Roots are the place you will make art from. Even if you hate your background because it was hard, It IS the place you will paint from. Trying to run away from it or deny it will only make it worse. Embracing it will make it powerful.
“Embracing your dragons,” some have called it. I loathed my background when I was a young adult because it was so unsophisticated and normal and boring.
What a laugh that I had all this goodness poured out and I twisted it. Big Cities were more IMPORTANT than small towns in my book.
I could not see how you could ever be an artist or a poet in a town like mine.
Of course you never appreciate your roots when you are young. You have to have a perspective from down the road a bit.
Every kind of beginning can be used for something wonderful , but only if you embrace it and draw the gifts it has to offer. People who have survived hardship are stronger than me , That is a gift. Strength is a gift.
My gift was transparency and intuition . I got transparency from a safe and sound upbringing. But I did not know it at the time.