Description

At age 45 I was told by the hand specialist I was no longer able to use my right hand.  I began to re-learn how to write with my left hand, using with fat crayons, the kind I used in kindergarten.  I was a child again, learning my letters, and what eventually came out upon the page astounded me.  Sadness that had not had a voice in my right-handed world began to speak.  One day the voice of the hidden me stood up and said, right there upon the page, I’m tired of trying to paint like Sally Waterman.

I read these words and looked around, wondering who had written them. Where was this reaction coming from?   I decided to follow my left-handed muse.

The teacher always held up Sally’s work as examples of good art. The rest of us looked in awe at our classmate’s masterpiece.

 And then down at our own attempts. We covered our work first with our hands and then with our shame.

It was a simply written piece about the comparing critic, the voice that tells us we aren’t good enough, pretty enough or smart enough. The writing of I’m Tired of Trying to Paint Like Sally Waterman, published in 1999, was life changing for me. I realized that I needed to allow my own voice, my own authentic voice; to come forth and stop living how I thought everyone else expected me to live. I began to understand that I am enough. This radical way of thinking was foreign to my upbringing. A deep shift began; I began to give myself permission to embrace the creativity that was repressed within me.

I decided to turn this writing into a little book and illustrate it myself, yes with my left hand. The drawings were simple and child like.  I now use this book when I teach writing classes to explain how we are not on a comparison journey and how our inner critic works to keep us from expressing ourselves. I often hear students state, “I had a Sally Waterman in my life too…”