What If (I fail)?

A failed collage - but when I turned it sideways it didn’t seem too bad - it’s still not my best but I keep turning up and trying to do my best even when I might fail.

I’ve talked a lot about big bold projects lately. Mine and other people’s. They are the resolution of those first tentative what if? explorations. What if I tried this, or experimented with that? But the biggest what if I tackle with every venture or project or even daily collages is the What If I fail fear. It’s a major fear that I am still learning to overcome, every day.

Everyone has fears, for some it is what if I end up alone, or what if people see me as an imposter or what if I become bankrupt and end up in the debtor’s prison. This was one of my father’s biggest fears which can lie traced back to the economic crash of the 1920s or even further back to the stories of Charles Dickens.

My own what if I fail fear is about falling short of the high expectations I set for myself, of being successful in all that I do as an artist and an entrepreneur. Like many artists, I can beat myself up over this or other associated fears of the creative process - what if I fail to have another creative thought in my body or what if I have already done my best work and everything else is downhill from here? I am learning to accept and live with the what if no-one likes it or buys it fear. I realise this no longer determines my creative production.

As a woman any of these fears can be compounded with the fear of being homeless or abandoned, or not being a good (enough) mother or wife, or to the biggest extreme, what if I can’t protect my children or myself?

For many women the what if fear becomes a daily anxiety, - what if I leave him will he come back to stalk me/kill me/ hurt my children. This is a very real fear borne about by the deaths of women in Australia at the hands of a partner or ex-partner. One woman is killed every week in Australia, usually by someone she knows. Something to reflect on this International Women’s Day.

So while we stand on the shoulders of our suffragette great grandmothers it is good to reflect on how far we have come since then and since the women’s rights movements of the 1970s, but how far we need to go.

I love being a woman living in the 21st century but I know we still have a long way to go to ensure women and for that matter, children, vulnerable older people, homeless and mentally and physically ill people and are safe and cared for. A society is only as good as its capacity to care for all its people. We need to each strive to bring that care into the little things we can do to make someone else feel cared for. A simple phone call can go a long way to letting someone know that they are loved. Phone a friend this Sunday. Go on, make their day.

Detail from my daily collage Women Holding the Sky. I really wasn’t happy with it - but it is finished and I move on…