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Meet Julia Speer

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Julia Speer.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Julia. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I am a native Atlantan. My dad was from Little Five Points, my mom from Cartersville. I came from a very creative family with a lot of female energy. I have four sisters, so that’s a houseful. When I was a young teen, I asked my mom if I could paint on the bedroom walls. She didn’t hesitate to say yes – didn’t even ask what I was going to paint. I remember putting bright colors of acrylic paint into paper plates. My sister and I put our hands in the paint and jumped on the bed, stamping colorful handprints over our head on the ceiling. I also painted words of poetry and other images on the walls. Creative expression was encouraged and nurtured. It was seen and valued as much broader than drawing and painting, which is what comes to mind for most people when you say “art.” I have many creative outlets. I bake, write, make jewelry, sculpt, do mixed media collage, and more.

However, the thing I am most passionate about is Relationship. I believe the most important relationship we have as humans is the one we have with ourselves. The degree to which we love, respect, accept, appreciate, have empathy and compassion for others is in direct proportion to how we love, respect, accept, appreciate, have empathy and compassion for ourselves. How we see ourselves has a direct impact on our creativity. Most people don’t see themselves as creative because they put creativity and art into a very narrow and limited box.

I taught elementary art in the public school system for 20 years. Children are much more fearless in their creative exploration than adults. If I had a dollar for every time I heard an adult say to me, “Oh, I can’t even draw stick people,” (as if that were the measure of creativity), I would be extravagantly traveling Europe right now… well, if it weren’t for the pandemic.

After retiring from the public school system, I continued teaching after school classes, summer art camps, workshops, and art parties. I offer this to both children and adults, although with COVID I am moving my business online. I’ve been teaching myself how to use open broadcaster software with online streaming and creating pre-recorded video tutorials that I will launch very soon. Learning new skills brings me joy and excites me. I have also discovered it reduces anxiety- something many of us have more of with the Covid outbreak. I am proud of my hard work and my willingness to learn new things, especially at 63.

It is not art in and of itself that is my focus, but rather the relationship it creates with ourselves and others. It is a vehicle for curiosity, discovery, healing, and joy. It is a language for expression when words fail. When I was teaching in the public school system, kids who struggled in other areas would come to art class and find validation and belonging. Kids who may have been “holy terrors” in the general education classroom would blossom and bloom in art class. As a kid, I always felt like a misfit, like I did not belong. Art & creative expression validate my humanness, my fallibility, my vulnerability, and my individuality. In this way it nurtures my relationship with myself.

To be creative, we must be open. We must remain curious. We must recognize that there is always more to learn, always new and different ways of seeing and experiencing things. This is a core value and has driven and inspired my work with adult women as well. My other business besides Ms. Julia’s Art Studio is Sage Soul Sisters. I create and facilitate workshops, retreats, and sacred circles for women. We have explored topics and issues common to women such as body image, a woman’s fury, the Good Girl Archetype, and others. I use a facility in Asheville, NC for the weekend retreats. It’s quiet, private, and sits in a beautiful cocoon of nature with hiking trails along a quiet river. Creative expression is always an important part of that powerful, healing weekend. We have created clay Goddess figures representing the sacred feminine, explored archetypes and made archetype masks. We have created stunning visual journals, decorative wands, and more. It is always so exciting to see women, who before the weekend did not experience themselves as creative or artistic, settle into a quiet almost meditative body posture while creating. One memory I have is the connection and joy I saw and heard from the visual journaling group while they were gathering images and words from magazines, sharing with and inspiring each other. It was phenomenal!

With COVID, I have not been able to offer my annual women’s retreat, and I so miss that transformative experience. I look forward to getting back to that when it is safe to do so.

Curiosity and growth as core values has also influenced my own personal growth since 2016. It was and is important to me to become a better listener. This is something I started to be more intentional about. I watched. I listened. The veil began to lift. I saw how very white my Facebook friend list was. I began to understand white privilege and systemic racism. I made a conscious choice to take action in ways that I had not previously. It is IMPERATIVE that I lean into the discomfort. This is how I grow. I have made many mistakes and continue to do so as I learn. I have felt indescribable shame and embarrassment in my bumblings, AND I know that my shame and discomfort will not kill me. So many of us as humans do not know how to sit with our discomfort. We must come to recognize that it will not kill us. In fact, I believe our discomfort is a doorway to ourselves where we can ultimately look in the mirror and stand what we see- the beautiful AND the not-beautiful.

This is what I mean when I say that it is not the art in and of itself that is my passion but rather the relationship we have with ourselves. Creative expression is a powerful and healing tool for exploration, discovery, acceptance, compassion, joy, play, and ALL of those are healing.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Nope. Not easy, but everyone has a story, and if they’re human, there are struggles within their story line. One of my favorite quotes from author and researcher Brené Brown is, “You either walk inside your story and own it or you stand outside your story and hustle for your worthiness.”

In 1987 I checked myself into a treatment facility for co-dependency. It was a 21-day program, and it saved my life. When I got out, I began some rigorous work on myself. That was a major turning point in my life and was when I began to examine the relationship I had with myself.

In 1999 I divorced my first husband. That was THE most difficult thing I have ever done. I have said it was like the tearing of flesh. As a southern white woman, I had been taught, though not consciously, to defer to the white man in power. That was first my father and then my husband. So, I was not just tearing myself away from a toxic marriage relationship but a toxic relationship I had with myself- how I saw myself as a woman, a fallible human, and how I showed up in the world.

I married young. I was 21 and stayed in that marriage for 20 years. My daughter was 16 when I moved out and was furious with me. I think she saw her dad as the poor wounded one and I was the bad guy who hurt him. That was so hard. I cannot even put into words the grief I experienced at that mother-daughter loss. Fortunately, there has been much healing between my daughter and myself, and even between her father and me. It’s truly remarkable considering what I went through and how I felt at that time.

I am infinitely grateful for the elementary students I had at that time. I was in unbearable emotional pain. My role as wife and mother had all but ended. I did not know how to see myself. Those elementary age children who love to hug filled a hole in my heart. They gave me my “Mommie fix.” I had thought originally that I wanted to teach high school, but there were no openings at that time. Now I know elementary school was exactly where I needed to be. I stayed at that school for 20 years.

On an emotional level, those two events were the biggest on my timeline, but going from being supported by a corporate successful white male to a single income schoolteacher was and is not easy in this world. I carried great shame about my financial inadequacies for a lot of years. I am only now coming to realize I am not alone. Sadly, many people struggle to get ahead. This is another thing I am learning more about- the class struggle in America and how that impacts people- most importantly when examined through an intersectional lens.

How I see and value myself and my gifts impacts my work. I really struggle, even now, determining the worth and value of what I offer and then putting a price tag on it. I find that terribly difficult. COVID has had an extremely negative impact on my afterschool classes. Where I once had approximately 60 art students and an annual women’s retreat, I now have 6 online students and no annual retreat. With COVID, I am moving my business online. This requires new skills and equipment. That has been a tremendous challenge, but I know I am not alone in this struggle. These are impossible times for so many. I have several self-care practices in place to help combat anxiety. Creative expression is one of these.

What were you like growing up?
Insecure. Wanting very much to be liked by others, but also a rebel. I didn’t like to follow the crowd. I was not good at sports. I was very physically insecure. As a kid, I took ballet lessons. I thought I wanted to become a ballerina. I also loved nature. My favorite thing was to backpack on the Appalachian Trail and go camping. I’m grateful to have so many sisters. I carry good memories of growing up with them and my cousins who were close by in Cartersville, GA. I remember playing in the creek behind our house, OTP as they call it, collecting crawdads and salamanders. I remember tadpoles and watching frogs grow. With my cousins, I remember climbing the low hung branches of a magnolia tree at my grandmother’s, eating watermelon and seeing who could spit the seeds the farthest. I remember laughing, shouting, and playing in the rain with my sisters. My mother wouldn’t let us into the house in our soaked clothes. All of us peeled off our layers in the car port, leaving them in a wet pile on the cement floor. I remember discovering my mother’s hiding place for Christmas gifts and carefully, secretly peeling the scotch tape back until I could unwrap the gift to see what was inside. I prided myself in being able to do that with no one knowing. I was sneaky.

We’d love to hear more about your art.
I have two businesses. One is Ms. Julia’s Art Studio, where I offer classes, workshops, summer art camp, and art parties. My goal as an art educator is to help you begin to see yourself as creative and create opportunities to explore and discover the form of creative expression that excites and inspires you.

My other business is Sage Souls Sisters. I design and facilitate creative workshops, healing retreats, and sacred circles for women. Incorporating creative expression as a healing modality- a way to play and create joy- is a vital part of these experiences.

What I am most proud of as an individual and therefore, as a company is my willingness to learn and grow. I am proud of my courage and vulnerability. I am proud of my willingness to show up in all of my messy humanness. The most important thing to me is building relationships – creating connections with other human beings. Everything I do and create and offer originates from this place.

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