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SKETCH HOPE
I fight pain, anxiety, and fear every day, and the only method I have found that relieves my illness is to keep creating art. I followed the thread of art and somehow discovered a path that would allow me to live.
—Yayoi Kusama
Knock-knock. Knock-knock, knock-knock. When the winds of change come knocking at the door of my heart, the sound always startles me. What is this? Who is that? But then I recognize the sound. The knock of change is distinct and familiar. Its rhythm is consistent and persistent. It cannot be ignored. Instinctually, I move toward the sound, but hesitate. The force of nature stands on the other side. It is a force difficult to fight. When the door opens, chaos will consume me. The wind will swirl, disrupting everything carefully put into place. As it does, it will ask to believe all things are possible, hope all things will work together for some greater good in my life, and endure all things that rush at me. Beat-beat. Beat-beat. Beat-beat. The beat of my heart matches the rhythm of the knocking. Why would I invite this chaos in?
There is a fine line between anxiety and anticipation. Anxiety is a mindset of fear. Anticipation is a mindset of hope. It is possible to feel both at the same time. Fear the chaos and unknown outcomes of change while also anticipating what opportunities will come as a result of it. However, only one of them can govern my actions at a time.
Listening to the knocking with anxiety, the door to change cannot open. Instead, I become paralyzed with the compulsive need to protect the peace and fear the worst is about to happen. Total destruction is imminent. The winds have to force their way in, and the change feels invasive and violating as a result.
However, if I listen with anticipation and let the winds of change enter, this breath of fresh air provides extra oxygen into my lungs. My inhale collides into, over, and around me. My exhale becomes part of its force. All at once, I am elevated and part of the change rather than a fighter of it.
How do I turn the same anxious energy into anticipation? you wonder. So did I. In fact, that is how my journey to SketchPoetic started.
* * *
I was an anxious flyer and still am to some degree, but less so now.
Whenever an airplane quickly lost or gained a fraction of altitude, the leap up from the seat completely untethered me. Constantly traveling for work further exasperated the anxiousness in ways that were becoming all-pervasive. The awareness of chronic imperfections waged war with my perfectionist tendencies. My people-pleasing personality felt like it could not please anyone, and meaningful relationships felt void. Gaining control of external circumstances was a constant battle. Professionally and personally, I seemed to have a handle on life, but instead I was losing my grip on it.
Through the years, my fear of turbulence worsened. The unanticipated shake of the fuselage. The roar of the engines. The utter lack of control. It all rattled a strongly held, yet previously unexamined, belief of mine—If I am good and do good then nothing bad will happen, but every time turbulence came, none of my goodness mattered.
After trying journaling, yoga, exercise, meditation, and almost everything to make peace with the rumbling and restlessness in my soul, I found myself doodling on my notebook at work one day, processing the content of the meeting with more awareness and understanding. There was a calmness—an escape. There was less anxiety and nervous energy. It wasn’t meditation, but it was meditative.
There came a point where tackling the source of my anxiety alone was not ideal. I had been putting off seeing a therapist. Therapists were for other people with pathological issues. My issues aren’t pathological. I can handle this on my own. It will eventually get easier.
It did not.
I could express my positive and negative emotions in a healthy way through sketching, identify them, and accept them, but couldn’t understand the reason why such fierce and strong illogical reactions were happening in the first place. Shortly after, I made my first appointment and began investigating, with much trepidation, the root cause of my fear.
At first, the turbulence of my childhood came back to me in pieces … the unpredictable anger of my alcoholic father … his possessive love and wild jealousy … the fury and the silence of his abuse on my mother … Memories that laid dormant started to arise. All the anxiety and fear woven into these experiences unearthed like buried ghosts.
Let me pause here and say that on some level, I knew why my anxiety was there all along. I could hear it thumping on the inside of my soul for years and built my life over it. It was louder in my youth, but as time passed, the sound grew fainter. Unearthing these ghosts of my childhood through therapy did not bring immediate relief. It made me more aware of the fact that the distance created wasn’t safe enough. These memories could reach me at any time. This realization was not liberating. It was terrifying. There was no solid foundation to stand on. I was suspended above it—disconnected and trapped. Less in control than ever before.
Sketching through this time in my life helped me express the anxiety and despair. It supported the process needed to make connections between the past and present and as much as I didn’t want to revisit these experiences, doing so helped me to face the shame with grace.
It was about a year into daily sketching, when the memory of my grandmother surfaced. My nanay had been a second mother. We had a special relationship and a connection that didn’t require many words to be exchanged between us. It was a simple shared understanding of each other and our interaction with the world.
Remembering her laugh left an ache in my heart. When she was diagnosed with cancer, my mother told me her condition was deteriorating quickly. We didn’t know how much time she had, but we all knew we needed to be with her. My mother immediately planned a flight to Australia where my grandmother lived, but I did not.
The news of my grandmother’s cancer happened during a very difficult time at work where the pressures of growing the business were all-consuming. It was my priority. It was my future. I had also managed to convince myself that I could not watch my grandmother die. “It would be too painful to say goodbye,” reason would say. “I want to remember her the way she had always been…” These narratives played over and over again until the truth became buried—my grandmother’s death would be a devastating loss and combined with the reality of being trapped on a plane for fifteen hours with turbulence … no. I could not. I would not. I didn’t.
At the time, it seemed rational. It was not a conscious choice and unknowingly, this choice would haunt me years later. The shame flushed my face as this connection was made. It still flushes me to think about it.
I let my grandmother die without saying goodbye.
This sobering truth still hits me harder than many of the truths encountered while sketching. How could I have made such a senseless or heartless choice? How did my fear become so great it overpowered my heart? And, how was I not aware of how bad my anxiety had become?
I expressed and processed my despair in my sketches for a while, and over time I was able to find forgiveness, grieve the loss of my grandmother, and heal.
This, my friends, is how SketchPoetic works. It gives you space to acknowledge your anxiety and shame, time to face the sources that cause them, and opportunity to express these feelings in order to process them. Each day, I learn to surrender control of my external circumstances and become more familiar with the depth of hope, courage, faith, truth, and love always accessible inside.
Turbulence, thus, has become a metaphor to describe the leap into SketchPoetic. As I allow myself to express the fear, shame, and despair that turbulence rattles in me, I am able to feel the resilience of my spirit rising. The peace comes from within and my spirit elevates to clearer skies. It does not mean that I no longer feel shame, fear, or despair, rather it means that through sketching, I have found a way to navigate above felt experiences. Fear becomes truth. Anxiety becomes anticipation. Despair becomes hope.
Follow the feelings, friends. Examine the sources. Realize the peace within you. Do not lose heart. Leap into this practice with hope.
HOPE SKETCHES
According to Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, “safety” is a basic requirement for a person to experience self-actualization. Sketching provides a safe space for you to realize your potential. It allows you to become acquainted with yourself as a creator. This is the nature of your truest self.
In this exercise, you will express your anxiety through sketching. You can choose to leap into it with hope or despair. Either way, harness any comfort or discomfort you experience and explore the possibilities in every mark you make. Sketch through what you go through. Let your lines be shaky and uncertain if they want to be. Let them be as wild and nonsensical as you can allow them to be. The blank paper is the safe space you need it to be. Give your mind permission to wander wherever it wants to go.
In any given moment we have two options: to step forward into growth or step back into safety.
—Abraham Maslow
SKETCHING THROUGH ANXIETY
(10 MINUTES)
OBSERVE
How do you cope with anxiety? How do you respond to events that are out of your control? How would you like to respond to events that are outside your control?
When life is turbulent, you may wrestle with anxiety as I do at times. Think of a time in your life when your sense of safety and security was shaken. The circumstances may likely be related to a change in your life, relationships, job, health, or general well-being.
As you think about your reaction to the experience and the anxiety you felt (or currently feel as you recall it), notice the way your body responds. Reflect on your answers to the following questions:
Did the pace of your breathing change?How is your body responding to the thought of anxiety?Did you find your mind drifting or focused in this recollection?What else is happening to you at this moment as you remember?Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing.
—Georgia O’Keeffe
As you engage in this first sketching experience, pay attention to your body and allow your pen to move on the paper in synchronicity with the emotion. If your legs are shifting or tapping, let your pen move in rhythm with it. If your shoulders are tense, allow your lines to express this tension. If your mind is jumping from one thought to the next, let your marks jump with it.
SKETCH
Using turbulence as a metaphor, sketch a series of waves starting from the bottom of the page all the way to the top. The goal is to represent the motion of turbulence.
Imagine the first wave being the most extreme example of turbulence you can imagine. Let your pen move up and down in varying speed, height, and distance as you feel your way through this sketching experience. Repeat the waves over and over again until you reach the top of the page.
Notice the way you hold your pen as you sketch. The tightness of your grip represents the intensity of your anxiety and the control you want to have over the movement. The looseness of the grip represents the hope and anticipation you have in passing through this moment to get to your destination.
At some point in the sketch, grip the pen super tight, almost as if you are cutting off the circulation in your hands. Then release your grip on the pen to something noticeably less intense as you sketch.
REFLECT
When you are done, take a moment to reflect on what you sketched:
What patterns, themes, or images arose?What emotion(s) did you feel during the sketch?How did your body respond throughout?Did any memories, thoughts, or insights surface?Did you observe any shifts in energy or perspective?SKETCHING WITH ANTICIPATION
(30 MINUTES)
OBSERVE
Think about a time when you anticipated an experience. You knew it was coming but you didn’t know what the outcome would be. Perhaps it was just before a performance, presentation, time of travel, or life event.
The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but building the new.
—Socrates
Consider the way in which your body reacts to anticipation and compare it with anxiety. Notice the way in which your body responds.
Did your heart beat faster at the thought of it?Did the pace of your breathing change or did you stop breathing altogether?Were you filled with hope or dread?Are you tense or giddy?Did you rehearse all the possible scenarios?Did your thoughts seem clear or scattered?Consider engaging your body in the following sketching experience by allowing it to move in synchronicity with the motion and emotion of anticipation just as you did in the last sketching experience.
SKETCH
Using dots, lines, patterns, or shapes, create a visual representation of your experience with anticipation and what it feels like to you.
Remember, it doesn’t have to look like any particular thing—it does not need to factually represent a person, place, feeling, or object. It is more important to focus on releasing this anticipation and putting it on paper. Think of your pen as the mechanism for communicating and let it flow from one mark to the next.
REFLECT
When you are done, take a moment to reflect on what you sketched:
What patterns, themes, or images arose?What emotion(s) did you feel during the sketch?How did your body respond throughout?Did any memories, thoughts, or insights surface?Did you observe any shifts in energy or perspective?When an airplane hits turbulence, the pilot seeks a higher elevation to rise above it. How did you navigate both of these prompts? Reflecting on your sketches, consider your answers to the following questions:
How are the sketches similar and different?How did the intensity of your grip impact you and the result on your paper?What did you spend the most time thinking about?In times of uncertainty, why is it difficult for you to have hope?As you look at the entire sketch, what does it reveal to you about your experience with anxiety and anticipation?Sketching allows me to hope. It acknowledges fear as a rational, instinctual reaction and allows me to anticipate the sudden changes in my life with a form of acceptance. I can work with the wind instead of fighting against it. I can navigate it with curiosity rather than the sense of impending doom.
If this first chapter resonates with you and you’re not ready to move on, go with that instinct. You are welcome and encouraged to repeat this experience. To repeat an experience is part of the process.
There is no timeline for completion. Repetition is the way progress is made. Use repetition to mark, measure, and track your own development. The more evidence you have of the hope that lies within you, the more you will navigate your way through the ups and downs of life with hope.
— TESTIMONIAL —
“SketchPoetic is a ritual. I find a comfortable place to settle my bones. My only objective is expression, although this encompasses healing and growth. I close my eyes. Deep inhale. Full exhale. I take note of how my physical body feels. Any aches to tune in to that my body is telling me about? Eyes open.
“I survey which pen feels best to me. Bold? Brush? Fine?—I settle on a fine tip, 0.35 mm.
“Closing my eyes again, I take a deep breath and I observe my headspace. How am I feeling? Joy? Anxiety? Grief? Shame? Is there a memory or thought replaying in my mind that needs attention? Maybe I don’t know today, or I feel nothing—that’s okay too. I open my eyes … or maybe I don’t, and I put the pen to the page, unsure of what will flow out.
“It’s late today, I feel centered, content, and drowsy—starting in the center of the page a vague Buddha figure appears. I color in the bottom for some reason—it feels weighted down now. Flowing lines radiate out from that. The energy feels good.
“Naturally my mind wanders, I start to worry—dark intense circles tunnel out and swirl like a tornado across the top of the page. I reassure myself, and let it go. A desire to fill the page moves me toward the bottom right corner. I playfully begin to draw a profile using swirls and circles (I’m too intimidated to try something more detailed). As I continue to sketch I start to focus on making the figure more refined—frustrated by this perfectionism I draw squiggles protruding out in all directions to ‘mess up’ the figure on purpose. An act of defiance.
“My eyes feel heavy as I begin to scribble in order to fill the remainder of the page—these scribbles flow from my hand almost like a buried language I’m unable to read. I get into a flow of enchantingly writing these words as the timer goes off.
“Whatever I’m able to release on the page leaves me with a new perspective. These pages are a safe place for expression, along with this community created by Sheila. I am grateful to be here and for this tool.”
—Amy Weible, @boneneem
Copyright © 2021 by Sheila Darcey.
