With all of the stress and change and difficulty of the past several months (and longer), I decided to have another personal at-home summer art retreat. Last year’s – which you can read about here – was fun and nourishing, and it helped me cope.
So I decided to do it again.
Since starting on June 1, I’ve been spending more time than usual painting and doodling and art journaling. There’s nothing structured. No set schedule. Just doing my best to make more time for creative play.
Sometimes I doodle.
I’ve been drawing some mandalas and using colored markers to color them (which is sooo relaxing and calming).
I’ve returned to some old canvases to make some changes.
Even something as simple as painting watercolor swatches counts as part of my art retreat.
The main thing is to have fun. It’s relaxing for me, it helps reduce my levels of stress and anxiety, and it keeps me connected to my creativity.
The months since last summer’s personal at-home art retreat have been difficult ones. My husband has had a stroke, which has brought us changes and challenges. He’s had surgery to get a pacemaker. There have been numerous doctor visits and tests and procedures.
And my days have held a lot of stress, anxiety, and fear of the future.
Creativity has been helping me. Writing, painting, sketching, doodling. All done with no pressure. All done just for the enjoyment of it – just for the doing of it.
That’s why it was an easy decision for me to have another personal at-home summer art retreat this year. It’s something I’m doing for my own self care and soul nourishment.
I hope you have something that brightens your days and lightens your load. It doesn’t have to be a commitment for the whole summer. It doesn’t have to be an at-home art retreat. It doesn’t have to be anything with timelines or guidelines or pressure.
It just needs to be something that connects you to joy and nourishes your soul.
I started writing this post the first week in January. I got only three paragraphs into it and then paused, intending to come back and finish in a few days – but then more “life stuff” happened, and I put this post and my blog aside, even though everything going on exactly fit what I had started to say. So I’ve decided to simply pick back up and continue…
I must admit to having mixed feelings about the new year.
On one hand, I’m glad to see 2025 come to a close. It held a lot of anxiety for me, I wasn’t nearly as productive as I wanted to be, and the last month a half brought unwanted and scary changes to life because of my husband’s recent health challenges.
On the other hand, I’m not exactly looking forward to 2026 because I don’t have much optimism that it will be a better year. Actually, I’m afraid it will be even worse.
And this is where I stopped back in January, and now I’m here in February to finish the post. When I wrote the opening paragraphs, we had been dealing since mid-November with my husband’s heart tests and his stroke and the changes to our lives. The past few weeks have brought more challenges, including a pacemaker for my husband and seemingly ever-increasing anxiety for me.
Since mid-November, it’s been an intense time. Overwhelm, fear, anxiety, stress, grief, changes in routine, doctor visits, tests, procedures, adaptations, the busy-ness of countless phone calls and forms for doctor/health/medical/insurance stuff.
I’ve been doing the stress-reducing things that usually help. Prayer and spending time with Jesus, breathing techniques, brain retraining and neural rewiring exercises, meditation, music, talks with friends, reading cozy fiction, tapping, painting, watching comfort TV, and more.
I haven’t done all of these as consistently as I could have (even my usual-daily painting got skipped at times) because, to be honest, sometimes simply existing and getting through the day took all my energy when the fear and anxiety consumed all my energy. And even though I have taken a few walks and had some porch-sittin’ time, the weather definitely limited how often I ventured out in the cold.
And as for writing? I’ve barely done any. I worked on fiction exactly twice this past month, and today is the first day I’ve tried to write here on the blog. I simply haven’t been able to get beyond the anxiety and fear and overwhelm enough to focus my mind to put words on paper or screen. Writing means being in my head in a way painting does not – and I think that’s at least one reason I can paint (usually) even when I’m highly anxious, but it’s so hard for me to write when in that state.
When I first started writing this post in early January, I had intended to set a new writing goal for myself. A simple goal, one that felt easy and doable even with all of the difficult and scary life-stuff happening in our home since mid-November.
Just write for one minute every day.
That’s it. That was the goal I planned to set for my writing as the new year started. One minute, but daily. I thought it would help me get back into some sort of consistent groove without feeling overwhelming.
But I wasn’t able to do even one minute a day these past weeks.
So I’m not going to give myself that goal after all. I’m not going to give myself any writing goal right now except for this one:
I’m going to stay connected to my identity as a writer.
What that looks like will be different on different days. Some days I’ll write, even if it’s only for one minute or one sentence. Some days I’ll read something from a writing-related book to get some inspiration and remind me of my writing life. Some days I might simply look at this caricature of myself from ChatGPT.
It’s important to me to stay connected with my writing. But I’m not sure how much I can actually write during this time, and I’m not going to force myself. When I can get over the hump of getting started even when I’m feeling scared and anxious, writing is wonderfully nourishing for me. Writing helps me. Writing connects me to my core self.
So I’m going to do my best to deal with the stress and anxiety and overwhelm enough to write at least somewhat regularly, even for brief bits. But if I can’t, I’m not going to beat myself up about it.
There are more tests, more doctor visits, more of who-knows-what ahead in my husband’s health journey. Our life is different now than it was before mid-November, and more changes will come. All of this is hugely triggering for my severe anxiety. And all of this is hard for both of us.
I’m doing the best I can to handle all the things I need to handle, even though it feels like I fall short so much of the time. I’m doing the best I can to help my husband. I’m doing the best I can to deal with the stress and anxiety and overwhelm.
And I’m also trying to do my best at giving myself grace.
Something I’ve noticed over the years is that the more I create, the more I create.
It’s true that there are cycles of creativity, and sometimes it seems to flow abundantly and sometimes it slows to a point that makes me wonder if it’ll turn back on. But all the same, it seems to be true that the more often and more consistently I write or paint, the more likely it is that I will continue to write or paint, and the more of it I’ll do. Even with the ebbs and flows, and the stalls and starts, the overall trajectory is that creating leads to more creating.
For me, this is the case with writing as I continue to slowly and gradually work on the sequel to New Life in New Melody.
Ginger Simpson White 