Pretty disjointed and very un-edited. Just kind of too exhausted to care enough to do more than warn you.
MOM to GODDESS RISING then FALLING then RISING AGAIN
I began my art career by simply coming out of my protective shell. I was a bit of a hermit. I threw all of my focus into being a mom. Watching Disney movies and coloring in coloring books, doing home crafts and playing jump-rope. I loved being a mom to my little ones. I marveled at their interactions. Their hair as it bounced when they ran. The way they would see something amazing in the most ordinary of things. I would be supportive of most things they wanted to do and helped them to the best of my abilities. I got better at being a mom as time went by, but at some point that was all I was being – a mom.
Marveling and fussing over your children is not really a full life for me. Even being a great mom is not a full life for me. And I do think I’m a pretty great mom – though some think me a little too clingy. So I try to be a little less clingy and take advice from moms who I think manage that pretty well. Being a supportive and always available mom helps them, but it doesn’t always inspire personal growth in things that are non-mom related. And we all have to keep growing, or when the kids grow up and don’t need us anymore: CRISIS. Of the identity sort. Who am I? What is my purpose? Poor me – my babies don’t need me – nobody needs me, why am I even here? There is *nothing* wrong with wanting to be needed. I think that it goes to that little seed I believe we all have and all feel: We all need to matter. That is my theory of everything. However we can meet the need of “I need to matter” — we will march forth and do in an effort to feel as though we matter. Or in the case of something gone by – mattered.
I have had the deepest emotional wounds in my life from feeling like I was nothing. Like I didn’t matter or make a difference. That I am replaceable and unimportant.
I believe many crimes of passion, cracked personalities and neurotic tendencies are rooted in the need to matter.
My way of dealing with my need to matter, I suppose, was and is to reach out to people. To share my feelings. To seek validation. To tell my stories and see who calls back to me with their pain and needs. Then to have dialogue with them. This is how I began my art career. By calling out to women who were plus size. Then to women who had self esteem issues or eating disorders. Then as I grew as a person and an artist (and as a mother of two daughters) I began caring about all of the struggles women face. At times I have been a ranting and screaming feminist. At other times I have tried to take a more Zen approach. In the end I have found the best way to be a feminist and an artist and a mom is to try to be the best ME I can be. To try and call out hypocrisy in advertising and media. To at least highlight powerful ideas that give women strength. To hold hands with all of my sisters and do something beautiful for them and with them. And in making them feel beautiful and powerful, I do the same for myself…and hopefully for my daughters.
I realized how much I had instilled this in them when my marriage was falling apart. Due to the manner in which I was replaced I felt like something must be wrong with me. A dangerous road to go down. And I went out and bought $200 worth of new make-up and skin creams. Then I started talking about things like face lifts and clothing not looking good on me. I was so distraught by feeling like I didn’t matter that it caused a crumbling at the foundation I had been building for about ten years. My daughters couldn’t believe what they were hearing. And when I saw the looks on their faces, I felt ashamed for doubting myself. But still, the self hatred continued for a while – I just kept it more to myself. I felt like I had been a doll on the shelf who was dusty, faded and ugly and he picked me up and tossed me into the corner – my face and chest and heart cracking into a thousand tiny pieces. He took a new doll and put her on the shelf. Now she was the favorite. And I was nothing. I realize that this is not a very grown-up way to handle the situation. So dramatic Heather! Don’t be a drama queen! I knew that these feelings needed to be worked on. Which is why I sought therapy. And which is why I paid close attention to what my thoughts were and journaled them. I had thought I had all of these self esteem issues licked! I was a GODDESS DAMMIT! I am beautiful and powerful and strong!!! But, well…the esteem issues were still in there. Asleep. They felt gone, but they were asleep. And apparently at least a good bit of my self esteem was based on things like what my partner thought of the way I looked. Can anybody out there honestly say that they do NOT care if their partner finds them sexy? I am very curious about this concept. Is there any woman or man out there who is truly, madly, deeply in love with their partner and would not care if their partner found them unattractive, physically?
In any case, I had to get over myself. I had to accept that I was not attractive to him. I had to accept he found somebody else more desirable to him. And I had to find a way to do so that allowed for me to still grow – and I thought I had.
One thing though, I had sort of a safety net that many women going through a separation – who have been left by their partner for another woman – do not have. I had Will. And his support and dedication, passion, desire and promises helped me through the worst of all of it. My foundation of trust with him was unshakeable. Eventually I got over the hurt of what had happened between my husband and me and I felt better. My heart had healed. It was worse for wear, but the scars were pliable enough and it was beating hard and happy for a while. We were in a state of grace. Then one day, not so long ago and purely by accident I realized that my heart could be destroyed if Will were to think less of me than the very happy best he always had. If for some reason he didn’t think I was the smartest, prettiest, most desirable girl – if something were to change his mind about that – then that would shake me to my core and make me feel worthless and long to be something else. Somebody else. What is a girl to do? This realization made me spin into another crisis. SHIT! I AM NOT a whole person – my own person. A person who can stand up all by herself and say, “I ROCK!” I apparently need to say, “I ROCK!” and have other people agree with me that I rock – at least a few, anyway. Or at least my lovers. I let my lovers determine my worth to a dangerous degree. Why must I face this question over and over about my intelligence, beauty and power and worth? Is it because I need to be able to walk away from any man and feel confident and strong and not need him? Is it because I am supposed to realize that at any time another woman could become a favorite of a lover of mine and I would be the old doll again and that is just reality? Am I supposed to have MORE faith in men or LESS faith in men based on these things? Or in lovers? Or in myself?
I am not even sure if I had a female lover that this dynamic would be different. I greatly value what my partners think of me. To the point that if their opinion of me does not place me in the throne of chosen favorite Queen Goddess – then I may have a crisis of self worth. Is that normal? Is that healthy? What do you think?
I go around the house muttering to myself questions about whether or not I am worth much. Whether or not I MATTER. And I get feedback that, YES Heather, you DO matter. Then why must this question and this change and this tilt of my planet be happening and why did it have to change my ecosystem that I thought I had carefully tended to? And even if no answers came – can I answer to myself, “YES HEATHER – YOU MATTER!” And does answering yourself mean that you are crazy or smart?
Sometimes the power of other women who are supportive has helped me bridge many gaps in my flawed little landscape. Is a crack in the landscape a flaw? I don’t know – maybe it’s just made that way? It’s just a canyon or a stream or a river and not a flaw, but something to explore and value as beautiful in its own way. Is that an illusion? Am I trying to talk myself into the ideas that my flaws are beautiful or if I believe they are, then they are. That’s what I have always said. Because who really gets to decide if we are beautiful souls? Who gets to come up with that definition? We do. We all do. Collectively and separately, right? So what is the consensus when you talk to and look at yourself? How about me? And if you think I suck, does that mean I suck? Or does it just mean you can’t see my beauty? So many different ways to look at it.
During this time of crisis and realization, I decided I wanted a tattoo or to pierce something or to color my hair a drastic color. Last time I was having a crisis I should have just stuck to the hair stripes. I did do those – but thought of them AFTER the tattoo. Unfortunately I should have followed my friend Jackie G’s advice: NO NAMES! This was a recent Sharpie change to my tattoo I had put on my shoulder when the crisis with my husband first began. I did it out of a show of dedication, but maybe that was silly. Who gets a tattoo when trouble starts? You get a tattoo when things are going WELL! What do I know? I should have thought of crazy hair first.
My oldest is in town now and I asked her about my hair. “Pink, maybe…” I said to her. She said, “You look good with red. You should do a nice regular red.” I said, “No. I can’t dye my hair red right now. Well, maybe that super bright red. Or….PINK!”
Then she said, “Mom, you can’t dye your hair those crazy colors. You’re too old for that.”
I paused. Gave her a look of disbelief. It felt like the time Jade told me I couldn’t put two little twists on the side of my head because I was too old for it. It felt like a stab. I knew she didn’t MEAN to. But it did. And she saw the look on my face and said, “Mom, lots of people are too old for that – I think anybody over 25 is too old for that. Don’t take it wrong. It just looks like you’re maybe trying too hard.”
“But, I’m an artist, ” I said.
She sighed. I went to my room and lay on the like a fifteen-year-old and quietly sobbed. She asked me why I was crying. I said, “I don’t want to be too old for bright hair! I feel so old today! You don’t know how damned old I feel! I didn’t do these things when I was young and now it’s too late, I’m too old!”
Shit, I’m welling up just writing about that silly scene. She conceded to dye it pink and bright. And I’ve gotten many compliments. I think because I love it and it makes me feel fun and that comes across. So, for this month, while my hair is pink and bright red I reclaimed a little of my star-spangled-goddessyness. Now I need to work on that feeling of moonbeams shooting out of every pore. That one is a lot harder to achieve.
TECH GIRL
For you younger folk – back in the early days of computers we had “bulletin boards” and “usenet groups” — of which I belonged to several. This was before webpages. It was in these groups I discovered that there were not only women who were plus size and perfectly happy with who they were, but there were men who actually liked plus size women – PREFERRED them. I thought of this a few months ago when a young woman who was then a friend of mine, was over at my home. We were cooking and talking about Freddie Mercury and she made a comment. It was one of those moments when I wished I had a recorder or had written down the exact phrasing – but she said something like, “I take great delight in the fact that one of the most amazing rockers of all time, when he liked women, liked them plump.” She may have said fat or extra-curvy – but I thought this was quite a revelation and it made me laugh out loud and grin for many moments that followed, whenever I thought of it – and still makes me grin now.
In those early days of usenet groups I connected with people who would have a great impact on my path to self discovery and my future as an artist. And Goddess – for however long she reigned.
After the usenet groups phased out due to the growing popularity of webpages I then, with Robert’s help, created a “Homepage” – which was pretty much a blog, but you had to hard code it or use a web editor – at the time the popular one was Frontpage. We ended up with Dreamweaver eventually, which had better, more customized results.
I found this description of my old homepage, called “Mythical Realities” – so named after a poem Robert had written in high school – which is probably from around 1998:
Mythical Realities by artist Heather Bartlett: her hobbies & interests, photos, personal& celeb, links, artwork, poetry, vegetarian, women’s’ issues and plus size stuff.
And perhaps you don’t know this, but “links” used to be a big deal. Links were highly sought after before the invention of Google. If you had a topic you were interested in, say BBW artwork or plus size clothing or Female Genital Mutilation awareness – if you had links and you shared them, people were grateful and visited your page.
I found these graphics on the internet – they are from back then when I had invented a “Goddesses of the Web Award.” This was an award I went around and gave to websites I thought had a positive message for women. Or services I thought benefited women. I had given out a few hundred of these to folks who enjoyed them and proudly displayed them on their websites. I also had made “Goddesses of the Web Webring” — a webring was a way of connecting in a big loop a bunch of related topic websites. Again, pre-Google, these things were important for navigating the WWW. The graphics look so amateur and clunky to me now. But at the time people thought they were pretty great. Back then I had Paint Shop Pro and was a long way from ever using Photoshop.
This entry is so disjointed. And I’m to emotionally exhausted to go back and edit it. Normally I let it rest then go back and put paragraphs with like paragraphs and edit out a bunch of stuff that doesn’t need to be in there and find all the things I repeated. I often say the same thing in different ways. I don’t know for sure why I do that, but I think it’s a way of making something more real or maybe I am afraid I will be misunderstood. If I say it two different or three different ways, then surely I won’t be misunderstood, right? Well…that’s the hope anyway.
The point of me telling you all of that, was to tell you this: I started my road to being happier with me by reaching out to others, through bellydancing class, through usenet groups, through my homepage and eventually my blogs and artwork. Sometimes I get so hurt by being open and vulnerable – well by being that way with a person and they misunderstand me or change to disliking me or deciding I don’t matter much – and that hurts like hell. So then I want to SNAP SHUT and become a hermit and hide under my covers forever. Then, after some time, I get indignant and feel like just because that person thinks that – no matter how cool and awesome I thought they were – that it doesn’t mean they are right about me. And if they think something unsavory about me, that doesn’t make it so. And so I feel like I need to just open back up and be ME. Open and sharing and maybe sharing too much – but some of the most wonderful people in my life have come by me because of that. Should I risk missing out on that? Or should I risk the hurt? My poor heart is pretty scarred and battered. So, right now I’m just asking the questions – I’m not sure I have all the answers. But I do have some tools to help me get to them. I hope.
