EP 46: Hear a Photographer's Journey from Deep Sleep to Gratitude

Our mission is to give you tools and strategies that will help you move from being stressed to feeling your best.

Gail Howarth, a long-time resident of West Michigan, is a storyteller and award-winning photographer joins is for a candid conversation on gratitude's role in healing. 

Gail’s early work focused on her first love, nature. Her landscapes invite the viewer to take a break from the busyness of daily life. She hopes observers of her photos will experience a sense of calm, peace, or serenity. 

More recently, Gail has become interested in people, their stories, what divides us, and how to build bridges between those with vastly different backgrounds and belief systems. Gail’s ArtPrize project, A Time to Heal, and The Gratitude Project By Lakehouse Photo explore this concept in words and portraiture. She believes that to heal the divisiveness present in our society today, we must start by identifying and sharing our most common bonds. Only then will constructive conversations occur.

Co-hosts Deb Timmerman and Barb Fletcher are certified HeartMath® Trainers, and certified stress educators, who are skilled at helping people discover the power of living form the heart.  To take the Stress and Wellbeing Assessment in Canada, click here. To take the Stress and Wellbeing Assessment in the US, click here. 

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Website: LessStressinLife.com/podcast/

Stay tuned for more conversations with Deb, Susie, and Lindsay as they empower you to live well, manage stress, and build a thriving, healthy life!

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Gail Howarth, Barb Fletcher, Deb Timmerman

Deb Timmerman  00:00

You're listening to the less stress in life podcast. Your hosts, Deb Timmerman and Barb Fletcher are on a mission to help individuals and organizations manage stress and change. Together, they bring you real conversations, inspirational stories, and strategies to help move you from being stressed to feeling your best. Hello, everyone. I'm Deb Timmerman. Welcome to our series of 52 practical tools for less stress in life. This is episode 46. 

Barb Fletcher  00:32

I'm Barb Fletcher. Our goal is to give you tools and strategies to help you move from being stressed to feeling your best. Today, our guest is Gail Howarth, a longtime resident of West Michigan. A storyteller and award winning photographer, Gail's early work focused on her first love, nature. Her landscapes invite the viewer to take a breath from the busyness of daily life. She hopes observers will experience a sense of calm, peace, or serenity. Most recently, Gail has become interested in people their stories and what divides us and how to build bridges between those with vastly different backgrounds and belief systems. Gail's Art Prize project, A Time to Heal, and The Gratitude Project by Lake House Photo, explore this concept in words and portraiture. She believes that to heal the divisiveness present in our society today, we must start by identifying and sharing our most common bonds, only then will a constructive conversation occur. Welcome, Gail.

Gail Howarth  01:45

Thank you. It's good to be here.

Deb Timmerman  01:46

Gail, can we start out by you telling us a little bit about the gratitude project?

01:52

Sure. The gratitude project started out as a curiosity. I had gone through a difficult life changing event, my folks passed away on the same day five hours apart, and that put me into a depression that lasted about two years. I like to think that it was sleeping more than a depression and when I awoke from that, it was sudden, like waking up. When I came out of that, I woke up with a sense of awe and wonder and almost like I was reborn again. The color blue would make me cry, because I thought it was so beautiful, and that there were so many shades. I was so grateful for everything and I started thinking well, What does gratitude look like? And what is gratitude? Why does it feel so good? And I started asking my friends, will you sit and allow me to photograph you while you're thinking about gratitude? And so, it was just really a curiosity. What does it look like? I know what it feels like, but I didn't know what it looks like. Then, I was actually surprised at what it looks like on a lot of people. So it really just started out as a curiosity and then as I got into the project a little bit more, I learned that, gosh, people are grateful for the same things and if that's the truth, then why are we so divided on so many issues? And so that's when I started to believe that it would be a way, a door or an entryway to conversations about important things that we face every day. Whether it works or not, I'm still working on the project. So, I have hope, but that's what the project is about. Just really getting in touch with gratitude, seeing what it looks like hearing what it is for people sharing that and hopefully one day we'll be able to share it with enough people to show folks that we are more alike than we are different.

Deb Timmerman  03:54

I was looking at your website earlier and one of the things I noticed about the folks that you photographed in the gratitude project was this beautiful sense of excitement and a spark in their eye. It looked like they all had that in common. Could you talk more about those physical features and what you saw as a photographer in those recordings that you did?

Gail Howarth  04:20

I would say that that's what I'm looking for. You may have noticed that all of the photographs are in black and white. I do them in whatever light is available. In the beginning. I said I wasn't going to use a flash, but sometimes I needed to use a flash. But yes, what I saw,  especially my folks that are a little bit older, let's say 30 on, I think I see a little bit of grief along with their gratitude. Yes, there's that spark but I see some part of them where they're drawing from true life experience from things they've overcome and so I think that grief and gratitude sometimes can go together. I did work with a group of Ohio State students that were maybe 20 years old, and I didn't see the grief in their photos at all. So I had a great day with class there and took about 60 photos of kids that were grateful for wonderful things, but they just had so much spark. Whereas the older folks, I see the combination of grief and gratitude,

Deb Timmerman  05:21

Oh, my gosh, Barb, that makes me think about Michelle Butt in her work in facial intelligence, and how we might go back to that website now and look at those faces and actually see and read what's on their face regarding grief.

Barb Fletcher  05:39

I'm just so intrigued, because we're human. and so we know intuitively, when we're attracted to people who have that spark in their eyes, yet, we may not notice it the same way you are noticing it behind the camera.

Gail Howarth  05:56

A lot of the times the camera shows me things afterward that I didn't catch at the time. The first photo that I took of a person and gratitude was the one that taught me the most. One, I learned that I'm asking somebody to be vulnerable with me. Gratitude is easy for some people and it's not easy for some folks to share, and so this woman, the energy in the room was just palpable, when we took the image. We had been working all day at a dental convention. That's the field I was in and she had wanted to do this very much, and we kind of sat in our hotel room and got really quiet. And she said a little prayer before she went into her gratitude. And I said, I'm just going to start shooting as soon as you open your eyes and when she did, tears streamed down her face. It was one of the best photos I've ever taken. The light in the room, made little diamonds in the tears from her eyes and I thought she looked like an angel with silver stars on her face. She was being grateful for her mother, who had passed recently, but when I showed her the photos, she thought that she looked like a fat old woman. She had not realized how much she had aged in the last few years. And she couldn't get past that now, she wouldn't allow me to use those photos. That's okay. That's really okay. Anybody who participates if they don't like the photos, if they feel too exposed, or just like the experience wasn't what they expected, then they have that option. I will tell you, she's the only person who's ever said, I don't want you to use my photos. But, it taught me a really valuable lesson and that when I'm asking somebody to give me this, I'm asking for part of their soul. I can't abuse that and so that's what she taught me. So, it was an amazing, incredible experience.

Barb Fletcher  08:06

How magnificent though, that you got to present her a different perspective on what you saw because those images and those beliefs that we carry around with us are the ones that shape our path. As you were sharing that story, I got those shivers that are a really good indicator of this is a very deep, meaningful conversation about what's true and I'm just grateful that. Because in some small way, even though those pictures may not be seen by anybody other than you, you will have reshaped her journey.

Gail Howarth  08:59

Yes, yes, thank you.

Deb Timmerman  09:02

Tell us a little bit about your project with Art Price, A Time to Heal. What did you do in that project?

Gail Howarth  09:09

I was a part of a gallery here in Muskegon, Michigan called City Center Arts and they featured me as the Artist of the Month. I really wanted to do The Gratitude Project, but it was during the pandemic and the board, talked about it and they thought that while gratitude is a great subject, that it might be seen as flippant at that time in our country's current events. My first reaction honestly, was to get mad because I thought, well, this is a great way to help us during this really dark time. So I was going to decline that, but what ended up happening is over the weekend, I meditated on that and prayed about that a little bit and I went back to them and I said, Can I do gratitude with a twist?  I said, What if I talked to folks who are being impacted by current events? So if we think back to 2020, we had a pandemic. So we had health care workers, we had people who had COVID, we had LGBTQ issues where the Supreme Court had just stated that, the members of the LGBTQ community couldn't be discriminated at the workplace, so they couldn't lose their jobs, just solely based on that. We also had George Floyd and we had a lot of racial tension happening. And so I went, and I talked to people who either had COVID, were caregivers for folks  with COVID. I talked to people of color, and talked about their experiences, and those were vastly different, which was really interesting to me, as a white woman. You know, I can't know what it's like to be a black woman or black man or Hispanic or any of those things. So, I expected their experiences to be similar, but every one, of course, is unique. Then I talked to a gentleman who was a school teacher, and he has relief. His tears of joy in that he would never lose his job because some parent didn't like that he was a gay male teaching third grade students. So, it was an amazing project. So, I still photographed. I still did it in black and white. I photographed as they told their stories, I really felt like I captured their emotion. So, it was a big mural. There were 16 pieces and all I did blog pieces on each of the persons. It was just really a wonderful project. One of my takeaways was from a gentleman named Kwame and I asked him about healing. Can we heal? He said something that I thought he meant in the moment, but I take it with me every day. He said, Gail, the time is right. Everything is right for us to heal, right now. Everything is in perfect order, and now is the right time to begin to heal. And honestly, I thought he was talking about the Black Lives Matter movement. And maybe he was, but every day I wake up and I think of Kwame, and I think today is the exact right time to heal. It is! Every day we have an opportunity to make it better. Every day, we have an opportunity to step forward into our lives and make one thing better feel for Kwame,

Deb Timmerman  12:37

What role do you think gratitude plays in that healing process?

Gail Howarth  12:45

It's basic. Gratitude and that's us when we have question earlier in the email to about that and I just think gratitude is a basic emotion. We've all felt and experienced gratitude at one point in our life. I think if you can start to focus on what you're grateful for, and you know, there are all kinds of studies that show that if you begin a gratitude journal, or if you start really accounting, count your blessings, that you start to see more blessings.  I believe it's true. If you focus on negativity, then that's what you'll get. If you focus on positivity then that you're going to see more positive things in the world and around you. So, it's pretty basic. I can get really funny about gratitude, I can stare at blades of grass and feel gratitude to the point of tears. And I can look into the eyes of a stranger and not know that person at all and feel so grateful that I met or passed that person that day but I don't know if that's a typical thing for people. But if to practice gratitude, it really does change your life.

Barb Fletcher  13:55

I'd love to go back just a little bit. I feel so confident that this is how you live your life now. How is that different than that quiet period that you had for two years? 

Gail Howarth  14:10

Wow! That quiet period, I lost everything during that time period except the job that I loved. Not only did I lose my mom and dad, I had a partnership for eight years and she just wanted me to come back. She wanted me come home to the relationship and I was so far away and this is one of those cases where antidepressants didn't help. Nothing I did helped. Counselling didn't help. I think I was meant to go to sleep. I know I'm not answering your question, but I'm not sure I know how to answer your question. So how things were in the dark, was just really dark. It was everything I could do to go to work. I still loved my work. I was a teacher. So, I went to dental offices and in taught I'm how to use software and how to make their office more productive and I loved teaching. But as soon as I would leave, I would be so exhausted. So, as you can imagine, there was a lot of travel in that job. I was so exhausted that I would drive home not on the expressway, because I was so tired, that I thought I might fall asleep driving. So I always called it taking the long way home. I did also take my camera with me on those journeys and so sometimes I would get out of my car. And I would take photos of what I saw along the road. One of the things that I can say is, I do think that that helped me to grow more present, because when you're looking at a beautiful thing in front of you, and you've got a camera, you're focused on the present, and the past can't hurt you there. If you're in the present moment, your past, whatever pain you've experienced, whatever you've endured, it's not in that present moment. And so I think that that is a part of what helped me to get out of the darkness but I will expand on that and tell you that I became so exhausted that I really wouldn't say that I was suicidal, but I didn't want to be here anymore. And so I told you about my abrupt awakening. So I will tell you how that happened. And that might be a part of the answer too. It was a snowy night, and I was coming home from work and I thought just so tired. I was so tired. It was wet, snow, biting wind, and I sat in my car in my driveway, and I thought I have to get out of my car now. I was so tired. I just didn't even want to get out of my car, and I thought I could just sleep here. And I thought No, you'll freeze to death if you stay in your car. So I got out of my car and instead of going into the house, I found myself standing on a bluff. I lived at the top of a hill overlooks a marsh, and I just had one of those moments that you see in movies, I think where I was throwing my fists into the air and cussing at God and just I can just remember screaming, bring me home. Bring me home and I woke up on my knees very wet and very cold. And I was like, What am I supposed to do now? What do I do now? And I brushed myself off, and I got up and I went in my house, and I went to bed. The next morning when I woke up, the sun was shining and the sun was going across my face and my chest and I felt warm, but not just warm but warm in a way I hadn't felt in two years, and I felt held and loved and grateful. So grateful and honestly, it took me another couple of years to think oh my gosh, my prayer was answered. I was brought home. I was brought to my earthly home. and I think that my role is to help make this place a better place and gratitude feels like the way that I'm supposed to do that.

Deb Timmerman  18:25

Oh, my, there's nothing we can say to that. I think we need to just do our call to action. So, the call to action this week, is to really think about where you are holding judgment on people. Where you might be more similar than you are different to start to bridge that gap through gratitude. When you can find something that you're grateful for about a person, it changes everything. That one little connection and even being able to say something as simple as I love the earrings that you're wearing today. Or you look really pretty in that color pink. Those are the small things that make us come together as humans and sometimes those exchanges, for the people that you meet along your path, you can remember them for a long time, can't you? Because they're so filled with that human connection. So this week, especially we have an election coming up in the US on Tuesday. It is traditionally not a good time. It's not a time of unity. It is a time of division. And as Gail said, we can either really choose how we're going to look at that and find something that we're grateful for even in those times of suffering and come together with that. 

Barb Fletcher  19:53

Thank you 

Deb Timmerman  19:53

We should say where you could get in touch with Gail though. So Gail give us those connection points for Are you for folks who might want to reach out in touch you.

Gail Howarth  20:02

You can find me on Facebook at gratitude by Lake House photo. You can email me at Gail@LakeHousePhoto.com. And I also have a website called Gratitude by LakeHouse. Lake House is just one word.

Deb Timmerman  20:21

Thank you so much for joining us today, Gail.

Gail Howarth  20:24

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. I'm grateful for both of you.