Colouring outside the lines
When our children were young, my husband, Michael, had one strict rule. No colouring books!
He was adamant that their creative expression not be confined within the “lines” of pictures conceived and drawn by someone else.
While this might seem like a small thing, it’s actually a big thing.
It’s how my beloved has lived his entire. And it’s rubbed off.
Both of our children are wildly creative, much like their dad.
Our eldest, Everette, is a fashion designer who is constantly creating outside the usual boxes and trends of the fashion industry with their Gurlie Guy brand. Our son, Ren, is deeply immersed in live action animation and other more quietly creative pursuits.
My hub and I have been together for over 30 years, yet I never thought about this a lot. That’s until recently when the prompt “colouring outside the lines” came up on the writing wheel my Story Republic buddy Michael Averill spins each week for our “Workout Wednesdays – Live Telling” sessions.
When it was my turn, I leaned in. I relayed the coloring book story but also how everything I’ve done during my lifetime partnership with my beloved has been “outside the lines”. I didn’t always go willingly, and I look back on that with some regrets. When I insisted we follow the rules set by “the man” as my husband often disparages, things haven’t always turned out as good as when we have strayed into more unchartered territory instead.
I now see why.
Those other paths – let’s call them lines in the sand – were forged by someone else.
This includes some demanding, often soul-sucking corporate jobs I thought I had to stay in, and the rules society dictated on how we should educate and raise our children. My husband regularly bristled against much of this. I tried to follow these doctrines, but deep down, he knew I needed to break free of these confines as well.
The day he called me at my desk and told me he’d just got a large contract that would enable me to quit the corporate job and start my freelance writing business, I put my head down and cried. Yep, right there during office hours with my co-workers just a cubicle away.
It was the first day I stepped outside the rigid lines that had been drawn for me by myself and others.
I have never looked back. Despite some nervous hesitation, I trusted Michael implicitly that this would all work out.
Not long on the heels of this momentous day, I agreed to follow Mike, along with our young children and dog, to the wilds of northwestern Ontario, where he’d grown up. For 20 plus years this would be to a back country adventure where he introduced us to all the joys of his youth—fishing, boating, breaking trails in an unchartered forest, picking wildflowers and berries, making way for the wildlife that often visited, and building our cottage one reclaimed piece of wood and shingle at a time.
No electricity for much of this time meant less distractions for creative pursuits and connection to the fascinating world around us.
Mike’s brain worked overtime recognizing opportunities to get it all done while stretching our limited funds as far as possible. During that time, we both worked as freelancers with no job security and two mortgages.
After some time, we affectionally named our retreat “The call of nature.” We enjoyed our very private bit of wilderness with its frequent wildlife—otters, beavers, spawning fish, feasting eagles, ducks, geese, deer, bear, muskrats, bats, a moose and my favourite, many grey herons. Our quiet bay is very shallow producing a vast field of wild rice when the water levels remain low.
We have an organic garden, we compost, we fish within our limits and do everything we can to uphold the natural beauty and sustainability of our riverfront paradise and community. It’s the least we can do for all it’s given us.
We loved what we built off the grid and out of the prying eyes of neighbours so much, we decided to relocate from our comfortable, urban home of 25 years. We moved here permanently in 2017 once both our children had graduated from high school and were somewhat independent. It wasn’t an easy decision.
I worried that removing the security of my children’s lifetime home would make them feel less safe in the world. But the crippling debt of a city home and country cottage was literally killing us, and some sacrifices had to be made. I found the courage to hurl “the man” off my back.
With this weight lifted, we all became more bold and less afraid.
The call of nature is now the one we all answer to. It brings both Ev and Ren home regularly and it’s what Michael and I live by every day.
I have often said that I’m quite fearful, but living here in the wilds doesn’t really give me time for that. When I step outside my door, I always pause and cast my eyes about to see if a bear might have wandered into my garden, or a wolf is crossing the bay just past our shoreline.
My organic garden is a labour of love that I grow entirely from seeds out of my greenhouse. This means I start trudging through knee deep snow in the late February early March to tend to my emerging buds.
We heat our home with a wood stove and draw our water from the river. Both fail occasionally leaving us at the mercy of the elements and our own inventiveness, resilience, and creative “workarounds”.
All of this requires a level of fearlessness I often forget I have.
And it keeps giving back. My partner’s resistance to colouring in other people’s lines has spurred on something adventurous I never thought I could do.
In the coming months, I am launching a self-published, illustrated (by Everette) poetry collection, Somewhere Home. Living a non-linear life is definitely one of the main inspirations in the collection.
In my poems, I take readers along with me through the discoveries I’ve made living alongside a vast forest on the shores of an endless river, away from family and many of my lifelong friends, and near a very closely-knit community that I’ve found somewhat hard to “fit” into.
This journey includes hikes into the untamed forest with only the birds for company, on gentle paddles through known and unknown waters, and on watchful walks through urban streets in our nearby town. In all of this, I share my observations of the contradictions, parallels and answers to the elusive question, “where is home?”
I’m a new poet. Who am I to think I can publish this?
A writer friend of mine, Dan, recently shared this: “We talk about the voice of doubt and fear-of-failure that can defeat us. How important it is to wake up to it. Recognize it. And then to understand that we have another voice in there to counter it.”
He nailed it.
I credit my life “outside the lines” for giving me that other voice—The one that doesn’t answer to anyone but me and perhaps the glorious mother trees and birds outside my window.
It also helps that I’ve found my people.
My co-writing friends in The Story Republic, my beta readers, my editors, and most importantly, my family are all pushing me past these fears.
I wouldn’t have the courage to do this without all of them.
I’ve learned that finding your people is especially important when living a life “outside the lines.” It’s good to know someone has your back.
I’ve struggled with this. Looked for those people in the wrong places on occasion. But increasingly, by leaning into my fears and asking for help when I need it, I’m finding them. And they are finding me.
Living, colouring, and just plain existing outside the lines is a weird and wonderful place—you don’t want to go it alone.
I hope to see you there.
I enjoyed learning more about the life you've drawn outside the lines.