About Me — Barbara Carter

Self-discovery and inner healing.

Much about what makes me who I am stems from my unusual childhood. My family took in boarders, both young and old. This introduced me to a sadder, darker side of life.

On the flip side, there was a dead sea captain’s house, two doors down from my family’s home. Various kinds of people came to rent there, exposing me to hippies, artists, a rock band, and the first black man in our neighbourhood.

We lived in Nova Scotia, Canada. Across the harbour from the small scenic town of Mahone Bay.

I was the only biological child. My younger sister was adopted. Three cousins grew up with us. Many were worse off than me. I didn’t recognize my abuse until my thirties.

Our family never travelled. The world had to come to us.

As a child, I learned to draw around the age of ten. Before that, I loved colouring books. Colouring books provided the power of choice. I was able to decide what colour to use. Nobody telling me how to do it.

Drawing became something I learned to do on my own. Art was not taught in the schools I attended.

Drawing was a connection to something greater. Creating took me to a peaceful place. Gave me what our family’s Lutheran religion couldn’t.

In my teens, with a broken heart, I began writing poetry. Then anxiety took over, and I had a nervous breakdown at age fifteen.

As a teen, I wanted to become an artist or a writer. But my mother and circumstances stood in my way.

I then began a love affair with addiction: smoking, drinking, and men no good for me.

In my early twenties, I found myself defeated by many hard years, and unexpectedly pregnant. It was then I started anew and tried to live like those around me lived. I got married. Had children. Threw out all my art supplies.

I turned to quilting to satisfy my creative side. Made necessary items for our home.

Then I found a way to become an artist and show and sell my work in galleries.

I struggled for years, trying to live from my art. Working at other jobs to pay the bills. Spent ten years instructing art classes for children and adults. Learning a lot from what I taught.

But never knowing where my next pay cheque was coming from was hard. Wanting financial security, I worked for the NSLC (Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation) a government-run liquor store, for fifteen years. I retired last fall.

Along the way, I had a repetitive workplace injury that turned into fibromyalgia.

But creativity has always remained a part of my life. Providing insights and value, measured in more than dollars.

Books have also always been with me. My interest, as in art, involves people. I read memoirs, psychology, spirituality, and mind-body connection, along with good literary fiction.

For most of my life, I’ve identified with the Warrior archetype. Strong-willed and determined, I fought mainly against my mother’s need to control and suffocate me.

My father was an alcoholic who hid his drinking. My mother didn’t drink and pretended her husband didn’t either.

I had to learn to trust myself.

Creativity has been my saviour. My guidance on self-discovery and inner healing.

Married for just over forty years, I’ve learned a lot about relationships.

Our children are all in their thirties, some with children of their own.

Through therapy, I’ve come to a place of peace. Able to feel a full range of emotions.

The archetype I most identify with now is the Magician. I accept life and don’t run from it. I pay attention to synchronicity/meaningful coincidences. I’m capable of change.

I express my truth.

As a young woman, I felt I had nothing of value to say or offer the world. Through healing, I’ve become a self-assured person with lots to say.

I needed to let go of what was inside me. To write or lose my mind.

When I wrote the first draft about my childhood experiences, I wanted to walk into the ocean and drown. The critical voice in my head tried to silence me.

When the time is right, things happen. My mother died as my first book was born. I put the advanced reader’s copy in the foot of her casket. I went home and reread those childhood stories about our mother-daughter relationship.

With my children, I have been very conscious of not being an over-controlling, meddling, parent, to allow my children to become who they needed to be without my interference.

BARBARA CARTER likes to take walks, read, watch TV dramas, practice Qi-gong, and work on her memoir series BARBARA By The BAY.

Learn more here: https://www.barbaracarterartist.com