mental health day {10/11/23}

Evidently yesterday was World Mental Health Day. I missed the memo, so I celebrated today by doing…nothing. Here’s a poem I wrote about it:

Instructions for Resurrection

Go back to bed
after you drop the kids off at school.
Scroll on your phone
for a while, then
put it down.
Close your eyes.
Be nothing
until noon.

Take a hot shower.

Eat lunch.

Go outside.
Shake a blanket open over the grass
next to the wildflowers you sprinkled
from seed packets last spring,
the ones that took so long to grow
you were sure they’d never come.

Watch the bees
scavenge the goldenrod
for late season nectar.

Think about what you will gather
for winter.

Lay on your back in the sun.
Start playing a podcast
then stop.
Listen to the birds
the crickets
the dogs
the neighbors on their walks.

Watch the clouds,
the dragonflies circling the cloud of midges.

Take off your jacket.
Take off your socks.

The stalk of the sunflower bows,
seeds spent. Remember
the seeds you planted in the garden last week,
how they will wait under the soil,
under the snow.

Perhaps you will see them in spring.

It is hot in the sun
but stay out a few minutes longer, stay
out as long as you possibly can
Stay
and listen to the world sing.

new things {5/2/22}

Hey everyone! I know, I know, it’s been a while. Time flies when you’re raising young children during a pandemic. Anyway, there’s some exciting stuff coming up on the “pictures” side of things over here. First off, I have two collages in the Creating Space exhibition at Lillstreet Art Center in Chicago! The show opened yesterday, and will run through May, with a reception on May 14 at 6pm. Please come out and see it if you get a chance!

I also have some collage work in the latest issue (7) of Phototrouvee Magazine! Full disclosure, if you follow me on instagram (@kelleyclink), you’ve already seen it, but if you check out the issue, you get to see amazing collages made with found photographs by tons of other artists. Win-friggin-win.

I know what you’re thinking—that has to be it, right? WRONG. I have a tiny collage in a micro gallery in Forest Park, also appearing this month, and two more small works in the Tiny Works exhibition at Fulton Street Gallery in June. I’ll post more details about that in a few weeks.

I’m nearly done with my series of zodiac tarot cards! Capricorn is the latest, which means Aquarius will be available soon. All these illustrations are available as prints (8.5x11 $30 plus shipping or 11x17 $45 plus shipping), and can be combined to create unique family portraits. Follow me on instagram @kelleyclink to see all the signs, and contact me for orders.

Gemini + Libra

For those who are asking what’s with all the art stuff? Does Kelley even write anymore? The answer is yes, I’m currently working on a YA novel. The first draft should be done this year. I hope. But I have taken a break from writing memoir and/or first person accounts of my experiences with mental health. It’s still a cause that’s important to me. It always will be. But I’ll be honest, it’s been really nice to turn the lens in a different direction for a while. So, for anyone who needs to hear it, you are allowed to change direction. I’m going to say that again, a little louder for the people in the back.

YOU ARE ALLOWED TO CHANGE DIRECTION.

You are allowed to pause. You are allowed to quit. You are allowed to try something new. You are allowed to quit again if the new thing doesn’t work, and go on to another new thing. You are also allowed to go back to the first thing, if that’s what ends up feeling right. Spring is all about new beginnings, isn’t it?

So, what would you do, if you let yourself try something new?

seventeen years {4/30/21}

I’m running out of pictures of you to share that haven’t already been used. Even the best ones I have are hazy, like the camera is trying to reach back through the fog of time. But no, this is just how photography was back then. Cardboard disposables. Early, pixilated digitals. Things were changing quickly, and there was so much we couldn’t clearly see.

It isn’t much different now. The photographs are sharper, but life is even harder to bring into focus. The thing is, all the passing years have taught me patience. Sometimes, a lot of times—right now, actually—everything seems clouded. But I know that, eventually, I’ll find the sharp edges of meaning. Or, more than likely, I’ll create them myself.

Of course I grieve for the fact that you didn’t get a chance to experience that. I grieve for all the things you didn’t get to experience: music you never heard or made, books you never read or wrote, loves you didn’t fall into, all the corners of the world you didn’t see. But mostly these days, I just miss you.

The ache sits in the center of my chest. It’s dull. It’s heavy. It catches my breath.

I hated this ache for so many years. I tried to ignore it. Avoid it. Bury it. Hide it. But today I know I can hold it. I can comfort it. I can let it soften me, even though it hurts.

I can let this grief stay blurry. Let the edges bleed.

down the mountain {2/11/21}

Once upon a time, in 2011, my body fell apart.

It happened slowly. Slowly enough that I could pretend it wasn’t happening, or that it wasn’t going to get any worse, and every time it did I would say “well surely this is it. things are going to get better now.” And then they didn’t.

I saw every doctor, chiropractor, physical therapist, massage therapist, acupuncturist, and intuitive healer that people recommended. Still, it got worse.

I bought children’s clothing, because I’d lost so much weight it was all that would fit. I cut off all my hair, because I’d always wanted to, and if I was going to die why the fuck not? I was in constant pain. I stopped walking. Stopped working. Stopped doing anything but watching Law & Order reruns, popping Xanax, and googling symptoms.

But, as you can probably tell, I didn’t die. I finally got a diagnosis—Gastroparesis—and a treatment plan. I started putting weight back on. Slowly. Slowly. I started making and sharing photographs—one every day. I started writing again. I went to Buddhist church. I read books and meditated and planted flowers. I got another diagnosis—labral tear and hip impingement—and a surgery. My body stopped hurting so much. I could walk again. Ride a bike. Dance. I wasn’t the same as I was before—I still had a restricted diet, and still sometimes had problems with pain—but I was okay. I was okay. Which to me felt nothing short of a miracle.

It was a weird thing that happened. No one knew why. But it was over.

.

.

.

Until it wasn’t.

It came back slowly. Slowly enough that I could pretend it wasn’t happening again, that it wasn’t going to get any worse, and every time it did I would say “it isn’t that. this isn’t the same.”

But it is.

There are hollows in my collar bones. My rings slide off my fingers. My back and hip joints slip and grind, and my muscles spasm around them. I feel that same scramble, like an animal clawing madly at bald ground while they slide down the side of a mountain.

The first time I got sick I took a lot of comfort in Anne Lamott. In her book Traveling Mercies, she says:

“When a lot of things start going wrong all at once, it is to protect something big and lovely that is trying to get itself born—and this something needs for you to be distracted so that it can be born as perfectly as possible.”

In my case, the big lovely thing was my actual children. I’d wanted to be a parent for years, but, in the wake of my brother’s death, I had been paralyzed by fear. Fear of loss. Fear of love. I was shattered, crushed, and everything that touched the open, gaping wound of my heart was excruciating. But somehow the physical pain of my illness, the physical act of watching my body melt away, obliterated all my fear. And when I was healthy again, I was ready. I was certain. I knew exactly what I wanted.

I don’t know what is waiting to be born this time, and honestly, I’m scared. Scared it’s nothing, and that I’m just going to be hurting and sick for the rest of my life. Scared it’s something, and that I’m not ready for it. (And that I’m still going to be hurting and sick for the rest of my life).

I’ve been hesitant to say much about where I am, because so many people are suffering right now. Like really, really suffering. But if I learned anything from the first time, it’s that you don’t have to win the gold medal in the pain olympics to be genuinely hurting, and that nothing gets better until you talk about it. No one ever gets through anything alone. In fact, we’re all sliding down the mountain together right now, hoping that something big and lovely is trying to get itself born.

I don’t know what it will be—not for me, or you, or the world. But it better be fucking huge.

fifteen years {4/30/19}

Dear Matt,

The branches are heavy with blooms. The birds are singing. Despite lingering snow and cold, the world is waking up, just like it does every year. And every year I miss you a little differently.

My children are 4.5 and 2, and memories of and questions about our own childhoods have crashed over me like a tidal wave. There’s so much I want to talk to you about. So much I want to heal with you.

OMG, check out that pack of smokes on the end table!

I learned something really amazing thing this year: it wasn’t our fault. We weren’t broken. We were perfectly imperfect, exactly like everyone else. Actually, I knew that already, I’ve known it for a long time, but this year I really started to FEEL it. To believe it. I try to say it out loud as often as I can, so your nieces can feel it, too.

Buddy’s shirt and orange Faygo. This photo couldn’t be more Detroit if it was covered in Better Made.

I still haven’t figured out how to introduce you to my kids. I talk about you sometimes, but I don’t think they get it. It’s hard to know who someone is that you’ve never met. Actually, I tell them that I think they knew you a long time ago, before they were born, which isn’t any less confusing. R is getting to the age now that when I talk about a time before she was born her face glazes over with existential dread. It’s adorable.

Speaking of existential dread, I’m about to turn FORTY. It’s a reckoning year. I’m cleaning everything else out of the psycho-spiritual closet. It’s AWFUL. But it’s way past time. And holy shit, I’m kind of excited to see what life might be like without all that junk. I wish you’d had a chance to do this, too.

I don’t have much to add. In a dozen journals, a book, and fifteen years, it’s all been said. I will never stop missing you.

And I am 100% going to hang a framed print of this last one on our stairwell.

Love,

Kel

a beautiful mess {4/25/19}

There are shoes everywhere. There are squeezed out puree pouches, drippy paintings, stickers, snotty tissues. There are germs—an endless parade of colds, coughs, and stomach flus. There are multiple meals cooked every night, forms to fill out, and schedules to memorize. There are missing toys, shouts and tears, stamped feet and red faces. There are tiny heartbreaks. There are deep breaths and big fears. There is exhaustion, and failure, and a constant hum of worry.

It’s so easy to forget that I never thought I’d have this.

So easy to forget that I cried for years with wanting, too afraid to try after losing my brother to suicide. So easy to forget that I tried for years, that I did hundred of injections, that I traveled across the country to find the clinic that would give me the best chance, that I was so, so close to quitting.

So easy to forget that the cycle that finally worked was going to be my last.

I must admit that in the hardest, most chaotic moments of parenting, I never remember how close my children came to not being.

But when they smile,
when they laugh,
when they wrap their arms around me,
when they dance,
when they sing,
when they plant a kiss right on my lips,
when the house is quiet with contentment,
or loud with joy,
my body shivers—

with gratitude
wonderment
happiness
and a shot of leftover fear
that will probably always linger.

It’s National Infertility Awareness Week. I know first hand how uncomfortable, isolating, and devastating infertility can be. I kept it to myself for years. Eventually I sought out a support group and I learned a life-changing lesson—I was not alone. One in eight couples will have trouble conceiving or sustaining a pregnancy. It may not sound like much, but that’s MILLIONS of people. Forging friendships with a group of women going through the same thing didn’t erase the pain, but it gave me the strength to keep going.

If you are there right now, trying, struggling, hurting, know that YOU ARE NOT ALONE. There are resources, options, and friendly people who will help you through. Reach out to us. We are here for you.

https://resolve.org

https://infertilityawareness.org

https://lifefindsaway.org

still here (and there, and everywhere) {12/12/18}

I woke up at 4:30 this morning to pee, and then I was too hungry to go back to sleep. Before I knew it, my brain was up and running through all the things. Christmas gifts I need to wrap and ship. Food I need to buy and meals I need to cook. Laundry I need to put away. Emails I need to respond to. Somewhere between playdates I may or may not have scheduled and the grocery list I forgot to write, I realized that I owe you guys an update.

I can’t believe it’s been so long since I posted. But then again, I can. When you live with two tiny humans, time works like a shattered hourglass. Sand spills out everywhere, and before you know it, months have gone by. It’s quite inconvenient, and it’s part of the reason I haven’t posted much since my daughter was born. But it isn’t the whole reason. The whole reason is this: postpartum depression hit me HARD. And it was unexpected, which sounds stupid to say, because, you know, I had pre-partum depression for like 20 years. But I was on medication, and I didn’t have PPD after my first, so I figured I was…I don’t know, immune?

Like I said. Dumb.

Anyway, this last year has been one of the most difficult of my life. I tried all the things I was supposed to: prioritizing sleep (ha!), exercise, meditation, increased medication. Nothing seemed to work. Things finally started to improve after I stopped breastfeeding (never underestimate the impact of hormones).

I still feel a little fragile, and stunned. Like a bird who’s just flown into a window.

But I wanted you guys to know that even though I haven’t been here, I’m still here. Showing up in my brick and mortar life, wiping butts and watching cartoons, coloring and playdough-ing and brushing my teeth on the regular (which, trust me, is a huge improvement). I started a new chapter of Dance Dance Party Party. I’m working on an anthology about parenting and mental health. I’ve written a few picture book manuscripts. I’m looking into new opportunities for advocacy. I’m chipping away at another memoir.

I don’t know what’s going to happen next. I don’t know if I’m “better.” What I know is that right now, today, I’m covered in sand, and grateful for every minute/month of it.

i thought you should know {7/25/18}

My desk is as jumbled as my brain. I'm a shattered windshield these days: broken into a thousand pieces, yet somehow still keeping it together. But one more bump, one more pothole, one more clipped curb and I might come crashing down. 

And yet after all these years, all this work, all the preaching about acceptance and vulnerability and transparency, I don't know how to talk about it. I don't know what to say. The drafts bar of this blog is full of unfinished pieces: all the times I've bottomed out but didn't feel comfortable sharing it. Because this part, the right-in-the-middle part, the lowest-of-the-low part, terrifies me. I don't know how to make it pretty. I can't festoon it with hope. I mean, I know it isn't going to last forever, because I've been through it before. (But for the record, it feels like it's going to last forever. Every. Time.) I know it's going to get better, because it always does, eventually. (And yet...) So I go into crisis management mode. I remove as much stress from daily life as I can. I prioritize sleep and exercise. I write, even though it's hard and I hate everything that lands on the page (including this). I make appointments with my health care providers. And I try to let myself be where I am. 

Which is truly fucking awful.

But it's real. And maybe if I just say it right when it's happening, with no platitudes, no lessons, no warm fuzzy spiritual hugs, it will help someone else say it, too. And maybe if they say it, another person will say it. And another. And maybe, someday, we'll all be able to say it, and then it won't feel like an ugly truth we have to hide until we have the pretty words. Like a horror story we can only tell in the past tense. 

Until then, I'm here. In the shit. 

I thought you should know.

fourteen years {4/30/18}

This year I didn't even remember. Not right away. Not until I was scrolling through Instagram and saw a tribute post from one of your friends. It knocked me off balance to see your name, your face, in an unexpected place. I admit, I felt guilty that I'd only been thinking of today as Monday. But then I didn't. I was up most of the night with the baby, and I'm sure I would have remembered after the fog of sleeplessness burned off. Anyway, it's not as if I don't think of you. You're always here. Sometimes a quiet shadow in the background, sometimes a giant, elbowing up front. 

You would have been 35, almost 36. I say this every year, but it never stops being true: you would most certainly have been bald. Maybe a little paunchy? I definitely am. I'm not sure what you would have been up to career-wise, but I often think of you as a lawyer or political strategist. You definitely would have been crusading for social justice, fighting for equal rights and speaking out against material excess. 

You would have been one of the leaders of the resistance. And shit brother, we really could have used you.

You would have been a spectacular uncle. I can picture the kids squealing with delight upon your arrival, barreling into you full-force the way only tiny humans can. Your eldest niece is whip smart, stubborn, and hilarious. She reminds me a lot of you. The newest one is a ball of sunshine--until you cross her. Then she's loud, formidable, and fierce.  

God, you would have loved them. And they would have loved you.

I haven't told them much about you. I'm not sure how to. How do you introduce them to someone who isn't here? R is old enough to start asking questions. I hope I'm ready to answer them.    

Spring was so late this year. All through March and April there were gray skies, cold and snow. I kept thinking it would never come. But it's 70 degrees today. There's a bird singing right outside my window. And if I get really quiet and listen, I can hear the wind chimes in my backyard. 

I wish you had waited a little longer. I hope you've found your spring.

happy spring! {3/20/18}

Way back in autumn, I sent some of my work to a magazine I really love. I've been wanting to get published there for years but hadn't had anything that felt right, until I wrote a short essay about photography. I sent it off with some of my photos and the customary flutter in my stomach--proud of what I'd made, full of hope, but surrendered to the very likely scenario that my work wouldn't be accepted. 

You know, the usual. 

A few months went by and I didn't hear anything, which in publishing land means NOPE.

Disappointing, but no big deal. I can't tell you the number of times I've been rejected. I mean I literally can't. I kept track at first, but after a while my spreadsheet just got too unwieldy. You get used to it. You have to. It's one layer of the writer's shit sandwich. I thought about trying to find another home for the essay, or posting it with the accompanying photos on my blog, but I held off. Mostly because I've been busy with other projects. And also, having a second kid completely nuked my life. It's all I can do to remember to buy groceries and pay the gas bill. (Seriously, that gas bill is my kryptonite. I finally put it on autopay.) 

Anyway, it sat on the back burner for so long that I completely forgot about it. Until today, when the magazine let me know that my work was accepted. AND IT'S OUT RIGHT NOW!!!

I'm so thrilled to be featured in issue 15 of Bella Grace. My essay and photo are even in the little sample pics! If you're interested, you can buy a copy online using the link above. They also sell Bella Grace at bookstores.