People create, whether works of art, simple meals or wood piles chopped and stacked. In these special places which also provide comfort, we receive intuitive messages and birth our imagination. Writers sit at desks to write. Woodworkers bustle around their shops. Crafters lean over their workbenches. Composers delight at their pianos. We enter our meaning-making spaces, memory-making spaces, and listen for ideas. We step in with reverence and wait for inspiration. Then we perform our rituals: click the keyboard, mix and smell acrylics, flip the switch to turn on the buzz of the saw, sauté the sizzling herbs. We play in these spaces. We wonder what to do next. We hope for evolution of our skills.
For me? My space has history with its mellow deep gold walls. I called it my office for seeing clients for therapy. Decorated with soft, warm colors, the room invites intimacy. For a relational feel, on one wall I hung a metal image of five women with arms around each other, and on another, pictures of loved ones, grandkids, my kids. Near my chair I had –and still have—paintings depicting emotion: a gray rabbit my son drew in second grade. The dark bunny has a tear running down his cheek. Two pictures that my aunt painted hang by the door; one of a toddler in a corner with her head hidden in her hands, and another hugging a doll.
This room echoes with stories, mine these days, and lots of client stories, explorations of career paths, fears about adult illnesses, trauma, depression. Stories with more questions than answers: questions about how or if to retire, or if and when to move to assisted care, crises of faith. What a blessing to witness clients moving from suffering into claiming their brilliance, coming to know the nature of their own true beauty, and the beauty of their own true nature.
After retiring, I dismantled the office. The space became a grand-baby’s bedroom, with pac-n-plays, and board books like Eight Silly Monkeys and A Day with Cows. This room had rattles and the scent of Johnson and Johnson Baby shampoo.
When these babies outgrew cribs, the room morphed again, became a study for writing, for scattering books on the floor and papers strewn about. We change rooms and we change with them. Rooms change us. We care for them. They care for us.
Today, I sit surrounded by books about writing and poetry. Next to me hangs a sepia-tone picture of Dad at two-years-old, stacking wooden alphabet-cubes. When I showed it to him, he nodded his head, “Oh, I loved to build with blocks.” Decades after his life and love of building, and after his death, Dad’s smile acts as muse for me.
Happy pictures of my mom, and my grandparents dot the walls. These loves loved me unconditionally (my dad’s dad, the muse of muses). These inspirers, no longer alive, beam life into me. With our own space or room of refuge, our hearts open, widen, broaden. Perhaps our outer spaces help us access our inner spaces and our creativity.
This warm, cozy room has echoes, memories, history, and her-story. It is mine. For others? Megan has her weights, mats and stretchy bands in one secret section of her basement. My friend Jamie has her quiet yoga room. My pal Peter has his computer corner. My grandkids have a Lego loft. Whatever we call it– office, art table, kitchen, man cave, garden, wood lot–maybe we all need our own sanctuary.
Sue , I love this ! Such grounding words and thoughts and images . I will look differently in my own “rooms” (spaces) . Hope you are WELL !!!!! Anne C
Your own creation of this inspiring essay encourages us to flee the “busy-busy” and to shelter in the fertile spheres of reflection and imagination! Thank you, Sue!
Interesting, now I remember different colors on walls in different businesses. Hospitals, schools, business meetings etc. Have wonder if designer chosen or for a specific reason.