Photo by Adam C. Smith

I didn’t know exactly what to expect of Healing Hamlet, but I did understand the value of art and healing in my own life.  This project has always felt bigger than me, because it is. 

Seventeen months ago, Healing Hamlet launched with its first post: an interview of my very talented artist friend, Staci Thompson Adman.  But the idea for this blog surfaced months before then, sprung from life events that had shaped the preceding years.  Thoughts became plans and plans turned into lists, outlines and sketches of web pages.  I took web design courses so that I could dive into the HTML entrails of my WordPress theme.  Long hours were spent in the soft glow of my laptop screen, tweaking and revising, changing and modifying.  After a few what happens if I do this…, several oopsies, and a couple omigod- I’ve ruined everything, I massaged the thing into a format somewhat resembling my original vision.  Now the real fun could begin: the search for content.

Staci was gracious enough to grant me an interview.  In her studio, I watched her create beautiful glass beads while I learned about the role of art in her life.  Later, when the post was complete, I hit publish with a slightly shaky hand and sent a link to all my email contacts and Facebook friends.  Then I took myself to the theater to watch Life of Pi (an amazing movie, btw) so that I wouldn’t be staring at my website counter for the next three hours.

I didn’t know exactly what to expect of Healing Hamlet, but I did understand the value of art and healing in my own life.  This project has always felt bigger than me, because it is.  When you create a platform where artists can gather, you meet the painter shaped by the labor camps of China; the geophysicist whose first novel won the Bellwether Prize for Fiction, the gifted songwriter from Ottawa who showed us how to stand up for ourselves; a Pakistani woman who creates art for social change; the man who sculpts snowy landscapes; the musician/songwriter who knew all The Doors lyrics by the age of 2; the writer who weaves her novels through patterns and verse; the father of the spiral-horned, winged cheetalope; and the teen who left us with the lasting gift of music.

I made a point to post regularly.  Since I didn’t receive the submissions I had hoped for, it became a treasure hunt: seeking out contacts and following internet threads.  Every single painting, sculpture, poem, quote, book, song, story, interview and photo that I shared was like a gem to me.  Creative Commons opened up an amazing world of gorgeous photographs.  I used these to accompany written works while giving credit to the photographer.  Each post was a small gift that fed my soul and gave me joy.  I’m continually amazed that there is so much beauty and wisdom just within our grasp.

Now that the days are turning warmer and (hopefully) sunnier, it’s with mixed feelings that I’ve decided to take a sabbatical from Healing Hamlet. Instead of sitting in front of the computer screen working on this website, I’m going to be sitting in front of the computer screen working on my book.  (And you thought I was going to say I’d be out in the sun soaking in some much needed Vitamin D!)  I still plan to post the occasional story or interview, so be sure to “like” the Healing Hamlet Facebook Page to stay updated.

Healing Hamlet has given me a space to find healing through art.  I’m grateful to all who have shared the journey with me thus far: the talented artists, musicians, writers and photographers; the Healing Hamlet followers and Facebook friends.  As always, your comments are welcome!

I’ll leave you with a few remarks by some of Healing Hamlet’s contributors.

Thank you!  It’s been a great ride!

-Anita

I’d be happy to have my writing on your blog. As an actress and writer with a disability I think healing and the arts is a very interesting focus. –Katie Calahan, www.disabledmom.com

Your blog is wonderful, thank you for sharing it with us. –Emily Randall, Playingforchange.org

I believe very strongly in what you are doing and in the power of the arts to heal. –Naomi Benaron, Naomibenaron.com

I’d be honored to have an excerpt featured on your blog! It felt so cathartic breaking up with ‘Worry’. Personifying these crippling emotions can lead to healing, even if it’s in small doses. –Anka, Goldenstateofgrind.com

What an amazing site, thank you for including us! –Mike Notter, Hannaleesong.com

Thank you so much, art therapy is a beautiful thing. –Liese Chavez, Liesechavez.com

I have been enjoying reading your blog since your first note.  You provide such lovely food for thought! –Aisling, Quietcountryhouse.blogspot.com

I’d be delighted for an excerpt of ‘Robbed’ to appear on your blog. I’ve had a look at it and it is a truly lovely collection of things.  I think proper curatorship on the internet is rare, and Healing Hamlet is a marvelous achievement. –Xtin, Xtinpore.blogspot.com

I think you’re doing something extraordinary and necessary. –Peter Goetzinger, Artistbrothers.com

The mission of your blog is fantastic. Just beautiful. –Lauren Roedy Vaughn, Laurenroedyvaughn.com

Deeply grateful to be featured here in this healing place….we are all in need of that. I love to write, it is a pleasure for me, that I haven’t afforded myself in months. Knowing my stories are considered a healing thing…..well, that makes a world of difference. –Jennifer Valentine, Sacredcake.blogspot.com

The post Sabbatical appeared first on Healing Hamlet.

Photo by Adrian Mathurin

When Mr. Sulaiman from Jordan play he pipe and the band join in – two musicians from Liverpool, a’ Egyptian beatin’ drums with he hands, a German drummer, and a German guitarist – I thought about children in a’ open-land, running wild and free.

Me an’ Bhoy, assistant to Fazal (gardener-tree-trimmer-grass-cutter), examine the ground.  Every crack was a thirsty mouth.

“Look, eh, you would never think so much rain did fall…” Bhoy say in he slow-w-w-w way.

“Yeah, four an’ a half months o’ rain and now look!”

Fazal say he does have to finish work soon before the sun blister he.

Every day, the heat rise, if you coulda hear it, you woulda hear a scream in the sky, I swear.

I don’t know if it was the heat or me, but I been feeling like a desert too.  All me words been panting like them flowers, h-h-h-h.

Read the full post on Guyana Gyal’s Blog

The post When Sami Yusuf Came to Town appeared first on Healing Hamlet.

Photo by Enokson

 

 

She was almost past our house when she suddenly stopped and stared. Her eyes widened, her mouth dropped open, and as she moved towards our table of rejects, I could see the longing in her eyes.

 

 

My mother had a keen wit, a love of good books, reading, languages, and life-long learning, and a generally impeccable sense of justice. She had a number of faults too of course, and one of them was a perverse talent for unwittingly picking the last thing in the world you would want as a gift. Having grown up in the age before plastics were widely used, my mother never got over her fascination for Mellmac, Tupperware, and just about any other plastic product you could mention. “It never wears out!” she used to say, when I expressed my loathing for polyester. “You can drop it and it won’t chip or break,” she would say when I longed to eat off china instead of Tupperware. “Termites can’t eat it!” was her standard line when I wondered why we couldn’t buy more furniture made of wood. Over the years, she never quite learned what I liked, so I accumulated a collection of things I could never use or develop an aesthetic appreciation for.

Read the full post at ResidentAlien

The post White Elephants, Orange Plastic Cats appeared first on Healing Hamlet.

Photo by Tim Samoff

And another thing: Stop turning to face and talk to each other when one of you is driving. Keep your eyes on the road.

I have no reasons to despair. I don’t even have any problems, at least no serious ones. I am presently not afraid of death despite the fact that soon enough I will be – again. As it happens every so often.

I worry, obviously. It’s a habit, a game. I can get myself deep deep into worry. Like having a bath. Almost enjoyable but too hot and hard to get out of.

Read the full post at Interim Arrangements

The post I Have No Reasons to Despair appeared first on Healing Hamlet.

Photo by Jonathon

A pause, while the sun gathers her courage to climb up over the hill. She’s packed her lunch and taken her meds, and she has her to-do list sketched out, but there’s always that little pause before throwing herself into the day.

God knows what all these things mean to all these people: we know so little, and we try so hard. Scuff and a pebble skits right over the edge, and falls without a sound. Good night! Good night! Dream of ragged ships coming in over the bar; dream of cinnamon and sunlight; dream of wet shirts laid out on the rocks to dry. More things are in play than ever we imagined: of that, at least, I’m sure.

Read the full post on Mole

Dale Favier works as a Licensed Massage Therapist and has written two books of poetry: Opening the World and Not Coming Back

The post While the Sun Checks her Make-Up appeared first on Healing Hamlet.

Photo by Louise Docker

We work, drive kids around, fix dinners, do laundry, care for aging parents, make time for spouses, volunteer, nurture and create.  How often do we step back and say, “I made a difference today.  The world is a better place because of me.”?

Some years ago I was in the check out aisle of a Target store and spotted a box of Barbie Valentines on sale.  Thirty two valentines for ten cents!  I had no idea why, but I had to buy them.  Several months later I would rediscover them in a cupboard, just in time for Valentine’s Day.  Valentine, you’re styling!, You sparkle, Valentine!  Valentine, U R Cool!  I laughed out loud as I signed my name beside the corny lines.  Barbie grinned back through her painted smile, holding her head erect to keep her tiara in place.  I could have sworn I saw her wink at me.  She was in on the joke.

I mailed the valentines to a long list of women: sisters and cousins, old neighbors, childhood friends and girlfriends from high school and college.  I saw their faces as I waded into memories drenched in laughter, love and drama.  A few days later, the phone calls, letters and emails started coming.  I heard voices I hadn’t heard for years, saw the carefully rounded handwriting I remembered from notes slipped to me in Algebra class, and felt my spirits rise along with the names in my inbox.  One by one, the women from my past resurfaced.  It was Christmas in February!

Last weekend my younger sister chose to celebrate her birthday with the people who have known and loved her the longest: her sisters.  The three of us braved the snowy roads for 2 glorious days of sisterhood.  We shared memories, a warm fire and chocolate (of course).  We set out a glass of wine for the missing fourth sister.  “I am never more comfortable than in your presence,” she had said before she left us.  So true.

A few nights ago I was fortunate enough to share an evening with eight amazing women.  We stormed the local restaurant, calling ourselves the Ladies Lemon Drop Society.  The air filled with our stories, humor and kinship as we sipped our sugar rimmed martini glasses or drank tall lemonades.  I looked around the table and saw the biologist, the artist, the paralegal, the teacher and the musician.  There was the woman who can make a beaded necklace from recycled beer bottles, the mother who composed original music for the school orchestra, the scientist working on a cure for cancer, and the neighbor who single handedly installed a new toilet.  We know how to advocate for kids, fight for the environment, make an impressive Chilean cake, get pet stains off the carpet and raise chickens.  Put us all together, and there isn’t much we can’t accomplish.

And yet, are any of us ever satisfied with what we have achieved?  We work, drive kids around, fix dinners, do laundry, care for aging parents, make time for spouses, volunteer, nurture and create.  How often do we step back and say, “I made a difference today.  The world is a better place because of me.”?

This Valentine’s Day, I want to say thank you to all the women in my life.  Because who embodies love more than the sisters, daughters and mothers?

To me, you are the face of love.

Thank you for making every day Valentine’s Day.

More posts by Anita Sheridan Price

The post To the Women in my Life on Valentine’s Day appeared first on Healing Hamlet.

European Robin Photo by Jean-Jacques Boujot

I’d never really believed we could find one at all, these clever, teddy-eyed, bauble-shaped puffs of feathers with red dickies that stood on snowy festive fence-posts and showed Mary the key to the secret garden.

I came to England and suddenly it was all about the birds.

That can’t be all, surely? That can’t be everything there is to say about that? What happened? Was it the breakfasting thrush? Maybe I was just lonely and far from home and people were scary and had closed faces and walked purposively up and down streets I kept getting lost on. Maybe the birds were alive and warm and near and comprehensible and everything else was far and cold and obscure and spoke RP. Or maybe it was that through-the-looking-glass thing. English birds were all story-told, imaginary creatures, except they weren’t. Nightingales. Barn owls. Kingfishers. Woodpeckers, like in the cartoons, everywhere except where I lived. Ducks that actually looked like the decoys. Robins, like on Christmas cards! What if I could find a robin! They lived here.

Read the full post at Xtinpore

Find Xtin on Twitter

The post Robbed appeared first on Healing Hamlet.

Photo by Nicholas A. Tonelli

He grinned and began throwing the chunks of ice. They smashed against the rock with a satisfying sound that echoed throughout the valley. After a few minutes, I took a second pair of gloves out of my camera bag and joined him…

“Maybe you can help him look at this,” Biker Boy’s foster mother said, handing me a photo album. “It’s making him anxious.”

Biker Boy, who had gone running off to find his sneakers, stopped in his tracks.  He didn’t say anything, just turned and looked at me. I knew right away what the book was, and I tucked it into my bag.

“We’ll take a look,” I promised her. Then I looked up at Biker Boy. “But first, let’s go run around outside somewhere. Get your coat.”

Read the rest at Writing as Jo(e) Blog

More about writer and poet Janine Debaise

The post Smashing Ice appeared first on Healing Hamlet.

Photo by Anoldent

I sat there in that corner and watched her and how seamless her process was and how there was an air of play about it and how she didn’t seem to be thinking at all. She was just doing without worrying about the end result. She was loving the process itself.

You meet so many people in a lifetime. Crossing paths for anything from a split second to a few months to eons. If you were to connect the dots, you’d make a thousand constellations– a lifetime of connections. And whether you know it or not, each of these beings of light impart something. A gift, a thought, an inspiration, a lesson (even if it’s a painful one).

Read the full post at Wonderings and Wanderings

The post Zoe appeared first on Healing Hamlet.

Photo by Marian Rainer-Harbach

I felt frustrated for feeling so sad, for not being able to live in the gratitude of it and feel thankful after he died. I wanted to think “thank you, thank you, thank you for that love”…

To me, grief is like a fog. For the past six months, it’s been hard to focus, concentrate, see things in front of me. I would listen to my friends and family talk, and I would hear them, but it was like I was underwater. I can hear you, but there is a roar in my ears, a scrim between us. I am trying to listen, I hope you know I’m trying to listen. I did all the normal things, I went to work, I met friends for dinner, I smiled, and the smiles were genuine, but they were labored, under that thick, blankety fog.

Read the full post at Pop Culture Librarian

The post Lifting appeared first on Healing Hamlet.