Tag: feelings out of fiber

The purpose of life: stop struggling

When everything you do feels like a struggle, it’s hard to believe life is supposed to be filled with joy and ease. And yet, that’s the whole purpose of life.

This may look chaotic, all these colors and bits of fabric struggling together, but really, it’s an expression of joy and ease.

If you’re feeling rudderless…

If you’re drowning in that sea of struggle, convinced you’ll never feel joy again, convinced nothing is ever easy, you need support. Support is critical to reconnecting you to purpose. Support is how I did it for myself and it’s what my business is centered around now.

When I was stuck in a place where work and life felt hard, I was depressed, angry, frustrated, and overwhelmed. I was unwilling to really talk to anyone about I how felt because I didn’t want to bring them down into the depths with me.

But this was the wrong approach. That became clear when my negativity began to leach into my relationship with my guy. Something had to change.

My guy knew I was unhappy. It was impossible not to know it, but while he expressed encouragement and gave me hugs, he also grew really tired of hearing me say “It’s fine” when it clearly wasn’t. Really, how fine could it be when I was cranky, angry, and weepy all at the same time? Dinner isn’t particularly delightful when the person across the table pouts the whole time. It’s a wonder he stood for it as long as he did.

He called me on my shit one day and I started talking, sharing my thoughts and feelings about how conflicted I felt. Deep down, I knew nothing was supposed to be as sad and difficult as everything seemed to be but I couldn’t see a way out.

That conversation led to others. As we talked our way through what I was really seeking, I found hope. Once I found hope, I was able to see my situation more clearly. Once I could see clearly, I discovered all the ways I was blocking my own joy and ease.

With clear vision, I hired a coach and was then able to create the mindset shifts I needed to leave struggle behind, in every situation, in every experience, and in every thought. Now, even when I’m doing something I’ve never done before or my day is long and full of work tasks, I feel joy and ease. Consistently. And that makes life amazing.

Getting support…

Start by talking to someone who has your best interests at heart. This can be your partner, another family member, or friend. Keep in mind this person may be biased towards keeping the status quo (because that might be easier for the other person) so give serious thought to who you choose. I started with my guy, but eventually, I knew I needed greater and unbiased support.

Next, consider working with a coach to receive that unbiased support. This is the work I do with my clients, providing a safe space to work through the struggle, opening the mind to discover the blocks, and then helping them create the mindset shifts they need to live a life of joy and ease.

Finally, do the work you need to do to release the perception that everything is a struggle. It’s easier to do this work when you’re supported and encouraged, when you work with someone who can see what you can’t see. You’ll shift much more quickly and the work will be easier to do.

With joy and ease…

If I can go from literally decades of push and struggle to consistently feeling everything is joyful and easy (even the tough stuff), you can too. The whole point of getting support is so you don’t have to keep doing it alone. Give yourself the gift of working with a coach to expedite your shift from struggle to ease.

Let me help you find your joy.

If you need support around shifting from struggle to joy and ease, let’s set up time to chat.

If you’re ready for a private (virtual) showing of my art, you can schedule an appointment here.

To discuss commissioning me to make a textured fiber painting specifically for you or someone you love, please schedule an exploratory commissioning conversation and we’ll see what we can create together.

If you enjoyed this article and found it helpful, please share with the ONE person you know could use it too!

Roadtripping during COVID

Life recently felt more like “normal”, even as we played fast and loose with our health. Roadtripping during COVID can be anxiety inducing.

Or not.

We chose not.

Me, wondering if a road trip is a good idea during a pandemic.

Roadtrippin’…

✅ Florida
✅ Georgia
✅ Tennessee
✅ Kentucky
✅ Indiana
✅ Illinois
✅ Wisconsin

And back again. All in the span of a week. It’s an 18 hour drive to Illinois, then another few hours up to our oldest son’s house in Wisconsin. We split it up, taking two days to travel from Florida to Illinois, where we stayed with my sister-in-law and her family. The next day, we drove to our son’s first home so he could show off his adulting skills.

After an overnight with him, it was back to Illinois to spend time with our younger son, family, and dear friends. All in all, we spent 3-½ days up north and 3-½ days driving.

I’m a little worn out!

But it was worth it.

There were birthdays to celebrate and hearts needing the comfort of seeing each other. 💖

To be anxious or not…

I’d been a little anxious about this journey. It was the first time I’d left the house for an extended period since March. I felt socially awkward, like I’d forgotten how to people.

I had some concern about traveling during a pandemic.

Would hotels really be clean?

What if we, or one of our family members, were asymptomatic?

What about gas station bathrooms? They’re never spotless during the best of times; would they be hotbeds of virus now?

These and other questions spun through my brain even as we drove north. Even as we stopped to fuel up the car and the “natives” gave us the side-eye for wearing a mask.

But then I realized something…

It’s okay to be a little nervous. Everything carries risk.

We’re not afraid of the virus, but we don’t want to get it either, or give it to someone else. Roadtripping felt a little like upping the ante on that risk.

While traveling during a pandemic may carry more risk than at non-pandemic times, it’s still a matter of finding your unique level of comfort with that risk, just like you would with anything that feels risky.

After all, the magic happens when we step just outside our comfort zone. And the magic of reconnecting with family and a couple dear friends was so needed.

We were prepared with our face masks and a jug of hand sanitizer.

Sitting in a car for 18 hours is a textbook definition of socially distant.

We practiced caution over recklessness at every stop, chuckling a little at the side-eye, knowing that everyone has their own way of seeing the world and the current situation.

So I made a decision…

I could choose to continue feeling anxious or I could choose to enjoy the journey.

I chose joy.

Everything else is fear.

With joy and ease…

Life is about choices. We can choose fear or we can choose joy, even when the world feels upside down and sideways.

Especially when the world feels upside down and sideways.

Which do you choose?

If you need some support around choosing joy over fear, drop me a note at hilaryclarkstudios@gmail.com and we’ll set up time to chat.

If you’re ready for a private (virtual) showing of my art, you can schedule an appointment here.

To discuss commissioning me to make a textured fiber painting specifically for you or someone you love, please schedule an exploratory commissioning conversation and we’ll see what we can create together.

If you enjoyed this article and found it helpful, please share with the ONE person you know could use it too!

Feeling in Progress: Depression

The feelings I create out of fiber typically take me anywhere from four to six weeks to create, but in recent months, I was pushing myself to make more, sew faster, produce, produce, produce.

That “drive” took all the fun out of it.

I want to be intentional about the time I spend creating my art, including when I share it with you so today I’m sharing update photos from my latest Feeling in Progress: Depression.

Feeling in Progress…

Depression – in design, photo taken using mono filter

Slow and steady…

I’m a big fan of ease. “Type A” does not describe me. Slow, steady art making soothes me and, with my Feelings work, is a critical part of the process.

When I’m creating feelings out of fiber, I’m exploring how the feeling feels within me. I give myself the opportunity to observe the feeling – where it sits in my body, where it sits in my heart and head, what thoughts it produces, and what lessons it has to offer. Rushing the creative process short circuits the learning and discovery process, which I believe is critical to personal growth and development.

Our feelings offer lessons for us to learn. Only by feeling them, observing them, and opening ourselves to receive the lessons can we transform ourselves into the people we’re meant to be.

Exit through the gift shop…

I hope you’ve enjoyed these few update photos from my latest feeling in progress, Depression. Thank you for providing me with the opportunity to share my art.

If you’re curious about learning more about the lessons feelings offer you, drop me a note at hilaryclarkstudios@gmail.com and we’ll set up time to chat.

If you’re ready for a private (virtual) showing of my art, you can schedule an appointment here.

To discuss commissioning me to make a textured fiber painting specifically for you or someone you love, please schedule an exploratory commissioning conversation and we’ll see what we can create together.

If you enjoyed this article and found it helpful, please share with the ONE person you know could use it too!

3 steps to learn from your feelings

When your feelings feel out of control, swamping you with emotion, particularly when it’s a feeling that keeps coming back over and over, it’s natural to feel completely overwhelmed with zero motivation. But there’s hope. When you allow yourself to learn what your less positive feelings are trying to teach you, you can get your motivation back.

Here are my three suggested steps to learn from your feelings.

This image of “Screen Door” looks like chaos, similar to what it feels like to be overwhelmed by your feelings.

Let go to break free…

When you’re buried under the weight of an overwhelming and recurring feeling like depression*, anger, resentment, or shame, there’s always a part of you that’s worrying about how to break free so you can just stop feeling shitty all the time. You get bogged down in thoughts of what you could do differently, which creates a cycle with the feeling, putting you on a merry-go-round that never stops.

This sensation you’ve got to control how you feel in order to make it stop is why you’re staying stuck.

Let go. Let yourself feel what you feel in all its pain and darkness. Give yourself permission to express your feelings and then express them. As you do, set some parameters so you don’t wallow forever. Give yourself an hour, a day, or a week – you’ll know how much time you need – and when the time is up, move on to the next suggestion.

Step back and observe…

After you’ve given yourself the gift of feeling what you feel, the next step is to step back and observe. This is where you get to pretend to be outside yourself, looking in.

The key here is to question your feelings. You want to inquire why you feel what you feel.

What triggered the emotion?
Why was that the feeling that rose up?
When have you felt that feeling in the past?
What caused those occurrences?
Is there a common link between what you feel now and what you’ve felt in the past? What is it?

Continue to question your feelings until there’s a sensation of release, a moment when it becomes clear why you keep feeling this particular feeling.

You can do this in a number of ways. You can journal, take voice notes, film yourself talking it out, spend time in contemplation via meditation, create the feeling as a tangible object (like I do when I create feelings out of fiber), or work with a coach like me who can help you dig deeper than you may be able to go on your own.

Find the lesson…

As you allow yourself the grace of observation, you’ll find yourself writing, speaking, or creating a record of the feeling and its root.

The “why” will appear and it will reveal the reason you default to depression*, anger, resentment, shame, or some other feeling that isn’t serving you. It will point to a moment from your past when an event happened or words were said that attached to your heart.

This moment may be major or it may be something that seemed inconsequential at the time. This moment is the key. Once you understand the moment that serves as the root, you have found the lesson and can begin the work to learn what it has to teach you.

Short is dumpy…

I have a moment that has served to make me feel motivated and encouraged AND defeated and depressed. A single moment can work to make you feel positive emotion at one point and negative at another. Each time a feeling arises, there may be a new lesson to learn. I used the steps I’ve outlined above to learn what this particular moment needed to teach me.

When I was a pre-teen, my grandmother said something that etched itself into my heart. She was short and had grown rounder with age, post-menopause. I too was short and it was clear I wasn’t going to be a tall adult. So she said to me, “Short is dumpy.” I took it as a warning to watch out as I grew older, delivered with love in the hopes she could prevent me from sharing her fate.

For years, that statement, that moment, worked as motivation and encouragement for staying slender, a short person with a slim frame. Whenever I was tempted to overeat or to make crappy food choices, I would say “short is dumpy” to myself and it worked as weight control.

And then I became post menopausal. Suddenly, no matter what I ate, how much, how little, the type of food, didn’t seem to matter. I’d become dumpy. Every time my pants felt a bit too tight, I felt more defeated and depressed. This spilled over into my work and into my art.

I was ready to change my feelings around my body. I decided to feel the defeat, observe the feeling, and find the lesson. When I did, I found that moment when my grandma warned me of the changes that occur as we age.

And the lesson I needed to learn was to re-frame the statement.

Now I tell myself “short is beautiful” and I am.

Exit through the gift shop…

When you can follow the steps I’ve shared here, you can learn what your feelings are trying to teach you. Start by letting go to break free. Next, step back and observe by questioning the feeling to understand its purpose in being there. Finally, find the lesson the feeling carries so you can begin to learn from it.

If you need support around navigating these steps, drop me a note at hilaryclarkstudios@gmail.com and we’ll set up time to chat.

*Depression is tricky. For some of us, we can manage it on our own and it never grows so severe we’re at risk of self-harm. However, for many others, help is needed to manage depression. If this is you, please do get the professional help you need. The world is better with you in it.

If you’re ready for a private (virtual) showing of my art, you can schedule an appointment here.

To discuss commissioning me to make a textured fiber painting specifically for you or someone you love, please schedule an exploratory commissioning conversation and we’ll see what we can create together.

If you enjoyed this article and found it helpful, please share with the ONE person you know could use it too!

Why trusting your feelings is key to changing your life

How often do you find yourself in conflict with what you feel?

Maybe you feel depressed and you don’t want to, but can’t seem to pull yourself out of the pit. Maybe you get angry at the tiniest things and you know you’re being irrational but keep snapping at your kids, your partner, your co-workers all the time.

Those feelings are trying to teach you something. Until you learn to trust them, you’re going to stay stuck right where you are, being a person you don’t want to be.

(Feeling) Inflamed lets you detach from that feeling of anger and ire so you can see what it’s trying to teach you. Transformation comes through observation, which leads to trust.

What would it look like…

What would it look like if you trusted your feelings instead of trying to shove them out the door as soon as they show up? If you’ve learned to trust the more positive emotions, like love, you can learn to trust the more negative ones too. Both sides of the emotional coin have the power to change your life.

The first step is to trust what you feel. Let me share an example from my corporate lifetime.

During my early years in Aviation Construction Management, the primary focus of my day to day work was with numbers. I created spreadsheets and pie charts and plugged formulas into cells to audit and verify invoices and calculate percentages.

I didn’t consider myself a “numbers” person, so I. Was. Terrified.

I felt anxious and on edge all the time, convinced my manager would discover “math” was my least developed skill and he’d have to let me go.

Every day, I woke up certain today was the day my job would end. This caused me to be irritable and tense, which wasn’t like me at all. And that’s when I knew I needed to take a step back and examine why I felt the way I did.

Stepping back…

It was true math hadn’t been my strongest subject during high school and college. I didn’t fully trust my abilities in that area which had caused the anxiety. However, the anxiety served a purpose – it pushed me to hone those math skills. I was so nervous I’d be “found out” as bad at math, I made it a point to learn how to use the accounting software better than anyone else on the team!

I learned to trust the anxiety and used it as a catalyst to learn. As a result, I became a highly valued and trusted member of the team. I became the person others turned to when they needed support. I received recognition for doing my job and doing it well, which led to advancement opportunities that exposed me to greater and greater challenges.

And when those new challenges arose, I trusted any anxiety that came along with them, and used it again as a catalyst to learn.

Exit through the gift shop…

You too can use your feelings as a catalyst to learn. The first step is learning to trust what you feel.

This first step is critical to your personal development. Without it, you’re always questioning your next step, at the mercy of your emotions. You absolutely need to feel whatever it is you feel but you don’t have to let those feelings turn you into someone you don’t want to be.

Learning to trust your feelings is key to changing your life.

If you need some support around learning to trust your feelings so you can become the person you’re supposed to be, drop me a note at hilaryclarkstudios@gmail.com and we’ll set up time to chat.

If you’re ready for a private (virtual) showing of my art, you can schedule an appointment here.

To discuss commissioning me to make a textured fiber painting specifically for you or someone you love, please schedule an exploratory commissioning conversation and we’ll see what we can create together.

If you enjoyed this article and found it helpful, please share with the ONE person you know could use it too!