Show up, do the work, let the magic happen.
Remember – words for the beautiful mess that is motherhood, wrote herself starting on the 8th of July 2021, I woke with a fever to write. Writing and photography do this to me on occasion – they ask me to work, to give them the space they need to show themselves, to translate stories, emotions, experiences into writing pieces or images, where I am the conduit, and the work flows through me.
Because it is work, it can be the hardest work, while seemingly the easiest work. But still work, there are boundaries to work within, processes to be completed, there are elements to be considered, there is flow and there is gutsy work that leaves me exhausted and strung out.
The ease comes from my practice, from trust in myself on the hardest days to show up and practice, to trust my voice in the stories told through the art of my writing and photography, to let go, play and be curious enough that the voice wanting to be remembered will reveal itself in the work.
It is an act of vulnerability and surrender to start with no plan or end result moving around in my overthinking mind and to follow each next right step as it unfolds.
To allow the work and the art to unfold as it goes is a result of continuously showing up and doing the work without writing or photography asking that commitment of me. It is knowing and trusting my process, and creating enough writing pieces and photos that have no life span or audience and will sacrifice themselves for the practices of the discipline. To show up and persist in the relationship to writing and photography is an act of love, each building and whispering to me “there is more where that came from”. The good and the bad.
Creativity is energy and always moving, unfolding, and revealing the next level of work, love story, and reward. It calls for the level of commitment of a devoted lover, while in some seasons the need and darkness of an unhealthy relationship. But always within this commitment, I am rewarded with writing pieces and images that are a combination of showing up, hard work and magic.
The writing of Remember was from 19 years of journal and diary writing from the most mundane days to the most celebrated and grief-stricken days. I had shown up in all my glory and all my heartbreak. There are long periods of no writing and in those spaces is photography. The energy of my writing practice knows me intimately, it knows when I am in desperate need to let the words flow out of me and knows when the creative energy turns me to focus on photography when writing is too big for my emotions, and I need to be in the present and zoom into what is in front of me. Remember knew I could be trusted to be a conduit for her. She knew I was able to let her flow starting that first day, the work unfolded in the most perfect way. I had zero expectations. I did not know I was creating a book, and each step, each decision, task, process, and person revealed themselves to me exactly at the perfect moment in time. The writing of this work of beauty had marinated long enough, I had proved myself to that particular form and with grace and ease she translated my hardest work into a thing of absolute art and healing. The work revealed herself in a way and form to be of service to hundreds of others.
And I keep going with the same commitment and understanding that the work unfolds as it needs to perfectly.
Have a beautiful day
Love
Melinda
