Launched!

Posted on | February 23, 2010 |

Last night my husband, Allan Hunter, and I had a dual book launch at The Arsenal Center for the Arts in Watertown, MA—and it was fantastic fun!  We each spoke for 20 minutes as part of the Text and ConText series—Allan on his book, Write Your Memoir, and I on my career as an illustrator/artist and then to introduce my book, The Confident Creative.

Allan spoke off the cuff and in such a moving way about how writing about our lives in an honest, reflective way can bring us to a place of wholeness in which we grow our souls.  He told the story of how he helped his father, Jim, write his memoir.  Jim was a WW2 RAF pilot who was shot down over the Atlantic to survive and become a “guest” of Nazi Germany for 4 years.  It was a devastating experience, one in which many of his friends died though in all of Allan’s life it had been rarely mentioned and only in terse passing comments.  When Jim was finally able to tell the whole story, and even share the watercolor paintings he’d made in the prisoner-of-war camps, it was a very healing experience and we could see even how Jim relaxed and felt more secure in himself.  Telling his story was helpful for his life but it also helped his family and friends understand him better.  Allan believes it can be good for all of us to write about our lives and I really agree that it is a fine, fine way to reflect on our life journeys.

I was quite nervous the whole day of the event. For one thing, I’m not at all used to public speaking and then to follow Allan who speaks so eloquently and with such ease—well, you can understand.  Still, it was my aim to do well and I prepared a few days in advance and rehearsed two or three times.  But then I forgot to bring my notes to the event!  So I had to wing it it—but perhaps it’s good to just speak from the heart as you go.

And I really could speak from the heart because so many great people were there—the members of the art class, my artist and other friends, my children came and lots of people we didn’t know as well.  I think there were almost 100 people.  I tried to say, however clumsily, that we are all creative, all creating our own lives.  I also tried to say that art has value in all its forms.  It’s not just art in museums that matters.  Just as much it matters that we each discover our own creative selves and come to live fully from the core of who we are.  I wonder if that isn’t really the purpose of art—that it connects us with spirit.

I’m sure it was because of what I was saying and how much it means to me to have witnessed the unfolding of other people’s creative lives that I felt so comfortable talking, even without my notes!  It was something new for me and not something I was at all comfortable with if I thought about it.  But when we all come together to really explore something that truly matters in an honest way—there’s magic in the air.

Afterwards we got to chat with so many people.  What a fantastic community we have around us.  I thank everyone who came for their presence and for all the love in the room. It was an amazing night and a good send-off for two books as they begin their journeys into the world.

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