Living Our Story In Which We Are The Star

 

 

 

“Growing old gracefully really means either disappearing or sticking around but always lying straight to people’s faces about the strength of your feelings and desires.” – Heather Havrilesky

 

We are the star of our own story.  We had a beginning, a middle, some conflict, some resolution, and a denouement.  The denouement in our life story is the final part of the story.  It is where all the happenings in our life come to some resolution, or should.  It is important to decide what genre your story is going to be.  Is it going to be joyful, or is it going to be a sad story?  I want a joyful story all about love, survival, overcoming and thriving.  How about you?

As we age, our body becomes more and more fragile.  We have poor immune systems.  We sag and have bags.  We tend to start to forge things and become frustrated at doing so.  Perhaps there is even fear.  But we do not tell others about it.  It becomes our hidden secret as we tell everyone, “I’m good…I’m fine…”  And, really, we are not…we are aging.  Some of us will burn out without a burst of joy that comes before a star disappears.  With us, burns our authentic story.

Towards the end of our story, we can say we have finally grown up, become an adult, become a wise sage.  We know ‘stuff’.  We feel ‘stuff’.  We believe ‘stuff’ because we have a history of years and years of living ‘stuff’.  We have become a star bright and brimming with being who we are, streaking across others’ sky and leaving them wondering who that was that was so brilliant, and then we disappear, leaving a night sky yearning.  And we live, as if we did not know that about ourselves.

Be that character in your story that is unforgettable, a classic, a story told to children at night before they slumber.  Be that character in a story that women, curled up on the couch, will relate to.  Be that character in your story that men fear.  Be that legend.  Be that myth.  Leave them wondering how they could not have known such bravery, courage, brilliance and soul-deep authenticity about you.  Leave them wishing your story could go on and on, in trilogies, in whole collections of stories worth being told.

Be, that, sisterfriends.  Be all that you really are.

©Carol Desjarlais 2.28.22

 By turnnung the head, changed the line of the sides of the neck, you cn gain a whole different projection of feeling.

For the backgrund, I chose one of my dies to us a a stenci

It is not typical to make the horizon in the mide if the page.   But, for this one I did.  

I, then, began to sketh a sparce drawing.  If I am going to have the head tilted, I had to remember tht how I drw the necmakes a huge difference.  I did not want her whole body tilted, jsut the head. so, the side the head is tilted to, the neck will be shortr and the shouklder higher.

I am not reallt happy how her head is tilted, and, as you can see, as I block in some color, that I did not make the shoulder, on the tilted side, high enough, but I can correct that a bit when I paint.

It always feels better when I begin to paint her.  There is something wrong with the tilt, but I continue on,

I work on her to get some color down and then stop and work on the horizon.  It is best not to make the horizon a straight line, and I correct where it was originally and make the horizon more of center.

Don't ask me what stars are doing in the sky when it is definitely daylight.  Perhaps it is a reminder that, even though we canot see them, they are there.  This fits into the theme;  we are stars whether we feel that we are or not.  

I think justifying it this way felt better than simly knowing the tilt is wrong.  lol