KEEP TRYING | Michael Kennedy and Vania Hardy

Singer-Songwriter Michael Kennedy and illustrator Vania Hardy brought their talents together in the making of “Keep Trying” - a delightful declaration of resilience after being knocked down. The song’s cheerful and catchy tune paired with Vania’s whimsical illustrations speak to the hope that is found in the hardships of life’s journey. No matter what we might face or experience, there’s always a reason to sing, and there’s always beauty to be found.

Both Micheal and Vania reflect on '“Keep Trying” below. You can stream or download “Keep Trying” here.

Vania Hardy, Illustrator:

”So many visual elements in the “Keep Trying” video are intentional. The story begins in the darkness before dawn. Further into the journey, the setting gets brighter and more hopeful.

Verse 2 is the turning point (“All the places I went wrong…”). We look up from the turtle and see the bigger context of where he is, and the beauty and purpose he’s surrounded by. The plants are based on real trees that grow in Hawaii—kauila and ‘ohia trees. The kauila tree was named after a mythical Hawaiian turtle and has leaves that are thought to look like turtle shells. The ‘ohia tree, which grows bright red flowers, is one of the first plants to grow out of the new land that settles from a volcano eruption, so it’s a symbol of new life springing from death. The verse ends on a shot of a volcano in front of a sun-lit sky.

After the second chorus, we dive right into the ocean. This shows us what the turtle is crawling towards but hasn’t seen yet—vibrant beauty and the start of a brand new adventure! And sure enough, in the end, the turtle does end up making it to the ocean.

I’m originally from Hawaii and was even a hula dancer. My childhood was filled with cultural stories and legends. When you’re a dancer, you learn a lot of the traditional songs, many of which are about nature symbolism. Turtles have always been my favorite cultural icon, as they symbolize endurance, wisdom, and finding your way home. After 35 years of wandering around the ocean, female turtles always come back to the beach they were born on to lay their own eggs. The journey they take as hatchlings, of getting to the ocean, gets their bodies so imprinted on the unique magnetic field of their natal beach that they know exactly where to come home. 

I saw the true significance of that journey as I was illustrating the video. It’s where the turtle’s identity is formed, where it’s prepared for the perils and adventures of the wider ocean—its “promised land.” This project found me in a healing process from a rough season, looking back and seeing the purpose in the pain. Working on this was such a great outward expression of that healing, and a way to encourage others!

Michael Kennedy, Singer/Songwriter:

Two years ago it seemed like almost all the plans I had made for myself crashed down around me. I had just lost the most important relationship in my life, and beyond that I felt like nothing I was trying to accomplish at that moment was getting anywhere.

It was in the middle of the deepest point of my confusion when I wrote this song, as a way of grabbing on to hope even when I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t see evidence that God was doing something at the time but I wrote this line out anyway, because I knew that It had to be true:

“The mess I’ve made is all being restored,
turns out it turned into an open door,
and I’m expecting something.”

Several months later I entered the song into a national songwriting competition and I ended up being one of the winners.

“Keep Trying” is the first song from my new EP, ‘Here on Out’ and it represents a sort of beginning place of a journey from brokenness to restoration.

---

VANIA HARDY

Vania is an artist and illustrator from Elizabethtown, Pa. Her art comes from the patchwork of her identity–from the various places she’s lived, the cultures that have shaped her, to the communities that have influenced her, and the faith that’s been her lifeline. She’s often inspired by stories and whimsy.

Being a third culture kid, Vania is fascinated by unexpected juxtapositions that create unlikely connections. She expresses that with splashes of contrasting colors, along with a balance of structured lines and spontaneous strokes. Without always trying, she tends to explore themes of home, identity, community, and legacy.

MICHAEL KENNEDY

Michael Kennedy is a songwriter who uses his personal struggles and life experiences as inspiration to write songs of hope and encouragement. His goal is to help people come alive and discover their purpose, using music as a spark for them to begin thinking differently. The power that music has to create a different atmosphere where new things are suddenly possible is something Michael tries to utilize in the writing and production process. Michael currently works as a server, lives in Elizabethtown, and spends his free time writing or finding other ways to be creative.

I DREAMT, I DREAM #31 | Shua Wilmot

Last night I dreamt
He beckons me back
Back into that toxic environment where I once lived

Like a fool who tries again to grab a scorching pan
With fresh blisters on his hand
I acquiesce

I cross the threshold and know at once I must flee
But cannot will myself to abandon them again
Despite the inevitable torment should I stay

I compromise with my internal conflict
Calmly sweep their floor
Then politely slip back out

Today I dream
We have the power to resist
Resist the pull to the harmful familiar

Like a child who hears words of comfort
And pretends not to know they are false
We have hope

In our optimism we ignore the peril
Reason that we must not abandon our duty to love them
Thus ceasing to love ourselves

I dream we will overcome
Calmly say our “No”
Then politely slip back out

This poem is one out of a long series of poems I have been writing about my dreams and nightmares. Sometimes our indelible traumas resurface years later in our subconscious dreamscapes, as this one did. Writing poems about them is one way I have been able to take ownership of my experiences, build resilience through creative processing, and share a meaningful message. My suffering is always more worthwhile when others can learn from it too, so I hope you find valuable encouragement in the second half of this poem.

---

SHUA WILMOT

Shua Wilmot is a writer and producer for Shagika Tales, a feminist art company based in Uganda, and a full-time Resident Director at Greenville University. He is passionate about community-building and striving to live life with integrity to universal values.

EX NIHILO | Amanda Brindley

i woke up this morning
to find a day dawning bright
with sunshine
and an empty ache in my womb

as I sip my coffee
I want nothing more 
than to cradle an infant in my arms
I don’t want this day
with its unmet expectation

there is no “instead” here
only tension
pictures of other women’s babies in their arms
in a facebook feed (I know, I shouldn’t look)
and a handmade mug warm between my palms

curled in my chair, crying
for all anyone needs is nothing
and I feel as though I have it

---

AMANDA BRINDLEY

Amanda lives in Southwest Ohio, where she works 9-5 in a local bookstore warehouse while dabbling in many creative endeavors--writing children's books, poetry, and creative non-fiction, watercoloring, drawing, baking and gardening. She loves connecting deeply with people, laughing and adventuring with her friends, hiking, and recommending Leif Enger's latest novel, Virgil Wander.

PIECES: A PARADOXY | Krystal Hart

A semi-truck jackknifed and ran over my car. That moment - encapsulated by metal, glass, and pavement, suspended between the earth and the sky, became the catalyst for the work that engulfs me. My work is preoccupied with the essence of human transversion. I investigate physical, social, psychological and theological constructs of our human existence as we navigate a world in flux. The psychology and physiology of regeneration (resilience) in tandem with cacophonic environments interest me. 

The work rests in duality as I ponder what is and the possibilities of becoming. I stage environments suspended and void of time. For me adversities are human connecting points. I see my process as acts of intercession and networks of human connectivity. The work catalyzes hope and promotes empathy, endurance, and peace through experiential expression. 

In this selected body of work some of the adversities abstracted include: natural disaster, medical diagnoses, auto accident, relationships, loss, trauma, and pain.

---

Hart’s current series invites prayers and thanksgivings from friends and strangers. These abstract works painted with natural matter are influenced directly from text and imagery taken from personal, social media, and other outlets. Some works are time-stamped with specific notes to persons encountered trauma or adversity. The first works of this series was exhibited in a group show “Escapeism” in early 2019 at Atlantic Gallery in NYC’s Chelsea art district. A body of this work is currently on view in Durham, NC at her recent solo show “Pieces: A Paradoxy.” Hart’s painting processes are acts of intercession and a bridge for human connectivity, catalyzing hope in individual and shared adversities.

View fullsize

Hart, Krystal. “‘Live in the Already’ He Used to Say. 2338 hr.”

View fullsize

Hart, Krystal. “Though Mangled She Mingles.”

View fullsize

Hart, Krystal. “4:10pm Dawn from Death.”

View fullsize

Hart, Krystal. “Heartstring.”

---

KRYSTAL HART

Krystal Hart is a North Carolina native. Hart received her BFA from New York Institute of Technology and is a distinguished recipient of various honors and residencies, including a 2007 Chair Person Fine Arts Award, a 2009 and 2012 Limner Society Residency, a 2011 and 2017 NC Regional Artist Grant, and the 2018 Mass MoCA Masters of Abstraction Workshop in Residency. Hart has a passion for serving her local and global community. Her work often provides a platform for cross-culture and cross-community experiences of a shared human condition. Her aim at shifting perspectives towards restorative and regenerative communities motivates some of her noted exhibition participation.

FOR THOSE WHO HAVE KNOWN | Shigé Clark

Lips move in constant procession,
printing pageantry on newspapers
to turn a profit:
headlines of heartache
and the weight of grief.

I watch the eyes and hands—
they hold nearer to the truth.
Sometimes in yours I see a flicker,
somewhere beneath the iris pools,
like a glint off of the stone that sank us,
and wonder at what you cannot say.

Weight does not call and cry, it sits
frozen like a glacier at the center, compounding,
carried as it crushes. And I
scan all faces for the creases of pressure
and fingers for the tinge of frost.
One cannot call a crowd’s attention
to that which has no name.
But a single bearer may see 
how you drag your body beneath a smile,
and wonder—have you known?

Have you savored the orchestral swell and known 
the dead way limbs hang
in the reverberating silence
beyond a heartbeat’s final note—
wrestling to applaud
beneath immobile arms
and hands welded to your ribcage
like an art piece
meant to depict the irony
of how the greatest works are never appreciated
in their time?

Has some runner passed you the baton
and bid you carry on the work
(or thrown it to the ground
and dared you pick it up)
and having spent your best-laid years
training for this race,
have your legs fallen numb beneath you?

I have no lips to print papers,
nor ears to hear them read.
But my legs have grown strong beneath the stone,
and my arms, though cold and stiff,
now press with greater force.
I have no warmth to melt the silent weight.
But if your limbs fail to bear it, know
that I have learned to lift.

---

SHIGÉ CLARK

Shigé Clark is a poet and contributor to The Rabbit Room blog. She grew up a wild southern child in Alabama and studied Psychology at West Point. After spending some time as an Army officer, she is now pursuing her masters degree at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Shigé believes in the power of poetry and story to shape our lives toward redemption, and she hopes to continue supporting that mission through her current work at The Rabbit Room. You can follow Shigé and her poetry on Facebook and Instagram. She recently published her first book of poetry, “The Beauty of People.”

Artwork by Eric Peters.

BEING A CAREGIVER | Morgan Burke

Resilience is being a caregiver.

It’s a series of routines one would never choose to become used to. 

Packing a bag for the hospital, again.

Waiting in the emergency room for hours, learning about new treatments, recovery methods, medications.

It’s developing a whole new set of skills: changing dressings, working a pump, maintaining a feeding tube, learning to watch the dosages and increments of time.

It’s opening your heart to someone more than you ever imagined you could, while simultaneously being more tired than you ever dreamed. 

It’s acts of selflessness, over and over and over.

Why? Because you love the one you’re caring for. You love them so much more than the doctors and nurses could, because somewhere along the line this person was diagnosed with an illness that broke your heart into pieces. Somewhere, at some point in time, you realized how much that person meant to you.

And you acted. 

You gave up your schedule, your normalcy, your sleep. 

And when, at long last, the days creep in that are dark and frightening and unnatural, with the hollow shadow of death lingering in the corner, you continue pressing in.

Despite the sadness, the unknowns, and the terrible indefinite grief that looms with every moment, you hold their hand, you bring a cup of water to their lips.

Your patience is limitless.

Your recognition is nonexistent.

Your love knows no bounds.

---

MORGAN BURKE

Morgan is a former teacher, staying at home with her toddler while learning to embrace her love for writing. Her family is currently waiting on their next baby through domestic adoption. When she’s not at home chasing around her little one, she is most likely reading, cooking, going on a walk or spending time at the lake. You can find more of her writing here.

SYMPTOMS OF GRIEF | Sallie McCann Tupper

grief appears in the body
as much as in the spirit.
first a patient may notice
the heart and stomach 
sag with the condensate
of accumulated exhaustion,
fear, and sadness.

at critical mass,
it starts to drip drop into the lungs,
wherefore the torso spasms, spurting them upward,
out of the fountain of one’s eyes,

and this is how grief exits the body.

a patient may notice that while
one round of distilling and purging
is constructive, even cleansing,
it can take many rinses until
the water runs clear.
a patient wishing for total healing
should expect to rinse and repeat,
rinse and repeat,
rinse and repeat;
as many times as necessary.

---

SALLIE MCCANN TUPPER

Sallie McCann Tupper and her husband enjoy living in Lancaster City with a community of friends. You can find Sallie spending time outside in her garden or in the woods, observing neighborhood animals, organizing her whole house, or cooking delicious food. She reads and writes fervently, and finds it almost impossible to read a good book without underlining and dog-earing the best parts. She writes poems to underline and dog-ear the small and sacred moments of life. Find more of her work on Instagram — @sallie_mccanntupper.