Meet Mary Smyer

We recently connected with Mary Smyer and have shared our conversation below.

Mary, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?

This quote from Pema Chodron gets right to the heart of my definition of resilience.

“Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.”

Like everyone in this life I have had my share of hardships and confrontations with the unwanted: with disappointment, setbacks, uncertainty and loss. For me resilience has to do with flexibility, not losing heart or giving up in the face of adversity and developing confidence in my capacity to abide. When I discovered Buddhism in my twenties I felt relieved, as it reoriented me to seeing difficulty as a path rather than just a drag. Bit by bit I have increased my ability be more elastic rather than rigid with what reality brings.

I feel it is a similar flexibility that allows for true creativity, in both art-making and in navigating a life. When I don’t insist on what my small controlling mind thinks should happen, there is space for something new to unfold. In a way working in ceramics is always teaching resilience because the medium is inherently quirky and fussy, but also at times, incredibly forgiving. The making process is full of unexpected errors, saves, setbacks, mishaps, victories and mistakes!

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

I am a practicing psychotherapist and I love my work with clients. I am also an artist and have maintained an art practice through all the phases of my life. In the last ten years I have begun to divide my time more equally between my psychotherapy practice and my art practice which is focused primarily on ceramics and creating my business, Maud Ceramics.

I attended Rhode Island School of Design as a Graphic Design major but soon after graduating gravitated towards crafts and ended up as a Core Student at Penland School of Crafts in Penland, North Carolina. This was a watershed moment for me, and my whole creative and inner life opened up. I had uninterrupted time to wander both physically and figuratively- reading and writing poetry, studying mythology and fairy tales, recording my dreams. I worked with clay, made books, painted. It was a kind of Dreamtime for my soul and to this day I continue to draw from the inner spring that opened up for me during that period.

The next chapter was at Anderson Ranch in Colorado where I had an artist residency and enjoyed two more years being supported in following my own creative threads. After this came a period of intense immersion in parenting and family life living in New Mexico. I continued to make art and I also became interested in psychology as I pursued in my own therapy in an effort to suffer less and to understand myself more.

As I tried to penetrate my own psychology I also began practicing meditation and learning about Buddhism. I eventually went back to school to become a Marriage and Family Therapist when we moved to California. I raised my kids, went to school, created a private psychotherapy practice and made as much art as I could along the way. When I was 49 I was diagnosed with cancer, which among other things, re-awakened me to the central importance of my creative life,
which over time had gotten moved to the back burner. I got back into clay and began to take classes locally. I also began to return frequently to take classes at Penland on my own and with my grown children.

This began a steadily increasing dedication to my own need to create. Now, just over ten years later I have a ceramic studio on my property which my son and husband built for me. It is tiny, but adorable and a true sanctuary. The desire to create is so powerful and compelling and I am enjoying the space and time for my inner process. I am slowly venturing into putting my work out into the world and am fortunate to have pieces at three very special Bay area shops: Sobu, Flowerland and Esqueleto. I am still figuring out a lot about social media, sales etc., while trying to preserve what is most important to me in the work.These days I am allowing for a lot of experimentation with forms and materials and surface treatments. There seems to be no end to the discovery and inspiration.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

I would say that for my journey, perseverance, openness and self acceptance have been important and necessary. In my experience, each one helps develop the other two. But I believe self acceptance to be the most crucial. In this society we are trained from an early age to look critically and to continually evaluate ourselves and the world around us which is very constraining. Making any headway towards allowing ourselves to feel what we feel and to be what we are, supports our unfolding and allows our unique gifts to flourish. Self acceptance allows us to learn more about who we actually are rather than who we were nominated to be or who we feel we should be based on some ideal. My advice is to listen deeply and trust yourself as much as you can! Allow yourself to dream about and envision your own heart’s desire. Put yourself in proximity to people and experiences that awaken, inspire and touch your truest self.

Alright, so before we go we want to ask you to take a moment to reflect and share what you think you would do if you somehow knew you only had a decade of life left?

I actually think about this all the time. I am very aware of the unpredictability and the impermanence of all situations and so I aspire to live as fully as I can now and not wait until later to seize on what is important. Right now I am trying to prioritize time in my studio and to expose myself to opportunities to learn from and be inspired by others. I feel I am only inches into the vast frontier of what is possible for me creatively.
The most important thing is to stay in close contact with myself, listening inwardly and following my curiosity and inspiration. There is so much beauty and so much meaning all around us and I hope to stave off the siren calls of distraction so that I can really experience what is here moment to moment, day to day, for as long as I have the gift of being here for it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.maud-ceramics.com
• Instagram: @mary_smyer_ceramics