Stencil Work

Cutting your own stencils is tedious work.  It goes like this:  you print out a favorite photo in black and white, the contrast as high as your photo program will go, and begin to cut away all the black areas.  Cutting away the positive space is a foreign feeling, something you're not used to, and causes much anxiety and misgivings.  With every cut you feel like an utter failure, certain you are destroying something you cherished, and was whole only moments before you started this ludicrous exercise.  If you're like me, you get frustrated and discouraged, maybe yelling a little along the way, because the more you cut, the less it looks like you're going to have anything of value left when you're done.  If this is a portrait, the features of your loved one look kooky and unreliable, and you decide this just isn't going to work at all, and it's really not worth the effort.


But the thing is, you have to trust the process.  It's not only your cutting that makes the final image, it's also all that white space that was already there at the beginning.  Every cut works with what was already there, and changes the relationship between those lines and space to make something new.  It's totally normal to not be able to see your progress when you're in the middle of cutting.


You trudge along, maybe cursing a little along the way.  When you finally spray the paint through, muttering under your breath, "this is gonna look like total crap", and lift up your stencil, you are amazed at the image that is left underneath.  When you thought you were failing miserably, you were actually creating something bold and clear.  Something you can build on.


This is how this whole grief business feels to me.  You do all the "right" things, the only things that anyone knows to do, and the end of the day, you often don't feel any better than you did when you woke up.  But you trudge forward, hoping for a better outcome even when you don't realize you have hope to carry you forward.  That hope is the white space- all that strength you used when your child was here to get her through rough times.  It's still there, you just don't always see what's right in front of you cause you're so focused on all the black parts.


When Dr. Z told me to "trust the grief process", I really didn't have a clue what he was talking about.  Like really?  That's the best you can do?  My insurance company pays you how much for 30 minutes?  (Sorry, Sven darling, you know I love you.  I didn't mean a word of it.)




 Then I cut some stencils.  I kinda get it now.