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“A balm for the soul”
  review on Goodreads
GOOD PEOPLE Book
upworthy

Sara Zimmerman

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The comic that parents need to see before they embark on Thanksgiving.

"I have a plan, but then real life as a parent happens."

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays.

Though the food is incredible, it’s not the main reason I love this holiday.

I absolutely love Thanksgiving because I get to be with my family, play games, work as a team to make a delicious feast, and reflect upon the things I am grateful for in my life. This vacation time, coupled with fun and my end-of-year gratitude recap, gives me a boost I can use to propel me through the next holiday and into the new year.


Maybe I’m overly optimistic about how the holiday festivities will go, but I always look forward to the potential for these beautiful family moments each and every Thanksgiving.

​Comic by Sara Zimmerman/Unearthed Comics.

The thing I do tend to overlook in my “fantasy of the perfect family Thanksgiving” is that the experience of Thanksgiving as a parent tends to have some unexpected elements that add to the unpredictability of the holiday. This is because though I would love to plan every single moment with how I can possibly prevent dealing with explosive tantrums and insurmountable frustration, I can’t.  

So, as a parent, approaching the uncontrollable events and emotions means being more fluid than runny gravy and dealing with these changes as they occur.

For instance, I always just assume that traveling to see my family will go smoothly, easily, quickly — only to realize that the assumption itself is a delusion. Though sometimes our drive has gone smoothly and we have arrived on time and unscathed, this is not a frequent event.

How it often goes is that we frantically pack and rush to leave only to hit terrible traffic where time and space seem to meld together into a standstill and walking starts to seem like a faster mode of transportation. The slow-moving mass of steel and exhaust starts to feel claustrophobic and, soon, an antsy child erupts. As a parent who has suffered through previous child meltdowns incurred by everything from forgetting toys to being overwhelmed and hungry while traveling, I try to plan for this by packing and overpacking. But it’s always difficult to foresee exactly what my child will be satisfied with and how long the distraction will last.

The same goes for meal and holiday preparation. I have a plan, but then real life as a parent happens.

This means sometimes my adorable little offspring distracts me from staying on task.

​Comic by Sara Zimmerman/Unearthed Comics.

Once the juggling of impeccably timed baking coalesces into a picture-perfect meal, we all sit down with the expectation of relaxing as we calmly eat and express our gratitude. And as a non-parent, dinner seems to align with this expectation in this order: sit down, eat, and then talk over dessert.

However, as a parent, the meal goes just a bit differently and is usually accomplished with more whim than that of drunken fraternity BBQ.

​Comic by Sara Zimmerman/Unearthed Comics.

After dinner, our intention is good: enjoy our chance to be together by playing games and sharing stories.

Yet, usually, that intention gets cut short by a food-induced coma. Then, with full stomachs and heavy eyelids, we pack up game pieces and pile on top of each other to watch a movie.

​Comic by Sara Zimmerman/Unearthed Comics.

All in all, an idealized Thanksgiving is just that: ideals.

The ability to enjoy reality lies behind the intention of the love shared by being together, whether it all works out anything like my strategically fantasized plan or I decide to just wing it, go with the flow, and enjoy reality.

​Comic by Sara Zimmerman/Unearthed Comics.

I love being inspired.

Feeling inspired sends a pulse of golden energy through my body. And with it comes a buzz of flittering excitement.


All images used with permission from Sara Zimmerman at Unearthed Comics.

Like a wave, inspired creative energy brings with it a notion of hope, creativity, optimism, imagination, endless possibilities, and purpose.

Inspiration makes me feel invincible and aligned with my purpose for being on this planet. When I feel inspired, I feel like a superhero.

However, like one of those shady infomercials that promotes an uncomfortable sense of urgency, there is often a sense of timeliness that comes along with my inspiration, as if this creative effort needs to be done now or else I might lose it. Or worse: Someone else might get this idea and publicize it first.

If life went exactly as I wanted it to, I would drop everything and respond to this call of creativity right away.

But often, even when I schedule time to create, it goes less like my ideal situation and a little more like this:

Regardless, my creative drive is so strong that once the distractions are dealt with, I can usually manage to get in a few minutes of creativity.

Like a stubborn dog, inspiration doesn’t always come when I want it to, either.

Sometimes it comes at 3 a.m., rudely waking me from a comfortable slumber with a confused pomp and circumstance.

I toss and turn with thoughts as equally restless as I am, wondering what was so important to steal me from my dreams of gold and glory. After about an hour or so, I may get a hint of something glorious that needs to be manifested into this world.

Or sometimes it will come in the middle of the day, at work, when I really, really, really need to get other projects completed.

But at some point, when inspiration comes knocking at my door so loudly that the only option I have is to answer it, I make time to create — I have to. If not, I get edgy, resentful, and throw some artful adult temper tantrums.

After my pity parties and tantrums subside, I usually allocate some time to create, either after my daughter goes to bed, in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep, or even 15 minutes between projects during the day.

Then, just when all is quiet and in place and nothing else needs my attention and is absolutely perfect — just then when I think all will go my way — just then, my own thoughts can even backfire sometimes.

Instead of optimizing my precious time, I start feeling those waves of guilt that kept me from creating in the first place because I am not sure if I really should create or if I should be a responsible mom/wife/friend/business owner instead.

But, like I said before, if I don’t honor my creative spirit, I get cranky — super cranky.

So I do some self-talk to justify taking a little bit of time during the day for me. And yes, though I still feel some of the guilt when I start creating, it always feels so worth it when I am done.

If my internal judge shows up and decides to start criticizing, saying that what I am making is utter crap (which she does quite often), sometimes I completely embrace it by creating the absolute ugliest thing possible.

I choose the ugliest colors and just go, pushing paint, spreading paint, scraping paint, sometimes even smearing or removing paint. Or if I'm drawing, I work heavily in pencil with that handy kneaded eraser nearby, knowing that in the end, Photoshop can help me remove those little horrors if need be.

When I settle into it, just creating something can help me as a form of meditation.

And no, the initial product is usually nothing I want to show anyone. In fact, it can be terribly embarrassing when someone comes over to see something in this stage.

I used to get worried that people would think my art was crap. And though that is really frightening, I’ve found a lot of freedom in this process. So I push through the fear and embrace that the "ugly" stuff is just a representation of some of my more flavorful parts (like my anger, frustration, etc.), and these layers of "ugly" are just part of this whole process. All I can do now is just accept it.

Perhaps after I get through the layers of psychoanalysis and am able to remove my deep dark issues of unworthiness, abandonment, and repressed anger, my process will go more smoothly.

But for now, this is just one part of my creative process, and it's a part of me. So, as uncomfortable as it is, I usually choose to embrace it and just paint and create. And, despite the icky-ness and frustration, in the end, it feels amazingly freeing. And, though all of those processes seem sometimes so crazy and complex, once in awhile, when I just surrender to the will of the world, the trifecta of a beautiful meeting of time, inspiration, and effort will occur for me.

I don’t know when this trifecta will happen, and I can’t force it. Yet, when it occurs, I feel so blessed, like I have won the lottery.

It may be only five minutes, it may be five hours, but when the three come together: time, inspiration and energy, that is the circumstance where truly insightful creations can be manifested.

I have made it a priority for me to have creation time in my life because creating is a integral part of who I am. But the time I allocate for my inspiration doesn’t always procure masterpieces.

So I have to just take the inspiration when I can and realize that though I have a thousand ideas, some inspiration doesn’t need to be acted on.

I can choose to revel in the yumminess of the times when I can create, free of true judgment of the outcome of the piece and self-criticism, even if it is only three minutes of creation.

When I allow those hints of inspiration to come through, free of all the "shoulds," it is the best feeling in the world.