Jodi Hills

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

Tag Archives: resilience


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Moving forward.

Some things you simply know, even before Google confirms it.  

I love birds. I love Sparrows. I guess because they’ve always just been around. Maybe it was that assurance I gravitated toward — before, during, after the storm, they were constant. Like my grandparents. Like my mother. 

They pop up in my sketchbook consistently. Almost knowing when I need them most — when I need that blessed assurance. Yesterday one arrived atop my image of our coffee pot. A reminder, I suppose, that just as certain as the coffee I brew each morning. Love wafts on the scent of it throughout our home. 

I googled them after breakfast — the sparrows. This is what it said — “They are creatures of quiet resilience, navigating storms, finding shelter where there is none, and moving forward even when the winds push them back.” Isn’t that the way that I, we, could begin each day, with this quiet resilience… There’s coffee on the table, and kindness in the air. 

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Forwards, backwards and upside down.

I suppose I’ve always valued resilience over perfection. First of all, good luck with the latter, but even if it were achievable, how boring! There is no movement in perfection. No dance, no artistry, no flight at all.

Some say it’s why we love the hummingbird — the acrobats of the sky — with their ability to fly forwards, backwards and upside down. How delightful! I love even just saying it. And don’t we all have to be, emotional acrobats that is, while navigating these lives, these loves. Do you think joy, or forgiveness comes without a little tumbling? I don’t think so.

So what if we embraced it? Celebrated them — all of our imperfections and struggles survived, as the beautiful flashes of color that they are?

I’ve never been one to be get there as the crow flies. But I keep humming along. Taking delight in all of my forwards, backwards and upside downs. And it would be my honor, my pleasure, to tumble and fumble along beside you.

“I wish for you an imperfect life, and all the wonder that living can bring.”

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With flowers and gratitude.

When it comes to love, thankfully there doesn’t seem to be any “had I known at the time…”

I fell in love with my yellow bedroom almost immediately. It was the first time I got to pick out my own decor. Yellow! Everything was yellow. Carpeting and bedspread. Van Dyke Road shone a little brighter as the reflection jumped from youthful bed to the gravel. I could read at night without a light. It was so bright, but for the stairs, you never would have known I was in the basement. 

Was it even a year? I don’t know how long it was before my father sold the house and my mom and I moved to an apartment. I guess it’s true that perfection knows no time constraints, because even in giving it up, I went on loving it. I still do. And the heart, as broken as it seems, isn’t. It fumbles, yes. Stumbles, sure. But it keeps on loving. 

It’s not even the bathroom really. We have separate little rooms for our toilets. I give them flowers and paintings. Maybe a candle. Why? Because I love them. I wrote once, “this year, let’s love like no lessons have been learned…” — that’s how I decorate the bathrooms, the bedrooms, the kitchen, with flowers and gratitude, and a love that stays as bright and hopeful as a child’s bedroom. 

There are burners that I will no longer touch. And roads that I won’t take. But my heart climbs the stairs, and beats forever yellow. 

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Never disposable.

I packed up the painting yesterday. UPS took it away in the afternoon. It is now on it’s way home. All is as it should be, still, there is a tiny hole in my soul that needs to be filled. I know what to do. I have done it time and time again. I must start a new painting. And the process will fill that little space, and with any luck, that painting will find a new home and I will begin the process again.


When I was a kid, I suppose I thought that I would learn something once, and that would be it. I would just know. I would feel something once, and I wouldn’t have to feel it again. Smiling now. It’s just not the way. I find myself learning things again and again. Patience. Trust. Love.


People will enter your life and you will love them. Sometimes they will hurt you. Sometimes you will hurt them, (“and that I think is worse” as Dorothy Parker taught us.) But, oh, that heart, oh, that resilient heart, will love again. And be loved again.


Sometimes people will lift you. Gloriously lift you. Sometimes they will leave you. And your sore heart keeps beating. You will learn trust again. You will learn patience, continuously.


I paint as instinctively as I breathe. And my heart just follows. Jumping each time into the deep end of the colors. Deeper. Deeper. Filling my lungs. Creating as deeply as I can, then rising to the surface. Breaking though. Releasing the breath that carried me. Letting it all go. Ready to do it all again. Trusting in that ever resilient, never disposable heart.

Let’s stand together in front of today’s blank canvas, and begin… again…

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Barely more than air.

There is a group of migratory birds that, each year, flies over 7000 miles over water, without stopping, without eating, without sleeping.  They are able to shut down a piece of their brain.  Their heart rate changes.  Their digestive system adapts. These beautiful living beings, weighing barely more than air, have been given every tool necessary to make the journey.  Each year, at the same time, in the same place, without worry, without discussion, they take the flight. They don’t gather and wonder, “Well, I don’t know, it’s a long ways… I’m not sure… It’s super hard…We could get hungry… Probably tired… Maybe we should wait…”  No, these are the voices in my head, probably yours.


When I was five years old, I began to write and I began to draw. My mother said, no matter what I was feeling, I would go into my room and create the feelings on paper. Feel them. Work through them. Resolve them.  These words and colors would carry me through unimaginable things.  They still do.  


Sometimes I forget. Clogged down with little things like, oh, my computer isn’t working correctly, how can I possibly go on… I’m embarrassed to say that I can be grounded by the smallest things, when I know, I have been given everything I possibly need to make each day’s journey.  


I, we, barely more than air, hold the most magical gifts.  Here comes the sun, my friends.  We can do this. The sky is open with possibility.  I’ll see you up there.  

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