Loose-Leaf Letter #4: The Three C’s
college visits, critical comments, colored pencils + zoom link
My daughter Avery and I visited colleges this week.
(If any of my longtime readers felt disturbed by that sentence, you are not alone! I can’t believe Avery is seventeen years old either!)
As I packed the car for our road trip, I thought back to when my daughters were little and how I would always bring activities. Now that they are older and have phones, hands-on activities in the car aren’t needed as much. But knowing the pervasiveness of technology and the importance of media breaks, I included supplies, just like the old days.
As I gathered colored pencils and drawing paper, I thought about the art therapy exercise a beloved member of our treehouse community shared when she restacked Loose-Leaf Letter #3.
Amy Smeal of
offered this instruction:“Take out a box of crayons, colored pencils, markers…whatever you have that has colors.
Pick up each color one at a time. Close your eyes and write down the first feeling that comes and any other thoughts that follow in relation to that color.
(Basically, you’re making a list of colors and their meaning to you.)
Put that list aside.
Use whatever colors grab you to make whatever shapes, lines, or designs you feel. Don’t overthink it. Just go with whatever thought or idea comes next. You could also create first and then make the list. Your choice!
When you are finished, sit back and reflect on it and journal whatever comes to you.
Don’t judge, don’t critique. It doesn’t have to make sense, but it may resonate with you later. What have you learned about coloring yourself in?”
I had been meaning to try the exercise since the day Amy posted it but hadn’t gotten around to it. With a quiet house and all the supplies I needed right in front of me, it was the perfect time.
In the upper left corner of my paper, I made a key of seven colors and their meaning. Then I covered up the key as I drew and colored for about fifteen minutes with no plan or intended outcome (that was new experience for me!).
The resulting picture was unlike anything I’d ever drawn before. Normally, I draw familiar objects, so the fact that a novel design appeared was interesting to me. I was also intrigued by the fact that I had included “depression” on my color/meaning list, and how it showed up in my design, almost hiding among the vibrant colors.
But the detail that stood out to me most prominently was the way the soft “clouds” in my favorite color seemed to cocoon my core colors/concepts. And when I looked at my color key, I saw that color represented HOPE.
I am surrounded and protected by hope.
That is an incredibly comforting concept, but there is more…
Building my treehouse here on Substack has offered me a feeling of security I haven’t felt in a while online. In the more public spaces of the internet, I am open to personal attacks and unwarranted judgement. I don’t like to admit how long I’ve carried some of the hurtful comments I’ve received from online readers. One of them was especially painful because it felt deeply personal. It came from a long-time follower of my work who I’d met when this person drove several hours to attend to my first book signing and give me a gift.
Although I can’t remember the exact wording, this person publicly announced their exit from my Facebook page because I was “too hopeful”. Their comment was written in a way that discredited my work and shamed me for being who I am. Unlike demeaning comments from random strangers, this one pierced my heart because there was a shared trust.
Too hopeful
There were a lot of ways to interpret that statement and believe me, I dissected it; I examined it; I held on to it.
A year passed, and then five, and now ten. And much to my delight, I’d say hope is still alive and well in my writing because hope is still alive and well in me.
If it weren’t for hope, I would not have survived one of the most devastating experiences that can happen to a parent. The night the floor fell out beneath me in 2021, I remember watching my swirling ceiling fan and saying, “I can’t do this. It hurts too much.”
A still, small voice inside me said, “Yes, you can… you’ve been preparing to walk your child through her pain by walking through your own.”
That voice was hope.
Although that person’s judgement caused me to question my belief in hope, I did not allow them to take it from me.
I still have hope… or perhaps I should say hope still has me.
Through this art exercise, I can visibly see how I am held by hope.
My friends, I encourage you to try this exercise and share it with a loved one. During our long car ride, my daughter and her friend, Julia, became engrossed in their drawings. When we stopped to eat, they both were excited to share their drawings with me. When we got home from our trip, Avery wanted to talk about her design in more detail.
As I listened, I learned a lot about where she is right now as she faces a major life transition. Hearing her interpretations about her picture was enlightening and uplifting. I was grateful I’d trusted the nudge on my heart to include the art supplies and share Amy’s activity with the girls.
Friends, I still can’t believe Amy is joining us at the Kripalu retreat in April! She will be leading exercises that will expand my Soul Shift teachings and help us uncover healing clues inside ourselves. Thank you to those who read my vulnerable post last week and signed up to join us. You don’t know how happy that made me. There is still room for you if you are considering!
Don’t forget there will be a live gathering in the treehouse this weekend! As always, this is a come as you are experience, but if you’d like to bring crayons or colored pencils and paper and do this art exercise before, during or after the gathering, please do. You are worthy of this hour on Sunday to reset and restore in community before the week begins.
Paid subscribers will find all the details, including the Zoom link, for our third Loft Lounge Session below. If you’re a free subscriber and would like to participate in these uplifting gatherings, as well as have the full community experience here at the treehouse, please upgrade your subscription by clicking this button:
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Rachel's Treehouse to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.