Happiest When I’m Happying

When I was at art-college I fell in love with the painting ‘Christina’s World’ by American painter Andrew Wyeth. It’s a melancholy painting with a sad story. But it’s beautiful, too. It’s oppressive and claustrophobic, yet when you view it you feel the sensation of the open pasture. You feel trapped and at the same time - almost, free. 

I’ve been thinking about that painting a lot during this lockdown. I’m isolating at home on the Dorset coast with my husband and two children. Life has in many ways remained unchanged from the life I knew pre-pandemic. I’m always at home with my children. I’m always juggling. These things aren’t new to me. 

But I think, perhaps more people are noticing that it’s possible to feel both entrapment and freedom within the same life. Just like the painting I loved at college. And we’re also realising that freedom means uniquely different things to each of us. 

Imagine you’re standing in the middle of a meadow, with nothing but fields as far as the eye can see. To some of us, that sounds like total, blissful freedom. But others in the same situation may feel overwhelmed and lost.

The first time I walked across town alone, two weeks after giving birth to my daughter (who I’d left in a café with my mum). That felt like total freedom to me. I felt it in every part of my body. Yet, as a twenty-something, taking a flight alone to the other side of the world, to escape feeling in love with a boy (who didn’t love me) - I’ve never felt so trapped. I should have felt free as a bird, flying over the ocean, but it just didn’t work.

My point is, I guess, that having a sense of freedom is important to me. But equally, I don’t like feeling lost. Starting my pressed wild flower business Wilder & Wren helped me find that sweet spot. 

I founded Wilder & Wren when my son Wilder was a newborn. Wilder was a spring baby, and sometimes I wonder whether I’d have created a pressed wildflower business if he had been born in midwinter. It was (excuse the pun) such an organic process. 

I was feeling more lost and less free than I’ve ever felt. Those of you who have had a baby will know you that in those newborn weeks it’s common to feel feel blissfully happy and completely petrified, both at the same time. Wilder had been born with a brain injury after suffering a stroke at birth. We both had trauma to process. I walked for miles and miles everyday with the pram. I’d gather my thoughts while gathering and pressing wild flowers as a sort of ritual. I suppose I was creating these rituals and routines to try and slot myself back into my own sort of new normal, in the gentlest, quietest way.  

I’m sure the walking helped.  And having a focus on doing, of creating, kept me present.  I tried my best to appreciate the time I had with my newborn and to avoid feeling guilt and regret about the past and unease and fear of the future - of how Wilder’s brain damage may (or may not) manifest. 

Eventually, I began to see a brighter future unfolding before me. I noticed Wilder begin to reach milestones I’d been concerned about. Spring turned to summer, summer turned to autumn, autumn to winter and there we were - back where we started, a year after his birth.

A whole year walking in nature. A whole year - noticing everything growing and changing. Wilder’s first smile under the trees on our walk down to the beach.  Kicking his arms and legs towards the branches swaying in the breeze. Reaching and grasping for wild flowers in the park. His first chaotic steps across the lawn on the hottest day in summer. There is always hope. 

Back to the question. My reason to be cheerful? I wouldn’t really describe myself as a cheerful person. I’m analytical and sensitive. I have a tendency towards melancholy. But I am, mostly happy. Which is similar, but not quite the same thing. But just like the seasons, we’re cyclical beings by nature. We may feel lost at times, in fact feeling down sometimes is about as certain as the trees losing their leaves each autumn. But it won’t be long. Then spring will always come.

I studied poetry at university, and I remember asking a teacher whether he could define happiness and what that meant to him. He explained, that rather than a noun, the word happy should be a verb – a doing word. That in order to feel happiness we should all be ‘happying’. He was so clever, and so right. I’m happiest when I’m happying.

Beth Kendall

Beth is a pressed wild flower artist with a small brand called Wilder & Wren and offers a contemporary, meaningful twist on the traditional craft of flower pressing.  Her designs are inspired by the female gaze, motherhood, nature, folklore, Greek and Roman mythology and Victorian floriography. You can find Wilder & Wren on Instagram and Etsy.