On rejection

I'd like to say it was a new experience, and it was the novelty that upset me.

Of course the reality is, like everyone else on the planet, I've had plenty of experience with rejection.

It was a new experience to have an artwork - one of my quilts - rejected for a show. This is mostly because I haven't entered many juried shows, not because my work is always accepted.

The feelings of pain, anger and worst of all, shame, were surprisingly intense. Fortunately short-lived too - experience enriched with an effective course of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy allows me to 'get over it and get on with it'

Today I listened to cricketer Martin Crowe talk about his life and career and my attention was caught by how he discussed his failures.

It might as well have been the same thing: rejection=failure ... and all too easily follows with:

I'm not good enough

I'm still learning to not make that step. To untangle exterior occurrences like rejections, failures, being beaten, from my sense of my own value. I'm grateful that my quilt was not accepted into that show. I practiced dealing with it as a factual occurrence that didn't mean anything *about* me. It means something *to* me, but that's different.