We Don’t Have to Choose One Version of the Story
A little over a week after returning home from teaching an art retreat in France, I found myself struggling to walk upstairs because my lungs were completely worn out. Unfortunately, the feeling was a little too familiar.
The year before, after teaching a retreat in Italy, almost the same thing happened. I came home exhausted, got sick, and my body basically said, Okay, that’s enough.
Apparently, I hadn’t completely learned the lesson. Here’s the strange part, though. When people asked me about France, I couldn’t stop talking about how wonderful it was. Because it was wonderful. I had an absolutely amazing time in France.
AND I came home completely worn out.
I think we have a tendency to want our experiences to fit neatly into one category. The trip was wonderful, or it was exhausting. The work is fulfilling, or it’s too much. We’re grateful, or we’re struggling. We love what we’re doing, or something needs to change.
But life rarely seems to work that way, at least mine doesn’t.
Teaching art to a room full of women in France is still one of those pinch-me experiences for me. I can look around and see artists making collages, trying something they weren’t sure they could do, and discovering something new about their art and themselves, and honestly wonder, How did this become my life?
My own collage practice started simply because I loved making art. I couldn’t possibly have imagined all the places it would eventually take me or the people it would bring into my life. And having my adult niece Ann beside me in France as my studio assistant made this particular retreat even more special. She’s been adventuring with me since she was eight years old, when she’d occasionally come along on my corporate travels, dress in her most professional little outfit, and help me check people in for my training programs.
Now, all these years later, she was in France helping me teach art.
I felt incredibly blessed.
And I was tired.
Neither truth cancels out the other.
Sometimes the Things We Love Ask a Lot of Us
I’ve always known that I don’t really know how to hold back when I’m teaching.
When I’m with my students, I’m with them. I’m paying attention, answering questions, looking at their work, encouraging them, celebrating the breakthroughs and trying to notice when someone needs a little extra help.
That’s part of what I love about teaching, and I don’t particularly want to change it.
What I do need to change is how I take care of the person doing all that giving.
That’s the piece I’m still figuring out.
Looking back at the four days Ann and I spent in Paris after the retreat, for example, perhaps we didn’t need to tour ALL over Paris every single day. Maybe a rest day tucked somewhere between the museums, neighborhoods, boat rides, cafés, and thousands upon thousands of steps would have been a very good idea.
Maybe I needed to pay attention to what my body was telling me while I was still there instead of waiting until I got home and it had no choice but to make itself heard.
I’m learning this one retreat at a time.
Gratitude Doesn’t Require Us to Pretend Something Is Easy
This may be the bigger lesson for me.
For a long time, I think I unconsciously believed that if I was grateful for something, I shouldn’t complain about the difficult parts.
How could I possibly complain about being tired when I’d just spent all that time teaching art in France? How could I say something was hard when I had chosen it and genuinely loved doing it?
But acknowledging the cost of something doesn’t make us less grateful for the gift.
We can love our work and feel exhausted by it. We can be thrilled about an opportunity and nervous about what it will require of us.
We can feel enormous gratitude for the life we’ve created and recognize that parts of it need to change.
Those aren’t contradictions.
They’re simply the whole story.
What If the Answer Isn’t Always Doing Less?
When something becomes exhausting, the obvious answer is often, Well, then stop doing so much.
Sometimes that’s exactly what we need. But I don’t think that’s always the answer. I don’t want to stop teaching art retreats. I don’t want to stop traveling. I don’t want to stop giving deeply to the people I care about or pursuing the work that lights me up.
What I’m interested in learning is how to do those things without leaving myself out of the equation.
Maybe it’s building a recovery day into a trip instead of trying to squeeze every possible experience out of every day. Maybe it’s saying no to something good because we’ve already said yes to something that matters more. Maybe it’s asking for help sooner. Maybe it’s resting before we’re completely depleted instead of treating rest as something we’ve earned only after we’ve pushed ourselves too far. And maybe it’s simply getting better at noticing.
I’m tired.
I need some space.
This is wonderful, and this pace isn’t sustainable.
There’s so much useful information in those sentences if we’re willing to hear it.
We Can Love Our Lives and Still Want to Change Them
At 66, my art has taken me places I never could have imagined when I first started cutting up pieces of paper and gluing them together. It has brought extraordinary people into my life. It’s allowed me to teach, travel, connect, create, and have experiences I wouldn’t trade for anything.
I want to keep saying YES to all of it.
I just want to get better at listening to myself along the way. And perhaps that’s the shift I’m trying to make now. Instead of waiting until I’m completely depleted to ask what I need, I want to start asking while I’m still in the middle of the beautiful thing.
Am I still okay?
What would make this more sustainable?
What do I need right now?
Not because something has gone wrong, but because I belong in the life I’m taking such good care to create.
We can be grateful and tired.
Joyful and overwhelmed.
Excited and apprehensive.
Deeply committed to something and aware that the way we’re doing it needs to change. Allowing both truths to exist doesn’t diminish either one. It simply gives us a more honest place from which to decide what comes next.
How are you learning to keep doing what you love without leaving yourself out of the equation? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
Are you interested in learning more about how to incorporate your collage papers into your art?
Check out my Collage Workshops!
*I’ve included affiliates links that pay me for products I share, at no additional charge to you.
