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I’m starting to feel energized about the idea of closing this chapter of my life, putting things in order and finishing some of the work we started here together, so something new can unfold.

One thing that feels complete right now is my art. I have used this particular style of art to pull me through to a new place over and over again. Each message I’ve painted is one I desperately needed to know down to my bones. I’ve held on tight to my art over the years, feeling anxious about letting it go, wondering if it could mean as much to someone else as it means to me. I know now that all that doesn’t matter as much as being willing to let it go, so I’m preparing this week for an online sale of over 30 original paintings. I’m not sure exactly how I’ll sell those pieces (in an auction? by donation? by drawing? for a fixed price? feel free to leave your thoughts on that) but I’m trusting that solution will come to me, along with a cohort to help me pack and ship in a super timely manner. (Please God.)

Hand in hand with that goes this overwhelming thankfulness I feel for every single person who has ever encouraged me about my art–either by reading this blog or buying something or leaving me a comment or writing a handwritten note. I’m wondering how I can say thank you or what tangible thing I could do to express how deeply I carry around all that kindness. I’m convinced there needs to be something specific and tangible, and am musing on that often right now, waiting for a spark of ingenuity.

For Putting Things in Order (Part Two), I want to let you know what’s up with Odette, the girls and things in Rwanda, because it looks like some of the dreams we shared in that story are about to come true, too.

I’m in a strange place with this blog, and all the other forums where talking is required.
Everyday I stare at this blog banner and think to myself, “Something healing this way came.” Whatever I started here feels finished to me, so I wonder what to write, what more can possibly be said.

I’ve had this situation with a blog before. Some of you remember way back in 2003-2005 when I had a totally different blog, when I wrote about my kids and faith and spirituality and even (gasp!) church. I wrote that blog until all those topics started to make me slightly crazy, so I quit and not only stopped blogging but also took all my archives down. It was Google suicide, but I didn’t care. I knew I wanted to be a part of a very different conversation and it felt good to make a clean break.

I spent the next year being a housewife, trying for the tenth time to save my marriage, trying to be domestic, trying to do ordinary things. I have to say all of those things made me very happy even though I was hardly successful at any of them. I spent that year with a little spiral notebook and a box of watercolor paints and I painted and painted until my soul started to heal a little, even if everything else was mostly the same.

At the end of the year, I went to Blogher, thanks to my sister, who was launching a business and thought it would do both of us some good to be there. I spent the entire time chatting with people who I did not know would eventually become soulsisters and dear friends. I had no idea at the time how those friendships would shape and change my life.

By fall, with my family settled in a new place and my little urban family well on its way, I decided I was ready to be a part of a new conversation–about art and creativity–and this blog was born. This blog carried me through all kinds of twists and turns. I learned how to take risks. I faced rejection. I asked for help. I found a new way to be a part of a community. I got my heart cracked open in a really serious way and had more than one major dream come true.

Now, one year later after being in Rwanda, I’m aware that my whole life is very different than when I first started. My relationships have totally shifted and changed. My focus has moved from art to activism. My desire is to be quiet and have things unfold more than shake and move to make things happen. I’m much more serious now about what’s important to me, and I’m more focused on using my energy to see real world changes unfold on a global scale. I’m not as uptight or as easygoing as I used to be and in many other ways I am much more tender and tough.

All this puts this blog in a strange place. How do you blog when you mostly want to be quiet? What do you say when you mostly want to listen? How do you share when your stories get stranger and stranger by the second? How do you explain how thankful you are that this blog and this community brought you to this spot in the first place? How do you say how much you wish you could keep giving because you’ve been given so much?

I don’t have the answers to any of that, and I’m not about to take all my archives down and disappear again, but I am aware that a change is coming. I wish I knew how to thank you for being in this with me for so long. I wish it were the kind of change that could be negotiated in person, but that’s the problem with blogs. The screen will have to do.

For Madeleine

Thank you for coming with me on this strange and complicated journey.
Thank you for understanding how much I need the people I love.
Thank you for being willing to be included in my sometimes scary, often times unpredictable brave new world.
Thank you for walking up the stairs when it never occurred to me that I needed you.
Thank you for standing beside me when it was best not to be alone.
Thank you for sinking deeper into your own world and your own dreams.
Thank you for trusting me as I pursue my own.
Thank you for being a kid, silly and sweet.
Thank you for saying no when doing so preserves your soul.
Thank you for letting me take care of you.
Thank you for being so uniquely determined to be your own person.
Thank you for being patient.
Thank you for loving and for being willing to be loved.

I admire and cherish you more than you will ever know.
Today more than any other, I understand, we are together.

your mom jenlemen

photo by Tracey Clark