September sadness

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

Disclaimer: This month’s blog post will be about loss and grief than advice being catered to illustrators. So I apologize if that's not your speed.

September is a month that ushers in change for all of us. A first day of school perhaps or the start of a new hobby/course. It's different for everyone and yet September definitely rings in the start of the end of the year. Curiously I always look ahead to see what the last few months will bring us now that the days grow shorter and the leaves start to colour.

For me personally, September has always been a month filled with intense emotion. It's the month I celebrate my godchild's birthday as well as my own but also the month where in my grandfather and great-grandmother died. Sadly this September was a particularly heavy one. In the past month we had to deal with a cancer scare for my father and my grandmother undergoing surgery, at the age of almost 90, not knowing if she would get through it. Every day that brought me closer to my birthday, I was starting to wonder more and more if it was going to be the last birthday I would have with some of my family members. The outcome wasn't decided yet but as anxiety started to creep in, I was hit by a wall of overwhelming grief. I cried for days, imagining the worst outcomes. I was letting my thoughts and emotions get the better of me and for a few days I was absolutely crippled.

A momentarily sigh of relief

Luckily, my father doesn't have cancer and my grandmother underwent her surgery just fine. So it seemed like we got through it all unscathed and yet, the feeling of grief was still there. It was starting to sink in that even though everything turned out alright now, there was going to be a day where it won't be as time inevitably moves on. Those days I cried in the beginning of September I was already grieving for the future as if the universe was telling me to prepare myself.

Our dogs Sergei and Igor in better days. Sadly both are no longer with us. 

Blindsided 

And then our family dog, Sergei, died. The dog I grew up with, the dog I had picked. So worried about my family members I was blindsided, never expecting that it would be our dog that would die. As anyone who has loved a pet, losing one has been very painful. The older I get, the more it seems to hurt. I hardly cried when my first dog died when I was still a kid not fully grasping what it means. As an adult I realize how much our pets enrich our lives with their presence. I’m thankful for the 13 years we got with Sergei, who was forever a grumpy old man in spirit but very much loved nonetheless. Weirdly enough the shock of Sergei dying dislodged something within me. Although the pain of loss is still very much here, that grief is now joined by understanding.

Dealing with grief in a healthy way

A little life preserver

As all of this was going on, I started a ceramics class. Ceramics has always been something I wanted to try but never gave a proper shot because I have sensory issues. I cannot stand the feeling of dry hands in such a bad way that it will make me physically freeze up and stop me from doing anything else until I can apply moisturizer. It can be mentally draining and quite embarrassing for an adult to go through something like that in public. As clay is notoriously drying for the hands, you can see why I never put myself in that situation before. But I don't want to live a life where my own shortcomings dictate my life. So through patience, slow exposure therapy and heaps for moisturizer I am able to try ceramics. In putting myself out there I found a new source of creativity, a boost in my confidence and inadvertently finding a way to deal with my grief in a healthy way. The new techniques and environment have been incredibly enriching.

And so, it seems fate was cruel to me in some ways and kind in others during this September. It's been a month filled with lots of tears, pain and general discomfort but it has also offered me a new lease on creativity and a deeper understanding to deal with grief. I feel my art is slowly reaching a new maturity that without that pain probably wouldn't have reached.

As I am thankful for the teachings, I do hope that October will be a less turbulent one.
Till next month,
C.