100. All the Colors
I see that my experience at the Day 100 party was an early rite of passage, teaching me about contradictions and uncertainty, and how that’s part of this experience of being human.
Truth be told, I didn’t finish my first 100-day project. By the time we reached the end, I was very, very sick. The standard treatment I’d been prescribed had failed, and I was undergoing a brutal experimental regimen and being hospitalized about every two weeks. I was actually too sick to feel disappointment. Instead, what I felt was a more general sense of despair—that every effort I made to be productive, every plan I had for moving forward had been interrupted. The ongoingness of it was so defeating. It was as if I had lost sight of the horizon, and I couldn’t will myself forward.
About a year later, I found myself at another Day 100: having made it through that many days post-transplant. It’s an important milestone, one that determines the success of your transplant and by extension your likelihood of long term survival. To celebrate, there was a rooftop party organized by my friends—lively 24-year-olds in the prime of life, who were drinking, dancing and laughing. But what very few of them knew was that, only a few weeks earlier, my doctors told me I had a high risk of relapse and were recommending another year of chemo. I spent the party profoundly disoriented. I was surrounded by the people I loved, all celebrating me—yet I was devastated by the thought of ongoing treatment, and I felt so alone. I could barely wrap my head around the contradictions.
I look back on those times and I see depths I couldn’t then. I see that my first 100-day project was not a failure—in fact, the writing I did became the foundation upon which I built my New York Times column.
I see that my experience at the Day 100 party was an early rite of passage, teaching me about contradictions and uncertainty, and how that’s part of this experience of being human.
Day 100 for me has come to symbolize so much. The first project. The post-transplant milestone. The culmination of my road trip, when I returned to New York City after traversing 15,000 miles around the United States. And now we’ve reached this Day 100 together. It feels both triumphant and contains the complex truth that we rarely get to move on from the hard things. As much as we wish we could leave them behind, could find some separation, they’re a part of us, and we have to move forward with them.
Yesterday I was on a call with the Isolation Journals team, and as we reflected on what we were feeling about our lives and the world at large, that’s what kept coming up—the contradictions and the uncertainties. Lindsay said she felt like we just realized we’re all running a marathon and are only at mile eight. Carmen said she felt directionless and untethered. Kate said that, for the first time in many years, she just couldn’t find the words for what she was feeling, and she thinks of all these conflicting emotions as experiencing “all the colors”—from fury to peace, from exhaustion to exuberance. “Maybe one day, I’ll have the luxury of experiencing and focusing on only one,” she said, “but right now, I’m a Jackson Pollock, splattered with every color and hue. And that’s just how it is. And that's okay.”
Prompt:
Reflect on all the colors that make up your emotional palette—from the brightest neons to the drabbest grays. Examine the different hues and shades that occur each morning, midday, afternoon and evening. Write about how they’re playing out on a canvas, how they work together to make each day a painting of its own.
Alicia Di Scipio
Location: Santa Monica, California
About: This piece is inspired by California summers and colorful friends.
Age: 25
When she woke, she was either a hazy beige or a warm tangerine. Depending on how she slept, the dreams that invaded her mind and if she felt like reaching for her vibrator before turning on the coffee maker. As she moved through her day the colors changed like a kaleidoscope. A scarlet red would burn harshly when her roommate yelped from the other side of the home. This would happen when she dropped something, anything, or when she walked through the hallway and saw a reflection. The yelp was never the appropriate reaction. But nonetheless, the red would transform to green with a sunny yellow fighting its way in when she took her daily strolls. A routine that started when she was feeling dull and blue. As the clock ticked and her fingers moved over the keyboard, a lush purple would say hello. A calm, a focus, that was always fleeting. The day would turn into a sherbet pink with streaks of yellow. More of a light mustard, not as strong as the sun in the sky. The sherbet was always a giddy time before the slate gray fog rolled in and all the memories came flooding back. But the slate would then turn from haunting to soft hues. Inside. Safe. Clean couches with matching pillows and art with blue and yellow tones. Valentine’s Day red cards sprawled across the dark carpet. Burgundy wine in clear glasses. The warm tangerine feeling returns. between laughs that feel like a mix of sorbet and blue, but a happy blue.
She feels all the things. All the colors. All day. Everyday. Her moods change as quickly as a riptide decides to break. The riptide. Blue, green, white, with tan sand flying all around. Fragile and destructive. Like her, she thinks. The ability to morph, to mold, to disguise. A gift and a curse. When her mood feels stuck in cement, her clothes do the talking. Faded blue denim, the tangerine one piece, the cropped blue sweater that makes her eyes icy and intriguing.
She climbs into her crisp white bed, kicks off the blush pink blanket and digs her head into the pale-yellow pillowcases. She dreams in all of the colors, unafraid of the rainbow she’ll wake in tomorrow.
Beth Young
Location: Boston, MA
About: I'm a recent grad hoping to make a difference in the world. The inspiration for this entry comes from today's social movements that are drastically changing the way we live.
My days usually start out orange. Orange like dawn. Orange for hope. Orange for a new day full of possibility.
Quickly though, I can spiral into blue, becoming lazy as the day carries on. Blue with the weight of the world around me. Blue with the knowledge that if we continue to live like this, our planet may never be the same. Blue with complacency.
For a few moments, I might be yellow. Yellow when I’m happy. Yellow when I’m with my loved ones and we’re talking about our hopes and dreams and what to do with our one wild and precious life. Yellow when I laugh. Yellow when I smile. Yellow when I think about the future I want to create for generations to come.
At times, I become red. Red with the passion that wants to make a change. Red with the anger of what is in our world. Red with defiance and rage and all that is wrong.
Some days, my emotions become black. Black for fear. Black for shame, for everything that I have ever done wrong. Black for guilt and regret. Black for words I can’t swallow and actions I can’t reverse.
These days, I’m mostly gray, because gray is what you get when you mix it all together. Gray for all the days and weeks meshing together. Gray like dusk. Gray before the day begins again.
Betsy Poos
Location: Washington, D.C.
About: I chose to throw away each entry as soon as I'd put my pen down daily throughout the 100 days so I don't have individual entries to submit here. This submission is my public blog post that speaks to the overall isolation journal journey and specifically to the closing day 100 entry. I was inspired to share the cycle of each day from my perspective as mom to two young children during this time of covid-19.
Age: 42
I’ve reached the end of The Isolation Journals project. Day 100. I joined this project on a whim. One of my favorite artists, Maggie Rogers, had posted about it on social media. At the time it was a one-month endeavor to keep the creative mind active during quarantine. Suleika Jaouad is the creator. Each morning for the past 100 days I woke up with an email from Suleika in conversation with someone that had touched her life. That person would then more directly address a story and writing prompt for the day. I’ve loved taking part in this project.
As quarantine continued, so did the prompts. The community of journalers grew to almost 100,000 across the globe. I’ve been an avid journaler for as long as I can remember. It is an important piece of my life and knowing that so many people were doing the same thing, though in our 100,000 unique ways has inspired me each day as I write.
I have sat with every single prompt. I have written about 90 of the entries. There were a few that just didn’t land or a topic I wasn’t ready for that day and I’d free write instead. And I didn’t always write daily, though mostly I did. Earlier this week I’d let the days slip by and then I took more than an hour in one sitting to write six journals.
Today we reach 100, the completion of the project (though Suleika promises to keep the group going with weekly ongoing prompts)! Today’s prompt asks me to look at my emotional palette, to name each color. It asks to examine the hues and the shades as they change throughout the course of a day.
I am a sensitive soul. My colors bleed all over the place with my tears a lot. I’ve learned over my lifetime how to lessen the intensity of my emotions a bit, how to shade and sometimes lessen the vibrancy of my palette in the course of a day. That may sound a little sad at first, but it’s an important balance for my well being. I recognize that ebbs and flows of emotional intensity are not only necessary, but also good.
I am a true introvert and enjoy a subdued palette of cool blues and greens and pastel yellows and pinks during most of the day. I need that for balance and security. I keep my head down and lean into quiet, kindness and simplicity in these hours. I’m parenting my young daughters all day and this palette works best. Right now there is so, so much inner and outer turmoil in my life that bring out the primal fire of red and orange. I wake up each morning practically on fire with these colors. I’ve embarked on a separate 100-day challenge exactly to match these bright emotional colors with movement and sweat. I’m currently on day 28 of the morning meltdown 100 and the program has helped me immensely to funnel my fire into productive action and mindset. I can’t wait to wake up each morning and tackle the fire.
In the evenings, my creative mind has the opportunity to surge. I start with a clear white canvas. I notice each night I usually have just one color on my palette though. Depending on the day it could be a deep blue symbolizing intellect, a magnificent purple of divine flow, or total icky stinky grey matter. And I don’t mean the pretty, clean grey of the accent wall in your home. I mean the grey of despair and depression (no sugar coating that). The better I match my color profiles during the morning and afternoon, the more likely I get to put the blue or the purple on the paint brush and work my magic. Every day is a blank canvas and I continue to do my best to paint with primary red and orange in the morning and cool pastels during the day so that I can be creative me in the evenings.
Over the course of the isolation journals, I re-learned much. I learned more about my tendencies, my triggers and my sensitivities. I learned how I want to show up in this world. I’m more motivated than ever to show up for others and myself through mindful movement, human rights advocacy, and creative exploration. It’s been a great journey and one that will continue. Thank you to Suleika and the Isolation Journals team. I’ve already pre-ordered your book Between Two Kingdoms and can’t wait to read it in February.
PS – When I started the isolation journals project I decided to throw away each journal as soon as I’d written it. I used a tear away notepad and into the trash it went as soon as I put my pen down. It made me write the truest for each and everyday and I its made me braver to dream big and bigger, to get that blank white canvas space each evening and have the juices to do more than just paint grey. I recommend it, the throwing away, even though I’m a little sad I can’t look back at all the words I put to paper now. Surely I wrote my first memoir in the past 100 days. I guess I’ll have to keep the pages and write an actual book to publish next!
Emma Eckert
Location: Albuquerque, NM
About: Exploring emotions has always been of interest to me. With the gift of time from the slowing down and staying in one place, I've been able to journey even deeper into the shadows of my mind.
Age: 36
The color of my emotions is the color of water. I don’t mean the deep blue of tropical seas, though that is part of it. I mean how water reflects what’s going on around it. Sometimes it reflects the sky, calm and peaceful. Sometimes the water is cloudy or full of debris, and it’s hard to see at all. Sometimes it’s so clear, it doesn’t look like it’s there at all.
In realizing my emotions are a reflection of what is happening in and around myself, it has helped with accepting those emotions, whether I ‘like’ them or not.
It feels like lately I’ve been reflecting a lot of sunsets, fiery and wild, though I know these, too, shall pass, and the calm and clarity of the night sky will soon follow.
Gabriela Matei
Location: Banjul, Gambia
About: Wandering expat currently based in West Africa, working in international development, collecting moments and fridge magnets. Inspired by rare chilly rains, the heaviness of life as I observe it in a least-developed country, and the risks the coronavirus pandemic is posing to the togetherness of this small world of ours.
Age: 37
My new season is daring red with a touch of orange, the colour of neighbouring flamboyant trees in blossom. The background is that limpid, joyful green of nature after the first rains of the year, long awaited when you live slightly above the equator. Every day. Mornings and evenings, from a hopeful afar.
In between, my time is swirling like a smiling rainbow, in my head and reality. It turns stormy dark, it goes deep, it has questions.
Yes, time has colours, even if you can rarely step back to see them. A world upside down allows that for once.
Iris Andrade
Location: Phoenix, AZ
About: Having already been thinking about colors before the post, I got to painting and writing my thoughts out into both text and art forms.
Age: 41
Isobel Copley
Location: Stamford, Lincolnshire, UK
About: This I so enjoyed writing. It seemed to flow and was a chance to reveal a little about my self without being overindulgent or self introspective (very English).
Age: 59
In my dreams I’m a yellow girl. I dance in the sun, I laugh, leap and love. I enter a room and light it up with gaiety and joy. When I’m not there the space is a mere muddle of colour, lines blurring into one another, hues overlapping into grey. I am a catch-me-if-you-can sunbeam; a golden winged dragonfly hovering not landing; a single bright thread through the centre of a multi layered tapestry.
But I can’t dream all the time. Awake I have to admit to pink. Pink is middle ground. It isn’t strong passionate here-I-am red. It isn’t untouchable unsullied and perfect white. No, pink is a blend, it varies in mood and tone. It can be moulded, spun, shaped how you want it. It is a chameleon colour a composite of its component parts.
Yet I carry pink with pride. I am warm. I can whoop, wave and highlight. I can mellow and soothe. I am woman, I am feminine. I can appease, relieve and console. I Am Pink.
Mornings bring the palest most gentle baby shade. Touch me tenderly, let my tone yawn and stretch out. Feed me citrus to sharpen my sense. Turn up the volume gradually and watch my tone intensify. By midmorning I’m positively aglow. My pink is luminous radiance, cerise, flamingo, fuchsia. I am the petals of the brightest rose in sunshine. I smile at you and you smile back.
By afternoon I ripen. The rose is wide open, tipped back to yawn in the sun. My pink is full flavoured with hints of cherry blossom. I blush and nod. I am raspberry, cherry and lipstick. I am cured matured and sweet. Sit with me and just be. No need to talk. Share the calm.
Shake the stalk of the rose and my petals will fall silently. You won’t hear them scream. You’ll barely notice them go. I might have been whole but when the wind blows petals slip away. Pink doesn’t do fuss. It doesn’t often stamp its feet or butt in. Petals hurt when they fall but do you hear them cry? Do you stay around to find out?
Evening brings blush. The orange of the late sun casts a seasoned shade. I am closest to precious. Held gently you still see my delicate shade. You’ll find me in your glass of Spanish rose’ or the very tip of the sunset. I am ruby, full flavoured maroon. I can commune and smooth. I am warm.
I am pink. I am woman and I am content.
Janna Schledorn
Location: Melbourne, Florida
About: Prompt #5 occurred on Palm Sunday, a religious observance I have always enjoyed, and I sat on my porch looking out the window as the prompt suggested. My daughter, Greta, introduced me to the Isolation Journal Project, and Prompt #27 introduced me to the idea of liminal space, which I have only just begun to ponder (and prompted me to buy and read Jordan Kisner's book). Prompt #100 helped me process some of the uglier emotions I have been feeling.
Age: 58
Emotional Palette
I wake to yellow smog, tangled in dead-vine brown. Open the window to fading peach, flickering rose and gold, an occasional splatter of iris. Trudge through puke green and dried-blood red. Wash off in beige. Wrap in a heavy midnight blue with one silver thread. Almost drowning in this blue. Then grey curls up next to me and purrs.
Kateri Kramer
Location: Denver, CO
About: As a hybrid nonfiction writer and illustrator, I'm always trying to find ways to marry the two art forms. This was the perfect opportunity to do that. I'd been in the process of studying color theory for a few weeks, but this gave me a much more personal way into our emotional attachment (subconscious or conscious) with particular hues.
Age: 28
Katie Wesolek
Location: Nashville, TN
Age: 35
Will it be a Rothko day or a Mondrian day?
Yes, that's what I ask myself each morning as I get out of bed. Consciously. Aloud.
And then I get a whiffle ball bat, stand it on the floor and place my forehead on the handle, spin around a few times, close my eyes, and stagger towards the wall. Whichever art.com reproduction I slam into dictates my emotional spectrum for the day.
No, I kid. But if I was serious, would you actually be surprised? I do a lot of weird shit, why shouldn't that be part of it?
Anyway, that should give you a sense of the emotional range I'm working with here. Some days are more colorful and clearly delineated than others, but the palette is always somewhat limited.
A Mondrian day might go something like this: I get out of bed feeling pretty good, so maybe a yellow square. Then I walk the dog and he has a terrifying outburst when another human enters the stairwell or a mail truck drives by on the street and because I'm PMS'ing, I just can't even. Red square.
After the walk is out of the way, I pass through several flat white squares where I'm going through the motions of the day with a neutral affect. Then I start thinking about what a skidmark the world is at the moment and get lost in a boundless blue square. Eventually, maybe the cat does something hilarious or I make a really bitchin' peanut butter and apple sammich for lunch, and I find myself in a blip of yellow square. After that, it's back to flat white until something external provokes me.
A Rothko day goes like this: We both slept poorly, and wake up more tired than when we went to bed. I get up, but only because I'm tired of staring at the ceiling and I'm starving and the dog needs to go out. I drag myself through the motions of life, slogging through a vast, muted gray swath. We don't exchange more than two words all day. Charlie acts like a dick on his walk, and I can tell that Andy is pissed about whatever sad attempt I've made at putting dinner on the table. I slip into black.
I get in bed at 8:00 and read until I fall asleep with a book on my face, and have night terrors of a Heironymus Bosch palette (the 3rd panel of The Garden of Earthly Delights - I hate to be that guy, but if you haven't seen it in person, you haven't really seen it. Sweet Jesus it's disturbing.)
Leah Langley
Location: England, United Kingdom
About: I wanted to write a fun entry for the 100 Day mark. I imagined what emotion, or characteristic, I’d associate with each colour, and then decided to put them into a fun poem.
Age: 22
I’m purple when I’m happy,
I’m blue when I’m sad,
I’m orange when I’m scrappy,
I’m red when I’m mad.
I’m yellow when I’m mellow,
I’m green when I’m alive,
I’m pink when I bellow,
I’m gold when I thrive.
I’m grey when I’m foggy,
I’m black when I’m lost,
I’m white when I’m stroppy,
I’m silver like frost.
I’m a beautiful mix,
Of all my colours combined,
With a couple of brush flicks,
I appear refined.
Lorelle Mariel Murzello
Location: Mumbai, India
About: My name is Lorelle- I am a Teacher-educator, researcher and writer from Mumbai, India. The Isolation Journals was this little window into my soul and helped me understand the (crazy!) world and my role in it through writing!
Age: 25
Hope with color
If I wanted to paint a sky
That’s calm, happy but silent
I’d mix red and blue
To make violet
And if my skies looked grey
And it made me feel blue
I’ll add in a little yellow
Until there’s a bright view
And if red filled my soul
With anger I cannot hold
I’ll throw in some white
Pink will help me brave the cold
When black’s the only color
That the world has left
I’ll source some glitter
And let the stars be my guest
Lynn Soreghan
Location: Oklahoma
About: I am a professor of geology who studies climate in deep time. My inspiration was my son's texts, as described in the post, within the context of the prompt's focus on emotional palettes.
Age: 56
I think the disorienting malaise imposed by these pandemic times is widely shared. My son occupies the liminal state between his senior year of high school and freshman year of college— both now heavily compromised by pandemic-imposed “distance” learning. So, rather than readying for a move to the dorms, we’re engaged in painting and renovating his upstairs bedroom, in an attempt to mark the transition.
Yesterday, I sent Nick off, mask-clad, to retrieve yet another color sample, following on the no-less-than-dozen samplers we’ve tried to date. But this one for the alcove of a gabled dormer, which we hoped to paint in a highlight hue to compliment the lovely green “Back to Nature” color chosen (after numerous attempts) for the rest of the room. After several false starts, we landed on one called “Climate Change”— and I really don’t know how to feel about a color named after the biggest existential crisis the (human) world has ever faced. And after trying it on for real, and standing back to survey the results, I found it a bit too sickly white. Perhaps I could have predicted that— funny but true— that it carried a slightly glaucous cast that I found, well lacking, really. Then I became distracted (a pandemic routine), and Googled “How are paint colors named” and hit on “whatever the color sparks in our mind.” So now I’m feeling better about the idea that a paint color that I found sickly white, and “lacking” was named “Climate Change.” Maybe those paint-naming people are onto something.
But it definitely means it’s OUT for the dormer alcove.
So where was I? Nick at the paint store, and I’d told him which color to try next, and had given him the chip but he didn’t take it with him— relying instead on his youthful recall, and he should have recalled that he has MY genes of perhaps 30% recall, so he texted “I got Camel Wick.” And I immediately replied with “WTH is ‘Camel Wick’?!” Because, what color would “Camel Wick” BE? And I suggested in my subsequent text that perhaps it was “Camel WHIP” but then quickly realized that sounded too sad for a paint name, and definitely not a color someone as sensitive and earnest as Nick would choose.
So then a new idea popped into my head: that maybe it was “Camel Whip” as in a type of caramel-flavored dessert— a WHIPPED dessert. But would the name evoke the glorious image of a whipped dessert or the violent one of a whipped beast? The ambiguity was overwhelming, so I decided it must be a different name.
And it was. “Candle Wick.” Yes. That’s it. And that makes sense and hopefully is what will look better than Climate Change. Candle Wick evokes thoughts of a comfortable glow— a glimmer, a hope. Yes. That’s what we need about now.
Paola Piccioli
Location: Los Angeles
About: These prompts have been one of the rituals that kept me grounded and loved during this pandemic, and I thank you immensely for giving me an outlet to cry out loud, and a beloved certainty, again, a ritual. The most common inspiration are the people I love. I have been blessed with many of them filling my life with chaos and joy.
Age: 32
The sudden change of my moods and feelings, the velocity with whom the whole perspective on life, on my own existence, would change, used to scare me. I had been confused. As every emotion stabbing my body always felt so overbearing, charged with an element of physical pain and weight, I thought I had to honor those feelings by giving them importance, and treating them as special. Surely, if they possessed me so ardently, it should mean that they were there to tell me something, teach me something, reveal something to me? Surely, I needed to be worried, elated, to reflect upon the enormity of my mood swings?
It turned out feelings are just feelings. I sometimes suddenly feel so overwhelmed with terror, I can only lie in bed with my eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling, until it’s gone. I can’t talk or be touched. Every inch of determination is focused on existing, on breathing. And yet, as quickly as it dawns on me, it will swiftly be gone with no logical explanation. The same with the waves of pain, of joy.
During lockdown, I found out new tricks about breathing through the terror that burst into my chest so rapidly and painfully, mostly with no logical explanation. First of all, the certainty that what feels hopeless today, is going to feel perfectly fine tomorrow – or in a month, or in a year – is a fact that I have scientifically observed in me, almost with detachment, and it gifts me the strength to exhale through panic. It’s just great to know it is not going to last. The same event or fact, is going to feel and look completely different, all of a sudden. The new lockdown mantra I developed is: “Just because I feel like this, it doesn’t mean it’s true”. For example: just because I feel there’s no solution and I am doomed, it doesn’t mean it’s true. It is not a fact. It is just how I see it right now. Just because I feel unworthy, it doesn’t mean it’s true. Just because I feel trapped, it doesn’t mean I don’t have a thousand exit doors in front of my eyes that are just out of my sight at this moment. That gave me hope, and made me more delicate with myself, softer. I have noticed tiny things can help me endure the depth of my unconceivable terror or pain: I just need one thing of beauty or safety to keep me anchored to life. The other day I was paralyzed by duties, responsibilities, money issues. I changed the sheets of my bed. Every time I entered the room, in the darkness of my thoughts, I would see my freshly changed sheets, and felt I had something to rely on, something that grounded me in reality. I can alter a moment by focusing on an object that makes sense to me. Just a little thing at the time.
Ryan Chepita
Location: Ottawa, ON, Canada
About: I am so grateful. Writing in this beautiful community feels like I have unlocked long-dormant treasures within me, or unearthed a treasure chest in the forest. The Isolation Journals have not just helped me to stay afloat in this era; it has helped me to thrive.
Age: 42
Though I've navigated 2020's drab hues with ease, the gaudy extremes threatened to undo me from both sides of the window.
They tried to prod and reduce me to red, but I'm a rainbow. Most of us are when we're awake.
Their assault, simultaneously serving as icy water and fire, backfired.
So I sought the greens of trees, best seen amid still, pure, shady forests.
I embraced my natural hue of blue for its sadness, coolness and depth. Under blue's soothing glow, I'm confident and never alone; full of and lost for words.
We're all prisms, choosing colours to disperse.
Stephanie Pizarro
Location: Bogotá
About: The doors that have opened for me as a result of the introspection that took place during the Covid isolation.
Age: 39
Terry Jago
Location: Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada
About: Retired nurse manager, amateur writer, and photographer. Inspired by 100 days of Journalling
Age: 69
The canvas I see today is in the journey of 100 days. My crayon box carries a series of emotions that changed me and challenged me.
I ventured out on a 30-day journey of writing to a prompt that would come in our mailbox daily.
Colour me cautious
I joined the Facebook group, and although I put much of my writings on a public blog it was nerve-racking to think of posting my answer to the prompt there. I read some of the posts before me and said to myself and to others “These are real writers!”
Colour me hesitant
I posted my first blog post and people commented on it and seemed to see me!
Colour me encouraged
We wrote of feelings of isolation, the views out our windows, nature, and feelings of
Colour me connected
We wrote forged letters, letters to strangers, to the editor to a postman, to a prisoner, and to an elder. We wrote letters from a different voice, and letters to ourselves. Some we mailed, most we just put on the page for others to see.
Colour me challenged.
We faced our own mortality in writing a letter from a fire.
Colour me humbled.
We wrote poetry, drew giraffes, and drew in the margins.
Colour me insecure.
I learned of the grief of fellow widows, who though each of us have a different story, the one thing in common – the love of a partner. We learned of grief and loss from many voices, grief after the loss of a parent, or both parents, a child, or a good friend. We learned of grief when a diagnosis is proclaimed on our family or ourselves. I heard many stories that were hard to read.
Colour me crying.
I read of relationships with parents – moms and dads, steps and fosters – the good, the bad and the ugly.
Colour me envious, and thankful.
I read of lives in faraway countries, and various parts of Canada and the USA.
Colour me informed.
I read of houses, and rooms and chairs (Oh especially chairs) that have inspired, comforted and held my fellow writers.
Colour me warmed.
Some showed us paintings they painted, songs they wrote, music they produced, and photographs they took. One even wrote music for someone else’s song.
Colour me in awe.
We read of travel, of loves, of sexual encounters, of drugs and alcohol, of lives changed, of frustrated love, and regrets.
Colour me engaged.
We saw hearts and lives opened in the “If you really knew me” prompt. We saw rawness and beauty and real life all laid bare.
Colour me honoured
We wrote of challenges with mental health, of abuse, of cancer journeys, health journeys, and so much more. We heard of racial injustice, racist attitudes and motivations to change. We reeled from injustices in the news and our own lives.
Colour me motivated.
We wrote in under 100 words, and thousands of words. We wrote stories, and essays, got political and explored faith. We wrote in journals, on computers, in pictures and on scraps of paper. We wrote from favourite chairs, beds, porches and nature’s beauty.
Colour me applauding.
We were writers of future books, past books and imminent books.
Colour me envious.
We stood in awe of Suleika Jaouad who faithfully sent us an email every day with a prompt from a writer, singer, or a friend. This woman and her many wonderful friends, without reimbursement, kept on amazing us.
Colour me thankful
But mostly we supported, we encouraged, we counselled, and we empathized. We got to know each other and become friends. Soon we knew the writing of one another without seeing the writers name. We read, we commented, we worried about each other and loved. We teared up, we sobbed, we rejoiced, and we laughed. In 100 days, we learned more about each other than many of our friends know.
Colour me enriched.