Self Care and My Desk

Sitting at my desk in my home studio had become increasingly difficult.

You see, for the last several years I’d done a mountain of work and cultivated community and friendships while at that desk. All of which was, and is, deeply meaningful to me and others.

I’d also navigated a lot of harmful behavior that I’d normally not tolerate in order to protect that meaningful work and community.

Then access to the physical and virtual space where that meaningful work was being done was taken away abruptly.

After that, I started having panic attacks when I sat down at my desk and turned on my computer. I was even having trouble creating in my home studio where my desk is because I couldn’t bring myself to be in there too long.

Logically I knew it was understandable for me to take a break from that particular space. To process and heal. At the same time, I felt like my world was being narrowed and manipulated. I resented that.

When I finally opened up to my husband and a good friend about what I’d been experiencing they both said it was okay to just move it. To offer myself what I needed.

It’s so simple, right?  To offer myself what I need?

At the time it wasn’t simple to me, though. I had begun to believe the lie that I was too much. That I didn’t deserve accommodations and care. Honey, the lie that has a chokehold on someone else’s existence had begun to bleed over into mine.

And that? That is not how I choose to live my life.

So, I moved my desk.

As soon as I’d moved the desk and my computer was set up, I immediately booted it up and started to write. I started to furiously type the words that had been pressing up against the back of my teeth and roaring in my head and heart.

The ones I’d been choking on. The ones that I knew if I didn’t let them out in all their brutal honesty, I’d never be able to move forward and heal.

I hadn’t been lacking a mode of expressing myself, but even as I created in other ways it felt incomplete. Writing has always been a part of both my art practice and my practice of processing life - which are often one and the same.

Moving my desk was a gift and allowed me to declare to myself that I am worthy of care, that I am not alone…

…and that I am not done.