April 2022: Celebrating not being in chronic pain
Don’t take what your body can do for granted: I never anticipated that at the age of 46 I’d be in chronic pain for over a year and lose most of the strength and mobility in my arms and shoulders to the extent that I couldn’t brush my own hair. Finally, after having remained committed to my yin yoga practice, meditation and creativity, and with the help of my partner Jan, my pets and plants, I’m still battling inflammation but am no longer in significant pain. It’s such an absolute joy to be able to cook, run, garden, draw and play my musical instruments a little again, that I’ve wanted to both bask in and spread this happiness.
I continue to follow my soul’s calling without knowing why… I say this because not only am I recovering from physical setbacks, but ‘contamination’ OCD-wise I haven’t been able to cope with mixing with others during the pandemic apart from visiting the allotment site and Claybury Woods. I know I must address this if I’m ever going to work in person with anyone again, but trying to find local trauma-informed healthcare professionals who are prepared to take me seriously, has been very hard (there’s only so much healing one can do alone).
Being as I haven’t really been anywhere physically for almost two and a half years, I’ve been indulging in nostalgia: it’s been comforting reliving my favourite book from childhood; Enid Blyton’s The Magic Faraway Tree, and I look back with immense gratitude at the seven years I spent working at Chichester Festival Theatre, the National and The Shaftesbury Theatre in the West End. These experiences all provided the bedrock for my very fertile imagination.
It was a privilege to speak on the phone to Ianto Evans in Oregon, USA (one of the co-authors of The Hand-Sculpted House - A Philosophical and Practical Guide to Building a Cob Cottage). I wanted to thank him and say what a life-changing read this had been for me, and to sound him out about next steps in my journey to build a cob cottage of my own. As well as completing a Cob Cottage Company cob building workshop in Coquille, Oregon, he suggested I go and visit cob buildings in Devon. I duly looked into this, but know in my heart I want to focus my efforts on living in Europe or the USA and so began researching possibilities in these areas and came across the CobBauge Project…
My upcycled cardboard art is proving to be the most popular on Etsy, so for Easter I made four embroidered chicks of organic fabric remnants having just stepped out of their geometric corrugated cardboard nests. Here’s a video of my most recent art:
Purchase my art at: www.etsy.com/shop/gemmaboydmixedmedia Your support would be enormously appreciated!
Purchase my art at: www.etsy.com/shop/gemmaboydmixedmedia Your support would be enormously appreciated!
Allotment-wise, I was excited by the blooming of a double-headed white daffodil and a bunch of gladioli that had been dumped in a skip; to have germinated two eucalyptus lemon bushes for the first time, and my April-harvested potatoes were delicious.
I recommenced the Tudor Crescent Village In The City project (view: https://gemmaboyd.space/tudor-crescent-village-in-the-city to find out more), by facilitating another ‘chalk chat’ on the pavement outside my house. This is something small I can contribute to the local community that takes minutes out of my day which generated lots of engagement, and chalked designs began appearing on other Tudor Crescent driveways. Typically, though, it also attracted abusive vandals and the chalk kept being stolen. I felt deeply angry and upset about this / it triggered memories of my abusive past, and I wondered why I bother trying to do anything meaningful. But then I remembered WHY I wanted to do this in the first place (to bring the neighbourhood closer together), and so persisted. Nobody said it would be easy.
Here’s a truly aspirational film about a man who’s paying his dues by giving his love and energy to the jungle home he created. Enjoy!