wayward year

I arrived in Alexandria, Virginia as an eager 11-year old—eager for new friends, a stable family, belonging. My mom had already explained, just before we moved, that she and my dad would be parting ways, a piece of information I’m not entirely sure she had shared with my dad just yet. The first part of my sixth grade year started relatively smoothly all things considered, but ended with my mom and I on our own in another neighborhood. In order to finish the year at my school, my mom drove me to my dad’s house (which used to be ours) in the morning and then picked me up at the end of her workday. The following year, I began 7th grade in yet another new school—the sixth I’d attended since kindergarten.

Thus began my wayward year, a time when teenage hormones, my parents’ divorce, and all the angst, anger, and confusion that came with both started leading me toward a more intense level of rebellion than ever before. One of the number one rules in those days was “home before dark” until one day, as the sun started to set, I heard about a party in our neighborhood (the parents were out of town), and I willfully, consciously decided to go there instead of home. (This is a moment I remember with vivid clarity—when I declared, in my own way, I was not going to do what my parents expected of me, not when they were breaking up our family and leaving me to deal with that, for the most part, on my own.) It wasn’t too long before police officers showed up looking for me.

I snuck out in the middle of the night to run around with other such cohorts. (There was no real purpose to this other than to do something we weren’t supposed to be doing.) I got on the back of a motorcycle in shorts and ended up with a third-degree burn on my leg, passing out as a result. I started drinking and stealing makeup. If I thought it would help me fit in and find friends, I would usually do it.

At the same time, I started a lawn mowing business. We lived in a townhouse, so yards were small and manageable. I made flyers, distributed them to every house on our block, and got a couple of customers. I was a dependable babysitter and got good grades. I was acting out in some significant ways, but by the end of 8th grade I’d found my way to a different group of friends alongside a budding awareness of who I might become. My imaginings of what it might be like to be an Artist and see other parts of the world were coming into sharper focus. I wanted to be independent, have fun, live out loud.

In the talk I gave at Nepenthe Gallery in Alexandria last week, I said, “My 13-year old self is freaking out right now,” and she really was. I have been thinking about her a lot throughout this adventure, and on the night of the show she was beaming—surrounded by so many of the beauties she met and became friends with at a time when her life felt like it had been turned upside-down. These girls, now women, pulled her through, whether they were aware of it or not, and made sure she found her way to that moment at the gallery.

My work as an Artist has been expressed in a lot of different ways and inspired by an array of experiences and influences. I have been uniquely rewarded and challenged by each iteration of my career, whether it involved making art, writing a book, or planning a retreat. Whatever the offering, my intention was to inspire others not only with the work, but with the story of its coming to fruition—to convey the truism that the journey means far more than just the destination. The path that brought me to Nepenthe Gallery on a chilly April evening started when I was a frustrated young girl trying to come to grips with all the rapid rearrangements of our small family and could have easily lost my way. Instead, I ended up surrounded by a circle of lovely humans—then, and now, and always.