#laura j w ryan

The Lighthouse, 5/26/2022

This little sketch is inspired by Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse I recently finished re-reading it for a fresh read before reading Katharine Smyth’s book All the Lives We Ever Lived, (of which I only have a few pages left to go.) They make good companions regarding the subject of grief, which I don’t think our society allows the time for processing the death of a loved one and goodness knows there is not a right way to grieve, everybody is different, there is no mold to pour your grief into so it looks like everyone else’s grief.

Mrs. Ramsey is the Sun that everyone revolves around, her loss shatters the orbits of all who relied on her being there. She is the lighthouse.

I have always liked Lily’s character best, being a painter I relate to her creativity and her pondering over the placement of a tree or a figure…of course, nothing good comes without a struggle. And even after all this time, nothing has truly changed when it comes to the expectation that a woman must marry and must produce children. Lily wants more out of life than that. Lily’s struggle with feeling grief is natural, even 10 years after Mrs. Ramsey’s passing, returning to the summer house on the Isle of Sky, she cannot make herself feel something, but eventually, it flows through its own without force.

If anything, reading Virginia Woolf always inspires me to write…but at this moment in time, I’m doing more painting with colors and drawing in pencil rather than the written word, that is the ebb and flow of creativity. There are things I have no words for.

(I love the cover images that Vanessa Bell made for Virginia’s books.)