My mom, Sue, was a tortured artist. Throughout her life she tried to soothe herself and fill the empty spaces within by leaning into her creative side, especially painting. I included a few references to her artwork in “Surviving Sue” and wrote about her apology art a few months ago.
Exploring her feelings with paint was a self-care technique for Sue, long before anyone tossed around the term “self-care”. For her, a retreat into whatever makeshift studio she concocted was like crawling into her safe space. Carrying pain of all sorts for most of her life, Sue used her painting interludes, usually in the afternoon, to hide and regroup.
When I’ve described Sue as being one of the loneliest people I’ve ever met, it’s because of this behavior. As much as she could be gregarious and the life of the party – creating sizeable social circles in every town we lived in – it was 90% performance. Performance art, if you will. She embodied what British pediatrician and psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott described this way:
“Artists are people driven by the tension between the desire to communicate and the desire to hide.”
I don’t know if Winnicott’s appraisal is true for all artists, but it was for Sue. She knew how to step into a role and fashion an image, a persona, to open doors and make fast friends. But it was rarely authentic and true. Desperately seeking connection, Sue could be chameleon-like for showtime, suffering the consequences later.
In those post-show moments, Sue would paint, and drink and smoke…in order to refuel, reset. As much as she craved interaction, she was consumed by fear. Worried that she would be rejected and abandoned if she was regarded in full, Sue tried to silence her anxiety and tension with destructive, maladaptive behaviors. In some ways, Sue’s entire life was a twisted game of hide and seek.
Here’s another powerful quote from Winnicott which speaks to Sue’s paradoxical life:
“It is a joy to be hidden, and disaster not to be found.”
Thank you so much for reading. I appreciate your interest and feedback about “Surviving Sue” and I’m so pleased to have great reviews on Amazon and Goodreads…and I welcome more. If you’ve enjoyed the book and my story, please pass along your positivity to a fellow reader. I’m excited by the opportunities to explore book club work – presentations and workshops, too – both virtually and in-person (in the Chicago area). Here’s a snip of my media kit. Please share! (And Julia Preston…one more time. Thank you for your amazing, early review, which I included in the ‘media kit’. Grateful!)
Vicki 😊
Victoria Ponders 
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