come in... rediscovering hope in the 12 steps with A.R.T.S.

Photo by https://unsplash.com/@rosiekerr

if you really knew me, i struggle with the word hope. it feels like a very slippery, "go around the board for free" kind of word to me. too many people my age use it as an excuse for not being accountable for the mess we've created with each other and on this planet. when i hear someone say, "i have so much hope for future generations" without also saying, "and i offer them my shoulders to  stand on so we can do it together," i want to scream. imho, anything less than that is a total copout.

however, i do acknowledge the beauty and importance hope has in my own personal healing journey. 

a little background here. i've been struggling with my identity as an artist for as long as i can remember. i've questioned it on a regular basis. what does it mean to say i'm an artist? do i deserve to claim that identity? am i good enough? am i contributing enough (to society, to my family) if i'm "just" an artist? isn't my friend who's a therapist and a part-time artist a much better person than i am because she's contributing to society in some way (and making money, too)? my whole adult life seems to have circled around these questions (and so many more). i certainly have rarely felt like i could ever just be an artist.

but when i attended my first A.R.T.S. Anonymous meeting, i felt it. i felt hope. tentatively. like when you find a box of old family photos you thought you'd lost, knowing that they hold some important answers to lifelong questions about yourself.  i felt i was rediscovering it after years of putting it away as something not for me, or something to be judged.

to be honest, more than hope, i felt like i had come home. i felt a sense of kinship i've rarely experienced in the wider world. and this was over Zoom, with a bunch of folx in Europe! i remember being in tears almost the entire meeting as i listened to them share their experiences - so similar to my own - of self-judgment, doubt and avoidance. i also felt, as an HSP, i was in a group of people who experience the world the way i do - through my innately undervalued and easily overwhelmed, sensitive soul. for the first time, i felt like i wasn't swimming against the tide of the larger cultural experience curated towards productivity, speed and noise. grind culture.  

i think i can safely bet that most of the folx in the A.R.T.S. world are HSP's, too. although we're only about fifteen to twenty percent of the global population, many HSP's are artists.  which is awesome! we're the visionaries, the court jesters, the philosophers, the wise and thoughtful advisors to the kings and warriors of the world. but because we are a small group, we are often overlooked, even discounted, in this crazy capitalist, consumerist society. but we are needed. 

imagine a world without art. without music, paintings or poetry. without care for ancestral stories and reclaiming of things lost.  without visionaries and dreamers. without, dare i say, hope.

in these times of deep uncertainty, mass extinction, environmental and social breakdown, in this Great Unraveling, i see a renaissance blossoming through the cracks of all the pavement and horror. a renaissance of artists, court jesters, visionaries. of unlearning all the things that had us believe we're less than, not good enough, or out of place. of slowing down to listen, to feel, to breathe, to re-inhabit our bodies. of re-membering who we really are.

it's time. we've had a good long run of power over, hierarchy and dominant, extractive behavior. it's time those of us who have hid and diminished ourselves, judged and beaten ourselves down, and, all too often, even taken ourselves out to be seen, heard, supported and honored for who we are. our voices, visions and gifts are valuable, needed and critical for these times. 

so, if you are grappling with all of this, if you're an artist who hasn't yet claimed yourself as so, if your sensitivity and vision have not been honored, or if you've relegated yourself to the ranks of the unreceived, i invite you to consider that there is another way. there is hope. and A.R.T.S. Anonymous is one of the most beautiful, co-created spaces to support you in feeling and believing in it again.

p.s. here's a poem inspired by a quote about Recovery shared at one of my A.R.T.S. meetings this week - "come all the way in and sit all the way down." may it bless you and be an invitation to find support and community with us if you're feeling alone, and maybe even hopeless.

come in 

come all the way in.

sit all the way down, into

yourself, into the

depths of surrender,

to the bareness of what it

is to share yourself

so truthfully you

have nowhere to hide. nowhere

to turn but inward

and outward to the

faces meeting your eyes with

such love and tender

care, such empathy,

all you can do is to keep

opening, pulling

your foot into the 

room, closing the back door and

letting it swing shut,

leaving all the old

stories of why you should have

stayed outside, outside.

come in. come all the 

way in. sit down, all the way 

down. and stay a while.

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