Transcript

Rowena Preddy
Tell us a little bit about who you are.

Erin Duncan
So I am an artist, I’m an illustrator, I make things, I design surface patterns that they go onto fabric to make beautiful cushions. And I have been a YouTuber where I’ve made lots of process videos. I’m a mother. I’m a mom of furbabies. And I’m a writer. And I love to talk about the process of art and the process of having a creative business and trying to move towards living a life that actually resonates because that’s what I’m always trying to do, you know, move closer to what it is that I really, really want and how I really want to be living. That is an ongoing process that constantly changes.

Rowena Preddy
And that’s a lot of what we do. So Erin and I have been friends for about three years, we became fast, business besties in a lot of ways and fellow lovers of baked goods. We talk everything from deep soulmate rambles to sidesplitting laughter over un-pc jokes usually from me, which brings our friendship kind of up to date until November last year. What happened intense?

Erin Duncan
So in November last year, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. And it was a surprise, as most people will tell you, it often is a surprise. I went in for a routine mammogram. I went I only went for that mammogram because my dad was telling me to go he was literally saying, Come on Erin, you’re over 40. And you can get a free check. Why don’t you just go do it. He’s that kind of person, he’ll go get the free check. Because boomers. I’m so grateful that he did I it’s weird. I expected to go in and out that there would be nothing, they’ll just be in and out bang done. And it wasn’t the case I went in, they found something. They did more tests. And there it was, you’ve got breast cancer and within weeks, and once you get diagnosed, you are on the train. And there is no getting off. You can’t run from this one, you know you want to run and there is literally nowhere to go because you’re gonna die. So you’re on the train. And within weeks, I’m in surgery, I’m having a double mastectomy, lined up for six months of chemo, daily radiation, and five years of hormonal therapy. And there is just this whole world of treatments and survival that you didn’t even begin to know about when you’ve heard about cancer in the movies.

Rowena Preddy
And a lot of us are lucky enough to have that. We’ve got that movie representation of what cancer is. But when it becomes your everyday life, it just literally it almost grinds everything to a halt. I remember when you were going through that process and it just felt like everything grinded to a halt. And suddenly like it was like the world had spun on a different axis or and started going a different direction because it was just it affected everything.

Erin Duncan
Everything stopped stuff. No, nothing remains the same from that point. It’s a real tower moment. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Tarot deck, but you get a tower card and everything crumbles. And everything crumbles. Which isn’t always a bad thing. Often in the long run, it’s not a bad thing. But, you know,

Rowena Preddy
You always knew you needed to find a way to document your story. We talked about that a lot when the reality was ahead of you. And it was still very much an unknown. You were still trying to find your path and find out where your creativity would have a place in what was ahead.

Erin Duncan
You mean how I was bringing together my creativity and this journey to use the word ‘the journey’. so cheesy

Rowena Preddy
Like pathway, it’s like no pathway almost implies you had a choice in this No.

Erin Duncan
Oh yeah, yeah, you take a path, don’t you? Yeah, I mean you do. But you always do you know, you have choices that remind you all the way through, there is always choices. You don’t have to take treatment, you don’t have to take this particular treatment, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, I think that’s a really big part of cancer of the treatment is realizing it becomes a microcosm for your entire life. You don’t have to do anything that you don’t want to do From your journey, And I know that those first few months were, understandably a blur. And when you came out the other side of having a double mastectomy, there was a part of you that kind of I can tell when, what next and what next for my creativity, and how am I going to explore where I’m at, through the way that I know, to express myself. What did you come up with as your way of making sense of all this? I came up with a project called 100 bad paintings. And the idea behind 100 bad paintings was that I would give myself the space to just paint whatever I wanted, in whatever medium I wanted any subject, any substrate, be it cardboard, be it paper, be it Canvas, in my journal, or, you know, just complete freedom, the only parameter being, you’ve got to make 100 paintings, I thought that it would help me stay on some sort of road, stay on some creative path, I have the good fortune of being an artist. So when a crisis happens, I can lean in to my art, that’s not always an easy thing to do there. So it’s been nearly nine months since diagnosis, a lot of that time during chemo. For the first few months, I was in freefall. So there wasn’t much art going on then. Then the six months after that, I was having chemo. And that’s really tough on your body. So there wasn’t a lot of art being made them, but in little pockets here and there is little spaces, it was being done. And it’s some of the best stuff that I’ve ever made, like things that I really, that feel really resonant, really true to me. I think the beauty The reason I did the 100 100 bad paintings, the reason I called, people why are you calling it 100 bad paintings. They’re not even bad. No, they’re not bad. But if I tell myself, I don’t think you could do a bad painting. Oh, you know, it’s still very subjective. But if I tell myself, they’re bad, then they don’t have to be good. The whole point of 100 bad paintings is that it’s a way to let go of any pressure. It’s a way to immerse yourself in doing what you love, it’s a way to heal and release emotions, it’s a way to just grow and let go and, and be free. Because when you it doesn’t even matter who you are, whether you paint for your job, or whether you just paint, there’s all this pressure, you got to do a good job, don’t you? It has to be nice it has to look like the thing, it like, you know, all this stuff. And I just needed to let go of all that shit for a while. And I know that you’ve been trying to do that for a while. And it’s almost like in a way cancer cleared up all the crap for you and got got you out of your own way. Because some of the work you’re creating at the moment is, and I’m, I’m biased, but I’m not. Because it has hands down some of the best work, you’ve ever recreated. It is gorgeous. And you can just tell there’s like heart, there’s something more to it. It’s really you. I mean, everything I’ve made has been really me. But there’s a point here when I feel like all the things that I’ve done over the years have come together to this one perfect point. And it’s not because of cancer. You know, of course cancer is the thing that sort of started this train. But you don’t have to have a health crisis to do this. You can, you can like this is why I decided that, you know, I’m going to write, I’m writing this book. And I’m telling these little stories in there. And it’s because I realized that I’m healing and that’s why I did these things. But you don’t have to have a health crisis to make the choices that are calling you inside your heart. Sometimes we do sometimes we do have to have a health crisis and there’s no shame in that, either. I clearly did. But the thing about the 100 paintings is that prior to that you want everything you do to be polished and to be finished and to be looking good. And that’s fair enough. And that’s really nice when it is and what’s beautiful about the 100 bad paintings is that you allow yourself to create and share work that is awkward, and unfinished and raw, and that you don’t know if people are going to like, and that hasn’t been what you’ve been making previously. And it’s the awkwardness. And it’s the beginner mindset behind it. And it’s the playfulness that really, it actually resonates more with people and yourself, the juice in your story is actually the paths that are uncomfortable and awkward, And potentially ugly or bad as well. Exactly, exactly. That’s actually far more powerful than the stuff that’s always perfect.

Rowena Preddy
perfectionism is total bullshit, it is based in a place of fear.

Erin Duncan
It is it’s 100%, based in fear. And that’s what I realized I’d been living my life in a place of fear that every piece of work I did had to be great. And when I said when I called it 100, bad paintings, that meant it didn’t have to be great anymore. It just had to be from my heart. That’s all. That’s the only thing. The best thing was like, I could paint whales, and then I could pay flowers. And I could paint it things didn’t have to tie together didn’t have to be an overarching theme. You know, It’s things like that crush you, you come to your studio in the morning, like, Oh, God, I have to paint something that was like in my theme. And that just, it’s something we need to free ourselves from, from time to time, sometimes you do have to paint in a theme,it’s part of the job, right. But also have to create a space in your life where you free yourself from that. And I will also say that for an artist, your work and your life as synonymous , they’re the same thing. So allowing myself the space to be imperfect and honor myself exactly as my my work is my talent is my skill is is the same thing as allowing my body to be imperfect, to not have breasts, to be older, to not have hair to lose my art, you know what I mean? Like, it’s the same thing, the root of the 100 bad pages project actually started right at the beginning of diagnosis, when I was told that I would have to have my breasts removed. It’s a heavy conversation. So havingsurgery, like We dug into some heavy conversations around that as well, I remember, it was the start of you having to choose your different pathways, like you said, having to choose the different, you know, what does this look like for me moving forward and all those sorts of things. And it just opened up a vortex of unknown. And we had a lot of conversations around it. But I remember, maybe the first time you took power, and you made a choice, the light that came from you. So Erin chose to go for a double mastectomy instead of a single because it it really made her question a lot of what her beliefs were around her body and around what it would mean for her and what she wanted her body to be like, and her relationship to be with it in the future. And I remember when you made that choice, it was just literally like you felt like all this power rushback into you. It was huge. For me, it was huge to make that choice. Before then every decision is being made for you. This is what’s happening to you. This is what we’re going to do about it. And that’s fair enough. I mean, they’re the experts. But everything is out of your hands, your body, your life, your emotions, it’s just a major freefall. When I am and you’re you’re on Google, like researching, like a maniac, looking at everything, looking at pictures, which on one hand is really intense. But I’ll be honest, you have to you have to, you have to see what you’re getting into. You have to normalize what is completely foreign. It helps. So making the decision to have both breasts removed and not get reconstruction. I wasn’t offered reconstruction, immediate reconstruction anyway, I don’t think I would have done it. Regardless if I was offered it. I still don’t know. I’m living. I’m living flat and fabulous as they say. But because I made that decision. And I knew that it was right for me. It’s not that it was easy. It’s not that I wanted that for myself, but it’s empowering to make that choice. Hugely empowering. Okay, I’ll tell you a little story that I do I have written about in in my book, and it’s on that that day where you get diagnosed, and you get told that they’re going to remove the breast. And that night I came home and I’m standing in the bathroom going to have a shower, you know, as you go into the bathroom, you have a shower, take off your clothes, standing there in the bathroom, shitty yellow light, you know. And normally at that point, before having a shower in the bathroom, you look at yourself in the mirror and you really only see the flaws, right? You go Oh my God, my boobs are like hanging down to my waist and I really need to do this. Something about my arms and you know all the stuff like my butt’s getting so big, what am I going to do this time after diagnosis, and after being told that they were going to remove my breast, I stood there in that yellow light, and I looked at myself in the mirror. And I didn’t see myself as too fat. I didn’t see boobs, that reached down to my waist. I didn’t see all those things that I disliked about myself anymore. All I saw perfection. All I saw was, how beautiful by boobs were, you know, when somebody tells you they’re gonna fucking Take them away. All these years, I have been looking at myself, like I’m not enough. And then all of a sudden I looked in the mirror shit your fucking beautiful, perfect just the way you are. And I realized that we have been doing ourselves such a huge disservice. All of us women who you know have, there’s always this glorification of youth and perfection, what it means to have like the perfect body and I realized under that crappy light that my body was perfect. It was perfect. You know? What a waste of time. It’s amazing you suddenly get to that point. Like, I look back on all these photos. I used to think I was fat and all these things, but now all I see is miserable. I see what I felt in those times. And don’t feel like oh my god, I wish I could be that skinny again. All I can think of is Oh my god, I’m so much happier now. It’s your 40s man. It’s like that Cusp before that cusp afterwards. I feel like so often your everyone jokes about men going through these midlife crisises. I reckon women go through midlife awakenings. Yes. Oh my god, I love that. It’s so true. 40 is fucking amazing, isn’t it? There’s something so beautiful about it, you go past the bullshit just drops away. That just drops away. When people are telling you they’re going to amputate parts of your body. The bullshit also drops away. It’s amazing how your perception can change and what yeah, we buy into being so hyper critical of ourselves, we really do. We buy into it, we buy into that shit. And it is a giant fucking waste of time, I hope its okay that I’m swearing so much. Don’t get me wrong, I have big scars, I have big, big scars. And I feel vulnerable. I go to radiation every day, I have to take off my clothes. And I feel vulnerable I do. It’s not that I’m not human. But I’m kinder, I’m so much kinder now than I was before. I don’t view this as a war. I don’t view my breasts as being the enemy. I miss them. But they were huge. I view my understanding of that the same way as I view my understanding of my creativity, I have a motto that I’ve been working with, you know, that is basically accepting myself, I honor and accept myself, just as I am feeling sick, feeling ugly, right now. I just totally accept myself just as I am. And it’s synonymous your your life, your body and your art. And by doing 100 bad paintings, and by accepting my body just the way it is, it’s the same thing. And it’s allowing the imperfection allowing the awkwardness allowing, allowing yourself just to be to drop it, put it down, put down the criticism, the self hate and self loathing and stress of the need to be okay and be perfect all the time. And I don’t think I really was able to do that ever before in my adult life. I think really, truly doing it now for the first time. It feels good. It’s funny because we’ve had so many conversations about this even before your cancer journey, I’m putting that in quote marks where you obviously can’t see it. But we’ve had a lot of conversations around our relationships with our body, our hopes for girls in the future and how they feel about their bodies. And we both got a couple of very emotional girls between. and but it also makes us very aware of not passing on the same narrative. Has this opened up conversations with your daughter around her body? Well, my my oldest is nine turning 10 No, it hasn’t opened up deep conversations on body issues, but I think that it’s modeling certain beliefs and behaviors that I want her to see. And I think that she’s taking that in mainly, you know, cuz she’s, she’s a tween. So mainly we’re talking about the changes in her body. I haven’t hidden any of this from my children, they see me every day, they see me naked. There’s such amazing souls, their acceptance of my body has been a huge part of my acceptance of my body. And it wasn’t overnight. Like, it was a little difficult. You know, for them, there’s trauma there, it’s hard for them to see that. And at the same time, I’m still mum and that never stopped. And they still love me and they still say I’m beautiful. And you know, they just accept, as children do they accept it, and then they move on, because you’re more than your breasts. And that’s one of the things that comes up straight away for me through when, when all of this started was, how do I make sure that they know that we are beautiful as women, no matter what, I cannot lose my breasts and fall in a fucking heap. And go, I am not worthy anymore. Even though I might feel that way. Because I did. I hundred percent did. And it’s okay to feel fear. And They know, you know, I say to them, I miss them too, you know, but how can I show them how that they are more than that? Because one of the first things that we that you think and that everybody says to you is, yeah, it’s awful to lose your breasts, because that’s your femininity, that’s what makes you a woman. And you know, there is something to that, for sure. And it is how you feel. But at the same time, I’m can 100% tell you that clearly, my femininity comes from somewhere much, much fucking deeper than my breasts, because I am all women, you know, it is all there, nothing has fucking changed. It was so important for me that they knew that. But they knew deep down, we didn’t even have to talk about it that they just know, because they’ve seen me and they’ve seen my dad who loves me endlessly. You know, and tells me I’m beautiful all the time that they know, they know that true love and connection is not what’s on the outside. Because because it’s so scary to be a little girl out there in the world. You know, to be a woman in the world.

Rowena Preddy
We desperately want them to see the world, but we can’t tell them these things. All we can do is show them.

Erin Duncan
I don’t like to really share my deep, darkest emotional life in public. And I thought when I got diagnosed, I thought I can just I’m just going to deal with this quietly and move on. Not gonna make a scene, I’m not going to tell everybody. how wrong I was. I learned really quickly that this is way too big to hold on your own. It wasn’t fair on me. It wasn’t fair on my partner wasn’t fair on my children. And it was fair on my friends to hold this all alone. And I’m so glad I did it. I’m so glad I shared I’m so you know you were there for me right at the beginning with all this. I’m so glad I decided that actually, this is my story. And I’m just going to have to tell it, because keeping it in would be deeply counterproductive. And it’s the same thing for your creativity. We can’t hold in all the bad shit and only show the good shit. That is not a story. And your art is your story. You’ve got to tell the story. That’s what art does. That’s what it’s there for. And you can’t tell the story without the process and the ugliness. Even when you make a single piece of art. There’s always a bit at the beginning where it looks really ugly. And you have to trust the mess. You have to trust the ugliness, you have to trust that it’s going to come together and usually does. I have been using a few mottos to help get me through. It was something I started I’ve been using the the Leonie Dawson planner, Australian artist and she makes these these books, these insanely colorful books that you can use to plan your creative business. I used them a few years ago, but she’s wonderful. And her content is super awesome. She has a section where you have to write in some mottos for yourself for the year. And I think I wrote them at the end of last year. And they were probably pretty generic, like I give myself permission to fail or you know, just something like that, that you do. You say to yourself all the time. And then throughout my creative process over the last few months I’ve revisited those mottos, I’ve tweaked them and changed them into a few mottos that actually truly truly resonate with how I’m getting through this journey creatively and personally. The first one I already told you about was I honor and accept myself just as I am feeling sick, feeling ugly. That’s a really, really powerful one. The second one that I have been using is I am true to myself, my thoughts, my ideas, my talent, I am following no one. That’s a really important one. Right? So at any given time, I’m always taking a class. I’ve got coaches looking at process videos here Skillshare classes, I’m trying to upskill I’m trying to do this and that. And there’s always this outside feedback which is I’m a big supporter of classes and of mentors, I love it. Eat that Shit up. But there also comes a time where you have to shut it down. You have to come from your heart, whatever that is whatever that says, I stopped listening to music or podcasts whilst I was painting so that I could just have silence. And I think that’s silent. I think silence is scary. I think being there to witness what really comes up for you is brave. The whole point of this is brave, right? The whole point of this issue is brave. And I honestly think that the bravest thing is honestly listening to what comes up from inside you and not making to shutting out the noise so that what is really going on inside you can come up and you witness it for yourself. That’s the hardest thing because shit comes up you don’t want to hear and you don’t want to say all you hear what you’ve really been saying to yourself in your own head, all this time, and you have to face it and stop running away from it. Like so often we get busy being busy, and finding those moments of silence and cos so often that’s why people end up lying awake at nighttime, because they haven’t given themselves that time and that stillness to contemplate inwards instead of outwards. So often the answers to what is going on externally are internal. And how can we possibly know ourselves if we’re not listening, if we never give ourselves the time, and the space and the silence to listen. And i was a huge multitasker, even when I thought I wasn’t I genuinely told myself that I was not doing too much at once you know, but in reality, I was actually listening to a podcast writing an email and making breakfast for the kids all at the same time. Multitasking, you know that is not that is not listening In. That is not silence that is not doing one thing at a time and genuinely giving yourself the space. And it doesn’t happen immediately. You need to give yourself time for that to bubble up and show up show up to that silence daily.

Rowena Preddy
Can you imagine me silent?

Erin Duncan
Yes, I can. So yeah, true to myself, my thoughts and my ideas. And if that’s that’s a brave one, because we’re always looking around, but bombarded with stuff as creators. This is what that person’s designing. This is what that person’s making. Look, look, look. And it’s lovely. I get you know, you get inspired by watching what others do. But then you also get swayed and you doubt yourself and your voice gets mixed in and diluted. And I have never done it before. not truly I have never said to myself, I gave myself a year basically and said I will not listen. I mean of course if I’m on social media and posting, I’m gonna see stuff on there to support people that I love who do what they do, but I’m not necessarily going to dive in and watch videos or, you know, sign up for a class or, you know, be directly coached on particular thing. I’m just giving myself space to be self directed, self directed. And I think as women as well, we do I personally do have struggled with self direction looking for someone to tell me what to fucking do all the time. You know, I thought that was me. But I also think that’s kind of a woman thing. Because we’re always being told what to do, you know, permanent student not elevated into positions of leadership not seeing that enough.

Rowena Preddy
Like we’ve known each other for three years and you’ve had a rough three years.

Erin Duncan
When my dad died. My mom had heart surgery. Yeah,

Rowena Preddy
Dog died.

Erin Duncan
Dog died. I got Cancer.

Rowena Preddy
What would you say has been your bravest moment?

Erin Duncan
Brave is having cancer because you don’t have a choice. You just get it and you walk off. But brave is deciding how you are going to live with the fear. Because there is fear. There is fear that it’s going to come back. There is fear that it’s not going to be enough that I’m not enough, like, the way I look is who’s gonna love me there is fear. What’s going to happen to my children, there’s all this fear. There’s fear for many of us, you know, there’s anxiety, there’s divorce, there’s depression, there’s isolation, there’s so much fucking fear. And I suppose my bravest moment is every day, when I decide that I’m not going to let the fear stop me from making plans, making dreams, taking steps towards living the life that I dream of that I’ve always wanted. I dream of a studio somewhere where the ocean and the woods meet with a wood burning stove in there. And you know what I mean? And not letting go of those dreams and brave is living with that fear all the time. But still being able to create the space around you to listen to your voice and to share it to say what’s going on for you. To be okay with that things are 100% out of your control. Really. There’s nothing we can control. We can’t control the cancer. We can’t control so much of our lives and what other people do and how other people feel about us. Going out in public when I’m now breastless and I’m hairless and maybe other people don’t notice people say to me, no one’s gonna notice, you know, you look just the same. But notice I totally did my body is I’ve got for me really curvaceous woman to being, you know, having a body like a child. I noticed I feel it when I go outside. And I think brave is casting that off and saying, it really doesn’t matter what a person that I don’t even know thinks about me. And that goes the same for when I post on social media or when I create artwork and say, I would sell it and I’m scared that it’s not good enough. Or when I go outdoors in my workout clothes, and I don’t have any boobs. It’s all the fucking same. That’s brave, isn’t it? We have to do that. Embracing, my body and going outdoors and being myself in all facets.