© Getty/Meridy VolzOne writer reveals how she learned resilience from a mother dedicated to a craft even in the toughest of times.
Whenever my mom blasted music loud enough to rattle the windows, usually Anita Baker or Chaka Khan, I knew she was in the zone. I'd find her in her sun-drenched studio, tubes of oil paint heaped on a rolling cart at her elbow in a jumble of colors only she understood.
Her painting style was swirly, vivid, and impressionistic. Standing in the doorway, I'd watch her layer gobs of color onto her canvas using a palette knife or her fingers. The task absorbed her completely, her concentration unbreakable. This image of my mother in her studio was the same from every age, whether I was 6, 11, or 18 years old. It's still the same now that I'm 43 and my mom is 73.
My mother, Meridy Voz, has won awards and hung in galleries and museums, but, when I was growing up, she struggled financially as a single parent. There were times when we barely scraped by. Unwilling to compromise her daytime hours in the studio, she sold cannabis to make ends meet, becoming a pioneer in San Francisco's medical-marijuana movement during the HIV-AIDS crisis when many of our close friends fell ill.
As an only child with no one else to turn to for attention, I sometimes wished for a"normal" parent whose schedule didn't revolve around daily studio time. Why couldn't she get a legal job with a regular paycheck like other mothers? But the harder things got, the more determined she was to make art every day.
© Courtesy of Alia VozMeridy Voz in her studio.
In this past year of political upheaval, dizzying news cycles, and the collective grief and forced isolation of the Covid-19 pandemic, I've found myself emulating my mom's determination to maintain a daily creative practice - in my case, writing. This means wrestling time and space away from the world, sequestered from family and friends with news alerts and social media muted.
Many of my artistic friends have agonized about not being able to focus on their work during this chaotic period. While that's understandable, I had the opposite reaction. The scarier things got, the harder I leaned on creativity to keep me emotionally strong and clear-minded - much like my mom did when the HIV-AIDS pandemic tore our community apart. I used to see my mom's creative obsession as impractical. I realize now that she was teaching me a survival skill.
My mom grew up in Milwaukee, daughter to a busy father and an overbearing, abusive mother."Whenever my mother got mean," my mom says,"I'd flop down on the carpet and draw. She couldn't reach me when I was in the zone." Art became my mom's lifelong refuge and source of self-esteem. Throughout her rocky marriage and eventual divorce from my father, the early deaths of loved ones, and her own struggles with addiction, chemotherapy, and financial instability, my mom has continuously produced art. Rather than diminishing during stressful times, her output increases.
"You may have heard of flow," psychologist Shelley Carson said in an interview with Harvard Health Publishing."People become completely unconscious of self, lose track of time, and get totally absorbed in what they are doing. In the flow state, they are meeting challenges as they create, and every time they're successful, the reward center in the brain is activated, and they get a little burst of dopamine."
An internal system of challenge and reward, requiring nothing of the outside world, is a powerful tool for maintaining equilibrium. I can tell by the tone of my mom's voice through the phone if she isn't spending enough time in the studio.
This is more than self-care; creativity has also been shown to sharpen critical thinking in young people and strengthen neural connections and social engagement in seniors. An artistic practice enables us to interact mindfully with the outside world. When I was a kid, it was sometimes tough to respect my mom's attachment to her painting time. Looking back, I realize that the focus attained through creativity helped her stay fully engaged and emotionally present with me the rest of the day.
My mom learned to access her flow during childhood, winning her first scholarship to an art school at age 6 and continuing along that path through college and into adulthood. My trajectory was less obvious. I enjoyed being creative - drawing, dancing, and making music as a kid - but nothing inspired intense enough passion to shape my life. I wanted stability. At 17, I got my first 9-to-5 job, starting as a file clerk for a global shipping company, and then moved through a series of corporate jobs. Years passed in a blur of expense reports and Casual Dress Fridays. I liked not worrying about bills, but I felt dull and disengaged. At 22, I quit my bland, comfortable job and blew my savings to hike the Camino de Santiago across Spain. Since I was traveling alone, I wrote in a journal to keep myself company.
Writing made me keen to details I would've otherwise overlooked: the texture of a log hollowed by termites or the way road dust inked the wrinkles of an elderly pilgrim. Simple things burst into vivid complexity. It felt like that moment in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy sees Technicolor for the first time. Of course, the outside world was the same; the difference was all in my head. My writer's brain was coming to life. Some 500 miles of walking later, I stood on a cliff in Finisterre where the pilgrim trail runs into the Atlantic Ocean. I tossed my walking stick over the edge and watched the waves swallow it in the evening's last light. In another time zone thousands of miles away, I knew my mom would be settling into her morning painting session. I felt closer to her than ever.
© DrAfter123 - Getty ImagesI've sought nourishment and mental clarity in a daily practice not unlike my mother's. It's been one of the few unequivocally positive developments in my life this past year.
Upon returning to the U.S., I dedicated myself to learning the craft - short stories, essays, a bad novel, and eventually an acclaimed memoir about growing up in the medical-cannabis movement. Two decades after my first journaling practice on the pilgrimage, I now make my living as a writer.
My process is often goal-oriented - focused on pitching the next piece or hitting the next deadline. It can be a slog, and I sometimes lose touch with the vitality that drew me into this work. In that respect, this period of isolation and turmoil has been a strange gift. Holed up at home - feeling anxious, angry, and sad - I've sought nourishment and mental clarity in a daily practice not unlike my mother's. It's been one of the few unequivocally positive developments in my life this past year.
During the pandemic, my mother's age and fragile health put her at high risk for Covid-19. Self-quarantined alone since the beginning, she has sought community through her artwork.
Inspired by the Black Lives Matter protests last summer, she began a series of colorful portraits of Black artists from throughout the ages, which she sold on social media, donating all proceeds to BLM bail funds and local organizations helping families in crisis.
At 73, my mom still struggles with an artist's unsteady income. Since leaving the cannabis world in 1998, she has survived solely on her artwork, supplementing sales by teaching art to retirees, at-risk youth, and incarcerated teens - now over Skype. Her"Art With Heart" program at Indio Juvenile Hall resulted in an"immediate decrease in discipline issues," making her art classes"essential in reducing anxiety and providing hope to these young men as they grapple with their incarceration," according to the Riverside County Office of Education.
Despite a busy teaching schedule and the challenges of this past year, my mom still spends every morning at her easel. The relationships she builds through art help her feel less isolated. More crucially, the simple act of working in her studio gives her the fortitude to weather another day alone.
Meanwhile, stuck at home in a different part of California, I've become newly grateful to my mom for teaching me to double down on creativity in times of chaos. After scanning the morning's frightful headlines over coffee, I disengage from the overwhelming stream of information, open a document, and look inward for my flow. It's not easy to slice through the noise, and I'm often dissatisfied with the work I produce. That's okay. The act of trying restores my focus.
At some point every day, my mom and I have a phone call:
"You writing?" my mom asks.
"Trying," I say."How about you?"
"Oh yeah. This painting is insane!"
And that's how I know we're okay.
Alia Volz is the author of Home Baked: My Mom, Marijuana, and the Stoning of San Francisco, finalist for the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award and winner of the Golden Poppy Award for nonfiction. Her work has appeared in The Best American Essays, The New York Times, Bon Appetit, and The Best Women's Travel Writing.
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