Jodi Hills

So this is who I am – a writer that paints, a painter that writes…

Category Archives: gentle


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Sanctuary.

When I went off to college, the first thing that surprised me was the noise. I had always studied in silence. I was alone for the most part. I didn’t turn on the television or stereo. I liked hearing the books I was reading, feeling the words I was writing. So the first few nights in the dorm were alarmingly loud. No one had headphones. Doors seemed to be quite optional. It was overwhelming to say the least. 

I wore a path to the library. And then I found the silent rooms. Doubled glass. No distractions. Glorious. My first sanctuary. It was there I could invent anything, even myself. I surrounded myself in words. Some lay quietly in yellowed pages. Others rearranged themselves and shot through my #2 pencil. It wasn’t the first time I heard my own voice, but it was the first I started to use it. 

I fear that some believe courage is only born out of chaos. That we must rise above all the noise with a clattering of our own. I suppose at times this could be necessary, but maybe the most bold is to listen to your own heart, your own mind. To brave the silence and find yourself.

There is a setting on my iphotos. It is called noise reduction. It takes away all the clutter to get at the real picture. I didn’t have the words for it then, but I have been hitting that button for most of my life. Sometimes I forget. I get caught up in all the clamor — “but he said, and she did, and they are!!!!!” It’s then I have to remove myself. Find my balance. Listen to the quiet. 

I whisper by hand into my sketchbook. And I am found. 

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Cataloged by heart.

After my grandfather spoke, no one ever had to say, “Well, what he meant by that was…” He was perhaps the first to teach me the strength of word economy. When he said something, without flower or hesitation, I believed him. 

Even with the wide open nature of youth, the vulnerable cracks of the heart and brain are very small. So it was this simplicity that allowed the love in. Word, by compact word. 

When my college professors began to emphasize the point, speaking of editing and being precise, I could only smile. That point had long ago been walked in –firm, straight and overalled. My grandfather’s words built a library inside of me. Cataloged by heart. Endlessly referenced. 

And I use it still today. In my writing. My painting. My interactions. If you have to tell someone, “I was only kidding…”; “It was only a joke…”; “What I meant was…”; “The point they were trying to make…” —  then there is a problem. There’s no room in the heart for all of that. What a glorious filter it can be. 

I’m currently reading the book, “What you are looking for is in the Library.” When my friend recommended it, I accepted quickly. She had long ago made it past the filter. And the title itself walked easily in, wearing overalls. 

I suppose that’s where all the love is stored. Here. And I pull from it daily. My grandparents’ shelf. My mother’s shelf. Husband. Friends. Family of all covers, all languages. Those whispering still and again, my heart’s truth. 

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Pulled in close.

From the age of five we began looking to see if things fit.

We got our feet measured at Iverson’s shoes, checking for the length and width in the silver contraption. After wiggling our toes inside the bumper tennies, the man on the triangle seat pinched the ends in search of our toes. If he gave the all clear we raced to the glass windows and back. And we were shoed.

In Herberger’s basement, when it was still on Main Street, we tried on pants. The clerk pulled at our waistbands to check for room. Tugged at the length and estimated the time before they would be too short. Up the stairs, past the billing department, were the dresses. Beautiful dresses that were measured to our knees. Zipped up our backs. Smoothed down the fronts.

Dr. Blanchard checked for space in our mouths. Dr. Perkins took our heights and weights. We stood in lines in the school gymnasium to check our eyes and our hearing. All, I supposed, to see if we actually fit.

I had my own checks and balances. Accompanying my mother to Olson’s Supermarket. I waited for her in front of the book section, right by the check out lines. I would pick out the words I understood. Look at the pictures. Then clutch it to my heart. Somehow my heart always knew. The woman in the red smock asked what I was doing. “Just seeing if it fits,” I said. My mother never had to ask. She knew me.

I suppose I’m still doing that. With everything. People. Places. Time. The only way I have ever been able to tell if something really fits is by clutching it to my heart. Sometimes it still stumbles over the bigger words. The tighter spots. The growing pains. But pulled in close, beat by beat, it always leads me home.

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In the white space.


One of the best lessons I learned as an artist was not in the creation, but in the white space. Whether it is on the canvas, or the wall around it, there has to be space for the eye to rest. The white space. To see the art, to really be able to feel it, there must be space around it, so it can breathe, it can live. When it all becomes too cluttered, then nothing can really be seen. Not even the best of art.

I suppose it’s the same with living.

There are a million books written about it. Grief. It only recently occurred to me — looking at my grandfather’s portrait. I’m living in that white space. Missing my mother. (My grandpa and grandma too.) But it made me feel better, seeing it this way. It’s all part of the big picture. This white space — this emptiness — it shows us the real beauty of life. And it’s not separate from the art of living, it’s a necessity. So I feel it. And I know that I’m lucky. What a privilege to be a part of these glorious lives. To rest in the space beside them. Knowing that we are all a part of the same work. We are together. Always.

I only mention it because maybe you are missing someone. Maybe you are resting in this space. And maybe, for a moment, you too can see the beauty of it all — the endless art of this living…

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Doing Better.

It’s no secret that I read a lot. Often they make the books into movies. Often I’m disappointed. For me, the words seem to paint a more realistic picture. A vivid representation of the person or people inside the story. Not tainted or swayed by the pressures of Hollywood. I wonder when we were first sold the idea that people, in order to be a hero, or heroine, had to “look the part.” I, I say with great fortune, have lived a life to the contrary. 

I have written about so many that have saved me through the years. Mr. Whitman, the caretaker of the cemetery, dirtied and slumped from the weight of burying the people from town. My grandfather, callused hand reaching behind his stained overalls to bring me along, bring me through. Chubbied Grandmother wiping kitchen hands on apron, just to give us something sweet. Wearied teachers, still finding a way to say the words that just might carry us. Tear-stained mother who laughed with unfaltering grace. 

So it came as a surprise to me, the woman in New York standing in front of my portrait of Maya Angelou — a sage I return to again and again. She read the words and seemed to be moved. She praised them. I thanked her. She wanted to buy copies, but whispering sheepishly now, “maybe without the picture.” Whispering even lower now, “you know, maybe she could be a bit polarizing to my customers.” 

I laughed. How ironically and completely opposite of the words that she claimed to love. 

Kindness. Truth. Beauty. Wisdom. Hope. Leadership. Strength. Love. It comes in all sorts of “packaging.” Each a gift. 

Maya would have forgiven her. As she always said, “When we know better, we do better.” I put the words and paintings before you, before myself, daily, in the hopes of doing just that… better.

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At any measure.

In the seventh grade at Central Junior High School, for approximately one week, it was decided that all students would learn the metric system. This foreign secret of measure, based in 10s and 100s, was brought out like a dirty, family secret on a Monday afternoon, and by bus time on Friday, we never spoke of it again. 

I’m not sure why we gave up, but as I struggle to convert grams to cups and kilos to pounds, I think it may have been useful. I never imagined that I would take pride in being able to weigh myself in another country, but here I am.

Through the years, the metric system became very low on the scale of “I wonder why we never talked about it.” There are so many things that got brushed under the rug. So many hurts. So many feelings. Confusions. As I stand here smiling before the scale, I imagine how many other things could have been so much easier had we only talked about them. I don’t say this in regret, but as a prompt, to keep things out in the open. Feel them as I feel them. A reminder to wear my heart on my sleeve and my face, giving it away at any measure.

Adding the flour to the bread dough this morning, I don’t use cups, nor grams. I have done it so often, I go by feel. A mixture of farine complète and farine de blé, my own special recipe. And it feels right. It feels like me. Heart wide open — this is where life becomes delicious!

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At play.

I’m not sure we ever finished a game. There was softball. And kickball. And kick the can. And freeze tag. Regular Tag. One game morphed into the next in the empty field between our house and Dynda’s. With five girls, the Norton’s made it possible to do almost anything. If they showed up, teams were easily made. And that’s really all any of us had to do — just show up. Balls. Bats. Even bikes waited patiently in the grass, or the curb of the gravel road.

If we did keep some kind of score, it was forgotten. Erased by front stoop calls to dinner, or the dark of night. When I think back, it may be one of the greatest lessons I received in humanity. In love.

As we get older, we think we have to do something – and even worse – do the “right thing.” When someone is going through a difficult period, we struggle. “I don’t know what to say.” “I don’t know what to do.” We search for answers or solutions. But as with most things, we were given the tools from the start. We knew what to do. It turns out, it still holds true. All we have to do is show up. Be there for each other. Forgetting all the scores, remembering only to reach out an imperfect, sweaty, grass stained hand, and just be… together.

My lot is trampled. Sure. Worn even. For this I am blessed. My heart is at play. And I will never finish loving you.

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Lighthouses.

It sold almost immediately after she put it in the window of her gallery in Wayzata — this 4’ lighthouse painting. I suppose we are all looking for the light. We painters and sailors. We who bob up and down. Knocked over, then lifted, by the same waves.

I’ve always been a morning person. Everything seems possible in the morning. Everything lightened, not just in color, but weight. But, oh, that nighttime. That darkness. Oooh, that can really get away with me. I’ve always tried to fight it. But recently, I’ve tried something new. Not fighting, but challenging. Not going toe to toe with it, round and round with it in my brain. When those thoughts start creeping in, I acknowledge them. “I see you,” I say. “But not tonight. We can talk about it again in the morning if we need to.” It’s not a perfect system, but it seems to be helping.

I have always been up for a challenge. But rarely a fight. My grandfather taught me that in the fields. My mother taught me that in the trenches. Both houses of hope, of light.

I heard a line in a song once, “My heart is a boat on the sea.” That feels about right. So I keep riding the waves, toward the light. Hopeful for all the light to come. Grateful for all the shine I have been given.

The gallery was named The Good Life. How appropriate I thought, it is indeed. I woke to all of the possibilities coming through my window, and said to the sun, “Challenge accepted.”

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I didn’t expect to learn it at the airport.

We were so tired. On the last leg of our trip home. To be honest, I don’t remember which airport it was. Maybe Minneapolis? Or New York? Inside, they all start to look the same. We wanted nothing more than to just sit down. All the chairs at our gate were filled with other passengers, also not expecting to learn anything. On the way to the restrooms, we saw a meditation room. Yes!  Why not?!  With no one else inside, I felt it was ok to break the rules posted on the wall, and I called my mom on my cell phone. I was mid conversation on speaker phone when she walked in. She sat cross legged on the floor. I smiled to make my apologies and wrapped up the conversation as quickly as possible. “I’m so sorry,” I said to her. She was so calm. “No need to be sorry,” she said. There was something to this, I thought. “It’s not about having your surroundings be calm,” she explained, “It’s about finding your calm within your surroundings.”  Wow. 

I like to do yoga each morning. We have a large house and a big yard, but I have found my tiny spot in between our two desks in our office. I like it. Here, looking out the windows onto the yard, I find my balance with the trees. Once in a while, Dominique will come in. His chair squeaks. Sometimes an ad will pop up on his computer at twice the volume. Papers will shuffle. And I’m not proud to say, it used to throw me. Almost annoy me. So ridiculous, I know, but true. Not anymore. I will never forget this lovely woman, in that forgettable airport. Calm isn’t given. It’s created within. I smile. So happy to see Dominique’s feet as I twist out my lower back. 

It’s easy to be happy when everything is going well. Easy to be kind when life is at its best. To be calm in the quiet. But what do we do when it isn’t that way? Who are we when life gets hard? This is the real test, I suppose. I want to be better, in all times. I think maybe we all could do a little better in this daily chaos. So today, let’s be gentle with our past. Gentle with our present. Gentle with each other.

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Trust in your own length.

I wish I had the same patience with myself as I do with a block of wood.

I searched my woodpile for wood that could be made into a frame for my newest painting. First, I had to find enough length. I did. Two pieces that could be cut into four. Imperfections everywhere, but the length was there. So I began sanding. And sanding. Ending each day covered in dust, filled with the scent of possibility. I filled previous nail holes with putty. And sanded again. I will continue this process for days. I trust in it.

I asked my grandpa when I was about six or seven — (I calculate my age in the length of my steps compared to his) — “…but who tells you what to do?” We were walking back to his tractor in the field. I was always amazed that he could fix anything. The tractor. The mower. The combine. Whatever it was. He made the walk to the garage, or the barn, found the right tool and fixed it. I was fascinated. And it wasn’t just that. How did he know when to plant? Where? When to harvest? What to do every day? “I’ve made this walk before,” he said.

I’m not sure I understood the answer, but I knew enough to try to keep up. 

I suppose nobody can really tell you how to make the journey. You have to put in the steps. Believe in them. Trust in your own length. It’s difficult for sure. But I see myself making the journey with a piece of wood. It’s just a small journey, I know, but it gives me patience. It offers me faith. And I take another walk, each time a little less afraid. A little more forgiving. 

Somedays, it may feel like you are being asked to do the impossible. Be patient with yourself…kind. Believe. You’ve made this walk before.

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