Smear paint across the entire canvas, create the burrow to shelter the frightened rabbit finger puppet, cry and howl, clown yourself until you take up so much space, intone the song your heart wants to hear, break the rigid containers & make new mosaics from the broken pieces, be still, surrender to the way the water blurs the edges of the colors you keep apart, hum the wordless chorus of your grief, draw cartoons of the people who seem larger than life, emulate the seaweed, invite the anxiety monster to tea, say yes when the rhythms & melodies ask your body to dance, write the love poems to yourself, sculpt the vessel to hold your pain & your wonders.

I talk to myself, out loud even, sometimes people look at me askance. We all talk to ourselves ALL THE TIME. We tell stories about how stupid it is, how we are right and they are wrong, how horrible we are, we dream of how much better it will be once we just get X, Y & Z. We cut ourselves down or we build ourselves up, or all the sides battle it out in our heads. We take on other people’s stories about what parts of us are distasteful, what is our fault, what we can hope for. GUESS WHAT… We can vehemently defy these stories, talk back to them, get out our red pens and mark them up, rip them up and write new ones, ones that write us into thriving!

Sometimes you have to consult the meteorologist’s maps to see the size of the of the storm you’re caught in, which forces buffet you, when you’ll get some relief, where to find shelter. Or you defiantly take deviations from the route offered by google maps, “re-route”, get lost, find the streets that don’t go through anymore, find other ways to go. Or follow the video game’s map: spy the secret passage ways, skillfully avoid or choose to take on the monsters, gain the extra health, powers & tools, surmount impenetrable walls, loop back again and again to get it right this time, to find the treasures along the way.