Post #51 – Women’s Memoirs, ScrapMoir – Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett
by Bettyann Schmidt
Having the wisdom to face the truth will bring us closer to peace~Melody Beattie, Journey to the Heart
Peace is hard to come by, both globally and within our own individual souls. I believe finding your life’s truth leads to peace within yourself. Not an easy discovery. Truth is usually the harder of the two to find. I also believe that the quest for truth and then its admission grants freedom–personal freedom, thus leading to our sought after peace.
The truth will set you free~ John 8:32
Finding Peace through Scrapbooking and Writing Memoir
I never meditated on, or even thought about, searching for the truth to learn who I was as a woman until I began journaling in my scrapbooks and then writing my family history stories. All of my life, in one way or another, I’ve been searching for peace, even if only subconsciously. I was so busy fighting odds and trying to make sense of life that it was not until my forties that I consciously yearned for peace. A peaceful personal environment and an inner peace.
I began noticing other women who I felt had peace in their lives–in how they lived, in how they dealt with problems and challenges, heavy workloads or responsibilities. I was an achiever, but I was driven. I was nervous and afraid. Afraid that I might not succeed. I was terrorized of failure. I didn’t know or value myself as a woman. I’d lived in a society where men were the powerful, the successful, the dominating figures.
The end of my first marriage began my independence. This put me totally on my own, and responsible for four children’s lives as well. The feelings were both scary and wonderful. I had to “make it on my own” as the score for the Mary Tyler Moore Show proclaimed (“Love is All Around”). My new-found independence and freedom segued into the creation of close relationships with other women. Together, we were all searching for our own inner peace and unique environments. We began finding and admitting truths to ourselves and each other that had brought us to our present day situations.
Always a journaler, I recorded my relationships with my friends, my children and family, my new life as a single mom, my career. The more I wrote, the more I discovered about myself, especially as a woman. I saw my uniqueness. I recognized my needs, my goals, my heart’s desires. I wrote my plans in my journaling notebooks, my lists of all things that can be listed. I believe my notebooks guided me down the eventual paths that started opening. For once in my life, I was gaining a “feel” for a good choice versus a bad one. I still made mistakes, but I was learning how to use the consequences more appropriately.
I was also learning from my close female friendships the skills and abilities I’d never possessed. I definitely knew I wanted more out of life than I’d experienced the first 40 years. I created lovely surroundings for myself amidst the chaos of teenagers in the home–a sanctuary where I could work and also create, where I could read and dream. Identifying my inner needs helped bring a calmness to my life and a place of peace where I could flourish. I’d felt like a withering flower all of my life with no one to tend to its intrinsic nourishment, and I found myself then watering and pruning, adding the vitality I’d missed.
War and Peace for a Memoir Writer
When you find peace within yourself, you become the kind of person who can live at peace with others~Peace Pilgrim, Mildred Lisette Norman
With a sense of peace in life, it’s harder to go to war. You don’t want to rally against others because you are jealous, because they have more than you do, or because you resent them for not being an exact replica of you. There are still times when we have to go up against moral issues, our core values, but not as often as most human beings do over things they could just accept about others if they understood peace within themselves. I used to be big on arguing with anybody who didn’t see things my way. I think that’s the starting place for larger and global warfare. It starts with power. Other people, nations, different races are not allowed to be just different. There has to be a mold everyone fits into.
I remember my son as a baby trying to fit those shaped wooden pegs into their appointed slots on that Playskool toy he got one Christmas. He pounded, pushed, stomped and carried on, trying to get a triangle into a square. It just wouldn’t work no matter how hard he tried. It was an important lesson for my boy. I don’t think everyone learns how to play with that little toy.
One of the huge benefits for me in learning that I didn’t have to change people came late in my life, when I met my present husband, Gary. He is entirely different from me in big ways. He is slow and patient. I’m still fast and impatient, not too much in love with delayed gratification. He is practical. I’m whimsical. When I first met him, I couldn’t imagine I would marry such a man. I learned to live his way, more than he changed to my way. I began seeing small things in life through his eyes. Astounding small things I had always been too busy to notice.
- Simple Sunset Wonder
Identifying and Writing the Small and Simple
Gary is a slow man and takes time to “smell the flowers.” He is in tune with nature, perhaps because he grew up on the farm where we now live. He knows the planets and loves to watch them in the night skies with his telescope. He’s never too busy to appreciate a beautiful sunset. I created the layout above when I noticed a simple wonder of nature.
More than once, I’ve flipped through my scrapbook pages to land on a particular layout that fills me with peace. There is also truth in these scrapbook pages. When my world seems out of whack, I notice the beauty I’ve chronicled as reality. Though the whole world sometimes looks bleak from my view, I’m reminded because of the images and words I’ve created on the page that life still has order and wonder. We should grab it each day that we can and capture it for the future.
Another source of personal peace can be attained through the eyes of a child. My scrapbooks are full of little, innocent children who can teach the most learned intellectual. Raising my youngest special needs son, Jeff, has changed my interpretation of life. He is the most peaceful person I know. He expects little from life and only good. He delights in everyday pleasures and shows unbridled joy in larger gifts.
The above layout shows Jeff’s absolute awe of the great salt-water, blue waves in Florida. It is as though he is saying with outstretched arms, “Here I am, Ocean!”
Jeff is also a farm boy, like his Dad. He likes to gather eggs in the morning from the hen house, chop wood in the fall and winter with his Dad for heating our home, and roaming through the woods with his dogs. Jeff doesn’t know he is disadvantaged in any way. He experiences simple peace and happiness. I often think what would it be like to live his way.
Simple Living…Living Simply
The little health food store I used to shop at in Nashville, The Sunshine Grocery, closed with the arrival of the big Whole Foods natural supermarket. Small stickers were adhered to all of their packages which stated: “Simple Living…Living Simply.” Everytime I opened one of their packages, I thought about those words. They reminded me that one of the largest, most important sources of tranquility is living simply.
My parents, having gone through the Great Depression, were forced to practice simple living. They had to wait to buy things. They didn’t have credit cards, nor did they own modern furniture paid for by the month. Our food was simple, but I remember Mom’s green beans and potatoes to this day and the homemade vegetable soup. Those two dishes were unforgettable. Everyone in our neighborhood lived pretty much the same way.
Jeff and his Dad with the morning eggs.
Unite the Pictures and Stories of Your Life
The reason I first starting scrapbooking and writing family history was a simple one. Everyone has pictures of what’s important to them, and most people have memories to go along with those images. I wanted to save the photos and the pictures for my family so they’d enjoy the feelings those memories conjured up. If all you have are pictures in boxes and stories in your head, it seems to me quite a waste. Going through a stack of photos is fun, especially when they’re new, but they won’t tell anything in later years.
My Peaceful Space for Scrapbooking
My scrapbook niche across from our huge family room in front of the built-in bookcase is one of my “islands” in the world. I work at an old, well used, dining room table my husband’s aunt left us when she died. Behind me on the shelves are my favorite books, my scrapbook albums, treasured trinkets, and all of my bookmaking products. I have a window looking out at trees and an old, overstuffed chair that’s seen better days next to the window, where I can grab a book from the shelves and snuggle in and lose myself in a good story. Or I can pull one of my scrapbooks down and flip through it and enjoy my memories.
I also journal every day and dump all the thoughts crowding my brain as well as my gratitude for what I have. This brings me peace.
Your Place of Peace
Do you have a tranquil space, a niche you can call your own where you dream, plan, create? Look around and let your imagination loose. If you have any ideas to share, I’d love to read them. Leave a comment below. And like the priest always said in mass when I was a child, “Peace be with you all.”
Bettyann Schmidt
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