If you know me, you know I have endometriosis. This year I even started to share work about living with the condition on this blog. I have quite a fun little monthly project called #BloodWork where I document one of the realities of having the condition and make funny, fun little reimagined images from phone-cam pictures. I recognise that some readers of this blog find it confronting... blood IS confronting. It shouldn't be when it's just menstrual blood but alas...
I am so excited about abstract painting that I am openly sharing my process pretty much daily over on Instagram... Siobhán Vs Abstract And secondly, because I just published a demo of a tune and intend to finally start sharing demos regularly on this site. Health challenges are probably the number one reason I have struggled to share my songs over the years, through performance and cataloguing through recording. I also have young kids, so for better or worse my songs won't be given the production treatment I would like to give them before putting them out into the world. I have had to make peace with my own limitations over the years it regards to how my health affects ALL areas of my life but it's affect on art-making is very hard for me to accept, when it comes to performance in particular. Endometriosis can often feel like 'a life half lived' but chuck in the racket in my head and... ... ... well just getting out of bed can feel impossible on bad days. That's me, eleven years ago, on the Sunshine Coast, recording. At the beginning of a wonderful but challenging decade that would see me make nowhere near the strides I had hoped to with music and song-writing. And this is me now, baby down for nap, menstrual products and pain-killers stocked up, still wearing my nightie, recording a guitar part. This is me, knowling my limitations and deciding to make some art in spite of it all!
I've heard it all before; having courage is not about the absence of fear but about how we face fear... righteo... so feel the fear and do it anyway? Maybe that's the book I should be reading right now... wasn't that title a bestseller? Anyway, I'm here today to say I am living in so much fear right now. There are some very normal fears that I think I am handling reasonably well, some that are particular to my circumstances and some that just completely holding me back! I am certainly not feeling the fear and doing it anyway!
So I'm not over-thinking this, I'm just writing this, spilling the beans, saying: I'm a feminist and keen to set a brilliant example of female strength for my daughter, yet if I'm honest I feel terrified about a great deal. I have fears about things I want to take on, personal goals and such but I am also afraid of things out there, in the world, in other people, things in the night! Feminists aren't meant to say that out loud are they? To be fair to myself it has been a rough couple of years and I do have a personality disorder to contend with and let's not even go into auditory hallucinations right now but COME ON GIRL (I say to myself) YOU'RE A SMART WOMAN, PULL YOUR FINGER OUT! FEEL THE FEAR, JUST DON'T BE PARALYSED BY IT!!! 'Hi! I'm Siobhan and I'm a feminist! But can you please hold my hand as i walk through life!' ;) Yeah, I'm being pretty rough on myself, I have to remember that I have achieved, faced and overcome alot in my life and in the face of many challenges. I should be proud of where I'm at. But I'm thirty later this year and my daughter is four next month and I always thought I should be teaching my daughter to 'back herself,' be fearless and if there are fears: Feel the fear and do it anyway! ;) And yet I struggle and for the last few years I have needed alot of support. I still do! Feminism does inform pretty much all areas of my life but I don't know how to let it inform how I handle fear... let alone inform how I manage living through a mental health crisis. Today I found myself writing a song; one minute I'm mulling over a paragraph of lyrics I'd written and twenty minutes later the bloody thing had just written itself. Great success! So I took a recording and listened back. BOOM! What did i learn from my song? My daughter will not grow to be a bolder woman by seeing her mother trying to be an island with unrealistic mental strength in all situations. She's seeing me call in some good support when i need it, because we all need it from time to time, that's what the sisterhood is there for yeah? So i'm feeling the fear and i'm asking for a hand; so i can get some shit done! |
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