While she was on maternity leave, my sister took a pottery class. Her education and profession have nothing to do with the creative arts and her aim wasn’t to gain a level of skill that would make people go “Wow, you should open an Etsy shop!” She just wanted to try something new, to feel how Demi Moore might have felt in that scene in Ghost and most of all, to be able to step back from the pottery wheel and behold something she’d created from nothing.
My sister lives a plane ride away from me, and when I last went to visit her, she told me about the class and how many vessels she managed to sculpt. It was a lot more than just one.
“Here,” she said pulling a little misshapen, glazed pot off a kitchen shelf. “I made this one for you!” I took the putty-colored sculpture from her and cradled it in my palm. Its heaviness surprised me.
It looked like a tiny toilet and I said as much to my sister because we have the same sense of humor and I knew she wouldn’t be insulted by my observation. “It’s like a chamber pot for a mouse. I love it! I’m going to put this on my office desk at home and use it for coins and whatnot.” I knew it would make me smile each time I saw it, both because my sister made it and because it literally looked like a bidet.
“Well, it’s a bowl and I had you in mind when I made it.” She showed me a tiny plate she’d made for her toddler daughter and told me about other pieces she’d sculpted for herself and some friends. She’d produced an impressive number of crockery in the span of a single class.
When her toddler came home from nursery, my sister handed her the bespoke plate which now held a few cut up strawberries. My niece accepted the snack and eyed it with reverence, whispering “this is my plate” as she sat down to eat. It, too, was putty colored and tiny, made of a few layers of uneven clay rope layered one top of each other. Like a tiny inflatable kiddie pool that someone had started to let the air out of. It looked like something my niece herself could have made.
“I wasn’t going for perfection,” my sister explained proudly, “I just wanted to try something new and have fun and create with my hands. And look,” she pointed to her strawberry chomping daughter, “what I made is useful!” She was right. My clay commode would be put to good use, too.
My sister’s creative process was so uninhibited, it made me think about how I was getting in my own way, when it came to my own writing.
Officially, I created Feelin’ It on October 1, 2023 (srsly, check the date on the post before this one with its false promise of “COMING SOON"!) and here I am—in April—sending out my first issue. (If you think that’s a long time, wait till you hear that it took me 10 years to finally start writing my memoir.)
I started a list of ideas for what I’d write about, mostly observational humor based on personal interactions and written in my very voicey voice. I intended to publish my first piece a week later, but I was still finishing the final edits on my memoir Nearly Departed: Adventures in Loss, Cancer and Other Inconveniences.
“My first post will go up before 2024,” I promised myself.
It didn’t.
“By mid-January, when I turn 50!” I declared to no one, but when I sat down to write, the words got clogged in my head, so that deadline passed, too. I watched my talented writer friends start their own newsletters and thought, “Oh, they just went ahead and did it! And their writing is so heartfelt, so funny so… voicey!” (
I see you!)They moved from thinking about doing the thing and did it. They got out of their own heads, even if their heads were screaming “Wait it’s not perfect!” like mine does.
So here I am, a full six months later, forcing my finger to click ‘publish’. All I have to do is put my inner critic in a soundproof chamber at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean whenever I have something to share with you.
I’m a 15 year breast cancer PRE-vivor and SUR-vivor and I wouldn't have made it through chemo and multiple surgeries while raising four little kids without a solid, persistent sense of humor. I bring that same humor to my long-running Feel It on the First campaign on Instagram where I post photos of myself holding boob-esque objects to my chest. My goal is to minimize the fear associated with breast cancer while encouraging people to prioritize their breast health. That campaign inspired the title of this newsletter which will serve up funny takes on every day interactions and a take-it-or-leave-it lesson. Or two.
My pottery toilet lives on my desk right next to my computer screen. It contains some coins, a few pony tail holders and a broken necklace chain I’ll never have repaired. When I hold it up, I see my sister’s name and the date it was made crudely etched into the base.
Unless you have a thing for toilet shaped home goods, my bowl would not make it into your shopping cart. It’s not perfect. But it’s useful and, more importantly, it was made with love.
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Do you have a trinket, utensil or some other item that’s janky but gets the job done? Tell me in the comments :)
A great first lesson! So glad you hit publish.
Gila! I loved this! And really loved the message too (look at you sneaking in a life lesson inside a Trojan toilet). I'm happy to subscribe.