Eep! Oh my gosh. Y’all. My heart is so filled with love and gratitude.
There are four days left (ends 20 Sept. 2026) for the Sweepstakes. I’m 12% to my wild goal of $2k. Paintings and drawings have been purchased and folks have entered the sweepstakes. At the moment only 5 people are registered to win. If you’re up for a game of chance I’d love for you to enter. Copper would love it too. <3 Register here by making a Donation. Each dollar up to $25, counts as an entry. Read official T&Cs here.
Did I ever tell you the catalyst for the wild flip flop from poetry to art? Come on in, let me tell you a weird story.
I’d been drawing, patterning, and making books, of course, for a hot second before the commitment, but when I moved back to Minnesota from Iowa in 2021, I truly thought I was finally, finally going to be the writer I’d always been trying to be (and had earned an MA and MFA to become). I was like, dedicated af. (As I’ve said in musings before.)
But I got into this pattern of burning out, first writing pitches, then writing essays that I published here or on Medium. I’d write one and then need a month to recover. I became completely dysfunctional, foggy, and exhausted after writing one casual essay! I knew if something didn’t change, that model was unsustainable. And I truly didn’t understand why it cost so much to write a thing.
I read a lot in this time: on psychology, habits, and ADHD, I also played with paints and drawing. After a year or so of this, I decided the meditation and healing had to come first, not second. That I didn’t need to time block my schedule, use a tomato timer, biohack my body, or create new habits, I needed to clear out the old programming and rewire my beliefs. I needed to regulate my nervous system. So I started meditating daily. Moving my body. Morning paging. Breathwork. Not necessarily in that order, but there was a ritual about it.
The next thing I knew, I was having a spiritual awakening. And practicing Reiki. I was all high vibes for a bit. Before a man came back into my life then left again…
I got into EFT Tapping and one summer spent most of the time I was supposed to be writing, Tapping things out and sitting on the deck with the birds. I cried. A LOT. There’s a lot of ugly crying in healing.
It isn’t a linear journey, and when I moved back to Dilworth, that’s when the excruciating pain really kicked in. I don’t know how long it lasted. Months. Maybe more than a year. I started drawing tiny circles on an 18 x 24 sheet. I could do it from the sofa and I didn’t have to think. It’s why some of you followed me. I got more than a thousand likes on a Note, it was astonishing. At least one of my favorite writers on Substack Esmé Weijun Wang liked it. I was, wow. Blown away. You can see it not quite finished in this post.
Somewhere around then I’d met another man, and then he left, or I did. Honestly. I don’t know. I didn’t feel he was giving me a choice in his silence.
And for months after, I felt guilty, depressed, relieved, anxious, resentful, grief-stricken, stuck, near suicidal at times, hating myself. Feelings I hadn’t really felt quite so deeply before. It was the most desperate and despairing and also motivated and excited I have been, ever. I delivered food. Then my car needed tires, and solenoids, and now a wheel bearing replacement, so I haven’t been able to earn money that way. I’ve access to a car, but not for that.
I’d been arguing with and soothing my inner child for months. Crying. A lot. Again. Becoming more and more aware of her needs, feelings, and how to support her.
One morning in between sleep and wake in December, I see, I don’t know, a being that kind of looked like a baby, except also a grown man, and he said “FINE I’LL LEAVE YOU ALONE FOREVER” and he stomped off.
Now. I didn’t really believe in demons or negative entities as such (many in the spiritual world do, I learned). My first thought upon waking, I think, was that it was the sad, feral, bits of myself that felt unloved and unlovable. I don’t really know. But I’ve heard weirder stories than that.
I don’t even know what I said to them to send them off, I’d been begging these feelings to leave me alone for a long time, or more accurately, to fuck off, but I know, in my dream state, I was talking to them before they said that. Maybe I was even pleading. Desperate for them, this being, these feelings to please, please depart.
I just wanted to feel… something pleasant again. I wanted to feel alive again. Consistently. Connected.
That morning, and for many months after, I felt much lighter. Freer. When I dipped down, it was never too far, like my baseline had gone up a few notches, and I came back to myself pretty quickly.
I even landed in unconditional love for myself for the first time. I mean, there were whole days I walked around singing love songs to myself out of nowhere. I was high vibing in a whole new way. In a way I didn’t know existed. I actually liked myself. I mean truly, just liked myself.
During this time I realized that writing wasn’t that fun for me. It was kind of a drag, actually. It felt like something I HAD to do, that maybe it was a healing modality more than it was a fun creative thing to do, but making art felt joyful and fun and a little wild. So I gave myself permission to just stop writing. I had been trying to be a writer for so long, I kind of missed that I wasn’t actually being one.
And through my practices and awakening journey, words had become … well they’re so muddy, aren’t they?
Three people can interpret the same poem three different ways (which is great in poetry, but not so great in interpersonal relationships). Sometimes no matter how you word something to your lover, it’s interpreted as an attack rather than a conversation.
And right now in the world, something like “Free Palestine,” can be triggering or motivating. Apparently, calling into question the genocide of nearly a million people by a government is interpreted by some as an attack on those who share a faith with the members of that government.
Bonkers, I know.
We must see different reports. Different information. Different numbers. There really are no words that would convince someone who cannot decipher between propaganda and true reports.
But in the visual, all there is is an energy exchange. First between me and the materials, and then the painting and the viewer. I can title and describe what that energy exchange is for me, but I can’t experience the painting for the viewer, and it’s okay if y’all see something different than I do.
The hard conversations are really meant to happen between humans, art, when it comes to it, no matter how much struggle a piece causes an artist, that’s an easy conversation. Much easier than human conversation.
I listed, today, one of the first pieces I was really excited about after making the shift. I hope you’ll have a look. (Figuring out lighting in this basement apartment has been a challenge. I hope you’ll forgive that.)
Thank you so much for showing up for me and Copper. Now he’s trying to ask the closet to feed him dinner, he gets a bit turned around… I best get up and oblige. Unless there’s an invisible being, a gnome perhaps, in the closet who is capable of getting him fed… Maybe I could get some help around here.
Much love and gratitude,
Libby as bōc cræftigą
ps. I’m going to be annoying the next few days. Got to make sure absolutely everyone has a chance to see this is happening. <3