Miriam’s Story
Me in my mother’s garden as a child.
EARLY LIFE
I was raised in Appleton, WI, by two parents who were non-church going. I experienced some pretty early losses: a grandmother dying when I was six, my father when I was twelve, my other grandmother at thirteen. Then my mother died suddenly when I was nineteen and remaining grandfather died when I was twenty-two.
After my father died, I briefly joined a born-again Christian church (rebellion against my parents!), and this was my first taste of spirituality and community. I loved it! The church itself lost luster for me, but the relationships of community and spirituality stayed with me, underground, for another ten years.
I became a poet when my father died, too – wrote all the time as a way to survive his death, which was traumatizing to me. I wrote poetry continuously – winning awards and even a scholarship to college on it – until college. Then, when I got to college, my mother died, and I stopped writing.
THE TRANSITION TO WHAT I DO NOW
The last semester of college I took one creative writing course, the only one I took in college, with the amazing Aimee Nezhukumatathil at UW Madison. She helped me fall back in love with poetry. I graduated with a double degree in French and Anthropology, with no intention to do either as a career. I left school hungry to write again, and found a local group called PGI that was meeting and doing readings, critiques, and so on just blocks from my apartment.
I was also taking photographs more and more. My camera was my father’s ancient Pentax K1000. Right after college, a friend and I were in Barcelona when 9/11 happened. We consumed as many International Herald Tribune as we could, trying to understand.
We spent our days trapped in Barcelona, trying to do the tourist thing: going to Gaudi buildings and walking around taking pictures. When I got back from that trip and developed them, there was a clear difference between my pre-9/11 photos and post-9/11 photos. The pre-9/11 photos are much more documentary. The post-9/11 are much more expressive – abstract, and tense. Intense. Aware of chaos and expressing it.
CONTEMPLATIVE WRITING and the pre-path to miksang
Playing ping pong at a writing retreat in my late twenties.
Around the same time, in the writing group I met a woman who was taking a writing class with someone who used meditation as a part of the writing process. ”You’ll love it!” she said, and so I did. These classes were with Paula Novotnak. Her own creation, she called them Writing From Center, and were held in a little office on the near-East side. Once a week I would meet with her and a half dozen always-older women, meditate, write, share and get super supportive feedback. I mourned my mother, found my voice again and began to learn how to compassionately listen to others. After a few classes with Paula, I realized I wanted to teach something similar to what she was teaching.
Paula had to stop teaching, and when I asked her if she would be ok with me beginning teaching, she said yes. When I asked her about space, Paula suggested I go downstairs (her office was on the second floor) and visit the people who ran a meditation group down there. Because their door was on the side of the building, and hers was on the front, I had never entered nor particularly noticed them. She said they might sublet space, and people who liked Pema Chodron, a teacher whose work Paula had shared with us, this seemed like a good fit.
At an art exhibit in Madison’s tiny modern art museum, I saw a show of Aaron Siskind’s. Most of the pieces were from his highway tar period – towards the end of his life, he shot abstract full-frame pictures of highway tar. I loved it, and immediately knew there was something in common with what he was doing and what my post-911 photos were doing, though I couldn’t articulate why at that time.
I read some of his writings, and writings about him, though, and I was disappointed to find that what he articulated didn’t line up with how I felt. But something was happening, opening. I was tapping into something important and deep in photography.
THINGS FALL TOGETHER QUICKLY
A friend and I went downstairs to check out the space, which turned out to be the Shambhala Meditation Center of Madison. We got meditation instruction from Kathy Faas, who was then co-director, and Kathy, when I asked if I could lease some space from them, basically handed me the key and said, “You can use it during such-and-such times. If you make anything, throw us some of it.” I began teaching writing very part-time, calling it Contemplative Writing.
After teaching in the Shambhala Center for a few weeks, some fliers appeared in the mail along with a video and calendar. It was a promotional package that Michael Wood, one of the co-founders of Miksang, had sent out to all the North American Shambhala Centers. I took home the video and watched it. Eight times in a row. I cried. This, this was it. This is what I had been looking for – in photography. I googled Miksang and came up with a workshop in Chicago in two weeks. I didn’t have much money, no car, but I found a way – borrowed a vehicle and went down to the Chicago Shambhala Center, which I didn’t know existed before that week. Eventually, I became a Miksang teacher as well, and found the Miksang teachings explained not only the harmony I found in photography (and Aaron Siskind’s work) but also the chaos I found in my Barcelona images.
But….HOW?
There is a missing piece to this story, one I have left out of the stories I have told and re-told many times over the last fifteen years. A piece I am finally ready to own.
In large part, when I started my “business", I didn’t believe I was starting a business. I thought I was just starting to teach. I believed it wasn’t ok to make a living off the dharma. At first, I had other part-time jobs, working as a House Manager at the Overture Center, and as the book buyer at Rainbow Bookstore Cooperative (RIP). Once I did go full-time, a “poverty is purity” mentality behind Buddhism, being a woman, and being the arts meant I undercharged, and I didn’t make enough to get by for many years.
I didn’t have to: I had some inheritance money to support me throughout those years. Otherwise, Herspiral Arts wouldn’t exist now, not to the extent it does. Both the privileges and hard work of my white ancestors are in this work.
Financial people advised against doing what I did, and in the last few years it’s become very clear that is no longer viable, nor was it ever a good idea. I have done a lot of work on recovering my misunderstanding and negative habits around finances, and am working with Mark Silver at Heart of Business to make a new - first! - business model, one that will keep Herspiral Arts sustainable for me, and for you, for decades to come.
I believe strongly in the principle of Mutual Aid, and run a wide sliding scale/pay from the heart model so those who can afford to pay more do in order to help those who need to pay less. Please know when you purchase a service from Herspiral Arts you are not just supporting “Miriam” but a thriving small business and other community members.
Co-leading a movement and creative process retreat in France a few years ago.