mental health Archives - Page 2 of 4

Let Me Introduce Myself

Ingrid Murray digital collage. Ingrid, a smiling white woman with dark eyes and long hair, wears a black shirt and sits near an open art journal. Over the photo are elements of here art: splotches of blue, red, and yellow; collage papers; and black marks.

If you’ve followed me and my art online for a while, you’ll know that I’m a self-taught artist and writer. I was creative from an early age, writing stories, building imaginary worlds, performing onstage, and drawing.

In a high school art class I discovered the Altered Books Workshop, which introduced me to the idea of collaging and painting in books; a few years later, I stumbled across iHanna’s blog and dove head-first into the world of art journaling. I’ve been publishing my writing and sharing my art online since 2009 and have filled multiple journals with mixed media experiments. (Here’s my latest one.) I’ve also continued to explore other avenues of creativity, including analog and digital collage, photography, bookbinding, and mixed media art, all of which you can explore here.

I grew up in Pennsylvania, and my childhood was turbulent and my home abusive. Art was and continues to be my refuge and one of the only places where I feel truly peaceful and free to explore my inner world. Though I wish that things had been different, my experience with the darkness and loneliness of depression has taught me greater compassion and empathy for those who also feel alone and unheard. Additionally, it’s informed my creative process: my work is a continual search for the lightness, unfettered joy, and unencumbered imagination that children naturally possess, and for the safety and innocence of time before trauma.

Aside from art and creativity, I am passionate about education, social justice, psychology, and finding the beauty and joy in the small things — I am awed by the natural world and am continually blown away we are here to appreciate it at all. My friends would likely call me kind, contemplative, and quick to laughter, and say that I delight in wordplay, deep conversations, and dogs. While I continue to live and work in Baltimore, my husband and I (and our cats) hope to be making Europe our home soon. (Update 2023: We did it!)

The older I get, the more I realize that we are all on a long road to find connection and belonging, peace, healing, and meaning. As I continue to develop as a human, I hope to be more kind, grateful, and a living example of what love — for oneself and for others — can do.

Have other questions about my life or my work? Drop me a line here.

Finding Peace in Stressful Times

When life’s stress is overwhelming, I focus on the things that are right in front of me and eliminate everything extraneous.

In just a few months, I am moving overseas. The magnitude of this change and accompanying stressors have manifested physically: my shoulders are tight, my head pounding, my sleep interrupted.

So this weekend, I picked up a book by Thich Nhat Hanh at a little library, moved my body, and rested. I laughed at dog videos. I snuggled my cats. I noticed the small beautiful things in the quiet of my home, like afternoon light that only lasted a moment.

I read Thich Nhat Hanh’s words: “If you are truly present and know how to take care of the present moment as best you can, you are doing your best for the future already. […] Everything is ok now.”

I also looked to other artists for reminders to take it slow, breathe, and take small steps forward. Morgan Harper Nichols (below, yellow) shares her beautiful art and poetry online, and they always seem to find me at the right time. Humberto Cruz (also known online as iscreamcolour, below, colorful) shares cheerful pep talks.

Morgan Harper Nichols' art. A mustard yellow square with a typed poem in the center:

No matter what happens
from here,
you are going
to learn and grow
on this journey.
you might not be able
to see it all in real-time
but eventually,
you will find:
courage was rising up
from within you
and grace continued to find you.

Art by iscreamcolor. Colorful letters spell out, in all caps, "Life is tough but so are you."

And over and over again, I am reminded that we never have to climb the whole mountain at once — we are in fact incapable of it. No matter the task, all we ever have to do (all we ever can do) is take the next step. As Hahn says, “My true home is in the here and now.”

So my only task, really, is to do the next right thing, here, in the present, and so move forward, slowly, slowly. And breathe.

Being Present

How much of your own life, of your own thoughts, are you missing?

Whenever I travel and face limited digital connection, I realize just how much my online habits have taken over my life. Last August, I was in Tunisia with my now-husband, visiting his extended family for the first time. Cell and internet service was limited, so I spent the entire week unplugged. I couldn’t snap a photo of the beach and immediately post it, then inevitably get lost in social media updates — so I snapped the shot and then returned to the present, actually enjoying the water and the company.

Usually, any time I have a few seconds between tasks, or I am waiting for something, even for a few minutes, I reach for my phone. I scroll through Instagram, or type in some answers in the NYT crossword app. I check my email, knowing that it’s mostly newsletters I won’t read and won’t respond to, just for something to do. I’ll check the weather over and over.

You are a priority

For years, I have practiced paying attention to the tiny things, the bees and the ants and the clouds and neighborhood kids laughing. But rarely do I give myself that same time and attention.

Anne Lamott writes in her book Bird by Bird about how so much of writing is sitting down and waiting, listening, and seeing what arises. “If we just sit there long enough, in whatever shape, we may end up being surprised … Try to calm down, get quiet, breathe, and listen,” she says. Austin Kleon has a similar mantra, shared by a former writing teacher: “Apply ass to chair.” Put the distractions aside and show up for yourself and your art.

The creative process requires us to be present. How much inspiration and intuition are we missing by keeping ourselves distracted? Why do we spend so much time avoiding what is right in front of us, or what is going on within us?

How I practice being present

“There is ecstasy in paying attention,” Anne writes. But to pay attention, to find that ecstasy, we have to tear ourselves away from all the things — TV, social media, notifications, news — that are tearing us away from ourselves.

I’m still learning how to be more present (and unlearning toxic avoidance), but here’s what works for me:

Embrace the discomfort. When we are used to being entertained and distracted every moment of every day, unplugging or sitting still is hard. I remind myself to sit with that discomfort, and not to run from it.
Get grounded. When I need to ground myself in the present, I do things that require me to be off my phone: get outside, go to the gym, meditate, or journal.
Get in the flow. I stop ruminating on the process or the shoulds, and start. I’ll put some paint on a page. Stick some collage down. Go full screen in a writing app and get some words out. If I show up, often the flow will follow.

Capturing the Chaos

This is what life has looked like recently: chaotic, unpredictable, and all over the place.

Since I first began art journaling, the pages have been a place to express — first in words, then over the years through marks and color and other symbolism — the ups and downs of my life.

I can open a journal to any spread, and it will transport me to a different moment in time: college, living in Philadelphia, studying abroad. What a gift it is to be able to have that record of a years-long conversation with yourself, to have evidence of your experiences and your struggles and your joys!

You Are a Garden

A field of tiny white flowers at dusk. Those closest to the camera are in focus.

We’re constantly bombarded with messaging about how we can be better, more efficient humans. Defy aging with this eye cream! Optimize your SEO for maximum views! Use this app to reach maximum productivity!

It’s exhausting.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be human. At one time, I thought that there a perfect version of myself that I needed to strive for, someone who had no flaws or feelings or difficulties. I thought that to be human was to reach the most unmarred of myself. If I could just TRY harder, I’d get there. And if I couldn’t bring myself to try hard enough, then there was something inherently wrong with me.

With time, my perspective has shifted. I’ve given myself grace. I am learning to lean into being a messy, inconsistent human who feels things deeply and makes mistakes and changes her mind and has good days and bad days. I’ve remembered that the urgent chant of “more! more! more!” is a toxic characteristic of white supremacy, and I’ve complained about being told to do more in the midst of a pandemic.

Perfectionism is poisonous

There have been two pieces of writing that have deeply influenced me this year. The first is this:

You are not a machine. You are more like a garden. You need different things on different days. A little sun today, a little less water tomorrow. You have fallow and fruitful seasons. It is not a design flaw. It is wiser than perpetual sameness. What does your garden need today?
If you expect a garden to “produce” things with the same regularity and sameness as a machine, you will be disappointed. If you try to maintain a garden the same way you would a machine, you will destroy it. The same is true of your body and emotional life. Give into your garden.
Joy Marie Clarkson

The second is Oliver Burkeman’s 4000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals.

What both have in common is a recognition that striving for perfection — a mastery of everything, all at once, unendingly — is not only completely impossible, but will break us. We cannot achieve everything, and we can achieve no one thing perfectly.

Embrace your humanity

You and I are not machines. We were never machines. We are “child[ren] of the universe, no less than the trees and stars.” At one point, our ancestors spent all of their lives creating, whether it be shaping pottery or cooking or telling stories or making music or sewing. At one point, we remembered who we were.

You and I, we’re human. We are full of contradictions and limitations, and that is what gives us character and substance. That’s what makes us everything we are and, in a paradoxical way, perfect.

Remember to slow down. Embrace your full humanity. Tend your garden.