Courage

 A woman sits before us, dressed in a white and blue printed shirt-dress and leggings, hair artfully pinned up, colourful glasses framing a wide-eyed, intent, focused gaze. She is next to a portable whiteboard; we are ranged around her in a circle in the room where we have met for the past ten Sunday evenings as we explore "The Artist's Way at Work".

She tells us of her hesitation about joining  us tonight; how she thinks she’s done the assignment/ task all wrong; how, that afternoon, she was facing her blank collage page - thinking of leaving it blank; and then deciding to fill it. Choosing too to fill it with the reality of how things are, with what really is: the way she feels, the labels she puts on herself, the terrible weight of depression that has kept her submerged on so many days… And also to add what she hopes to become: creative, brightly colorful, focused… The muddy river she has painted becomes lighter, wider, reaching up and across the page to the pictures and swatches of fabric that represent those vivid future things.

And because she has come, because she has filled the page with her reality, we in turn can tell her that she is in fact already all those hoped-for things, and so much more.  We can tell her how we see her: bright in every way, creative, strong, daring to stand up and stand out. We weren’t aware of her struggle; but now that we are, she seems to us even more luminous and vital, as she continues her journey.

And now we journey with her.