Small Business

Unpacking success in business: vulnerability, mistakes, and inclusion

/ Sarah K Reece / 5 Comments

Hello, lovely ones.

I have some wonderful news to share and I’ve been trying to share it for a while now. My business is finally a success.

Isn’t it funny how sharing our successes can make us feel so vulnerable? I’m very used to sharing things most of us prefer to hide. I’ve found value in it and learned how to deal with the downsides. I’m intimately
acquainted with failure and loss.

I’m less familiar and in a lot of ways less comfortable with sharing my wins. This is a big one, and right now I can finally feel it, and it’s not too terrifying to share.

20 years ago I wrote myself a goal list for my life. I wanted a lot of things, but my main ones were a job that paid well enough for me not to need Centrelink (welfare), a safe place to live, and a partner and children. They are not exceptional asks. But for someone like me they have been the work of a lifetime.

For 20 years, my work has tangled with my identity in deeply painful ways and brought a constant taste of failure to my life. I exposed myself as different before I found a safe place to stand with income, and that was risky, and it burned me. I have spent a lot of my life alone and naked in front of the crowd. And that created a community for me, it built connections I could not otherwise have created, and it humanised me in a world that saw me as other and less. It also closed so many doors, outed me early, and left me on the sidelines in a race that saw me as a dangerous liability instead of a resource to invest in. Self-employment was my remaining viable option, and it has been a brutally challenging path.

I have finally climbed my personal Everest. Work and money. I am officially broken up with that abusive relationship Centrelink. I’m financially independent.

It’s been scary to tell you. I didn’t feel successful, or safe, or like I’d made a real achievement, it just felt like a break in the storm, with more rains coming. What if shouting about it brought down an avalanche? What if I stumble and it all falls apart, and I have to crawl out of the rubble and tell you I’m back where I started? What if I fail again?

I will fail again.

I have been quiet, busy, kept my head down wrestling with it all. I have learned so much. I am now celebrating 4 years in NDIS space.

I also want to sing my achievements from the rooftops, because it looked so impossible for so long. So many people have helped me or struggled with me on this road, and I know there are so many other people like me out there wondering if it can be done.

When I started employing people I had three goals:

  • To do really good support work for our clients, something approaching the level of attuned and responsive care provided by good unpaid carers
  • To take really good care of our staff which is very rare in this industry
  • To run the business well so we all had security

I have to some extent achieved all of these, using a combination of approaches such as kaizen and co-design, values such as inclusion, and skills such as my capacity to engage in a vulnerable and authentic way with people I don’t know. Unlearning what doesn’t work and ignoring what everyone else is doing that creates the outcomes I don’t want has played just as important a role as finding the tools and approaches I need, and encouraging the values and methods to emerge from the process.

Sometimes I can feel a sense of accomplishment, but a lot of the time I’m just struggling with the things that aren’t working well yet. My fourth goal was added a couple of years in:

  • for my role to be a good fit for me

All are still in progress, and by the nature of this work always will be, but this one has come a long way. A couple of years ago I was lying face down in my driveway in meltdown over a distressing experience in this work. Most mornings I woke up hating my job. Most days I now wake up feeling reasonably good about it. There’s further to go but the profoundly unmanageable demands on me have been drastically adjusted and the fit is so much better.

Recently I have done a thing that clicked with me, that made me feel successful in a way nothing else has. I sent an email authorising paying my staff a Christmas bonus. There’s enough money in the business to pay me, and to give something to them too. I was walking on clouds for a week.

I’m autistic. I have ADHD. I have an unpleasant collection of chronic illnesses and a pain condition. I have mental health problems. I have a trauma history. I have struggled with poverty for much of my life. I have been homeless. We are plural/multiple. We are looking after a family with young children. And we are running our own business successfully enough that we no longer qualify for welfare.

None of those things went away. We are still plural. We still have ADHD. The pain and chronic illnesses have backed off and we’ve learned how to manage them well enough to have time to work – but even then I’m not working full-time. No one on my team is. Some weeks I manage about 10 hours and just keep the fires burning. I did not have to be cured of any of my disabilities to achieve this. I had to get the right support, the right advice, and to survive the shitty learning curve and all the mistakes I’ve made and the people I depend on have made.

One of my favourite quotes:

An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.

Niels Bohr

I am becoming an expert by the simple maths of running out of mistakes I can
make. And bringing with me a stack of advantages, and resources I’ve found, and playing to my considerable
strengths.

So what exactly have I achieved? I usually employ around 10 staff, most of whom are Disability Support Workers. We do something very unusual in NDIS space, which is to use a relationship-based, team approach. Most of our clients are neurodivergent and/or dealing with mental health challenges.

I now draw a regular income alongside my staff. I have taken out my first-ever loan and bought a car.

I used some of the profits to buy a caravan because we had 3 clients and 2 staff dealing with homelessness just in our second year of running. The homelessness resources here in South Australia are hideously underfunded and under-resourced. I have had staff sleeping on my couch and once had to drop a client off in the parklands with a warm jacket and a cheap phone. So I bought a caravan for emergencies and temporarily housed 4 people last year.

I have kept two highly vulnerable clients alive during the pandemic, fighting people up to the Health Minister of NSW and burning nearly every personal and professional bridge I had to do so. It worked. It was messy and exhausting but they were both at extreme risk including covid exposure and for one illness requiring ICU stays, and they both survived.

I’ve employed 39 staff total in this time, with a range of backgrounds and circumstances and many with their own disabilities. Some have been ridiculously overqualified but blocked from accessing employment due to issues like racism. I have been a step towards a bigger goal for people who just needed someone to give them a chance.

I don’t recommend starting a new business a few months before a pandemic kicks off, it’s stressful. We’ve survived a lot. Coping with $33,000 of unpaid invoices that took 9 months to resolve. Managing the theft of $23,000, changes to the award rates that looked like they would kill the business, and so many HR and SCHADS issues I’ve lost count. I have floundered as an inexperienced boss with disabilities myself and no road map on how to do that well. And yet, we’re here.

All our clients survived, some have moved on, some have stayed, many have begun to thrive, and some have had proper support during extremely difficult times in their lives. People who were trapped in isolation now have safe networks. People are getting fed good hot meals they enjoy. They are getting dental care, replying to their emails, getting their homework done, having birthday parties, passing rent inspections, getting first aid for self-harm from someone kind, decluttering their home without shame or pressure, getting the kids out to the park to play, having someone they can talk to about the voices, being able to use a clean bathroom or help to find a GP they can trust. It’s the most mundane and domestic things, and the most sublime and profound. We clean toilets. We change lives.

I’ve made plenty of mistakes, sometimes horribly publicly, and certainly sadly burned some bridges in desperation, but I’ve hung on, dusted myself off, got up and tried again.

As this team has come together the business has finally clicked over from being a hobby that pays for itself but not much more, to being a legitimate income for me. The nature of this work is that it’s in a constant state of flux. New staff, new clients, new NDIS rules and SCHADS conditions. Transitions in and out like the tide. I’m still refining the model, and there are still things I hate about it – like being constantly on call and struggling for work/life balance, but it’s easy for me to drown in everything that still needs attention. I wanted to stop for a moment and call attention to this impossible thing. I pay myself every fortnight. I pay taxes. I pay staff. We help people. We make a difference.  Some folks couldn’t find what they needed in support workers from other businesses. They are teaching us how to be better support workers and using us to bridge the gaps in their lives between their capacity and their dreams. We learn and refine each time, and something important emerges.

One of the key things I’ve learnt is that I can hire inexperienced disability support workers and train them myself, because I have those skills. But I cannot hire inexperienced administrators because I lack many of those skills and I can’t do the training. That was hard, and I struggled a great deal to depart from my preferred approach of hiring for values and then training people into the role. My disabilities drastically impact some of my administrative capacity. I can’t train people to do things I can’t do. So experienced administrative roles such as my business manager and my PA who can problem solve and experiment and function independently have been tremendous assets.

This job is all about people which means good HR is not optional, it’s the foundation. I’m on my fourth company so far. My darling wife Nightingale has provided stability and helped with tasks I’m truly bad at such as running the roster. I am time blind and have dyscalcula, which impacts my ability to get dates and times correct. No one in their right mind wants me doing scheduling. I once famously took my entire extended family to the Willunga Almond Blossom Festival 2 weeks early. I’ve needed people on my team who are better than me at essential tasks, and that’s taken a lot of time and a decent amount of luck.

My employees have added their knowledge and skills. Some have had terrible previous experiences and come in with considerable work-related trauma we’ve tried to use as antigoals to create safer policies and culture. Some have had experience in advocacy, community services, and management and they’ve been generous with that experience. I’ve gradually begun to find ways to manage some of my disabilities in this context as we’ve created a more inclusive workplace for each other.

I’m passionate about good service design. My years of experience in community services, peer work, alternative mental health, government, consulting, my training in public health, and my lived experience in disability and as a carer make me the right person to set up a business like this. I have found a place where my strengths are relevant and can make income. I have found a model where I get to provide services for some of the most marginalised people and still get paid.

I have had to sacrifice too. In the middle of a family lunch, there will be an emergency with a client rushed to hospital and I’ll be on the phone sorting it all out. I had to shut down every other wing of my business for 3 and a half years to focus on getting this running right and dealing with the pandemic. My ADHD brain found that nightmarishly hard at times. I have made almost no art and had almost no side projects. I have lived and breathed my family and this work. 6 months ago things stabilised enough to allow me the time to be able to re-open some select consulting work and that has been a joy. As much as it’s satisfying to figure something out myself and create it, it’s doubly so to have the kind of reach that means other people, organisations, or businesses can make something good too. I have honed a lot of expertise and it’s exciting to use it to support other people’s projects and watch them succeed.

Not everyone can do this. If I was still super sick this would be impossible. But many of the things that make this impossible have nothing to do with me, my disabilities, or my limitations. They are needless thoughtless exclusions that cut people like me out of the narrative of work and money and cast us away. It should never have taken me 20 years to get here, and it should not have been so hard. So much of the advice and training was worse than useless, and the intensity of trying to prove myself and prove my value as a person in this world has scarred and savaged me. This is not inspiration porn. It is not a stick to beat yourself with. This post might hurt to read, and if it does, I am so very sorry. I have cried a thousand tears. I cry with you. It isn’t fair and it shouldn’t be like this.

This may be a relief to read, for all those who have fretted quietly in the background about me. I remember being told once, there’s so much goodwill out there for you, but no one knows how to help you. I did not fit.

This may be hopeful to read. You too may not fit. Or you may be wondering if your autistic child has hope for escaping poverty if the people who apply for jobs at your business are worth taking a risk on if the dreams you have are in any way possible. If multiple/plurals can function in the world in some way or are doomed to be trapped in poverty.

Yes, we can, sometimes. This isn’t just about me, it’s about the context in which I’m doing what I do. I have had a raft of support, opportunities and strengths, alongside the pantheon of losses, impairments, and challenges. I’m still learning what’s made this finally work for me. I’m still finding words for the costs. I’m still figuring out how to stay afloat as things change. I’ll keep sharing honestly. Because all of us deserve financial security, we deserve jobs and public identities, and we deserve to be seen as part of the solution not just a social problem to be solved.

This is my story and it’s beautiful and painful. I’m sharing it because it takes courage to change the world and we are all changing the world. I have made a thing and it’s beautiful. I climbed a mountain. My feet are bloody and I have lost some toes. Failure is terrifying and necessary. Success holds its terror, it obscures and dehumanises and makes us want to keep our vulnerabilities more secret, it carries us to new heights to fall from, it is embedded with prices we didn’t realise we were paying. And it’s beautiful and powerful, the view across the horizon. Paying for Poppy’s dental surgery last year without needing to ask anyone to help. The illusion of independence and self-sufficiency, the protection from the consequences of our flaws and our soft underbelly, the place where we connect in humility that’s now covered by scales and cloth and so hidden we can’t even name the loneliness. I can afford my medications. I pay rent. I feel ashamed and survivor’s guilt for having enough in a capitalist culture that keeps the vulnerable below the poverty line to incentivise work. I wrestle with my place in a broken system when I am no longer at the bottom of it. I try to buffer the people in my care from the worst excesses of it.

Come raise a glass with me. I made a good thing. I dreamed something out of reach and have wrestled it down from the gods, eaten lightning. Come share my fire.

Mental Health Master Class

/ Sarah K Reece / 1 Comment

Hey lovely folks! I’m thrilled to be getting back into my workshops. I shut down all my public speaking, workshops, and consulting when the pandemic took hold and it’s absolutely wonderful to be dusting it all off and getting back into it. Keeping my clients alive and figuring out how to hire folks to be their teams was absolutely consuming and I simply couldn’t juggle anything else for the last couple of years. Yet I have missed it so much, there’s a special kind of magic in these spaces you don’t get in one to one work. Groups have so much power to validate and support each other. Nightingale is kindly sorting out the important things like room bookings and dates so things actually happen and I will be turning up to the correct location and on the right day!

This time I’m running a session on mental health on Friday 3rd of March, so if you’re interested share this post. This is a fabulous introductory price so grab your tickets asap. 

You will get to spend a day redefining mental health from my unique perspective. Mental health training is all too often divorced from the real world. Services are imperfect, frameworks have limitations, and sometimes our madness is what saves us. Embrace the contradictions and find hope rather than confusion in the complexity. Support others to find their own meaning and discover the most useful resources they navigate a mad world.

When: Friday 3rd March, 10am – 4pm 
Where: 19 On Green*
How Much: $300** (GST included)
If you don’t have NDIS funds and are experiencing financial hardship, please contact us. Some reduced price tickets available. 
admin@sarahkreece.com
Where to Book: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/545817403547

*Fully mobility accessible venue with breakout room.
**NDIS payment accepted for self and plan managed participants, please contact us if you need an invoice sent to your plan manager. 

I would love to see you there. This is suitable for people with no experience at all, or those who work in mental health but would value a fresh perspective. Carers and people with lived experience are very welcome.

Poem – my business is not who I am in the world

/ Sarah K Reece / 2 Comments

I read this fabulous article tonight about objectification at work, How to build a life: A profession is not a personality.

It was posted on the ever brilliant and relevant Freelance Jungle, the best mental health resource for Australian freelancers I’ve come across. It reminded me of a poem I wrote in my journal a few years ago when I was wrestling with my obsession with work. When I was sick and unemployed I struggled deeply without a public identity because that is usually our work. Struggling to figure out work left me tangled and defining my self and life in ways that disempowered and wounded me. I recall listening once to a fabulous presentation at a world hearing voices conference when one of the speakers told us he felt as defined and limited by his public identity as a psychiatrist as he used to by his public identity as a schizophrenic. He introduced himself as a person who worked as a psychiatrist. It was strange and thought provoking. We are all more than the roles we play, and it seems to be just as important for us to remember that as it is for other people to perceive it about us. 

My business is not
Who I am in the world. 
It is not
My identity, my value, my self respect
Not the sum of me
My place
My impact
My legacy. 

My business is a project
One project among many
A way to earn money
Make a difference
A way to be in the world.
It is not the only way
The one, true, right, way
The sum of every effort until now
Validation for all that came before
The reward for every tribulation.
It is just my business, one dream
Among many.

My business is not 
Proof that I've 'made it', or
Evidence I've settled, given up, sold out, lost faith.
It doesn't mean I've gone over to the other side
Become a success or failed a character test
It's something to be proud of but not the only thing
It's a part of me but I am not
A peice of it.
If it died 
I would still be here.
My business is not
Who I am in the world.

Being Disabled at Work

/ Sarah K Reece / 4 Comments

Well, 10 years in to having my own ABN, I’m now running a small team of 9 employees and have a few fabulous subcontractors and other businesses providing support too. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about disability at work because as a person with multiple disabilities work has been a huge challenge for me, and most of my employees have some form of lived experience of disability either themselves or as a carer in their personal lives. Figuring out access needs for all of us is a constant theme in my life at the moment! I’m presently overhauling all my HR documents to make them more inclusive and accessible, it’s so time consuming but also so essential.

I’ve also done a lot of training and mentoring over the years trying to figure this process out. Sadly, most of it has been worse than useless, it’s been so uninformed that it’s done harm. I’ve had to un-learn a lot of what I was taught because it became part of what was holding me back and adding to my struggles. The micro-business for people with a disability cert 3 I did 8 years ago was destructive. Experiences with some (not all) Disability Employment Service Providers was likewise, as were various trainings offered by mentors, business support services, NEIS, and so many other systems intended to make life easier for someone like myself. They almost all floundered on two very simple diversities: poverty and disability. Without a good grasp of those two realities, so much of the material was a poor fit and in some cases seriously so.

I’ve got more confident about walking away these days and in some cases providing feedback. Here’s a de-identified email I sent to a mentoring program I was in a year or two ago:

Just putting down in email some of the things we’ve been talking about. I think XXXXX has a lot to offer me and other medium to long term unemployed folks with disabilities, but some aspects of it are also concerning, stressful, and potentially harmful. My brief rundown is:

Positives:

  • Strong focus on increasing individual capacity
  • Wide range of useful methods with a good research base
  • Positive approach to challenges’
  • Useful overview of the business development processes
  • Excellent use of human centered design tools for product and service development

Difficulties

Most of the information is generic and not disability specific, particularly for people who are neurodivergent. (people’s who’s brains/minds work differently from the norm, such as autistic people, those with ADHD, giftedness, brain injuries, mental illness, and so on)

Much of the information is presented in a decontextualised way which is highly risky for people who experience systemic discrimination and trauma (both almost ubiquitous to the disability population) By which I mean things like

  • Telling people that empathising with other people groups is easy has the potential to be not only vastly inaccurate but shaming. Many people with autism experience over or under developed empathy in very challenging ways, most people who have been long term poor find it very difficult to empathise with people with money such as potential employers, and generally they lack the intimate access necessary to such people to form it.
  • Another example: “You’re not limited in any way if you have internal motivation” which is a cruel set up for shame and humiliation when people discover that in fact systemic oppression still exists and issues of stigma still impact their lives in harmful ways.
  • We were told often that habit formation is very easy “anyone can do it, it’s just like breathing!”, whereas difficulty forming habits is a common aspect of ADHD. (for more about this see here) And breathing is an autonomic reflex, not a habit.
  • Told that “If we were more outside our comfort zone, we would have more growth and success”. This is risky advice to give to vulnerable people, and there’s a substantial body of research that shows the benefits of safety rather than risk in promoting growth.
  • Told that we all lack motivation and struggle to make ourselves do hard things.
  1. there’s little evidence for any widespread personality deficits in either the poor or disabled communities.
  2. a quick discussion with the online group revealed the usual more complex relationships with motivation with 2 group members who hyper focus, 2 who find positive feedback distressing, 2 who use negative feedback as perverse reinforcement (common for marginalised communities) and only 1 who found motivation a concern in general. This took about 3 minutes to ascertain.

Quality of the facilitation. AAA is using a ‘mug and jug’ style of education where he the expert passes on information to we the students who are in need of his expertise. BBB is using a more appropriate adult facilitation style that includes more opportunities for reflection and tailoring of the information to the students. For example, CCC in the online group was clearly reluctant to engage and feeling alienated by the focus on positivity. A short conversation with the online group revealed a distressingly high level of job rejection with attendant loss of confidence, social alienation, and personal vulnerability. Without care for this context the information is useless at best and actively harmful at worst, playing into victim blaming dynamics already culturally prevalent for the poor, disabled, and unemployed.

A great deal of the information is inherently contradictory and rather than exploring that it’s being glossed over. For example, we are being told that happiness is the key to success but that motivation is not a feeling and we shouldn’t use feelings as motivation. This is fertile ground for discussion but that’s not being given time. Efforts to discuss are being dismissed as intrusive and needless, making the space less safe for anyone to volunteer information or contradict provided wisdom.

Conclusions

Many of the underlying assumptions about the causes and cures of long term unemployment need closer examination, as does the risk of the intervention itself. The intake materials for the course were based on the readiness to change materials used in drug and alcohol rehabilitation services. They had no data points reserved to indicate that any life domain was currently progressing well. The underlying message was that all aspects of our lives were in need of major changes, and that we were indicating our ‘readiness to give up unemployment’. However the central tenants of the readiness to change model – meeting people where they are at – is not being used. So people like CCC are being put under pressure to grasp the power of positive mindset rather than being offered the validation and grief tools needed to process their history and recover from it.

So far the course has given me much useful food for thought, but I’ve also been told that I am where I am in life because I lack enough empathy, willingness to take risks, self motivation, willingness to make myself do unpleasant things and to choose growth. This is grossly inappropriate.

Recommendations

If you would like to consider your program in a more holistic manner, I suggest the use of Critical Appraisal tools by Rychetnik (see more here) who was one of the pioneers of evaluating unintended consequences of interventions such as yours. I also recommend using frameworks such as Trauma Informed Care (more info here), and social determinants of health to contextualise your information in more appropriate and less risky ways.

I’m not sharing this to shame the program in question – there’s so many out there like this and most are put together by good folks with great intentions. I’m certainly not getting it all right myself either, this is a difficult space and I’m constantly messing up and learning with myself and my staff. I’m sharing to help you think more critically about what we think we know about disabilities in the workplace, and why it’s so crucial to take the onus of access and modifications off the people with disabilities and start placing them back on the employers and services. The burden of having to navigate these things is massive and largely invisible.

Understanding diversity is incredibly important when you want to turn good intentions into actually useful outcomes. If you’re going to be working with people with disabilities, poverty, and long term unemployment then you’d better talk to a few them and do a modicum of research before you start, otherwise you run the risk of simply creating one more shiny, painful obstacle in our lives. It’s absolutely possible to support people with disabilities in the workplace and we are competent, brilliant, reliable, and highly skilled. We can do better about how we do this.

Where I’m going in 2020

/ Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

I’ve just arrived safely in Melbourne for the LGBTIQA+ “Better Together” conference. (Say hello if you’re coming too) I’m tired and excited and really looking forward to it and meeting all the other amazing folks.

Image description: smiling person with short hair and a bright blue shirt with the image of a kitten asleep under a book and the slogan “Curl up with a good book”.

I have Rose to thank for the cool t-shirt. I’ll be away for 5 days and my heart aches knowing the nights will probably be tough for Poppy. I, on the other hand will probably get a bit more sleep while I’m away. Parenting dilemmas!

ID person in a blue shirt and a child in a yellow shirt tendering hugging each other

It’s been a full on couple of months. Massive bushfires have been destroying huge areas of Australia. It’s an unprecedented disaster with the largest evacuations we’ve ever experienced. The losses are staggering. Some folks are in the thick of it, while those like me who are lucky to be safe are watching with horror and confronting survivor guilt and vicarious trauma. Helping out through donations and community support eases the helplessness and is a small balm to the fury and grief. Sometimes it’s big things, others it’s smaller gestures like taking fruit to the local wildlife carers or joining in a working bee for a local damaged farm. Anything helps to unfreeze, to ease the impact of months of bad news and horrifying casualties.

If you’re feeling paralysed, silent and distraught like I’ve been, you might find it helpful to look for something small you can do and do it. Look for good news, for people’s kindness, and share that too. Walk away from it at times to build your capacity to stay engaged and not burn out.

A lot of people are in terrible pain, facing life threatening conditions, or handling thousands of burnt animals. These are all high risk for trauma, and the survivor guilt of those of us who are lucky can lead us to torture ourselves as if more suffering would somehow help. This is part of vicarious trauma, and things that help with this are connection with community, breaks from it, humor, and keeping a clear sense of responsibility.

It is not my fault, I do not deserve either my good fortune or to be punished. I am a better ally and supporter when I’m not overwhelmed.

The other major focus for me has been my work and studies. I’ve been in an intense process of wrapping up projects and studies and launching new ones.

I’ve completed my grad cert in public health with mostly high distinctions. The mentoring program with Sally Curtis has started and been full of invaluable learning already.

I’ve started in two new LGBTIQA+ representative positions, one on the Consumer board with the Southern Adelaide Local Health Network (the hospitals, rehab facilities and so on). The second with the Freelance Jungle as an admin on the team which supports a 5,800+ online group of Australian and New Zealand freelancers. I’ve been a member and then patron of the group for a couple of years, and it’s a fantastic resource with a great focus on mental health and inclusion. The Better Together conference will help me understand both the needs and resources of the wider community.

Consulting and community development work has been so satisfying last year with a creative health project in prisons with SHINE SA and a peer based research project about systems change for people living with chronic illness with TACSI. I was so pleased to support these, they were both work I’m very proud of and look forward to sharing more about.

With face painting I’ve been getting more work from councils and organisations aligned with my focus around diversity and inclusion, such as schools for autistic kids, or queer events, which I’m very happy about.

I’ve launched a whole new arm of my business, providing independent support work for folks through the NDIS, with a special focus on mental health and diversity. It’s going very well and I’ve found that I love it even more than I anticipated. Being able to cone alongside people in their lives and homes and provide personal peer based support that is therapeutic but not ‘therapy’ is simply wonderful. Like a doula it’s a flexible mix of practical and emotional support, looking towards bigger goals but also very present in the moment.

It’s very similar to the group work I used to do in mental health services, such as facilitating the hearing voices group. I’m part of a small community of practice with a professional organiser and a handyman, and I’m setting up supervision and a network of resources. I’ve been extremely busy with it which was a bit unexpected – it’s taken off very quickly and I’m largely booked already.

I’m also booked to deliver a new series of local creative workshops which I’ll share more about shortly.

My work life is all coming together under an umbrella of creativity and diversity. I’m very passionate about it and excited to watch it grow in 2020. I’m putting applications in for further part time studies to continue to develop my skills in this area, and looking forward to getting back in the studio sometime to pick back up my current project there.

Thank you all for your encouragement and support, it’s taken me awhile to find my niche but I’m incredibly happy to be doing what I am, and feeling very aligned with the values and quality that links my different business areas together. 🧡 If I can support you or your project in some way, get in touch and let’s talk.

Studio Opening Success

/ Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

My Studio Opening was delightful. Thank you to everyone who came, brought gifts, sent messages of support, or signed up as a philanthropist, I feel very loved. It was a pleasure to share my space and I’m delighted to hear it was inspiring for others creative pursuits too. There’s something incredibly special to me about studios and behind the scenes peeks into the home and birthplace of art. One guest is even looking into renting a space themselves, and there’s several lovely Christmas gifts safely on their way to new homes. The weather was bizarre but the cookies were delicious and the company even better. 💙

Image description: non binary person with short spike brown hair and teal lips smiling at the camera in front of art sketches and photos pegged on a string.

I’m about to leave for a week, when I get back I’ll create a walk through video and share a few special embellished prints I’ve been working on recently. I’ll also send my first philanthropist only email and start my gift lottery for these wonderful supporters. You folks are the best and I’m excited by what’s possible with your help.

Studio as a sacred space

/ Sarah K Reece / 2 Comments

Glorious studio days recently. Even by artist standards, I have a pretty intense relationship with my studio. Moving into this space, it took me a long time to let go of my previous space and fall in love.

I will be moving to a bigger, brighter, better space in the same building in July and I’m so excited about it. It will also mean I can integrate my office and studio spaces together and have everything under one roof. This should stream line all my processes considerably, mean I don’t need a lot of duplicate stationary anymore, and make it easier to move between admin and art on the same day.

In preparation I’m sorting, tidying, and planning. I have a pinterest board of studios for inspiration. I’m keen to create something both functional and aesthetic. One thing I’ll make sure to do is set my oil palette up on the right hand side of my easel, so I’m not constantly crossing over myself for new paint.

As part of this preparation, I’ve overhauled my watercolour and oil painting set ups. A friend suggested standing for my large watercolour paintings and I’m already noticing the difference; more confident gestures, better blending, and finally making progress on an image I’ve made 5 versions of that I wasn’t happy with so far.

This drawer beneath my glass desk keeps my palettes and paint protected from dust while I’m not there. The large white palette on the left was an op shop find, a flat porcelain plate which is is wonderful for watercolours and much cheaper than specialty art palettes. Watercolour handles so much better on porcelain than metal or plastic, it’s much easier to mix colours and shades accurately.

My oil paint set up is also much better now. This little glass top table was a steal from the local garden supply store. I lifted out the glass and backed it with a few sheets of neutral grey pallet paper for easier colour mixing. It cleans off while wet with a baby wipe, or once dry, with a wall scraping razor.

I had partly completed this artwork in a class last year about painting in the style of the Old Masters. It’s a copy of a painting ‘Arachne’ by Diego Velazquez. This week it was time to finish it.

She still needs a few more glazes but I’m very happy with her.

It was fantastic to get back into oils, I’m looking forward to my next one.

I have a number of irons in the fire at the moment for my next projects and so far there’s promising feedback on a couple of them. I’m excited about starting the new financial year with a better working space to meet whatever comes. 🙂

Many creative projects

/ Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

I made it into my studio for a few precious hours today. I bought this lovely drying rack for hanging wet artworks, and worked more on my illustrated poem project. You can see some of the pages drying on the new rack here:

I have been often ill lately with high pain levels and have not had as much art time as I’d hoped. The top priorities I’m keeping up with: my time with family, my studies, work gigs of various kinds.

I was very pleased to collaborate recently with the Greens SA and paint creatures of the Great Australian Bight during a listening post. Illustrating campaigns that are close to my heart is a special joy.

I was also honoured to be part of a panel at Uni SA about alternative responses to psychosis. I spoke from my Psychosis without Destruction perspective. I gave a brief illustrated presentation using journal entries from my first two episodes, and the body painting I did during my second episode which resolved it.

I am keeping up with my public health studies and learning French. I’ve just handed in an assignment exploring the social determinants of health and proposing an intervention intended to reduce cardiovascular illness for people with severe mental illness.

I was planning an exhibition for my birthday but I’m going to push it back a month or so and see how my health goes. I’m happy with my priorities right now. Family, study, and work are all going well and art and other projects fit in where and as I can. 💜

Advocacy, Success, and Vulnerability in Public

/ Sarah K Reece / 4 Comments

I wrote this post a long time ago and let it rest until I felt ready to share. I’ve wrestled a lot over the past few years with these issues and I’m making my peace with an imperfect and very human place in the world.

I miss this blog, but my world has changed a lot in the last year and I’m having to find new ways to engage and deal with new risks. I’m in a strange place it’s difficult to find words for – so much has gone right lately and I’m so ecstatically happy. I’m also so stressed, sleep deprived, and vulnerable. All the happy endings don’t take away the pain that came before, they just make it harder to accept and speak about. They add shame and confusion about why you’re still hurting when everything is so perfect.

I had the strange experience the other morning on my birthday of waking up and being excited to be online because I knew I was going to be getting birthday messages. For a few hours I felt special and cared about and safe. It made me realise even more strongly how unsafe I’ve been feeling lately. This blog is reaching a new audience, of people in positions of power and wealth. I feel exposed in a way I haven’t felt before. My lovely video about diversity in the workplace reached thousands of people and I found myself feeling embarrassed to be handing out my ‘face painting’ style business card to CEO’s and heads of industry. Thrilled and excited to feel like I have a career path, and also exposed and ashamed, even by this beautiful blog. I want to hide how I got here, how these skills were developed.

I use myself as an instrument. It’s a key aspect of my work as an artist/poet/writer, and also as a facilitator. I tune into my self and my body and I notice things. I notice when I feel defensive and I get curious about that. I notice when I feel afraid, or angry, or when I want to hide. I accept the feelings and the gut instinct but I try not to act on them until I’ve thought them through more. My world has changed a lot lately and I’m sailing through some pretty intense mood swings as I navigate the excitement and joy of that, and the stress and fear of it too. For the first time since I started sharing online I recently found myself gripped by an intense fear about having this blog public. The change in readership, or rather, the new readership has thrown me. People with power and money are people I find difficult to see as people and tend to see as embodiment of their roles, distant authority figures. My experiences since early years has been that they do not understand me or my life or the ways in which I am harmed while I am under their care.

I am practising spending time in new cultures, practising dealing with my prejudices and stereotypes, making myself make eye contact, speak as equals, see the people behind the roles, have empathy for them, understand them, find our shared humanity. Trying to get over a lifetime of instinct to flinch or snarl. Wrestling with a lifetime of thinking as these people as ‘the other’ and not being able see the ways in which we are alike, the burdens they labour beneath, the loneliness of their roles, the ways in which they too are brilliant, or unsafe, or wounded, or split off from their own truths. The contexts in which they live and the pressures that shape them. What does courage look like in that world? It’s different to what it looks like on the streets or in poverty. What does compassion look like? What are the things it is impossible to say, or even think? Where is the pain held and what does it look like? What does love look like in this place?

I came home a while ago from a shiny event with people who have done many impressive things and fought off the impulse to tear apart this blog. I felt unbearably exposed and wanted to go back and pull down everything in which I struggle, every post that showed my confusion or distress, every evidence of pain, every raw expression of loneliness or bewilderment or grief. It was unbearable. I quivered with distress. I sat with it and did nothing but listen to it. What is going on, my heart? Why?

Success has a kind of draw, I’m finding. A lure, like a light in the deep ocean, the fish come close and everyone hopes to be part of it, to have a little of the glittery phosphorescence rub off on them too. I watch people elevate or dismiss me depending on who in my system is out that moment, and whether we are showing our shiny side or our vulnerable one. I watch myself respond to the environment with pathological shame for my humanity, and a desire to conceal my awkward fumbling. I am not and never was uncertain. I am not and never was hurting. I am just shiny. I am success embodied. I am desirable. I never make mistakes. I never hurt. I am never lost. My livelihood depends on this. My life depends on this. Be the shiniest fish in the dark deeps. Don’t let anyone see anything else.

No one is saying these things to me overtly. But I feel the fear in the air, magnified through my own terror and my own vulnerability and my history of powerlessness. The carefulness in how we present ourselves, the concern about what others might be thinking or saying about us. Image management. A deeply ingrained caution, a reluctance to be seen. I feel it in my own impulse to run, in the way that we flinch from rawness, the honing of our masks of professionalism.

And the wrestle that comes with this, as I gnaw on my limbs and feel shame and distress. Why am I feeling this way? What of my values and beliefs? What am I turning into? Self destruction like a lure beneath the struggle, my own terror of being changed into something I do not recognise or respect. My instinct to set my life on fire rather than face my own darkness. I too, want power, and money, and crave status. I too, want an easier life for myself and my children, even at the cost of others ease. I too, can choose not to see what is inconvenient for me to acknowledge about the shadow I cast, and the prices we pay – or make others pay – for success.

The struggle itself is so worthwhile. There’s something beautiful in it. Even in the aspects I feel ashamed of. It tells me things about the world and myself, and about people and what we bring out in each other.

I resist the urge to hide. I retreat from being public at some times and in some ways, but don’t destroy the evidence of my humanity. I hold tight and look and learn and decide how I will respond.

I’ve also been able to see some things more clearly that had eluded me before. Like fish in water, in some ways it’s most difficult to understand the context you are most familiar with. I’ve spent so much of my life so anxious about the effects of power and the lure of money that I’ve not appreciated the effects of powerlessness and the harms of poverty. My ‘safe place’ to return to when I am afraid of my own ambition is not safe. It is merely destructive in a different way.

When I was very young
I was taught that power corrupts
No one mentioned the acid of powerlessness
The way it leeches you of worth
Hope, value, voice. 

I was warned of the dangers of money
But not of the grinding misery of poverty
The way it is like a thorn in each heel
The chronic pain of it, how it shapes your movements
Closes doors, leaves scars. 

(I think of all my friends who died of exposure,
And I remember all the ones who died for the lack of it. -Nick Cave)

I’ve been so pinned between
My fear of success and my horror at failure
Devoured by my demons in a place without peace
The truth is – there’s no limit to the number of days
I can sacrifice on the altar of proving myself worthy.

There is no way to live without risk
And the first loss is joy
It is lightness and laughter and play. 

Surely, if I have found ways
To be human despite all that’s befallen me
I can risk success?
If poverty has not destroyed me, I can risk money?
All my life I’ve feared losing myself, 
One hand on the self destruct button
Who says poverty and vulnerability are safe from harm?

They are no haven of purity, just
A familiar kind of hell. 
Just devils I know. 

A life deeply lived calls for courage
Sometimes courage looks like walking out onto the street
With no idea of where a bed or meal or kind face will next be found. 

Sometimes it looks like putting on my best clothes
Going to work, and getting paid. 

Freedom

/ Sarah K Reece / 1 Comment

Hey folks… I’m caught up on my business admin! I’ve reconciled my accounts to date, separating my income streams so I can easily see what’s going well – face painting, mentoring, community projects, speaking, training, and art. (Currently the first four are carrying the show, mostly because I haven’t had an exhibition this year yet…) Not that that’s a problem, but it’s helpful to see what’s paying the rent. 🙂

I wasn’t 100% sure if the breakthrough extended to business matters too or was more of a creative unblocking… I’m not saying I wanted to spend the day doing admin or that I had no anxiety, but it was manageable. I gave myself good snacks and breaks and was kind and THAT WAS ENOUGH. I didn’t cry or have a meltdown. I got a huge page of things done, sorted out all my work emails, and finalised my tax. This has been the biggest change for me in years. And today is a day off with Rose. ❤️

For a treat I mended trousers and watched an episode of The Good Place on Netflix. I’m finding I just have to do something with my hands every day, even if it’s just mending a hole. Poppy and I now have favourite pairs of trousers back, with tiny felt patches. ❤️ The garden has been soaked in anticipation of a hot few days. Everything is in order.

Epidemiology is wonderful. I’m getting top marks on my assignments and generally revelling in finally being past bachelor level education. The extra credibility is reducing my imposter syndrome way down to manageable levels too.

I’ve found my way. I’m sharing breakfast and a cup of tea in the backyard with Poppy and I have a future.

The Breakthrough

/ Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

Endo has been kicking my butt this week and kept me home when I’d planned fun outings with family. However it’s not all bad because the major breakthrough I had about my work has been stable for a week now and isn’t fading. This time last week I sobbed myself to sleep with regret for all the choices I’d made about my career. The next day I read a chapter in a book (I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was, by Barbara Sher) about people wounded in childhood and stuck. They freeze whenever they approach mastery of a skill. Their work life falls far short of their capacity and is fuelled by very old stories about worth. Early injuries leave deep wounds in confidence and self esteem. They become paralyzed by a need for validation, for someone else to see them as worthy and rescue them. So they are miserable at the prospect of succeeding based on their own skills and hard work. They crave caretaking that didn’t happen and are trapped trying to right an old wrong. There’s other aspects that don’t fit me at all – these people are often narcissistic and lack empathy for others, exploiting those around them, for example. That’s very far from me. My weakness is pathological self hate rather than pathological self love. But the hard work not paying off, the freezing up at points in projects where mastery approaches, and the undefinable but overwhelming misery of trying to ‘make it’ when actually I so want to be ‘discovered’ in some way that would make me feel worthy and cared about… That resonated so powerfully and has unbound me.

Recognising the source of these blocks and starting to unpack those feelings has undone their power. So I’m journaling about how trapped, unloved, and exploited I felt in school, and watching my capabilities come back online. I’m crying for how alone, how freakish and despairing and suicidal I felt then. And feeling the present day traps creak open. Letting go of the vague but powerful dream of being ‘saved’ from intolerable circumstances, and finding my strength returning to do my own work and care-take my own life. Not as a sad second prize because no one else thinks I’m worthy, but because it’s my joy and responsibility and no one else could do it better.

Since then I have been into my studio 4 times! That’s more often than I made it in, in the last whole month. I have picked back up old projects I’d been stuck on and finished them. The blocks are gone. I am full of creative energy and every day I find myself itching to do something with my hands, working out how to fit my day around the primal need to create.

Not only is the creative block gone, but the blocks keeping me stuck in my business are also easing with this new insight. My inbox is organised. I’m keeping up with my studies. I’m writing and preparing my upcoming talks for Sydney and Melbourne. I’m taking time off for days with Poppy. I feel so liberated. Every morning I wake expecting it to have gone away, expecting to find myself full of the familiar exhausting neurotic blocks. It’s like living with a tooth abscess for years and waking up to find the tooth gone and the gum healing. There’s so much joy.

Instead of narcissism overlaying insecurity, I went the opposite direction. Raw vulnerability and destructive, compulsive self sacrifice. So where Barbara’s ‘ragers against the ordinary’ recover through altruism, it’s Rose who realised I will recover through connection to self. The past 6 months have powerfully brought home to me that when love is only ever sacrifice and loss, it erodes something essential. The relationships lose dignity. It corrupts instead of heals. There is something harmful about normalising relationships where one person has no needs, where their needs are never a priority.

This is self denial as habit. It is for me, partly the wounds of spiritual abuse, the child taught in graphic detail she had personally tortured and slain her god. It is the bullied and alienated child in unsafe places. It is feeling unloved and abandoned when I care for myself and wanting others to do it for me – a difficult ask when even I don’t know what I need. How can anyone be attuned to someone so disconnected from themselves?

So, in small ways, we tip things on their head. Rose makes me choose what I want for dinner. I mourn the dream of being loved and cared for by others without having to be connected to myself, but also find deep pleasure in reconnecting. I can finally name the story that’s been killing me, the trap I’ve had my hand stuck in for years. Not just me but those around me who also felt the unfairness of my story and hoped that one day I would ‘make it’ in some kind of karma or restitution. So much power comes with naming it, the dream I cannot ever have where someone saves the child. I know what I’ve been dying for. Now I can let it go and live.

Passion and Balance

/ Sarah K Reece / 3 Comments

One day each week, Poppy and I have an adventure. Last week we went to the museum and looked at dinosaurs and opals. I thought I might be mildly hallucinating at one point but it turns out one of the taxidermy animals is animatronic and occasionally flicks it’s tail. A little sign about that would be nice!

Then one of us chased pigeons, played in a very small but nonetheless very wet mud puddle, and fell asleep. The other one of us packed up lunch and went to look at all the interesting things in the art gallery in relative peace.

It’s been a very recent development that I enjoy the art gallery. I’m absolutely wild about artists studios but have often found gallery spaces alienating. It’s been weird and a little embarrassing. It’s assumed they are my home territory when actually I used to have a lot of meltdowns after visiting galleries and didn’t usually go there if I had the choice.

But I’ve been doing lots of work unpicking mental blocks and old injuries, and Rose has taken me to some exhibitions where I’ve felt less overwhelmed by my stuff and more about to enjoy them at times. They are not home territory by any stretch (even my own studio isn’t that yet) but they are also no longer hostile territory. I wish sometimes it was a bit easier to be me.

Nonetheless, adventure time each week with Poppy is an absolute joy and doing us both a world of good.

This is one of the last little things I made in my flame work glass workshop, a tiny bee. Unfortunately because he wasn’t annealed in a kiln, his little wings broke as he cooled down. I’m currently immersed in research about kilns and torch types and where to buy oxygen tanks from. I postponed a planned exhibition of small sculptures when Rose became really sick, but I’d love to be able to put it together for next year.

This bead worked perfectly: I was practicing a technique that traps air bubbles under the glass. My teacher said I was the most gifted student with glass she’d had in 20 years of workshops. It just clicked. I adored it and I’m so keen to set up a flame work space in my studio.

I’m also hugely enjoying my studies. Epidemiology suits me and I’m loving falling down rabbit holes of information and getting a handle on the big topics. Today I was digging into health prevention, surveillance, and theories of health promotion. It’s fascinating to see how frameworks that fit one scenario so well (such as smallpox) have been such unwieldy tools in other contexts (such as diabetes), and how poor evaluation can make health promotion interventions look successful (eg education leading to increased health literacy) when they actually backfire and fail on the important scales (eg increased stigma, greater reluctance to engage in prevention or treatment). I’m just enjoying it so much.

My other project at the moment is a couple of talks interstate. I’ll be traveling to Sydney and Melbourne next month to give presentations at big events. This always involves a fair bit of preparation, both for the talk, planning the event with the folks coordinating it, and planning the trip. I’ll be doing a road trip and bringing the family with me to Melbourne, which is very exciting. I’m really looking forward to meeting the people behind the emails too.

I’m still practicing Kaizen and being mindful of Barbara Sher’s types of scanner, hoping that I’ll learn what schedule suits me best and how to set up my projects so they and I both thrive. I’ve several more wonderful projects waiting impatiently in the wings, but right now I’m finding downtime is important and immersion time helps, trying to change hats all day long is exhausting. Hopefully in time I’ll learn more how to balance everything I love so much.

It was a wonderful week and I’m excited about the week ahead too. We continue to muddle through; work, study, friends, home, family. Learning, helping, creating. Good things are emerging. ❤️

Navigating overwhelm

/ Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

Poppy and I spent the day together yesterday. We visited a festival in town, spent a long time learning how to cuddle bunnies, pat baby sheep, not to be scared of the chicks peeping.

It wasn’t one of the easier days. She had meltdowns about wearing clothes, and howled all through the bus trip because I wouldn’t let her kick the window. Sobbing hysterically on the seat next to me, wailing ‘Don’t touch me Mummy!’ as I dug deep for patience. There’s nothing like parenting an unhappy little person to make you doubt your competence! The best moment was when she was dancing to a choir, full of vim and delight and I could sit for a moment under shade and rest my tired brain from the high alert state of watching a small person running around an un-fenced area surrounded by traffic.

It wasn’t one of my easier days, wrestling a sinus infection and struggling to get up to date with the grad cert I’d been a late enrolment in… The challenge hasn’t been the content of the course it’s been the online format, which was a surprise to me.

So Wednesday for example I went into uni and hoped to get some work done after an appt, then discovered I couldn’t complete one assignment because the necessary information had been sent out prior to my enrolment, so I didn’t have access to it. So I hopped on a computer and figured I’d listen to a lecture, then realised I didn’t have earbuds with me so I couldn’t do that without disturbing others. So I came home and tried to access the lecture on the laptop I’ve been borrowing, but it’s embedded in a power point and the open office software messed so badly with the formatting I couldn’t follow any of the text. So I dug up a pair of earbuds and tested them in my phone to make sure they worked, then headed off to my office which has the microsoft office suite on my desktop. Where I discovered that desktops can’t process earbuds with inbuilt mics unless you have a splitter to separate the signals. So still no lecture for me. At which point I cried and came home.

The trickiest part is that I’m navigating these challenges I need to keep my mental space together. The more I struggle with things the stronger my sense of anxiety and displacement become – that I shouldn’t be in higher education, that I don’t belong and I’m going to fail (again). I’ve been talking myself gently through all the challenges for a couple of weeks and bouncing back well, but yesterday with uni and a work challenge not coming together I fell in a hole. I got back from my day with Poppy and couldn’t make decisions anymore. Should I try to get more done (everything is due on Sunday! and I’m late with everything!) or try to rest and clear my head? Bath for restoration or bed for sleep? Poppy woke me up hourly the night before and I felt like my head was a watermelon hit with a hammer. Am I getting sick with the cold everyone’s had, in which case this might be the clearest I feel as I go down over the weekend, or is this mostly sleep deprivation in which case don’t soldier through, rest and come back to it.

My mind obsesses about the problems, trying to solve them even when it’s clear I’ve no capacity left to think clearly. It adds in bigger, older ones I haven’t solved – what am I doing with my work life? How am I going to schedule everything? Where’s the next job coming from? Smaller problems get unimaginably large as the overwhelm diminishes my capacity. Everything clusters together into knots where I can’t assess priority anymore. It all feels urgent and impossible, the unmopped floors, the people I haven’t caught up with, the tax I haven’t quite finished, the assignments due in days… I notice the biggest anxiety is in thinking I’m supposed to look like I know what I’m doing but I’m scared it’s becoming obvious I’m unprofessional/incompetent/unskilled. I’m afraid this is the reason I’ve failed at all those job applications, and the more anxious I am that it’s my fault, the more desperately I try to show I’m competent rather than bewildered. A customer texts asking if I’m free for a gig and I seize up, unable to message back because I have a social engagement at that time and I can’t decide if I need the income or the time with friends more, can’t even work out how I would work that out, and my car died last week, very expensively, so if I say yes to the gig I’m also taking Rose’s car from her and making a choice about her access.

The longer I don’t text back the more my head is screaming with alarms about not being professional, and the worse the sense of failure and self loathing get. Once they are too strong, I can’t push through them enough to write back, can’t work out what to write, can’t make the decision, and everything I do, including continuing not to write back, is utterly utterly wrong, self sabotaging, and proves I have brought all the bad luck in my life on myself. I can see it happening but I’m swept along in a avalanche. Every move I make is wrong, and I can’t reach out for help because I think that’s probably wrong too. I open texts and messages and can’t work out what to write or who to send it to. I can argue all the cases (reaching out for help is a good thing, chasing being rescued is a bad thing, so and so won’t mind hearing from me, I’ve been leaning on so and so too much) and I can’t work out a fair or reality based guideline. I’m just lost and inclined to blame myself. My thinking spirals in on itself and the intelligence which is so useful and incisive in some areas becomes destructive beyond my control.

Overwhelm is such a huge part of dealing with parenting and mental health and yet I find it’s not talked about that often. It’s been a big part of my focus in my family for the past couple of months – what sets it off, makes it worse, makes it better? Carving up my life and rearranging it so it’s not part of my baseline anymore.

So yesterday I went to bed but couldn’t sleep, had a bath and felt physically a bit better. Visited friends for board games and found that I couldn’t do the games and run the mental programs of trying to figure out my study and business/work. That was desperately needed and nothing was engaging me enough to get me there until then. The mental break was restorative. Last night Poppy only woke a couple of times. Real rest, mental and physical. So today, I’ve read over the email from my lecturer that has bewildered me every time I’ve looked at it for two days and at last I think I can see what he wants, I think it’s just an odd grammar structure possibly part of English as a second language (wild guess on my part) where the the question asks What but really means How or Why. Maybe this is normal for public health? I don’t know yet. I’ll adapt.

These are the skills and patterns I need to get this cert. I am going to figure this out.

Deep breath. Soothing internal voice. We can do this. Back to it.

 

Reconnecting with my daughter

/ Sarah K Reece / 6 Comments

Poppy is two now! She is one of the greatest joys of my life. I never thought I would meet anyone else who loves swings as much as I do! We spend hours on this little swing in our back yard, or bigger swings at the park. ‘Higher, Mummy!’ She sings to herself on them, her own complicated versions of Twinkle Little Star or Indy Wincy Spider, concluded with giggling. Sometimes like yesterday, she stays on so long so rocks herself to sleep. Her little head droops and eyes close. I gently bring the swing to a stop and gather her into my arms, soothing the storm of tears about wanting to be back on the swing until she calms back to sleep.

Most mornings we share breakfast together in the back yard. Porridge, cereal with banana, eggy toast, and tea. Under the tree my heart expands, wakens more softly and looks at the day with a hopeful spark.

All my life I have so deeply wanted to be a parent. I am so grateful and so fortunate. She is glorious. And over the past month, I’ve learned to my surprise that I love and am well suited to being a stay at home parent. When both Star and Rose needed great care I quit work and felt like my life had ended. A sense of fatalism and despair. But I also felt something I didn’t expect. Joy, relief, new hope. As I match my days to Poppy’s needs and rhythms, a life emerges that is splendid. There’s peace, and fun, and connection. So I keep building on it. I find that my ideas about work are deeply poisoned. I am trying so hard to understand and recover from them. It is slow, painful, frustrating. Full of flashes of insight (work is my punishment for being on welfare) and such profound shame and self loathing I cannot understand anything or progress anywhere. I sit in front of my shrink sobbing until I want to throw up and there’s no understanding.

I’ve quit work. My work now includes peace and connection. There’s moments I simply sit and look at the sky. There’s tickling Poppy while she shrieks and tickles me back. There’s holding her as she falls asleep and feeling my heart expand and burst softly in my chest. A hundred invitations to be present in my life in a way I haven’t been.

Softly softly, the carer counselor tells me. We lose connection with ourselves and want to change everything, make it all right, now. Little changes for carers drained to the last drop. Choose what I want for lunch. Sit in my favourite place. Don’t always offer to do, eat, watch what the other person wants. Undo the impulse to destructive self sacrifice one tiny decision at a time, a few times a day. Tuning back in to my self and owning my own choices.

Rose and I realise that I’ve also stepped back from her pain in a way that’s blocked me from connection. She’s vulnerable, as the non gestational, non biological parent. Even more so with a terrible history of losses. I am sensitive to her fear, her desire for closeness to Poppy. When Rose is around Poppy, I fade into the background, unobtrusively. I cook or clean and care but I do not play or adventure or adore. I don’t step into the place that makes Rose sad or afraid. And in this way, for the best of reasons, I step out of my own life in a tiny thousand ways. My own relationship with Poppy. I become a caretaker instead of a parent. Rose has always seen this and been puzzled by it. She would try to cue me back in touch, help me notice when Poppy was trying to get my attention, encourage us to spend time together. I would read her buried anxiety and unthinkingly step back. Love as sacrifice. A vicarious life. My needs last. It’s hard to have a relationship with someone so out of touch with themselves they are barely in the room.

Rose emerged from her breakdown to find what she’d been hoping for has happened. Poppy and I sing to each other, snuggle, connect. She invites me back in, learns to celebrate alongside the little wince when I’m connected. I pay attention to my pull off course, the inclination to fade back and make small course corrections, a hug, eye contact, a few shared words. This child has two parents.

I am discovering the power of limits as well as nurturing. That a deeply loving yes must be bounded by the capacity for a deeply loving no. A willingness to let the other hurt in pursuit of their own growth. I adore Rose but should never have withdrawn from Poppy to make her more comfortable. Nor would she ever have asked that of me! There’s a kind of nurturing that is life giving and a kind that stifles, incapacitates, infantilises, wounds. I have mixed them up together and not been wise in my caring. Those I love and tend have grown both stronger and weaker in my care. I did not mean to harm but I have harmed. Stripped of agency, responsibility, the belief in a person’s capacity, they drown in their own vulnerability. If we never hurt we are unable to learn or choose. My love and caring has set people free and eased loneliness and suffering, but also created a kind of institutionalisation I did not foresee, and trapped me in a dungeon alongside them, also being tortured by their demons. Most carers know these places, these dilemmas. They are deep and difficult.

We are taking many steps a to a new life. Small errors are turned by time into routes way off course. The power of leadership, parenting, caring amplifies our weaknesses and impacts those we’re responsible to. Growth is a lifelong process, and sometimes tiny changes have huge impacts. Poppy takes me by the hand and asks ‘Swing, Mummy?’. We go swing.

Disability and Employment

/ Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

Some weeks ago, I was asked if it would be okay for Julia Gillard to quote me in a speech. I said yes, and she described me as ‘erudite and charismatic’ and quoted from my video with the SA Mental Health Commission about Mental health in the workplace, in this speech to the Diversity Council of Australia. Which is pretty awesome.

Julia is the Chair of the Board of Directors for Beyond Blue, and they were pretty keen on the message too. CEO Georgie Harman got in touch to share the video and invite me to speak on a panel at the Disability Employment Australia Conference #DEA2018. So today I trundled off to the Hilton to meet some new people.

There were some seriously awe inspiring folks there showing us what can be achieved with a disability. Which is inspiring and fantastic, if not intimidating. Conferences tend towards the shiny. So I did my thing and was vulnerable in public. I spoke about failure and shame. I told them I was possibly the least successful job hunter in the history of the world, and gave them a 5 minute run down on hundreds of job applications, rejections, sad experiences with DES providers, a microbusiness cert 3 for people with a disability where we were repeatedly told business is easy (spoiler alert, it’s not), NEIS, freelancing, jobs that evaporated after I applied, jobs that evaporated after I’d been successful at applying, training as a peer worker and still not being employed! It’s no bad thing to have someone speaking from failure. There’s so much you miss otherwise.

I was honest and passionate. It was hard. I thought TEDx was the most exposed I would ever feel in a talk but this was bizarre because it’s still something I’m wrestling with. It’s raw. Career has been my holy grail my whole life. I don’t come to a Disability Employment Service Provider for a job, I come for an identity! For a sense of purpose and meaning and connection. So I don’t have to be a bludger, a leaner, a long term unemployed, a hopeless case, a complex needs client, an underachiever, a dropout, a misfit, a failure anymore. I come because I don’t want to be poor for the rest of my life and I don’t want my children to be poor. I come because I’m so tired of pity and shame. I want to be a real person with a name tag and a business card and a place in the world.

So I talked about adversity and diversity and the complications of our lives where we don’t fit one box. Multiple intersections of difference and disadvantage, complex diagnosis, chronic pain, queer identity, homelessness.

We were asked how to motivate people to want to get help into work, and I said of course we want work – make it safer and make it more dignified. I talked about how essential work is but how risky too. Job hunting can put our financial safety nets at risk, can expose us to bullying and toxic workplace cultures, and can put more failure and rejection in front of us than our mental health can cope with. I also talked about how out of reach work can be during crisis, that often my personal definition of success is painfully simple – everyone I love is still alive at the end of the week.

I said that I’ve learned that I can’t successfully job search when I’m drowning in shame, terror, and rage. A bit like dating, I need to be okay with myself as I am. That means we all need to understand just because I don’t get paid, doesn’t mean I don’t work. People like me work a lot. We are often well suited to informal roles that fit around our disability. We run unpaid support groups on social media, we raise kids, volunteer at school, help out friends, care for family. We often create our lives in the gift economy, and transitioning to paid work is a very different culture. I shared how I’ve needed psychological support to help me see that having to make hard choices – like caring for a family member in crisis over finishing a degree, doesn’t mean I’ve failed.

I shared how many folks like me wind up freelancing so we can navigate our disability, and what a baptism of fire that is for many of us. I shared about the amazing Freelance Jungle and how essential that support has been to me. I talked about how changing my focus from what skills I want to use, over to what business model suits me best, fits around my limitations and causes the least stress has been far more helpful for me. Finding my own way of using skills that more closely mimics the informal work I do fits so much better than the rigid 9-5 model, or the huge, impossible to schedule projects that take years to finish and pay. It’s not about the skills, it’s about how the work is done and how well that fits. So I’ve moved away from project based work and back to gigs – short term, easy to schedule, and much less stressful for me. I mentioned that there’s a certain level of absurdity about funding an organisation to help me find work instead of just hiring me.

It was stressful, fun, exhilarating, exposing, and surreal. There were many interesting people to talk with, which I greatly enjoyed. My anxiety was pretty off the charts at times, but that’s the nature of that kind of personal work.

Georgie gave a fantastic talk about how we need to take care of our staff and our workforce too, to lead by example and prioritise mental health in the workplace. She was a strong advocate of the value and worth of people with lived experience. We both promoted the value of peer work in the disability employment context: that if you have never seen anyone do what you are trying to do, that is a very large gulf to bridge. People who share their experiences – the successes and failures – give us so much richness in figuring out our own paths.

So I hope I held a space for the human experience of disability and unemployment. There was a great deal of passion and sincerity from the people I spoke with. I was glad to be included.

 

Bagpipes for lungs

/ Sarah K Reece / 1 Comment

I’d like to be updating you on my my projects, but it’s just my health. I got half way to the studio today before having a huge asthma attack. I had to choose between going to the doctor, the hospital, or home for my inhaler, or pulling over and calling an ambulance. Not easy! I started to go to the doctor, then changed my mind and came home. I found I could breathe provided I did shallow breaths through my nose. Rose met me at the door with an inhaler and we got the next appointment with a GP. He’s changed my antibiotics to a different type and said the ongoing infection is triggering severe asthma. So I’m now on a stack of new meds and a nebuliser. It’s going to be a fun night of waking every 3 hours to dose me, Rose has her hands full with me and Poppy to look after, and there’s the constant vague worry of trying to decide when it’s time for hospital. My chest aches and when I breathe I sound like a kitten attacking a bagpipe.

But, I’ve got a soft bed, Netflix, the cuddliest bug around, and hopefully I’ll be feeling better in a couple of days. Fingers crossed.

I’m so glad I’d already recently decided I can’t pull off a primary income for my family (at the moment). This time last year Rose was in hospital with a chest infection. My family has a lot of extra needs. I simply can’t check out for as many hours a week as a primary income requires. But I can focus on income streams where I can shine even when unwell or on call as a carer. But what I can do is take the pressure off a bit, earn enough to keep my studio open, help with medical costs, afford my shrink. It’s not what I was hoping. But it’s a lot better than banging my head against a brick wall every week. At some point you just have to adapt! It hurts but it’s also taking a lot of pressure off me. I’ve sold four artworks this week, booked two face paint and glitter tattoo gigs, and things are going well despite coughing up a lung. I still have my art residency with SHINE SA and feel a great sense of belonging with that community. A career doesn’t have to be primary to count. It’s isolation that does so much of the harm. I was thinking of the years I’ve spent hanging around mental health organisations, and how it’s been within a sexual health organisation I’ve finally found a genuine understanding of diversity, and a sense of being valued. I’ve got art exhibitions planned and some in the works, and as soon as I’m better I’m going to finish and show you this beautiful handmade book I’ve been working on. I feel terrible but I still feel part of life and that’s so precious to me. ❤

Painting in bed

/ Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

All last week I was awake half the night with Poppy who was very unhappy with a throat infection. Pratchett, who died 3 years ago, has been keeping me company through an ebook on my phone. There’s an astonishing kind of magic there, that he can have been dead for years and still be present in a way that’s warm, human, and real to me. I fall in love with books all over again.

Poppy is recovered now, full of life and somehow extra words and communication now she’s feeling better. She sleeps with her hand touching my back or her feet resting on my leg. I am often surprised at my own wordlessness with her. My world revolves around her like a hatchling in a nest, and we venture through day and night together, yet there’s few poems since Tam. Still stoppered.

It feels like I haven’t met her yet. I don’t know who she will be or what worlds she will walk. Sometimes I live so much in her future I forget she is here now. I remind myself to wake up and look and she delights me with a grin and a kiss. She will never be this age again, never again be who she is right now. She’s astonishing.

Rose has been sleeping upright in an armchair to help manage pain from her ear infections. I find myself awake in the small hours, trawling Facebook, unsatisfied, lost. I’ve read all the books I can afford to buy and I can’t stop looking for something, and can’t name what it is. At last I realise simply that I’m lonely. I message Rose, she’s awake too. She comes to bed for a little while and I snuggle into her warmth. For the first time in a long time I unpeel my spikey armor and bring my soft vulnerability to her instead of sharp, prickly fear. We rest in the dark, wordless, holding hands. Thinking not of the past or the future but simply present in the night, velvet soft and beautiful with the child sleeping next to us.

I’m on day 8 of being sick myself, virus gone bacterial and dropped into my chest. I woke earlier this week to discover that a friend of mine, Amber, had died suddenly. She who survived so much suddenly taken from us. I spent the day crying in bed. I’ve spent the week in bed. I hope I’ll be well enough to attend her funeral.

So much illness brings its own fears. Am I annoying my friends? Have I missed some underlying cause? I find myself picking at the threads of my life, trying to work it out. Why am I hurting? Where have I gone wrong? I’m so depleted – how do I recover? What do I need? The picking brings no answers, it unravels certainty, brings doubt to every choice I’ve made. The only thing worse than being sick is also being afraid everyone else is bored and out of compassion, and that maybe you’ve accidentally brought it on yourself. After a while, with an effort, I stop picking and remember that in the middle of the illness is the worst time to ask such questions. I’ve no brain for it. Rest, fluids, kindness. I go back to bed and buy myself another book to read. Help Rose manage the new and unpleasant ear medicine in the hope of keeping her out of hospital.

Today the infection is worse but paradoxically I feel better. Good news is bouying me. I have new support and new projects on the horizon. I’m planning an art exhibition for later this year, I have a mentor lined up for my guide to multiplicity, and I’ve been selling art this week. I’ve borrowed a laptop while I need to be at home which has helped so much. Today I’m starting the painting for my handmade book for prisoners project, in bed.

Chronic illness and caring complicate my work and career goals, but I’m finally adapting and finding paths through. Letting go of the things I can’t have right now, like the time to create a solid primary income. Instead figuring out what works around my needs and my family, how to have the resources to be on call for them and trickle in enough paid work to keep up with my studio rent and my shrink fees. (Thinking of Frida, painting from bed in her body brace) There’s a kind of power in being able to do this, to still engage, to contribute, to feel connected and chase my dreams even from bed. I’m about to close down some aspects of my business and open new ones up that better fit my situation and my skills. Figuring out a model that works for me has been a major focus for the past year, and it’s finally emerging, as is the support I need to make it happen. I’m excited to launch it soon.

So here’s to life, my loves! It’s complicated at times. Full of grief, loss, sickness, plans gone astray. But also incredibly beautiful. I’m still a part of the world, part of the community mourning Amber, part of a team who cares about prisoners, part of a tribe who turn up with lunch and cry about heartbreaking things and laugh over a board game. I am here, in the heart of it, anchored by love.

Transformational Breakdown

/ Sarah K Reece / 4 Comments

Hi everyone, I have so many half written posts in drafts at the moment it’s ridiculous. 🙄 Life has been weird lately. My psychologist called it ‘a transformational breakdown’. Haha. That means it feels like we’re having a breakdown, giving birth, and blooming at all the same time.

One night this week we got very cranky while making dinner, drank a bottle of cider, switched to kids who felt stupidly ill because of the alcohol (multiplicity can be dumb that way) then found the couch, a blanket, and Star Trek Next Gen. There’s been a great deal of being very grown up lately and frankly it’s not all that good for us. One of the funky things about our system is that we can kind of shift into whoever is most needed. So if or family need someone unafraid to take a spider out of the house without making fun of them, we can be that. And if someone needs a whole lotta nurturing we’re pretty good at that too. Or research, or arty days in the backyard, or being firm about boundaries or whatever. There’s some things none of us are good at (coughadmincough) but we can adapt and respond to what’s needed of us, at least in personal relationships.

The secret to making this work is kinda the same as the secret to making parenting work for anyone – looking for that Venn diagram overlap area of where your needs and the needs of the kids overlap. If you just meet their needs all the time you burn out. If you just meet your own you’ve got a kid in a 10 hr old nappy. But there’s a kind of dance to figuring out if we all go to the library on Tuesday that will give the eldest time to get books for her homework, we can borrow a new Charli and Lola for the little one and I can pick up the book of knitting patterns and start Grandma’s present, the kids need to get out of the house but I’m really tired so I’ll take them to the playground next to my friends that’s fully fenced so I don’t need to chase them and see if she wants to catch up for coffee…

Of course it can’t all be overlap. Sometimes you do things simply because they need to be done, like dental appointments. Sometimes it is about one person’s needs – there’s no other reason you’d go to a dance by 6 years olds or listen to someone learning to play the recorder. 🙂 There also comes a point where we just need to do our own thing. We lived alone by choice for ages because being hooked into roles and having switches triggered by people around us was tiring and overwhelming. When you’re busy turning into what you think people around you need (or will like, or love) it’s hard to have a sense of self identity, to know who you are or what your own needs are. That’s true of everyone, although perhaps in our case a little more blunt. Sometimes you need to have nobody need you and to just see who turns up. Systems are self balancing, to the best of their ability, they switch out who they think needs to be out. My family are never going to need my poet but we need them out because they take care of our soul and renew our spirit.

We can’t live life with one part forwards all the time without losing out on so much of the world. No one can look at the world through one pair of eyes, one archetype, forever, without missing so much. And while it’s a gift to be able to tune in to what someone else needs and turn into it for them, it’s also a kind of cage if not attended to with some care. Sometimes you need to annoy or even embarrass each other, to be weird, different, inconvenient, and entirely moved upon your own tides. Blue lipstick days. I’m here for you but I’m not here for you, owned by you, of you, made to fit your empty spaces. I’m stranger by far than your dream of a perfect partner, parent, friend, guru.

I don’t buy the dichotomy we’re presented with – that I can be the best ever carer or I can care for myself. To choose between tuning in to another’s needs or my own. We do not recover well when our carers are in crisis and suffering. We are bound in their cages and suffer with them. If I wish to be deeply attuned, my own heart calls too. My life calls too. It’s not one or the other. It’s to listen or to not listen.

“Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.” Jung

So, I am home, finishing EOFY business admin, having meltdowns, having awful fights with Rose because we’re stressed and broke, feeling trapped in the domestic role I never wanted. Hanging washing and more washing and having strange panics about the cleanliness of the house as if attention to the kitchen counters has become a metaphor for how loved I feel, whether my needs are also attended to. I read blogs about autism and books about giftedness and articles about eating disorders and synthesise it all into a treatment program that is working brilliantly, and at night I lie awake hating myself for not being at work.

There’s hope for us. Today we took a break from the hideous interminable admin to chat with a friendly editor and mentor about our multiplicity book and imposter syndrome and how a blog feels generally manageable but a book is something more formal, official, tangible and we can’t quite transition, can’t quite stop researching and let it be a thing, incomplete and unresolved but good enough as it is. She laughed and we laughed and there was more common ground than difference. She reminded me a little of my late friend Leanne, who was also an editor and would have loved this project, if I’d been brave enough to tell her we were multiple while she was still alive.

We are doing well. I am hysterically exhausted. Star is thriving, Rose has been terribly ill with migraine and ear infection but is finally recovering, Poppy is currently unwell with a chest infection and I’m getting very little sleep.

I have withdrawn from work but I’m also hard at work on a new business model and I think I’ve finally cracked something I can actually do for the next 6 months while I’m also on call and caring so much… which is profoundly exciting.

And I’m still working on a new exhibition for later this year. Holding onto bits of my own stuff and upskilling rapidly in how to run a household with multiple disabilities and challenges in a way that everyone gets what they need – including me. We are still here, still together, holding on. Still kind, still in love, still hanging in there, still believing in better days.

I have no idea what’s going to emerge, but I hope the damn ‘breakdown’ part eases up soon.

Muse Magazine Interview: A day in the life of a multiple

/ Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

About a year ago I was interviewed for the launch of Muse Magazine about my experiences with multiplicity. I was holding off on sharing until they put the article online, but there’s been a hiccup with the mag (hopefully temporary) and it still hasn’t happened. So I wanted to share part of it, I was asked to write a snapshot ‘day in my life’:

Beautiful artwork – not mine though

A few days ago, I was struggling with severe stress at work. My partner, Rose, is worried about us. She’s looking after our baby, Poppy, on standby for supportive phone calls all day. I have a very stressful meeting that doesn’t go as well as I’d hoped. I feel numb and dissociated. There’s very few private places for me to call her. I sit in the empty foyer and phone. My system switches through several people who handle situations where we feel powerless, unsafe, unheard. We are all numb.

Rose is gentle on the phone, human and safe. She directs us outside. We go and stand out by the gardens and the numbness eases. Switching rapidly between parts with different emotional responses and needs, we pace in a circle by the garden, debriefing on the phone. Rose holds the space for us. We calm, like a flock of pigeons that flew up into the air in distress and now feel safer and return to the ground. We can advocate for ourselves again, contain the feelings, feel less frozen.

That night, Rose has a trip planned. I’m home from work and the autumn sunlight is calling to us. I need to be outdoors, I feel dissociated and airless inside. We text our elder girl, Star and arrange to collect her after school from a bus stop in town. We pack nappies and snacks and jumpers for everyone. Rose drives us all into the hills to feel the wind on our faces. We have the windows down. I sit by Poppy in the back to keep her settled. Our primary parent parts watch her tenderly. After a while she starts to wail and can’t be settled. Star needs the toilet.

We reflect inside how we are parents now, not lovers to wander where we will. Now there are noses to wipe and people with short attention and many needs. Rose stops at a park in the hills. I’m enchanted by the trees and switch to a 12 year old who adores trees. Star comes back from the public toilets stressed because the walls are covered in millipedes and she’s afraid they will fall on her. We switch the ones who are frustrated, who want her to be different than how she is away to the back of our system. Gentle parent part comes forward and walks to the toilet with her, feeling for that place between compassion and encouragement. Inside us the child yearns and watches the trees hungrily. The toilet trip is a success. A frustrated part comes out and silently takes a millipede off the wall, not to stress but simply to show that courage is a good thing in life, that the danger is not as bad as it may feel.

For a moment no one needs us. The child switches out, takes off our shoes, runs to the trees. Presses his face against the bark and feels webs in his eyebrows. Feels dead leaves underfoot. Feels human.

Rose calls out for our phone. Poppy is being adorable and she wants to take a photo. We switch to parent again and walk over. Then back to child, enchanted by the sunlight through the leaves. He points it out to Star, but she is feeling cold and goes to sit in the car. Still learning how to be free in these places. Rose comes back with a bag of snacks, shares chocolate and strawberries. The light changes colour. We switch. The carousel inside turns. We soak up life.

Switching is different for all multiples, not everyone switches this quickly or this often or has this number of parts. Some have many more or far fewer or they are all the same age or they switch only every few months or once a year! Please don’t take my system as the ‘norm’.

But that snapshot is quite normal for us, a group existence with many, many switches every day, often quite brief, and frequently triggered by what is needed from us by those around us, or what calls to us in our environment. A carousel that keeps turning.
For more information see articles listed on Multiplicity Links, scroll through posts in the category of Multiplicity, or explore my Network The Dissociative Initiative.

Hope for self hate

/ Sarah K Reece / 1 Comment

I’ve been reading again, avidly, using apps on my phone and ebooks. (Poppy destroys physical books) It’s wonderful. For fiction I’m reading works by Tanith Lee, Patricia A. McKillip, Jonathon L. Howard, Sonya Hartnett, Matthew Hughes… For lovers of multiplicity in fiction I highly recommend his Henghis Hapthorn series!

Nonfiction I’ve been reading about scanners in books by Barbara Sher, rainforest minds (a guide to to the well-being of gifted adults and youth) by Paula Prober, and The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.

Giftedness, scanners/polymaths/multipotentiates, and creatives are all areas I’m exploring. How do other people function? What kinds of work are they suited to? What are their vulnerabilities and how do they navigate them? I enjoyed reading this article of career advice about combining different skills by the cartoonist behind Dilbert. This quote in particular resonated with me:

The weakness of an art is its dogma. And when I’m competing against an individual from a different discipline, I try to find the dogma of that discipline. When I’m competing with someone within a discipline, I try to find their personal dogma. — Josh Waitzkin, Chess Grandmaster & World Tai Chi Champion

How fitting, and fascinating. I recall when I was wrestling with my sexualities in counseling, being revolted by some of the ideas espoused by the facilitators of the local support group for same sex attracted women. I was disgusted by the use of the word ‘het’ as an insult, by bi-erasure, and what felt to me like being indoctrinated into a culture – what music I was supposed to like, clothes to wear, how to style my hair. A closed and exclusionary world. It took me a short to move from deeply intimated and anxious/submissive to stripping away the dogma and embracing the beautiful history, courage, and love that is the best of queer culture. And wearing my hair however I damn well like.

So I’m moving past dogma in other areas and reading about people who are hypersensitive, intensely emotional, rapid learners, who constantly seek challenges and struggle with anything once there’s little left to learn. It’s been quite profound. Scanners as label warms my heart, partly because it’s not linked to anything as complicated and grotesque and risky as IQ, with all the challenges and misunderstandings we have about intelligence and human worth.

It’s a box I’ve left closed for a long time. Opening it has been fascinating. The most interesting outcome so far has been the first shift in my voice “I hate myself” that I’ve experienced in many years, a sense that beneath the rage and self loathing lies a different truth altogether: “I don’t understand myself.”

So I’m working to create a new space. Currently I’m most overwhelmed in the area of work/business/career. I am polarised between being barely able to think about it, and drowning in total overwhelm. I’m using my Morning pages (3 hand written pages about anything, a reflective tool suggested by Cameron) to wrestle a new space: gentle curiosity. Why am I blocked? Where is the pain and fear coming from? If this (life, work) was set up perfectly suitable for me, what would it look like?

It’s always an amazing experience, reading about yourself in others’ stories. It’s happened for me many times: reading about PTSD at 18. About attachment disorders, about victims of abuse. In some ways about multiplicity but mostly I didn’t fit the dogma and common stories there. About queer identity. It’s been some time since I found myself reflected in another face. Reading about scanners and rainforest minds has been the most hopeful thing I’ve found in a long time. There are many other people out there like me in these ways. Brilliant people who take 15 years to get an undergraduate degree, or never do. People who thrive on challenge and are constantly being told to slow down. People who can tie themselves up in moral knots so tight they can’t breathe. Obsessives who can’t “focus” and want to explore everything.

And just as I’ve done with being queer, or being multiple, they find friends who are not threatened so they can shine and struggle. They find careers that are good enough and leave them time to explore, or that embed challenge and variety and meaning in them. They stop trying to be what they are not, and learn what they are, and work with that. Which exactly what I’m trying to do. These books give me hope.

Focus on Family

/ Sarah K Reece / 2 Comments

I was sitting on the couch nursing a sick feverish Poppy yesterday, and thinking about the last couple of weeks. I’ve taken some time off work lately to pour some extra love into home and family and it’s been wonderful. There are huge changes afoot and as my business continues to develop I’m feeling less overwhelmed and obsessive. It’s easier to take time away, and I feel liberated to spread my energy across home and work, and my creativity and passion. A lot remains to come clearer but I’m happy with the direction things are taking.

I could do with more sleep, as usual, and I would love less sickness going on – my periods have returned so I’m back dealing with regular misery myself too, but between family counseling, books about creativity and business, regular date days, journaling, and the occasional much appreciated nap, things are going well.

So, our big news is that Star was booked for surgery on her knee, quite out of the blue and with only 2 weeks notice! This is wonderful news, she has been desperate for the surgery and struggling to afford her rehab costs as well as hospital cover for private surgery planned for the end of this year. We were told she was unlikely to come up on the public wait list for several years, so her surgery scheduled for tomorrow morning was a real surprise!

She has also just passed her tests and gained her provisional licence, something she’s been looking forward to for years. I am so pleased she’s going into the surgery with a big win, because it’s tough to prep for it (she needed a blood test and has a big phobia), and she’s had a really tough time with her mental health since the assault when her knee was injured. We are all going the surgery will be the turning point for better times for her.

We’ve been busy preparing, we’ve bought a lovely second hand couch which is a recliner, so there are more enough seats for everyone with achy joints to be comfortable.

I’ve also bought this wonderful standing bench to use for making or fixing things. It was only $30 second hand.

And we’ve all been doing lots of cleaning and organising. I’ve been tackling the sheds and Poppy’s toys and crafts.

So, fingers crossed everything goes well tomorrow. And if it doesn’t, we’ll deal with that too. Life is an adventure and that means sometimes it takes you way off script. You can’t hang everything on all the plans working out perfectly. But boy has it been nice to see our girl feeling happy and hopeful.

Glorious art

/ Sarah K Reece / 1 Comment

Inks and watercolours

Sewing and oil paints

I spent all day in my studio today, and it was wonderful. I’ve had the pleasure of attending a couple of art demonstrations recently and I have been greatly looking forward to a chance to play with new techniques and supplies.

I’ve been reading The Artist’s Way recently and I’m in love with Morning Pages. 3 handwritten pages every morning when I can, it’s a perfect type of focusing for me and I’m making great progress with all kinds of blocks and struggles.

My realisation today is that I tend to preference risk taking in my art – big projects, new skills, new supplies, large artwork. This would be fine except as soon as I encounter a roadblock or glitch, my inner critic goes to town and I get frozen up. Then my critic goes to town because I’m frozen and it all spirals into a painful mess. So today I insisted to myself that I would start low risk and explore and play – cheapest new paints first, small papers, simplest techniques or skills I already have, and go from there. And suddenly I’ve unlocked the most joyous and productive day I’ve ever had in a studio. Piece by tiny piece, I am learning what makes me tick and how to care for my artist and create a business that fits well. Today was a good day.

Watercolour forest

Sumi ink and Chinese watercolours, Magnolias

Orchids and dragonflies, watercolour

Poppies and butterflies, watercolour

Sumi ink and Chinese watercolours, peonies

Watercolor florals

Hand made books

/ Sarah K Reece / 1 Comment

The most fun I’ve had in long while has been visiting a local book maker and repairer. I adore seeing people’s studios, learning so much about the skills and inspiration behind their work is a treat.

I was particularly taken with the design of several beautiful old books such as this gorgeous concertina-fold book of prints:

The ‘pages’ are actually a long strip of paper folded, with a print on the same colour paper pasted to each fold. I fell in love with this stunning book of watercolours:

Which also opens and reads as a regular book:

Because each of the beautiful double spread paints are actually a single page, folded down the centre and glued along both edges to each fellow page. There’s no spine or centre gutter or binding at all, so it opens flat perfectly. I adore it.

An ancient Chinese ledger made from rice paper also stole my heart, but I was too busy admiring it to take pictures for you!

My current book making project has been progressing. I was asked to explore hand made vs digital layout of the content – same format just different tools to get the job done.

I’ve been really impressed with how user friendly and accessible Canva and Desygner are. InDesign isn’t bad either, but for intuitive design and speed the apps are amazing. I’ve used the desktop version of Canva quite a bit too, it syncs with the app on my phone and is really easy to use.

In the end it was decided to go with the hand made approach, which makes me extremely happy because it means more time spent with my brushes in my studio instead of with my computer in my office, and a more handmade feel rather than polished magazine feel to the whole project. I’m really looking forward to the content being signed off on so I can get into making the final. 🙂

Gourmet Meals with St James

/ Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

A new project I’m working on at the moment is developing a fresh gourmet menu with St James Quality Cuts. It’s quite a wonderful change from the rest of my work, and I find it marvelously clearing for my mind to shift between such diverse tasks. This is a little trick many creatives use – let yourself recharge and brew on one project while working on something completely different.

St James is a gorgeous little family owned butcher – owned by some of my family in fact, providing a huge range of pies, desserts, platters, and take home meals alongside their meats, veg, fruit, milk, and pet treats. For such a small crew and kitchen they work hard creating an amazing array of excellent meals.

They needed a menu overhaul, and clearer, easier systems in place for storing ingredients, accessing recipes, and methods for preparing all these meals. So I’ve been in the kitchen creating pies, testing flavours, and investigating what great local produce is available for summer and winter menus for them. There’s definitely no complaints about this project in my house – tasting nights are a new favourite, and bringing home choice bacon and ham is never an unpopular decision either. 🙂

It’s funny, at first I felt terribly anxious and out of my depth with this project, I’ve never done anything like it before! Then I realised I set up all the house cleaning systems in my home, the rotating menu, meal planning, shared shopping list, household budget, and have spent years adapting meals for various people who are dairy free, lactose free, gluten free, celiac, fructose intolerant, FODMAP, allergic to nuts, pepper, soy, or eggs. Like so many people, especially women, I have years of experience developing skills that I have few avenues to gain formal recognition in. Fortunately the wonderful world of freelancing cares much less about certificates and far more about competence. I’ve brushed up on safe food handling and current best practices, and the new, improved gourmet menu, recipes, and systems are making excellent progress.

Today I’ve been testing, among other things, sticky maple syrup lamb shanks with mashed potato, chicken korma, self saucing chocolate puddings, and pear and rhubarb crumble. If you’re local there’s a fridge full of these ready to go. Rose and I finished every morsel of the samples I brought home tonight. 🙂

My Exhibition Sold Out

/ Sarah K Reece / 1 Comment

It was amazing. The feedback was wonderful. People really engaged. And I sold all the art on the walls and then some!

I’m wiped out today and hanging on the couch with Poppy.

There will be updates with links and pictures and all the wonderful things for you very soon.

But for now – wow. My first exhibition since Poppy was born, and my first sell-out exhibition. I am dazed and amazed and SO EXCITED!

I was trialling the idea of one night exhibitions, in a community rather than gallery setting, hosted by an organisation – in this case my wonderful place of residence SHINE SA.

It was great. Hard work but fantastic. I already have interest in hosting it again, and SHINE SA are looking into how they might be able to keep it on display longer. I’m excited about sharing it in different settings with different communities! (Sing out if that’s you)

My favourite part of yesterday was people taking me over to a work to tell me what they see in it, and why they connect with it.

photo courtesy of Janiece Pope ©2018

Hearing that the ideas resonate, that the art speaks to people, that tricky topics suddenly feel safer to think about or talk about – music to my ears. This is a brilliant way of raising awareness, bringing people together, and exploring a topic in a rich, authentic, and ultimately liberating way. I’ve found my thing.

One learning is that I need to outsource sales. Rose is so much better at that side of things than I am, not because she’s ‘sales-ey’ but because she’s less flighty/fried on the night and more comfortable discussing people’s needs. (I forgot to even mention the work was for sale or how to buy it.) She’s come home with a plan to explore how we could offer payment plans to people who need to pay off their favourite work – something she does all the time with beautiful hand made kids clothes or quality baby carriers that would normally be out of our budget, so she’s very familiar with that side of things.

Guys, I sold a whole exhibition! I’m not even sure how to feel, I’m kind of thrilled, and a bit confused, and sort of anxious that it’s all been a big mistake or someone’s going to be really angry with me somehow, or that it was just a crazy fluke and doesn’t mean anything. (How much art do you have to sell before it’s not a fluke anymore?) Why do I feel embarrassed by it and embarrassed about my reaction because it’s not quite on script of just feeling excited? Why does life always look and feel quite different from what you thought it would be like? I don’t know.

Links, photos, good stuff on the way when I can move again, I promise.

And more art, of course. I’ve started a new collection while I was finishing up this exhibition, and it’s beautiful. ❤