The Weeping Woman

Do you see her? She’s curled in on herself, dark hair draping her curved back like a primal blanket. Her fingers pull on her shin as she tries to hold herself together. I have to smile at the cleverness of my subconscious. What a perfectly poignant image of my hidden soul. But this weeping woman was no work of genius on my part. Rather, she was the natural child of intuition. She had been written on my soul long before I ever saw her. It started with a meaningless doodle. I pulled the pedestrian ballpoint pen around the page in big, steady loops. Letting it go wherever it wanted to.

Letting myself just enjoy the sensation. And I mean that literally, not in some poetic, esoteric way. I turned off my brain and just sort of watched the pen make shapes on the page. It was just a doodle. I had no ambition for it, no big aspirations heaped upon it. I just let the pen and paper dance. I just doodled. Then, when a smile emerged past the curtain of my weariness, I lifted the pen, closed the book, and went to bed. Some days later I reopened the book. I smiled again, remembering how pleasant it had been to just doodle without the burden of “trying.” Gravitating towards the doodle, I picked up a brush pen and let my eyes find the most pleasing shape within the pile of interlooping shapes. I gently filled it in with the soft ink of a brush pen, just like a coloring book. My smile deepened. This was fun. I filled in another. And another. It was almost mindless, but there were two simple rules I followed: 1) fill in your favorite shape, and then your next favorite, etc.; 2) don’t let the filled in shapes touch. But beyond these simple guidelines, there was no meditation, no scheming, no “trying”, no “art” happening. If you had watched it happen, I might have looked lost in a daydream, absent-minded, as they say. One by one I selected my favorite shape and colored it in lovingly. I was happy. It was simple, satisfying, childish fun. I did this until I could not find another “favorite” that didn’t crowd another. I capped my brush pen. I closed the book. I went on with my day. The very next day, I opened the book. I flipped through the velvety pages, enjoying the little things I placed in them. When I came to the doodle, I stopped and probably dropped my jaw. Something had happened. Something mystical. Something frightening. I saw her for the first time. The weeping woman. She was so quiet, so tender. I had missed her before, only seeing the shapes. But she had been there all along. I was stunned. Of course, there was a quiet thrill of discovery. “Art” had happened when I hadn’t been expecting it. Instead of a meaningless doodle, I now had an introspective figure in my sketchbook. Something private and personal and humble—my little doodle—had evolved into something that was meaningful and worth sharing. But there was something more at work. She wasn’t just “art.” I know this will likely sound cliche, just an overused declaration of artists who want you to care about their work. Especially if you’ve never experienced this for yourself. But honestly, the expression holds true - she was a piece of me. I might be wasting my typed words, but I must try to convey the strangeness of the affection I felt for her because it has haunted me weeks after our initial meeting. I’m a mother, I have two beautiful humans to love and call my own. So I have a frame of reference here. And I’m telling you, I felt a deep, timeless love for the weeping woman. She was a part of me, a part often hidden, often forgotten. As I write this, the plot thickens. I am still learning lessons from this surreal transfiguration. I consider how apt the metaphor is. I re-entered therapy in 2021, and I’ve been retracing the lines of my history, wandering through trauma and victory and all those things that never come up when we say hi, how’s it going. Gently, I’ve been “filling in” the shapes I like best. Remembering that I’m a person of great passion and energy, choosing to honor myself with physical exertion and challenge. Rediscovering how much I need to create, and making space for more mess so that creation can make its nest. Piece by piece, I fill in the blank shapes of my soul. Not thinking about the greater image. Just enjoying, just playing and following pure instinct. Smiling as I go. But, like the doodle in my sketchbook, my therapeutic work is transfiguring me. And in the last couple months, I’ve quite literally been shocked by the weeping woman I’ve discovered in my pile of pretty shapes. She’s been there all along. Quietly weeping. Holding herself together. Waiting for comfort. It’s overwhelming. To be honest, I want to go back to doodling and filling in the coloring book. But I can’t unsee her. I can’t unsee her. I can’t unsee her. And I can’t not care. But how to make her lift her head and smile? That’s the enigma, ain’t it. Yet, the more I ruminate on it, the more I throw solutions at her, the more I’m starting to believe she doesn’t need to smile. There’s a grace in her grief. I don’t need to erase her; I need to acknowledge her quiet work. I think she’s kept vigil for me. Each aching moment of pain, loss, disappointment, betrayal has been tenderly held in her tears. She’s the part of me who witnesses the injustice and rightly weeps, even when my optimistic, independent, visionary, unflappable self is skipping forward to the next venture, running from that last moment. So here’s to you, oh weeping woman. I see you, I see your tears, and I choose to honor you. Grief is a good and right response to much of this world. Your tears bear testimony to hope, and also to enduring love. I’m glad I finally met you. Ok loves, I did my thing. Now go and do you, you beautiful, wild-hearted creatures.