A Creative Bent

Joyce Bier, Knotts Berry Farm circ '70s

It was Halloween in the early 70's, I was nine or ten and my best friend Heidi G. invited me to a party. I don't remember when I'd asked permission to go, what I do remember was the day of the party my mom took a pair of white leotards, top and bottoms, and tie-dyed them forest green. She colored and cut leaves from construction paper to affix to the 'stalks' and fashioned a big yellow, tissue paper, flower for my head. By the time my mom was done, I was a sunflower. That's who she was.

I'd love to regale you, dear reader, with warm stories such as this but growing up I felt separate and apart, like Marilyn from the Munsters.  There was a dark side to all of this creativity, and I'm an expert at compartmentalizing. It wasn't until my mom was forty-five, I was twenty-five and a single mother of three children, when that dark side had a name, bipolar disorder.

In the 90's, I moved my family to the bay area, armed myself with my first computer, an eMachine, the internet, and found Patty Duke Austin's book, A Brilliant Madness. I finally began to piece together my personal history.

If you haven't gotten it yet books are my constant companion; they've been my refuge, my safe haven. Even at the point of sitting vigil as my mother lay dying; I allowed myself to be transported from her room at the Brun's House, to a land of furry footed little people, stout and hardy dwarves, elves and their envious oneness with the natural world. My love of reading is just one gift my mother passed on.

I don't know if my mom's creative bent was a byproduct of her illness, what I do know is whether she was; repainting furniture, macraming plant hangers, tie dying clothes, drawing in pastels, stringing sinew over metal hoops to create dreamcatchers, or doing hair, my mom was the epitome of artistic expression.

Maybe my finding the Creative Placemaking whitepaper was kismet. Today, on the eve of my mom's birthday, helping young people express their creative talents feels like the right way to honor her. Maybe by helping others express their potential I can pay tribute to a potential unrealized.