More and more I am seeing how often fear motivates our actions.Fear of change, fear of failure, fear of the unknown, fear of strangers, fear of success, fear of not fitting in, fear of finding out who we really are.

Fear can stop us in our tracks and lead us to inertia.  It can also cause us to make all kinds of excuses as well as making certain decisions based around those fears.

This election brought about a whole new range of fears for me.

I began writing this post about letting go of fear weeks before the events of November 8th with the original thought of confronting my fear of getting back into illustration as a career. That particular fear seems somewhat insignificant now and yet there have been many calls for artists to lift their pencils and brushes and writers and poets to lift their pens and musicians to lift their voices and instruments in response to the fear this election has caused.

My artwork has never been political or particularly angry or dark but these feel like angry and dark times and I do feel afraid. It’s a global fear. Fear for and of my fellow humans, fear for the earth we live on, fear of things we might lose, fear for those who are so vulnerable.

I haven’t yet found the visual language to express those fears so at the moment I am still unable to respond creatively.

This image was done for one of the card decks that I illustrated for Hay House Publishers some time ago called “Wisdom for Healing”. The title of this image is “Let Go of Fear”.

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©Janice Fried