Weaving Together All The Bits & Parts & Pieces Of My Life + A Studio Tour…

Dear Ones,

I have done this blog post for 2 reasons. First of all, to help you better understand my work with Maisie, and her world — why I’m doing it, what it all means, and what it might mean for you. What I mean is that Maisie and I are both agoraphobic. We don’t leave our houses (Maisie not at all, I on very rare occasions, and I have gone weeks and months without leaving.) I will be 67 this year, have lived with a lifetime of mental health struggles, and have, given those circumstances, what many feel must be a very limited and some even imagine a very sad life. Yes, I struggle with depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, and PTSD among other things, and yes, I am a disabled senior citizen living on social security with limited financial means, but in NO other way do I find my life limiting. Look at these pictures. Does this look like a sad life, replete with a great many limitations, and nothing to do or to look forward to? I assure you it is not!

I absolutely love my life, and I can tell you with all honesty that despite the “limitations” that I do have I see endless possibilities here, and it fills me with joy. And so I have created Maisie, my alter ego, and Daisy, her little one-eyed chihuahua mix that is my Molly’s alter ego, and we are here to tell the world that no matter what your limitations are — real or perceived — the world is filled with potent possibilities abundant all around you. My work with Maisie’s World — the art, the book in process, other little books I hope to create, and my Patreon community are about just these things. How to create a life that you love, how to celebrate the life you have, and how to continue dreaming and expanding, never giving up hope, and always working toward more and more joy right from where you are. That is Maisie’s mission, and it is mine.

Also I am writing this blog post, for myself really, because this is the year that I want to bring together all of the bits and parts and pieces of who I am and weave them together into a whole. The writer, the artist, the teacher, the fiber artist, a community builder for women for over 40 years, creating safe and sacred space, a place where women may feel nurtured and inspired, where they may feel less alone and as if they have a “home,” where they can explore and create and expand their own dreams. All of these things are parts of who I am, and I need to do them all to feel whole and happy. It is not just about writing. It is not just about creating art, it is also making things with my hands, with fiber and fabric, making little books, just a whole host of things. These things are not separate entities, they are part of a whole. I have worked very hard, with the help of my dear friend Eleanor who comes to help me a couple or more times a month, to organize my studio so that I have working spaces that work, because I plan to get a lot of work done this year.

I hope, through my work, with my writing, and painting, and creating Maisie’s World which is my way of telling a story that hopes to help others find their way, is to create a body of work that is woven fine like a tapestry. I have realized that one of the reasons I have felt stuck in many ways in the last year was that my life was feeling too limited. Painting, creating Maisie and her World, are very important to me, main elements in the work I am doing, but by trying to limit myself to just creating Maisie’s art I was feeling as if important parts of who I am were lost, and to that end I didn’t feel whole, and I have had a hard time moving forward in the last months. What I have realized is that I need to let it all in, and in doing so, in allowing my creativity to expand in every direction to all of the things I have always loved and done, the art itself will be expanded and enriched. Everything I do in my life Maisie does in hers. She paints and she knits and she lives with her animal companions and other delightful creatures. She gardens like I do and she cooks, and she does all of the things that I do here in my cozy little cottage, Dragonfly Cottage, and Maisie’s World can only be created if I am living fully doing all of the things that I love that make me happy in my own life. This is the year I am going to reclaim it all, and I mean all of it. I am not going to limit myself in any way. I don’t need to buy things, I can’t afford to, but even after the fire a fair amount of things were saved that I hadn’t realized, at first, that I still had.

While I lost all of my big fiber art equipment — I mourn the loss of the bigger looms, and I have cried over the loss of my batt making machine to create big artful batts for spinning, BUT, wonder of wonders, because most of my yarn and fiber were stored in big rubbermaid tubs in my concrete garage I still have a lot of yarn and fiber, hand spindles to handspin art yarns, my beloved collection of hand-carved and painted spool-knitters and crochet hooks made by Noreen Crone-Findlay, inotherwords some of the little things. Another thing that amazed me after the fire was how many of my books survived. I had had bookshelves in every room, thousands of books collected over a lifetime, and while some were lost, and some came back to me in boxes (only because I insisted! They were going to destroy these) that were blackened and charred, I have been able to piece a life back together with what remains, and what remained, and what I have been able to build, with my inner resources, has been no small thing.

And so, dear friends, to this end I am sharing all of these pictures with you, because I want you to see that even for a nearly 67 year old woman who has survived housefires and hurricanes, is disabled and lives on a small income, with a life pieced together with this and that (and lots of brightly colored rooms in every color of the rainbow!) I have created a world that is a happy one, a full life filled with riches, if not monetary what I do have here, and inside me, means even more, and I want to show you, and share with you. Maisie’s World is really Maitri’s World, or rather hers grows out of mine, and her stories are what I call fantasy/fiction/memoir. I have worked hard well into my 7th decade to come to all of this. This is a glorious age and I am grateful for everything.

In creating my Patreon community, now in it’s 5th month, I have been able to get the support that I need to continue my work, expand it, and to help other women. If you would like to share in Maisie’s and my world and be part of my community I would love to have you. Just click on any of the Patreon links on this site to find out more. In any event, believe in yourself, trust in who you are, celebrate what you have, never give up on your dreams, and believe me when I say that there is more possible for you than you may have ever imagined. Last year was a hard year for us all. This year let’s gather all the bits and parts and pieces of our lives and build new dreams with them all, or resurrect old dreams, or revise dreams that you once held and gave up on because you didn’t think they were possible any more. As I always ask my students, “If not, why not? If not now, when?” Indeed.

I am always working and planning and dreaming. This is going to be a good year…

And you can watch today’s Sunday Afternoon With Maitri video below. It is an extension of this blog post…