Journal

Radical Self Compassion - Should we begin?

A strange thing happened when I turned 50 earlier this year. As that half century arrived I became aware of all the other selves that still were stored inside me - and I became aware that I was really not very nice about them.

It seemed that there seemed very little point in growing to a point where I was happy in my own skin - as I believed I had done - if I was still being mean about all those past versions of me. I decided that needed to bring some radical compassion and love them with all their faults.

So I went on a journey back in time, deliberately digging out past selves, looking at what I say inside my head about my younger self

"I was an immature, lying, boastful child who, unsurprisingly, had few friends."

It is a judgment that I have tried to atone for all my adult life - becoming truthful to the point of bluntness, never mentioning anything I'm proud of for fear of showing off, worrying constantly about friendships. It is a judgement that has cast a great shadow.

But when actually recognised the judgement and thought about it - gathering factual evidence as I would when faced with something in the present, instead of listening to that inner voice - it all looked a little bit different.

I began school half way through Primary 1. I was four years old, a year to eighteen months younger than everyone else in my class. Precocious reading skills and a new baby at home joined together to make early schooling a sensible option.

So the judgement was right, I was immature. I was at least a year less mature than everyone else in class. Sadly being able to read books doesn't guarantee being able to read social situations. No wonder teachers found me difficult, I empathise with them, for I cried easily if told off, I was terrible at anything needing fine motor skills, I played 'sick' a lot, I bragged.

But then, when I think back to my own children, a four year old is quite different from a five year old, and, when changing schools as a teenager meant another bump in age gaps - a fifteen year old is very different from a seventeen year old. When you are getting into pubs and clubs with your fake ID you don't want a 15 year old tagging along. I see that now. The not being invited to nights out probably wasn't actually anything to do with me at all.

This evidence based version is bit different from my memories of the insufferable boastful child trying to get attention, the nerdy awkward teenager drinking way too much, way too early to impress her peers. It turned out to be really easy to feel compassion for past versions of me.

I wonder how many of us carry these judgements of ourselves - not of our present day selves, but of the past ones - and I wonder if that stops some of us from feeling wholly loveable.

For me being able to laugh about how wrong I had been, feeling compassion for that little girl, that teenager, clicked a whole load of things into place around friendship.

For me, the feeling unworthy of having good friends, the feeling of everyone else being too witty and glamorous and clever and nice to be my friend, that shrinking that had been at the core of my being, and as though at a click of my fingers, it just disappeared.

It has gone in a feeling of 'Oh sweetheart' and a virtual hug and a shedload of compassion like a cheesy reality show.

I would love to hear from you if you have found yourself harbouring similarly out of date views of yourself - either as a comment here or email me Jane@snapdragonlife.com

A Room of One's Own - .

Over the past few months I have been feeling restless and rootless at work. I couldn't understand what the matter was - I love my job but I just couldn't settle to write or plan. Perhaps you recognise the feeling.

Then I realised it dated from a few months ago when we moved to hot desking, sitting wherever the work is and getting on with it.

That is efficient for day to day making and dispatching, for crunching through spreadsheets and answering email, but it turned out to not be good for anything creative, anything that needed a clear head.

In 1929 Virginia Woolf published "A Room of One's Own" which argued that without a dedicated room, creation is impossible. It made me think.

We are out of space in the workshop and I don't have a room in my home to convert into an office so first I tried working at the kitchen table.

I ate a lot of biscuits, I became easily distracted by unloaded dishwasher and unwashed dishes. I remembered why I had moved the business out of the house in the first place.

Then I thought that maybe what I needed wasn't a room, but a space - almost a sacred space - that was purely dedicated to creation. There isn't anyone else in the house during the day so, as long as I cleared things away, I could pick the best spot and make it my own.

I chose a corner of the sunroom - a rather neglected room that is mainly dogs and welly boots - and made my creation corner from a round table and a bedside chair. So far it is working.

 

My top tips for making space to create when you don't have a room.

1. Turn your back on household mess. If you can't see it, it can't bug you. I sit at a round table facing the garden.

2. Work out the minimum stuff you need in order to create - for me that is a notebook, a diary and a laptop, pens and a camera.

3. Dedicate the space. Make it like an altar, include a couple of things that make your heart sing. I have a bunch of sweet peas and a beeswax tea light by me as I type this. I particularly like tea lights as they smell wonderful and burn in about 4 hours which is a good writing session. Choose the prettiest water glass, the nicest jug.

4. Spend time setting out the space in the morning and clearing it up at the end of the day - think about where all your things can go when you finish - a box or a basket, a briefcase or bag. If it is set up when you start you are less likely to walk off leaving chaos. I have a simple rectangular cane basket that tucks under the table and sweep everything bar lap top, flowers and candle into it at night.

5.Put out drinks and snacks at the beginning of the session - if I don't do this I spend 50% of my time rootling around the fridge. I also find that if I have a big bottle of chilled water and a glass on the table by me I romp through my daily water.

Taking a lesson from Barbara Hepworth.

Last week I was in London for a few days family holiday. We rented a small flat in Hampstead through Air BnB - cheaper than a couple of rooms in a Travel Lodge and always much more interesting.

It was the end house in a row of tiny brick terraced buildings - accessed from the road via a long narrow flagged path, with bulbs and shrubs blooming alongside.

The house itself was mainly one big room with high ceilings reaching into the rafters, massive floor to ceiling windows which alongside skylights made the space cool and light and airy. I asked Gonzalo, who showed us round, about the history of the house and he mentioned that it had been home and studio to some important artists in its time.

As soon as he left I was on my phone googling the address - and there it was, between 1928 and 1939 Barbara Hepworth had lived there. There were even photos in the Tate archives of her posing in the house, next to the very stairs that I was sitting on.

Barbara Hepworth, grande dame of abstract sculpture had sketched by this window, had walked up these stairs, had sat catching the sun in this garden. I was more than a little star struck.

So I bought a book and started to read a little about her life. In 1928 when she moved there she was 25, she had been married to the sculptor and horse fanatic John Skeaping for 3 years. By 1939, when she left the house 5 days before the outbreak of WWII and fled to Cornwall, she was living with the artist Ben Nicholson and had 4 children - Paul born in 1929 and triplets Rachel, Sarah and Simon in 1934.

So in this beautiful but tiny space with its sleeping mezzanine, which had in the 1930s very basic heating, cooking and toilet facilities - 2 artists lived and worked with 4 children playing at their feet. Hepworth carved in a corrugated iron lean to extension which kept the plaster and marble dust out of the house.

They not only lived and worked but took their art to new spaces, were important contributors to avant garde movements, mixed with Mondrian, Arp, Picasso. It seemed a far way away from the conventional idea that "the pram in the hall" ends creativity.

So I read more - interested in how Hepworth managed this and found her writing about being a mother while having a life outside motherhood, to be the most straightforward that I have ever read.

"A woman artist is not deprived by cooking and having children, nor by nursing children with measles (even in triplicate) - one is in fact nourished by this rich life" - "I learned early on to regard all the time spent with children as a nourishment - a plus rather than a minus" "we lived a life of work and the children were brought up in it, in the middle of the dust and the dirt and the paint and everything" "being a mother enriches an artist's life"

It wasn't that though that I found most inspiring though, it was her practical approach to her work time and space being eroded by family life, by lack of money and by the privations of war.

That when she was unable to sculpt she took up drawing and gouache, when she could no longer afford bronze she carved in wood. It was the creation, the making, the thinking, the getting things out of her head that was important.

My favourite quote is this - "I found one had to do some work every day, even at midnight, because either you are professional or you're not. . . . provided one always does some work each day, even a single half hour, so that the images grow in your mind"

What she is saying that it doesn't matter how small the creativity is, it doesn't have to be massive 11 feet high sculptures, it can be some pencil sketches at midnight, as long as it is done every day.

It is the doing, doggedly, day after day, that is the important thing.

Barbara Hepworth's writings about motherhood, family and work are basically the same as Elizabeth Gilbert's views on creativity in Big Magic or Seth Godin's ideas about shipping. Keep going, take part in life, don't be a diva, do the work, enjoy.

As I said - inspirational. When I next feel that life is getting in the way of things being done, I shall relax, enjoy whatever it is that life is throwing at me, and squirrel away a small slice of time to be creative every single day.

Jane's house is in 25 Beautiful Homes magazine this month!

A while ago the photographer Polly Eltes came to take photos of my home and the article is in this month's 25 Beautiful Homes magazine.

It is a lovely article because, though there was a lot of tidying (the house has never been as tidy before or after) they didn't try and play down what we have tried to do in creating our home.

There was no attempt to make it more chi-chi or glossy, the art propped about is mainly by my daughters, the furniture is mismatched but carefully chosen, everything means something to us.

It matters much more to me that our home feels welcoming, that it is a place where children and animals can run about without messing it up, than that it is perfect or up to the minute.

Which is probably just as well as I am neither neat nor fashionable.