What I Learned About True Love and Courage from a Bucket Of Paint

Lessons About True Love and Courage from a Bucket Of Paint

Nothing feels as amazing as being in the light of true love. Right? I'm not talking about love. I'm not talking about like. I'm talking about true love. Something that feels true, beautiful, and meaningful, baggage and all, and I mean baggage and all. And what's amazing about true love is that no one can tell you any different. My relationship with light, color, and true love started in Puerto Rico in the back seat of my parents' car. It was a black Chevrolet Impala with Naugahyde red leather seats. 

Experiencing True Love Through Color

It was a time when you didn't have seat belts. So you could slide from side to side and look out the window, these beautiful silver chrome windows. We drove from my mother and father's house to my grandparents' house and back during sunrises and sunsets. I got to experience the world every day during sunrises and sunsets when I was a little kid. Imagine seeing light every day, transforming life before my eyes with color. For me, that color, that light, was true love. Being in that car was true love. I remember seeing other cars and thinking, "Wow. Those are other people going somewhere else. I don't want to be in that car. I wanna go home." That is the color baggage I brought with me when I moved to the Pacific Northwest, the land of gray skies and hunter-green. The funny thing about true love is that you don't even know you carry it in you and with you everywhere you go. 

Creating True Love, Not Finding It

I didn't understand this until 1990 when I became a mother. Driven by true love, I took that color baggage, opened it up for the first time, and painted every inch of my walls and ceilings with colors nobody else was using. With these colors, I created an entire universe that didn't look like anybody else's. And what happened? Like a beautiful sunset, people looked at me and said, "Okay, I want this feeling, not with your baggage, but with mine." I made it a mission to help them do it. Over the next 30-plus years, I helped thousands of people unpack their color baggage and create a feeling of true love with a bucket of paint.

There Are Three Kinds of White Walls

Fast forward to 2020. Not only did we have a pandemic, but our house was sold unlisted, and we had six weeks to evacuate to a luxury penthouse apartment. It was modern, beautiful, and had white walls. I grew up with two kinds of white walls. One was my grandmother's. Her white walls were true love through and through. She loved white. Her walls were white because all other colors honored that white. When you walked in, you couldn't deny the fortitude of that white atmosphere. You walked into her space, and it felt like a lighthouse. My mother's white walls were different. They were all about fresh starts. She got married four times. Those walls were her escape hatch because she was always searching for true love and would never quit until she found it. I walk into the third kind, the loveless, echoey, impersonal kind found in inexpensive or inexpensive temporary apartments. Anyone can live there; it creates a black space in the name of freshness, cleanliness, or flexibility when, in fact, it is in the name of turn-over convenience. I was in color purgatory. My baggage felt like rubble. Nothing was grounded.

The Red Table and the Courage to Love

Thinking I couldn't paint my apartment walls, I started dreaming of an old wood table I could paint and bring back to life. One day, I walked about and saw her on the side of the road with a for-free sign. Just imagine Ted Lasso's boss as a sofa table. She was big and beautiful, with long legs, heels, and a scallop skirt. I took her home, and she sat in my apartment for nine months because the only color that that table could be was red, which came with a lot of baggage. Red was my mother's color baggage. A woman who wore red lipstick all the time wanted me to wear red lipstick like her all the time. For decades, it was a hard no for me.

 Now, I was about to paint a table that would become a gigantic pair of red lips (ala Rolling Stones) in my entryway because the only color I could imagine it to be was red. The day came when I woke up, surrendered, and said, "Okay. Red it is." Four days later, because of that red table, I painted my apartment in colors I had never painted before.

The Power of the Red Table

Two weeks later, my neighbor across the hall invited me for a happy hour at her apartment earlier that evening. She was a young mom getting divorced with a daughter the same age as my oldest grandson. I hoped to tell her a piece of advice I had wanted to share for a long time since I myself went through a divorce, but the timing never felt quite right.

When I walked in, she told me she was excited to celebrate because she was signing divorce papers the following week. The conversation was never meant to be. When I left to go out to dinner, I asked her to keep an ear out for our dog Atlas in case he started barking.

Surprisingly, I got a text from her saying that the dog had been incessantly barking and that she had walked into my apartment, which was pitch black. Thankfully, I was 5 minutes away, and she stayed with Atlas until I arrived.

I flipped the breaker, the lights came on, and, like in the movies, instantly, she was transported into a brand new world of color with the same baggage. Her jaw dropped.

She instantly fell in love with my red table.

I told her the whole story and how much I had to trust myself to paint it red! As she walked out, she paused, rubbed the table from side to side, and exhaled the words I never expected: I need to take this red energy with me when I sign my divorce papers next week.

The red table had spoken.

I leaned in and whispered what I wanted to tell her. She left two hours later. A week later, she texted me and thanked me. She took a step she had been afraid to take and would not have taken had it not been for the red table. I knew the table had to be red, but that's when I knew why it had to be red. Moments of awareness don't happen instantly; they occur in the slow-rolling waves they leave behind.

My Mother's Red Lipstick

At sixteen, my mother took a secretarial course instead of college. She went to work to help her family financially, and that red lipstick gave my mom the courage to act like an adult and forge a new path ahead. It is the courage she always wanted me to have, and I did not understand until I saw a young mother asking a red table for that same courage. From then on, I began to wear red lipstick. 

Today, my mother still wears red lipstick. She has lived happily single for thirty years in a home lit up by yellow walls that feel like a warm Puerto Rican sunrise every time she walks in through the door. Her home expresses who she is, reminding her of her independence, resilience, and the better life she made for herself and her daughter when she came to America to start a new life as often as she needed.

 The Truth About Red

It's not an accident that red is associated with courage, willpower, and affection. Every color, except red, can be lightened and still be called by its name. Once lightened, red turns pink because it can no longer live up to its reflection or true nature. Every color in the rainbow has an extraordinary truth and teaching of true love for us that is beautiful, meaningful, and true—baggage and all. 

Claiming True Love as the Source of Courage

As I reflected on my journey from those red leather seats of my childhood to my mother's red lipstick to asking a red table for courage, I was both struck and reminded of the need we all have to claim true love for ourselves as the ultimate source of courage and step into the life we envision creating. True love isn't something you find; it's what you create. Anyone can create true love for themselves, others, and the world with their baggage and a bucket of paint.

Remember, if melody is the story, harmony is the setting, and harmony comes in color. As you reflect on your colorful journey, consider how a simple change in color can transform your space and your emotions. May you find the perfect harmony that resonates with your soul.  Learn about Chromatic Wisdom

From my bag to yours,

Gretchen

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I bet you have some colorful memories to unpack....

From My Bag To Yours,

G