"Lost in Transition"
5 x 8 Strathmore Visual Journal
It's that time of week again! And I'm eager to show you the final results of my (journaling) labour over the last couple of months. I also promised to tell you the story behind this journal, a story which is literally ten years in the making . . . .
{I must warn you that this was hard to write, pretty personal - and perhaps a bit too long - but I've decided to share my entire journey anyway. So, yeah, here goes:}
This book, this journal which I am titling, “Lost in Transition,” is very special to me. I didn’t know when I started it that it would become such an important tool in helping me get over a hard time - or transition - in my life, but as it progressed, it seemed to take on a life of it’s own, whispering words of encouragement that I desperately needed to hear.
Please allow me to explain. Most of you know by now that I’m an adoptive Mother. Because of this, my art tends to focus on the world of mothering and adoption. I collect everything babies: from vintage cabinet cards to tattered and torn report cards and all the good stuff in between. It’s fair to say that I’m a tiny bit obsessed with babies, children and the desire to have more of my own. In my personal life, I’m the girl that throws every baby shower and helps to design and decorate every new baby’s nursery that comes along.
And yet, I struggle to build a family of my own. I long for children to “complete” our family and to provide a sibling for our daughter, who is now six. It’s been ten years from infertility to now - with one successful (dreamy, perfect ;) adoption - and several disappointments since. And this to be honest, has been my greatest life struggle. To be a woman who can not give birth, and yet want children so badly. So, being a person who believes that I can have everything I want as long as I work hard enough, I have dedicated my adult life to getting that family. It’s the reason I started my blog, to get the word out about our hope to adopt again. It’s the reason I create the art that I do, to get the word out about our hope to adopt again. And it’s the reason I have not really “moved on” in my life, because I felt that my work - completing my family - was not finished.
But the thing is, I have been drowning in my determination. And it’s getting old. It is so hard to be in a position of having no control over something that you want so desperately while at the same time, trying to live a life content with what you do have. In other words, at some point I began to realize that I was spending my time, energy and focus trying to get a new baby, when my baby was already sitting beside me. And I was missing out. Missing out on every part of her, missing out on celebrating the family of three that we are, and missing out on being happy in the moment. So, after many years, we have decided to stop pursuing a goal that has eluded us and start living the life that is before us.
And that is where this journal comes in. When I cracked open this new book, it was to participate in an e-course that my friend Leslie was hosting, Mind. Body. Soul. An e-course of art and life. The crux of the event was to create journal pages based upon six separate and motivational words or phrases.
I began the first pages just as I would any other, longing for a baby. By the time I got onto page two, my husband and I were questioning wether or not we should stop trying, hence the second entry which suggests that I “just sit with it for a while.” By page four, I was feeling desperate and therefore, “But I feel like giving up” came out. The middle of the book (“O.ver.come”) is just black and depressing, but a couple of pages later, a conversation that I had with my Mother-in-law started to change my perspective. The quote from her is highlighted in my purple spread, “who among you are willing to be dark so that the others can shine?” Symbolically, this page also includes a vintage crystal hanging from it, which I used to represent my art and blog. It's the page that changes the feel and mode of the book. “Renew” comes immediately thereafter - the only page I actually drew in - which also seemed symbolic to me at the time. The rest of the book, from a page in which I use pieces of Kendra’s baby clothes (immediately after I gave most of them away) as my collage materials, to a page in which I celebrate life as it is with a beautiful Rumi quote, all just seemed to come together.
And as I finished the journal, I noticed that there may have been some hidden secrets along the way. Perhaps, the first page in which I question, “you ARE enough,” was really telling the story in a different way. Maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t about wether or not I could handle another child as I originally thought, but rather, it was about being enough as we are. “YOU are enough.” And although this decision is new and it still hurts, I am now in a place where I can actually believe that.
Kristin xo
