This week, I turn 50 and I am starting out on the next leg of a very long journey to bring creativity and flourishing to the world that I live in. Right now, I am currently fundraising to build an art shed in my backyard to create a hub for myself and others to gather, create and share. I’m quietly establishing a new creative space for flourishing at my home that I am calling GreyHaven Studios.
For the past 10 years, I have been doing that through my community arts non-profit and a collaborative community studio. At the beginning of this year, I felt it might be time to close that space but I didn’t know what would be next. I was unsure of what I would do without that studio but the time and energy it was taking to manage on my own was becoming more than I felt was wise to maintain. I wrapped up programs and closed that space at the end of May. This summer has been spent packing, purging, cleaning and giving away art materials to other community programs. It has been hard and clarifying work.
As I have been working to wrap up a decade of good work, a vision for the next has come together. I feel like I can truly answer the questions I’ve been trying to answer as people asked, What’s happening? What are you doing next?
If you have been wondering, here is the long story…
When we bought our house in February 2020, we had no idea the unexpected journey that lay before us. The past six years have been full of changes and unexpected pivots for everyone that we never could have imagined. Like many others, this stretch has been full of change, difficulty, discovery and growth.
For our family, it began in the spring of 2019, when we learned that we would have to move out of the house we had been renting. This was not entirely unexpected but it was also not a choice of our own timing. We decided though that this was our push to buy a place of our own again.
Quickly we discovered that we could only afford something half the size of where we had been the past 5 years. Buying in our budget would be a tight squeeze for our family of 6 but it was something we were all willing to make work. With clarity and honesty we bought a small house in Roseville, CA which was ‘just big enough’. This move would be a challenge – to right size our belongings and share every inch of space – but we were committed to do it, so, we started out on the adventure.
In Folsom, a workable 25 min from our new house, I ran a community art studio space that could double as a home for all my materials. The kids agreed to share their rooms to maximize space and pare down our stuff to what we use most. There were plenty of resources and activities around us to help fill out any of our needs. We had a plan to put down roots in a new community and stay connected to all the places where we were already invested.
A few weeks into planning, painting and packing, we were ready to move the first round of things in, set up the beds and stay our first night. There was still plenty to do, but we had time or so we thought. That next morning, all of the world began to shut down due to the growing covid epidemic. California had enacted a temporary shelter in place requirement and put an undetermined pause on all our of plans. Friends who were ready to help us move needed to stay home. Selling or sending to the thrift store all the stuff we could not keep or use was now next to impossible. We had a whole house, double the size of our new one, to move in a world that had come to an utterly unexpected halt.
This was our 10th move and it was the strangest one we have ever done.
From that day, it has felt like every season following it, every school year in succession, has required some sort of pivot. Home, work, school, social rhythms all involved the effort of estimating capacities, evaluating resources and pressing towards the best good that we could imagine in each moment.
In 2023 I found myself exhausted. After 4 years with so many pivots, so many reinventions, there was just only so much of me to give. I was pressing towards what mattered most, investing in my family and community, but feeling the thinness of my energy and attention under the strain. That spring, after some good encouragement from others, I decided to take a dedicated sabbatical rest for the first time ever in my life. At the end of May and the close of my scheduled programs, I pushed pause on my partnerships to take three months off to rest, reflect and renew my vision for the journey I had been trying so hard to navigate.
This time away was begun with an epic trip. For months, I had scraped together as many extra pennies as I could manage in order to surprise my husband with a two week trip to Italy for our 25th wedding anniversary. This was a place we had dreamed of going on our honeymoon when were were first married. We couldn’t afford it then and we thought hopefully, someday we would go. Twenty five years and 4 kids later, it was still a pinch but I knew it was time for us to finally take the adventure – just the two of us. Those two weeks away were unlike anything we had done since having our kids.
It was a treasure to explore together, savor our time and get a peak into the season of a gradually emptying household that is waiting ahead. We wondered together, how will we journey that next stretch of life?
Upon our return, I spent the remainder of my sabbatical cultivating the discipline of being present to the precious place where I live. That summer I walked the trails and the hills of our northern California watershed, created artwork bound to that particular space and time. I embraced the fleeting nature of life and savored it – spending time reflecting, praying, journaling and sitting face-to-face with the thoughts that kept compelling me to answer: Here you are at a resting place. You have many choices for where this journey will lead next. “What do you want?”
As a wife, married to someone serving in ministry for 25 yeas, as a mother of four, as a community arts advocate, I rarely get asked this question. This is not because no one cares what I want but because there just isn’t room for the question. Life is full and the demands of living often makes it feel like that question isn’t even possible to consider. So, when it came to the surface, I really didn’t know how to answer. But it seemed like the key to the other relentless question laying ahead at the end of the summer: What is next? Though I didn’t know how to answer them, I made space to sit with them awhile and let myself be honestly uncertain.
As I returned from that sabbatical, I could recognize that I needed to begin refining the focus of my energies and intentions. I was doing more than I could honestly manage and that needed to change. It has taken me the past two years to do that: trying to pay attention, making one small decision at a time, holding those questions alongside my uncertainty and allowing the answers to unfold.
What has been revealed to me is this – all of my efforts over the years have been a drive to foster deep and meaningful community, to embrace the gift of creativity, to pursue my curiosity, to use my voice and to share the deep good I discover while learning to craft a life of flourishing. Whatever activities I pursue with my time and attention, this is what I truly long for.
A place for people to gather together and share what matters dedicated to giving and receiving. To nurture our lives through – curiosity – discovery – creativity – connection – presence – purposefulness – intention – delight.
This is the vision for GreyHaven Studios.
You can be a part of this new chapter by giving to help build GreyHaven Studios.
