Being an artist means … ripening like the tree which does not force its sap and stands confident in the storms … summer [will] come. But it comes only to the patient … patience is everything!
from Rainer Maria Rilke’s advice to Franz Xaver Kappus from Letters to a Young Poet. Quotation found here.
Patience. Now there’s a thing to cultivate.
And the thing I’d love to have invented this month, in a parallel universe where time is infinite and all things are possible is Mental Health Mates. I heard the extraordinary and courageously honest Bryony Gordon talking about it at this year’s Hay Festival in June. She set up Mental Health Mates because, when suffering her own mental troubles, she feels (felt) entirely alone. She wants each of us to find our We. Because we are not alone (even if we think we are):
Gordon has written several books. In MAD GIRL she writes:
Your parents warn you about the monsters you might encounter in dark alleyways, but they never warn you about the monsters you might find in your own mind, the ones that taunt and trouble you, and make you question yourself to your very core.
Wise wise words. Look up Mental Health Mates if you feel like going for a walk (or setting up a walk) and talking to people who know that to think the way you think and feel is NOT unlike the way a lot of people think and feel.