+ Her Barefoot Heart
News of The 70273 Project with a side of Jeanne’s Barefoot Heart
She’s drawing, and I’m stitching in her wake:
Photographed with a painting my daughter did.
Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.
~ Mary Oliver ~
~~~~~~~~~
She is my developmentally disabled sister-in-law, Nancy,
and I am Jeanne, the woman who flat-out loves her.
Go here to start at the beginning and read your way current.
And there’s a pinterest board, too.
Once upon a time I was a productive junkie. Just the thought of creating a to do list revved me up, charged my batteries, got me going. And the satisfaction of checking things off? Oh my goodness, nothing felt near as sweet as reviewing the day’s list at bedtime and seeing all the items marked through. Each tick mark translated into “job well done.” With enough tick marks, I could be sure I’d left my mark, made the day count, earned my existence.
That was then.
Now, I have to drag myself to the paper to create a to do list. Digital task management software proves too easy to procrastinate, too easy to slide things over to the next day, the next month, the next year. Plus the satisfaction level just isn’t there without the sound of pencil scratching across the words on the paper. Besides trying every journal known to woman, I’ve come up with all sorts of carrots to lure myself back into such a simple, definable, provable existence. One item per index card, color coded by category. Moveable sticky notes lined up by category inside a colorful file folder for each day. And the rewards? Oh my goodness at the reward systems I’ve created and laid out before myself.
But no go. Despite it all, I cannot recapture that sense of being a woman-with-a-daily-mission. It’s not the system. Checking tasks off a list no longer satisfies me . . . probably in large part because the tasks on the list no longer satisfy me.
I seem to be living in a state of generalized grief. Where I once prided myself on cleaning the house every single Friday so it’s be spic and span for the weekend, I have to force myself to give it a quick going-over twice a month. I set the roomba out in a different part of the house every morning, make up the bed (because there’s something quite nice about pulling back the covers, even if I do rather detest moving the decorative pillows back and forth), do the laundry, and call that enough. I don’t really grieve the to-do list driven existence. Not specifically, anyway, because I do miss that feeling of structure the to do list provided. I miss that feeling of accomplishment, that feeling of satisfaction.
I grieve things I haven’t even begun to articulate – I’m living the vegetable soup of grief and mourning. I grieve who I once was, who I could have been, who I am today, and who I might be One Day. I grieve for time squandered. I grieve things said, but mostly things not said. I grieve for my son and, in a different way, for my daughter. I grieve for the loss of my personal space. I grieve people I’ve lost due to death or miscommunications, misunderstandings, differing interests, or something else. And despite the fact that I’m an adult woman with adult children and though he died in 2000, I miss my Daddy like you wouldn’t believe.
And here’s the thing: I am fine with that.
I write about living in this state of generalized grief with great dread of the emails and phone calls that might come. Offers to pray for me, witness to me. Obviously I’m not a good Christian if I’m feeling like this. Others will want to cheer me up, urge me to talk to a therapist, tell me about what pills they are taking to feel better.
Here’s what I want to know: when did happiness become the ultimate desired state of being? Want to know the truth? I can probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve felt blissfully joyful . . . and that sorry showing has always been something that made me feel decidedly less than. Something I’m ashamed of. Something I ought to be ashamed of, given my circumstance in life. How dare me not be happy, know it, and clap my manicured hands.
Even with the to do lists and the structure they provided for me, I’ve had spells like this before. I’ve used every euphemism I could think of: I’ve been in funks and fallows. Had stomachaches, headaches, needed quiet time, all that. I’ve been known to run like hell, too. Escapism, I call it. Going out in search of distractions, leaving would-be reminders and wagging fingers behind, at least for a little while. I’ve tried. Lord knows, I’ve tried. Even when I didn’t put on makeup, I’ve put on my best, most cheerful happy face and did my best to make somebody else happy, happy, happy since I couldn’t always seem to do it for and by myself. I’ve run and I’ve hidden and I’ve denied in every way you can think of (though I’ve never even veered near the S-word) – not so much from the melancholy, sadness, depression, grief and mourning, acedia, or whatever, mind you, but from the shame, from the feeling of shirking My Responsibility, from the dread of hurting family, from the fear of being left alone because I’m no fun any more.
This time, though, I’m just sitting with It, sitting in It, this murkiness, this darkness as some might call It. And though it feels good to write this, I don’t mind telling you that I’m scared. I don’t just dread the folks rushing in to help, to fix me, to make me feel better. I dread the ripple effects this public display of negativity might have on my family. There’s still a stigma attached to not being happy, you know. At least around here there is. Will I need to sew every member of my family a special shirt emblazoned with a special version of The Scarlet Letter?
In days gone by, I feared parents wouldn’t let their children play with my children if they knew I was more sadful than joyful. I didn’t – and still don’t – want people examining my mother and blaming her for things done or not done in my upbringing. I didn’t – and still don’t – want to take a pill that will mask this, turn me into somebody else who, while the-new-she might feel foreign to me, will be found acceptable by others. I’ve lived most of my life that way without pharmaceuticals, thank you very much. I didn’t and still don’t want to talk to a therapist for a whole bunch of reasons we might or might talk about later.
So what if I’m grieving? So what if I’m sad? So what if I’m melancholy? So what if I’m living with acedia? Maybe grief is another lens to look through. Maybe melancholy is contemplation. Maybe sadness is a filter. Maybe acedia is a call to authenticity. Maybe mourning is another way to love.
I can still authentically be the life of the party – this is not the sum total of who I am. But it is very much me, too. And it’s not just the rainy weather talking here.
Nothing restores my soul
like the Blue Ridge Parkway.
We took ourselves to the Folk Art Center
on the Blue Ridge Parkway today.
to Heritage Days
where all sorts of artists
demonstrated how they create.
Tatters tatted,
weavers wove,
carvers carved
sheep were shorn, and
border collies herded.
Among other things.
There was food
and music
and lots and lots
and lots of eye candy.
There was a time when Nancy
was a veritable chatterbox,
getting quiet only when
we took her to ride
and turned on the radio.
She doesn’t talk nearly as much
these days,
speaking only when
there’s something she
really –
and I mean REALLY –
wants to say.
I wish more people were like Nancy.
~~~~~~~~~
She is my developmentally disabled sister-in-law, Nancy,
and I am Jeanne, the woman who flat-out loves her.
Go here to start at the beginning and read your way current.
And there’s a pinterest board, too.
She draws something that looks like a flame atop a candle.
Or maybe a cupcake.
Or maybe a gnome, my husband says.
And I stitch it,
not wondering so much about
what the drawing represents
as I wonder if she ever feels
trapped
or imprisoned
inside her disability.
Last summer
I got a call that Nancy
was peeling off her clothes.
“She’s having a hot flash,” I said.
“Lord knows, when I have a hot flash,
I’d love nothing more than to pull off my
clothes.”
And sometimes I wonder if maybe I’m the one
who’s imprisoned
inside my so-called ability,
with all my layers of
culturization
and education . . .
~~~~~~~~~
She is my developmentally disabled sister-in-law, Nancy,
and I am Jeanne, the woman who flat-out loves her.
Go here to start at the beginning and read your way current.
And there’s a pinterest board, too.
She draws:
I stitch:
Once again I’m participating in Nina Marie Sayre’s Off the Wall Friday when instead of showing something we’ve finished, we take our cloth projects off the design wall and look at them in a different light, try something different, maybe even move a little closer towards completion.
“Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.”
Annie Dillard
I spend at least an hour a day on In Her Own Language, and today I spent about two hours clipping cloths to trees, snapping some photos, then removing the cloths, knocking off the spiders, and bringing everything back inside. More than two hours if you count the time spent going to town to fetch more clothespins. And as I hung the cloths in the woods today, I thought about time and how at one point in my life, my identity was based in good part on how busy I was, on how little white space there was on my calendar. As a career Mom, it made me feel needed and special and important that people asked me to do things, to take leadership positions here and there. I felt visible and appreciated. (Didn’t take me long, however, to figure out the difference between being needed and being a sucker.)
Then came the (ridiculous) stage of feeling like I had to justify any expenditure of time in terms of (a) how it would benefit someone else and/or (b) how much money it would become.
Sigh.
Eventually came the stage in my relationship with time when (and we could really call this a thunk on the head moment) I realized that my clock looks just like everybody else’s. I have just as much time as everybody else, the only difference is: I get to choose how to spend my clock. Right then, I stopped saying “I don’t have time” – stopped cold turkey – and replaced it with “If not now, when, Sugar?”
So here I am, choosing to spend hours every single day stitching Nancy’s drawings, writing my books, going to walk. I have several books and plays yet to be written, and I am gathering things for three or four installation pieces I’ll soon begin. Oh sure, I still have responsibilities to tend to, but my job is to live as wide open as possible. And I’m all done with feeling selfish about that.
Oh, I’m using the clothespin bag that belonged to my maternal grandmother. I love that, don’t you? Kinda’ takes me back in time . . .
~~~~~~~~~
She is my developmentally disabled sister-in-law, Nancy,
and I am Jeanne, the woman who flat-out loves her.
Go here to start at the beginning and read your way current.
And there’s a pinterest board, too.
Despite the homeopathic jet lag remedy that keeps me from feeling like a big truck ran over me at least three times, I slept a mere 2.5 winks last night . . . and they weren’t consecutive winks. But three walks today helped immensely. Nature has a way of sorting things out for me, showing me things I need to see, shoring me for what needs to be done. And sometimes, Mother Nature just makes me chortle . . .
We took a different path today:
Saw a tree that looked to be outgrowing its bark:
and another tree that appeared hollow on the inside:
The bark grew in beautiful patterns around this rotten interior, however, creating a captivating exterior with beautiful moss accessories:
We spied stones stacked atop one another to prevent further erosion:
and we saw a stoney face – do you see it?
Here. Let me clear away some of the surrounding rubble. Can you see it now?
We saw flowers that prefer cooler temperatures, blooming one more time because they can:
and a barn that would make a fetching (if cold in the winter) studio:
Then, on the way back, what to our wandering eyes should appear but a gigantic heart of stone:
Nature restores my soul every time.
~~~~~~~~~
She is my developmentally disabled sister-in-law, Nancy,
and I am Jeanne, the woman who flat-out loves her.
Go here to start at the beginning and read your way current.
And there’s a pinterest board, too.
I am fidgety. Probably from sitting so much. Sitting last Wednesday as we flew across country, East coast to West coast. Sitting as we drove 3 hours from LA to Trona. Sitting as we drove 5 hours two of the days we were there. Sitting as we drove an hour at least twice a day for food and internet. Sitting as we flew back across country yesterday. Sitting as we drove up the mountain today. You get the picture. Tomorrow will have windows of walk and dance amid writing and stitching (I have two new Envoys – perhaps you’d like to be one, too?) And we’ll turn the furnace on. Over 100 degrees in the desert yesterday morning, high 40s today atop the mountain. No jet lag yet, and it usually hits me hardest coming East. Took some homeopathic jet lag remedy – maybe it’s just the ticket.
It’s good to cut thread with real scissors instead of fingernail clippers. Thank goodness they allow travelers to take nail clippers now, though. Otherwise I suppose it would have been the age-old teeth trick.
~~~~~~~~~
She is my developmentally disabled sister-in-law, Nancy,
and I am Jeanne, the woman who flat-out loves her.
Go here to start at the beginning and read your way current.
And there’s a pinterest board, too.
Back on the red dirt of Georgia
tonight.
Much water has gone under the bridge
in the past week,
things swirling
and twirling inside me.
Pondering and processing
will have to wait
till I’m reacquainted with
a little something we like to call
rest.
And yet,
exhausted as I am,
I am struck with the
fragile threads of life
that connect us
and disconnect us.
Threads tangling and untangling,
twisting and crossing,
meandering and curving.
Threads dangling and raveling,
turning and stopping,
ending and beginning.
Lines and threads
that link us,
that connect us,
that bind us.
~~~~~~~~~
She is my developmentally disabled sister-in-law, Nancy,
and I am Jeanne, the woman who flat-out loves her.
Go here to start at the beginning and read your way current.
And there’s a pinterest board, too.
Tonight’s serendipitous Envoy is none other than Emily Lewis of Pleasure Notes. Andy and I are spending tonight in a Los Angeles hotel, you see, about 3 blocks from LAX where we’ll hop into a big chair in the sky in the morning to wing our way home. Emily, who lives here in LA, was kind enough to brave the ever-present LA traffic and come join us for supper. Dessert was when she agreed to hold Nancy’s stitched drawing #72. It was quite moving to watch Emily take the cloth in her hands and gaze at Nancy’s drawing. She held is so tenderly and with such respect. “Oh, look,” she said when I handed it to her. “This is so beautiful.” I told her how this afternoon I started filling in the large space at the bottom. I just needed to fiddle with something, I told her, but then I ripped it all out cause it doesn’t seem to need anything else. Emily agreed. It’s enough just as it is, she said. Now I know she was talking about Nancy’s drawing, but I declare: I thought of her when she said it.
~~~~~~~~~
She is my developmentally disabled sister-in-law, Nancy,
and I am Jeanne, the woman who flat-out loves her.
Go here to start at the beginning and read your way current.
And there’s a pinterest board, too.
First she draws:
Then I stitch:
Visited Aunt Ginny again today. The long, hard drive was made enjoyable by Ro and Bob, new friends of ours, old friends of Aunt Ginny’s. We just met them yesterday but feel like we’ve known each other for eons. Photo taken on some contraption at the Maturango Museum in Ridgecrest, CA.
~~~~~~~~~
She is my developmentally disabled sister-in-law, Nancy,
and I am Jeanne, the woman who flat-out loves her.
Go here to start at the beginning and read your way current.
And there’s a pinterest board, too.
This work by Jeanne Hewell-Chambers is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at http://www.TheBarefootHeart.com.
© 2026 Jeanne Hewell-Chambers
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