m having and one of the many fun things that go on in my Patreon community. Click Gloria above to go to Patreon to find out more about joining our community!

Dearhearts…

Well, after you all saw me through my frantic state last weekend I took all you said to heart and I just started playing. When I finished Delphine I knew the next Lady’s name was Gloria, but I didn’t know anything else at all about her, and it didn’t matter. I drew and doodled and painted and played. I made such a mess. I thought today that the kind of messy fun I was having was like when I was a little girl outside making mud pies. Just that messy and just that much fun. Here’s what it looked like in the sketchbook…

And when all was said and done I felt the same way I had when I came here Saturday night in a mess and you all talked me down. The thing was that I was just never happy with the text, lettering is not my strong suit, or rather not even a suit at all for me, and this was all such a mess too, but what if…?

You see I have been playing with my art in digital programs on the computer (Oh, how I long for an iPad, sigh, the big one with the Apple Pencil so I can do digital art on it) and what came to me was this. Yes! to the return of The 100 Ladies Project! 3 of the Ladies will be part of Maisie’s World as her imaginary friends but the rest will have their own project and maybe even a little book, with the text done digitally as at the top of this post. Now I have learned enough in my messy endeavors to know not to commit to a certain thing. The Ladies were always messy, happy fun, and being in their world was my playground. They are not to be all big paintings but fun characters who have little stories to go with them so that I will draw the Ladies and do the text digitally and I would love to do a little book. 100 Ladies and their stories. And again I am just thinking outloud but I did the Ladies for 5 years and some of them I, and many others, loved, and maybe they, and their stories, could be part of a little book too?

Anyway, no pressure here, but I will be creating them here on Patreon, I will share them with everybody but Tier 2 folks will see them being created and hear their stories as they arise, one at a time.

Gracious! It is so much better just to let yourself play. Isn’t that what art is supposed to be about anyway?

And for fun I will end with Faith, one of the original “100 Ladies” and her story. These Ladies and their stories made me so happy, and I need them, I really need them now. Of course I will be doing Maisie, but The Ladies are my spirit guides and they will see me through all the work to come, Here then is Faith…

“Faith sat facing her computer. She was trying to tell a story. The words came like beads on a string, one at a time, slid slowly from her mind through her fingers onto the page. She watched them fill up, one hundred words, two hundred words, three hundred, and as she wrote, and the words flowed, there was an easing of the knot in her stomach. Each day she wondered if she could do this again, if she could follow the thread, if the words would come. It wasn’t just about a book, this time, it was about her life, and the lives of the women around her, precious and dear, it was about how she wanted to reach out and touch them, to soothe their spirits, to let them know that she cared. These were not just words of a story but threads of a tapestry, woven together with love, a soul’s journey over time and space. Each word mattered, each woman mattered, both the ones whose stories she was telling and the women who were reading them. She thought of one woman, and then another, that she had talked to, that she had hugged and held, women whose hearts were burdened with sorrow, or who were having the first intimations of joy and yet were afraid to trust them. She wanted to let them know that she was there, that she knew, she understood, she was with them in spirit, and that the spirit was strong, and that the tapestry was woven fine, it would support each of them, would hold them close, that they were all safe and in this vast number of women there was enough love to hold up the whole world.

Faith took a deep breath. She typed slowly, and then faster, sentence after sentence came to the rhythm of her heart beating, a long strand of beads forming at her feet, like holy rosaries the strands grew, and the women gathered, and they knew, as she did, that they need never be alone again, that they were part of a gathering of women, a collective, a congregation, and that though they were women of every color of the rainbow, in every country of the world, their hearts beat as one and that it was holy, it was divine.

Faith knew not how the words came, but she followed them until she was spent. The rest would come another day.”

I was positively startled to read this again. I created Faith and her story in 2017 after having done countless Ladies and their stories, and as I see it now the Ladies were what led me to Maisie, and here to Patreon. It is the writing, the art, and the gathering together of women in community. I have said this since I started this Patreon community September 1, 2020, but it has all come out of the work I have been doing my whole life.

I have been having a very hard time lately but tonight I feel like I have found my way home. Now Maisie, and The Ladies and I have work to do. Onward!