The Home I Know: Creativity
Chapter 17
Thank you for your interest in the section of my memoir below. If your email server clips the message, then you can read the full post on Substack. You can also listen to the post by clicking the audio button at the top of this page. When needed, visit the Bibliography and Support Resources. This post mentions incest abuse. If you’re seeking resources, head over to Incest AWARE or Sibling Sexual Trauma.
“The first principle of recovery is the empowerment of the survivor. She must be the author and arbiter of her own recovery. Others may offer advice, support, assistance, affection,
and care, but not cure.”1
~ Judith Herman, MD
~ ~ ~
As my second school year concluded, my principal and I were both to decide whether we shared mutual interest in continuing my employment contract for a third year. She knew I had been wrestling with my identity as a Catholic and a Feminist, as she had done so in her own spiritual journey.
“Anne, you have to choose. Are you Catholic?” She inquired.
I knew that if I told her the truth I risked losing the economic security I had worked so hard to achieve, as well as left myself vulnerable to the need to return to the support of my family.
“I need three days to answer that question,” I replied to give myself more time.
I laid in bed after work and pondered what my future could be like instead of this: the constant fighting of my values inside of me, the performativity of teaching, and the exhaustion after work. My mind meddled with fabrics and furniture, color and creativity. Art. The process of designing my first apartment, choosing pieces as I could afford them, decorating with different materials and mediums inspired me. Maybe I could pursue a career in the design industry.
I tried to talk myself into leaving the security of my present job: I left my family, I left the church, I could change my career too. Paychecks from the school would continue to meet my basic needs for the next three months of summer leave. Moving away was not an option, as my only support system was still here. My health was still too unstable to have roommates. The dishes still sat high in a pile in the sink, while dust bunnies settled into corner.
I had little time to find a new career path without further education that would provide a high enough salary to afford living alone in the SF Bay Area, one of the most expensive US cities. It was obviously unrealistic, but pressure pushed in my pelvis asking for financial dependency on the Catholic Church. So this became my next dream: to get a job in the interior design industry. I knew that I needed a miracle. I returned to my principal’s office shaking.
“I’m not Catholic, but I’m scared,” I declared. “This is all I’ve ever known. It’s so hard to leave.”
My principal looked at me so firmly that her brow wrinkled between her eyes, “Anne, it will be hard to leave, but it will be even harder to stay.”
“I agree,” I had already learned this after leaving my family.
During my three months of paid summer leave from teaching, I networked extensively and landed a job in retail at a high end furniture store with a low base salary and high commission potential. However, it would take a few more months for my commission checks to begin depositing into my bank account, as well as until my health insurance started at the new company. My COBRA carry over insurance cost so much that I couldn’t afford to pay for housing.
So, I called Charlotte, the mother I nannied for back in Berkeley, and asked if I could live in her home for a few months. She didn’t have an extra bedroom, so I knew this was asking a lot. I would likely sleep on the floor in the playroom, but I didn’t have anywhere else to go.
“Anne, you’re always welcome to stay as long as you need,” Charlotte replied.
The sand, I could feel it. I had someone else’s family to fall back on. Not yet safe nor free, but no longer alone. I left the professional support system provided by the Catholic Church, moved into Charlotte’s sacred home, and got right to work. Within the first few months of high end furniture sales, I was one of the top representatives in my tier. Selling furniture felt natural to me. The commission checks began flowing in, so within a month or two I moved off of Charlotte’s playroom floor and into a new apartment. I chose a small spot near the ocean in Pacifica.
The fog laid heavy on the crescent of land that formed a hillside with scattered neighborhoods against the lapping sea. The sand glimmered in a deep charcoal gray, while green trees cascaded the mountain. The ocean continued to call to me, while my drive home from work passed by a curtain of eucalyptus trees. The scent of their oil settled my stressed nervous system at the end of every day.
But fatigue still burdened my body and limited the luxuries of my new life. I went to work, then returned home, then surrendered into bed like a large trust fall. Sometimes I had the mental and physical energy to cook for myself, most days not. Eating meals out was expensive, but easier for depression management. It cut out so many steps: no need to grocery shop, food prep, cook, or clean dishes. Nothing stacked up in the sink reminding me of how debilitating my depression could be. No shame.
Being in the design industry while I was literally redesigning my life from the inside out felt purposeful to me, intentional, meaningful. Like somehow, I was being gifted all the tools I needed to create a life worth living. A life where I finally felt okay. The Design Thinking process mirrored the pastoral ministry model so closely, except for one major difference. In the Catholic process, pastoral planning leaned heavily on church tradition to resolve contemporary problems. But the past proved incapable of resolving the complexities of the present and much of church teaching still reflected patriarchal, sexist oppression.
In Design Thinking, practitioners used both the patterns of the past and tested innovative ideas of the present to ensure the most accurate and accessible results in the future. The goal wasn’t to make the perfect product the first time, but instead to build a number of prototypes as quickly as possible, learn through the process, then continue to recreate until the design team discovered the desired results. Fail early, fail fast, and learn as much as you can, then keep creating.2 I approached my new life with this same amount of creative fervor and experimentation, ending each day at the sea in perpetual grief.
In my free time, I still spent most of my time at home, so I focused my creative efforts on its design. This place needed to be perfect. My internal and external worlds still felt so out of control. This place though, I could maintain and decorate just the way I wanted. So I found light blue hues and neutral tans to contribute to my calm, to bring the safety of the ocean inside of my home. Soft linens and cotton fabrics soothed my unsettled soul. Reclaimed wooden tables invited old trees to share a space with me. Between my own purchases and furniture winnings from selling so much, I carefully curated this refuge of revival for my suffering parts. Even my inner screamer felt satiated there at times.
Eventually, I landed a promotion in San Francisco at a small corporate furniture manufacturer out of New York, as their SF-based sales representative. One of the leaders at the company took me under his wing and asked me to attend leadership meetings with him to pen notes and help him strategize for the SF Market and a few larger accounts. Being invited to the leadership table certainly had its privileges, but it centered me once again under the power dynamics of the C-Suite made up of mostly heterosexual men.
Frequently, they communicated to me their expectations that I wear more makeup, higher heels. Pretty privilege works in corporate America and they wanted me to lean in. They placed my body in positions to sell products with men who were known in the industry to be sexually unsafe. I was called and offered warnings, but not given the option to not participate.
“Bloom where you’re planted!” My father’s voice repeated in my head, as I both fought and practiced assimilation to this environment built by men like him.
Quarterly, the company flew me to Manhattan and let me stay the weekend to explore. So I did. I walked the Highline, and went to a Broadway show, and ate at the cutest corner cafe. Then, my feet found themselves waiting at the two wounds in the ground where the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers once stood. My eyes watched as water plummeted down the holes in the earth and my fingers found the names of those murdered on that day: September 11th, 2001. I entered the museum as my ears heard the names read of every person dead. I could touch photos of their faces on an interactive screen and learn all about their histories.
The new World Trade Center had been constructed across the street. I waited in line, stepped onto the elevator and watched the walls made of television screens tell me the story of Manhattan’s history. I arrived at the top of the building, stepped onto the platform, and saw my new everything. New Jersey to my right and Manhattan to my left. The Statue of Liberty, holding her own small flame, standing tall below, and the sky extending endlessly above. My knees went weak in inspiration, so I fell onto a bench to take it all in. I observed the expansiveness outside of me and felt the potential of spaciousness open within. I took a selfie and sent it to a friend.
“You look so at home,” she said.
I wanted so much to be like Eve and take a bite of this Big Apple, liberating me from the imagination of perfectionism and sexism, and embracing the messy beauty of a life shared in density and diversity. But my body wasn’t ready. Still too overwhelmed in a city as big as this, with all the buildings, flashing lights, sounds, smells. I nearly passed out on the subway with so many people. As I prepared to leave, I grieved for the necessary separation between this city and me, hoping one day it would be appeased. While now holding the welcoming dreams of this future aspiration, asking for space to exist alongside the traumatic memories of the past and the challenges of the present still burdening my body.
Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence--From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror.
Romagnoli et al., “Design Thinking for Social Change.”
What happened next?