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Wanting me to disappear.

I found it interesting that my mother’s voice still echoes in my head, that it rings out loud and clear each and every time I veer off her well-beaten path, my fear of disappointing her screams louder than the thrill of doing what I love to do.

These echoes have traveled with me a long long time, and they are laced with fear that freezes me in my tracks if I even begin to ponder doing things differently.

This underlying system was created when I was very small, and the definition of self was built upon this very odd system, where my ‘goodness’ was mirrored when she was happy and my ‘badness’ when she wasn’t.

It had nothing to do with what I wanted to do, but had everything to do with her.

This track was laid down within me by how my mother reacted to life, and making her happy was my only goal, for her happiness meant her loving me.

It had nothing to do with the actual things I was doing, but the withdrawing of love dare I venture into a place that made her frown.

I wonder if this is how all children learn about life, that we simply follow the smiles and steer away from all the frowns, that we never learn to steer by our own smiles, we learn to navigate through life by others happiness.

Living in this backward system for 46 years, the last 6 have been spent learning how to live from my inner smiles and standing strong against their frowns.

Learning that I am not responsible for other people’s faces, that it is not my job, has been a full time job, undoing the tracks from childhood, taking them down one piece at a time.

I can see how people lose themselves while living with themselves, how they get pulled into the lives of others simply for happiness and love.

What is so debilitating is that your life disappears while theirs seems to thrive. And how is that love if you disappear?

In order to be loved by my parents, I had to disappear.

My needs had to disappear, my wants, my desires, my happiness, my joy, my love and my life. I learned to disappear for love.

As I walk forward learning how to love myself, her echoes come back to remind me of where else I let my self go, where I lost a part of me, where I buried myself and now where I can reclaim that piece.

I didn’t know I buried her in so much responsibility.

I find now, when I feel so stuck, so angry without a choice, I am tugging on a piece of the old track, and it has nothing to do with what is going on today, but instead what I have learned a long time ago.

A voice from the past wanting me to disappear.

This quilt represents my inner wisdom and the young artist…. I am so happy that this one didn't sell!

June 28, 2011
Enter In

Julia Cameron writes in The Artist’s Way, “I like to think of the mind as a room. In that room, we keep all our usual ideas about life, God, what’s possible and what’s not. The room has a door. That door is ever so slightly ajar, and outside we can see a great deal of dazzling light. Out there in the dazzling light are a lot of new ideas that we consider too far-out for us, and so we keep them out there. The ideas we are comfortable with are in the room with us. The other ideas are out, and we keep them out.”

“In our ordinary, prerecovery life, when we would hear something weird or threatening, we’d just grab the doorknob and pull the door shut. Fast.”

“Inner work triggering outer change? Ridiculous! (Slam the door.) God bother to help my own creative recovery? (Slam.) Synchronicity supporting my artist with serendipitous coincidences? (Slam, slam, slam.)

“Now that we are in creative recovery, there is another approach we need to try. To do this, we gently set aside our skepticism – for later us, if we need it – and when a weird idea or coincidence whizzes by, we gently nudge the door a little further open.”

“Setting skepticism aside, even briefly, can make for very interesting explorations. In creative recovery, it is not necessary that we change any of our beliefs. It is necessary that we examine them.”

“More than anything else, creative recovery is an exercise in open-mindedness. Again, picture your mind as that room with the door slightly ajar. Nudging the door open a bit more is what makes for open-mindedness. Begin, this week, to consciously practice opening your mind.” Julia

Yesterday I was panicked due to my one-day weekend, and I was not open to letting the chores go and just using it as my play day as I had threatened to do. I slammed the door on playing, staying with old habits of getting my jobs done first.

I was crabby but doing the work. Resenting that I couldn’t play.

It is like being locked in a room to which you have the key, yet unable to actually use it to turn yourself free.

There is an exchange I can’t see to agree with, messy house in exchange for playing!

I want both. And if I stay that course, I will continue exchanging playtime for work time, for as we all know there is always another job to be done.

She is suggesting that we ‘use’ this excuse in order to keep our Artist from going to explore the wide-open world, that we have become comfortable in the cramped workspace.

My grumpiness spread like a virus, or tried to, but most left me alone in my unhappiness.

My daughter took her playtime first, and later on in the fading daylight mowed the grass. My resentment at her is that she has mastered the art of play over work time…and is doing what I can’t allow me to do.

I blame her for me being unable to exchange playing for a clean house.

As I sit with this thought, I used to get appreciation and attention for keeping my mother’s house in order…and the opposite may be true, wrath if I didn’t help.

I recall many siblings not caring where I cared too much.

When I thought I cared about a clean house, in fact I cared what my mother thought of me.

Perhaps, this is the issue that needs to be examined.
”I am better if I have a clean house, even if I am grumpy.”

Who do I like better or who feels better inside?

It seems my self-identity is wrapped up in what I do and how external things look.

How brave to let it all go and play…That is the challenge this week…being a child doing what she feels like, letting go of responsibilites that can wait. The 'mother' in my head may want me to slam the door to fun, but I have to be strong enough to nudge it open and enter in.

June 27, 2011
Mine.

As I was reading Chapter Two of The Artist’s Way book by Julia Cameron, I found similarities between finding your artist self and leaving toxic relationships.

She is leading you forward suggesting ideas and things that will focus on self and in doing so you discover where you are standing and how you have been living and who has had their hands on the reigns of you.

Unblocking the Artist is like opening the eyes of those in denial.

Julia speaks of poisonous playmates and crazymakers and I see them as the dysfunctional family I was lost among where there was no space for my self.

She makes reference between giving up toxic thinking as giving up drinking. And those still enjoying the toxic beverages and the toxic mindset, will not be your cheerleaders and in fact will weaken your resolve.

The Artist Self is the self that is untouched by other’s influences, but whose sense of being comes from within and is connected to the Universe.

She is looking at this process from the self outward, where I was looking at leaving the mess of dysfunction.

I wasn’t trying to find an authentic artful self, but rather fleeing from the abusive family that I felt had stolen my self.

And it had, a pattern maker or follower had replaced my own artistic creative self, I had no personal connection to the Universe, I was plugged into an extension cord.

My sense of self flowed not from the Universe; it came from my mother/father/brother/sister/friend/anyone but the Universe and me.

When everything that was holding the definitions of me was shown to be very dysfunctional, I then seen my own dysfunctional self.

I saw what the extension cord was plugged into, and I unplugged them all.

It was the unplugging them that freed me to be available to hear the Universe, to pay attention to my body, my feelings, my emotions, to connect me back to me.

The definition of Universe is one song.

I am now singing one song… mine.

June 26, 2011
Art

The contrasts in life are incredible and their depths unimaginable, the reach between them are so they do not touch nor do they brush up against each other, two drastically different worlds, yet on the same planet living and breathing in the same time frame.

I had a short Artist Date followed by a conversation reporting more abuse in the FALC’s congregation; more horror of insidious acts perpetrated against children by highly regarded church members. Tales whose reflection echoes my parents…and a friend’s suicide explained 25 years after it happened. Swinging from Art to Horror within minutes.

The Artist within me, just moments before had feasted upon colors and fabulously soft textures, from the curly silken softness of alpaca wool to real silk spun by a worm and then dyed by Artist’s hands…my spirit was alive and alert to new things dreaming of how they can be used in an upcoming project…visions of color and me. I then was plunged into the harsh stark reality of abuse and its long term affects, my Artist disappears and my abused self arises, listening to the details of evil.

The contrast of embracing and working with my Artist self while healing from sexual abuse as well as unhinging myself from a brainwashed mind is equally on the far ends of the spectrum, yet closely related.

It almost seems like my artist self was hijacked by abuse and that religion; so in order to become my most artful self, I have to fully understand from whence I came.

The horror stories of childhood abuse, and how it affected the life afterwards is horrific, but equally is the ‘normal’ presentation of the perpetrators and their warm reception by the folks of the church, it seems more profound.

I told my brother I had more respect for the Klu Klux Klan folks for their agenda was front and center.

Whereas the hierarchy of the church sells an agenda of high morals and values, setting limits on the evils of the world and how their congregations are made to adhere to rules forbidding pretty harmless sins.

Watching of Television, to watching a movie, to nail polish, hair coloring, yet while the circles of abuse grow ever widening, while more and more children are born into the centers of crime, this seems violently insane.

Sexual predators sit on the board and behind the pulpit, and false evils are handed out, while behind the scenes, children face the repressed darkness, alone.

The singing in the pews can never be loud enough or sweet enough to heal the children who have been raped repeatedly, whose brainwashed state leaves them helpless for alternatives, who some find release in suicide or drugs and alcohol.

The face of the church that is presented to the public is like the white sheet the Klu Klux Klan hid behind… We are all fooled that the sheet is the man/woman instead of what lies behind.

What lies behind is the pile of sins, the unhealed wounds of their own childhood, the eroded brain from too much washing, the unreality of life…who needs the trappings of the church in order to hide.

I have often wondered of the deep-rooted fear that many struggle with about leaving the church, and I may have figured it out. It isn’t the fear of going to Hell that keeps them there, but the covering of the sheet.

They are too afraid to stand alone outside of the pews of the church.

They need the covering of religion offers.

They need the pretty faces of singing voices.

They need it all to cover up what lies beneath.

And what lies beneath un-addressed is the monster that continues to rape children and do extremely horrific deeds. And this sheet, they believe, has the magic to bless it all away, that they can literally hid behind its whiteness.

Sadly, it is true.

For no one speaks of the filth underneath, nor do they address it, and haul it into the court of the land. There are a few lonely voices trying to speak of above the hymns they sing so loudly as to not hear the cries…

I do not know what it will take before their sheets fall once and for all, when the children unite and yank them off, when this vicious insanity will stop.

I get so incensed with the idea that this is called a ‘church’.

It is the devils playground where children’s lives are sacrificed, where pedophiles reign supreme, and the brainwashed walk their narrow path, unquestioning, unchallenging, and unseeing to their final destination Heaven, to afraid of Hell to stop. Yet no one tells them they are in Hell.

The swing from Art to the harsh reality of sexual abuse hidden behind the white church…shows the distance I traveled, the valley of death that I traversed to be able to stand and ponder, Art.

Art is the complete opposite of that Hell.

The soul recognizes its worth in the wonder of Art.

June 25, 2011
Shield of Pretending.

If you look at the way positive or negative feedbacks travel, they are exactly the same, leaving a person and landing within you, the only difference is the content or is the only difference from where it comes?
Or is it the real affect, you.
Can you change a positive to a negative by how you hear it?
Is it possible our state of being had more to do with the incoming message than the message itself?
How about our expectations of the person and the difference in what they are saying compared to what we believe they should be saying, that our forecast is failing us?
I have a feeling that our inner reception area is very much filled with expectations and needs and desires, leaving little room for incoming truths to show up as themselves, we have demands and commands for them.
Is it possible there are no negative messages, just messages to show us the way? And a negative becomes a positive if you lay its truthfulness against your life.
It is my belief that there are truthful positive feedbacks, and then there are pretend positive feedbacks.
Pretend ones are much more common than truthful feedbacks…and way easy to give. Words that won’t hurt another’s pretend life…for you don’t want to be the one to shatter their world with a truth.
I have great respect and admiration for the folks who tell you what you don’t want to hear, compared to the ones who just are parrots to you.
Mostly when folks get what they call a negative comment, they never stick around long enough to ask why; it is the story behind the remark that’s important.
The one instance that I stuck around to ask why, I was shocked to find, that this person cared about Art as deeply as I did, and he was able to tell me why. I had watered down the art with craft like ideas, and when explained, it made perfect sense to me. That if I had aspirations of being an Artist, there were guidelines, however subtle that kept art from being a craft, and I had crossed the line.
His truthfulness kept me on track, he didn’t pretend positive feedback to spare my feelings, for sparing me would have hurt my art.
This is true in all of life…sparing our feelings hurt them in the long run, for we are led to believe that which isn’t true.
My most positive influences in my life have been folks who have been brutally honest, not caring about hurting my feelings; rather they say what they have to say in order for me stop hurting myself by pretending that which isn’t true.
Isn’t a false positive really a negative in disguise?
I also believe we need huge amounts of false positives to keep our lives of pretend working; we need others to shield us from ourselves. But, if you are standing in your own truth, you don’t need anyone’s feedback to keep your life going, your life just goes.
You are as you are, there isn’t this thirst for others to keep your life going, and you are able to be self-sustaining.
You seek out any part of your own life that isn’t truthful, wanting to uncover instead of cover up the pretend places.
Living authentically is to live outside the covers, to crawl out yourself and not pretend even to make others feel okay.
It seems this false positive can go either way, flowing from us as well as into us. It is up to us to put up a filter that can discern fact from fiction, both coming and going.
Art and writing seem to be the process of building this filter, of facing yourself for the first time without the shield of pretending.

June 24, 2011
Same Piece.

Last night I viewed lots of different Art, and it seemed each Artist had a message or feeling of energy that came through the piece.

The art piece said more about the artist than the art.

It is like the art is an inner imprint of how the artist feels; a coded message from within.

Some artists are so exact in realistic portrayals; their perfection is displayed as judgment or even a God like imitation, their gift is replicating, being able to mirror the landscapes.

There was Art that made you stop and think, wondering about the message or dichotomy it presented…a confused thinker sorting out his thoughts, making you pause and wonder.

Perhaps our attraction to Art equals the way we are attracted to certain people, and repelled away from others.

Somehow I separated the Artist from the Art not really believing that the Art told the truth about the Artist’s life. I believed you could paint a pretty picture while having a tortured soul.

Yet you can tell a lot about a person in their Art, which is why I feel many are unable to do art, for they fear displaying their self.

The same goes for writing 3 pages a day, the deeper unconscious fear keeps them safe behind the excuses of no time, nothing to write, I know me, done the work, am okay with who I am.

It’s the voices of fear to be seen in public without the layers and layers of coverings… like a painting draped with cloth so the picture lies hidden underneath.

To drop the cloth and stand exposed seems it would be fearful and it is actually the opposite, with nothing to hide, you have nothing to hide, and you are free to be.

Perhaps the fear lies in not matching another painting nearby or being as colorful or as dramatic or as calm and serene.

Yet imagine a gallery with walls and walls all displaying the exact same piece.

June 23, 2011
Anything in Return.

As I walked into the Apartment Building yesterday, carrying my mail, two ladies standing in front of the wall of mailboxes met me; we all seemed to want to be in the same spot.

They are knocking on the door of the lady who lives directly across from the mailboxes, in fact when I am delivering mail, no one can get by.

So, the two ladies flank the door and my back is to the door as it opens answering their knock. The woman says, “oh it is you,” to me, and then she sees the other ladies.

As I delivered mail, they delivered Jehovah’s message.

It had occurred to me earlier that morning that people can get lost behind the words, that words can become a mask or face to hide behind, that you then become the words.

Words.

I wondered if these ladies could separate themselves from Jehovah’s words.

If you dropped the words of Jehovah where would they go?

Who are they behind this whitewall of words?

Would they not just be two nice ladies visiting?

I left so grateful that I have no message to deliver, no one to save and no one I had to convince to follow me. And I can just be a kind smiling lady delivering, but not expecting anything in return.

June 22, 2011
Your Art

Between The Artist’s Way writings and exercises as well as pondering a Bio for myself, it came to me that Life and Art mirror each other, perfectly.

My Art has changed along with me, or me along with my Art, at times it gets confusing as to who is leading who.

I used to live life following a pattern, steering close within the lines, feeling secure that if I lived a certain way, I would know how life would go and where I would be in the end.

My life style matched my quilting and crafts, I followed patterns and felt daring when I did not.

One of my first attempts at Art was working in clay, and I made button covers and bolo ties and necklaces, all very bohemian, triangles and swirls. When I brought them to a Gallery, the lady replied upon seeing them, “that’s not Art.”

I remember feeling the blow, but still stood by the ‘art’…and signed up for a local Art Fair, had a tent and sold quite a few necklaces and bolo ties. In a booth to my left was the lady from the Art Gallery, she watched as folks walked away with my ‘not’ Art.

For some reason, even against criticism I followed my Art…for it felt like Art to me. And while I wasn’t good at standing up for my self at that time, I stood resolute behind my creations.

Another Bright idea I had was to make coffin quilts. They rest gently on the coffin and have a drape that hangs down to cover your lower half. These quilts spoke of the things the person loved while living. I felt they were a memory quilt of sorts, a remembrance of what their Spirit enjoyed while living. Yet they were misunderstood by the funeral home director how deals with dead bodies and the grieving.

He said they were too full of ego. I was shocked and horrified, for they were the complete opposite.

This was my first glimpse of the confusion between Art/Spirit and ego.

My art had more spirit in it than I myself did, which is why I felt so strongly aligned with it, a part of me was in each piece, perhaps more of me than was living in my life at that time.

And the folks talking about my art were saying more about themselves than about my art.

While I was trying to find the definition between Art and Craft, I should have been looking closer at the people who were looking at me.

Today my life is much more in sync with my spirit, with my truth and my integrity, so my art bleeds the same, it echoes me, and I fully understand when folks don’t understand my art, they more or less will not understand me.

The lady from the Gallery dresses very different, her clothes shouting Artist, and it seems to me she is trying to be an artist backwards. That she is believes if she looks the part, art will come.

I feel that my Art is taunting me and hollering to me to be more like it, to add color and loosen up, to catch up…to dare to stand unique and it seems I am living precariously through my art…or using it to let my self run wild.

My art makes me an Artist; I don’t make art to be an Artist.

My quilts are much further ahead of me in life; it takes months sometimes for me to understand the meanings or messages they bring.

Similar to my life story and how looking closely at my life’s events, I needed each one to create who I am today.

Perhaps each day or moment in our lives are little works of Art, expressions of Spirit…your Art.

June 21, 2011
Reconstruction on the Outside.

I was surprised at how at ease I felt writing and even how peaceful I was inside, how comfortable I wrote my thoughts as they drifted by, as I looked upon this day, as I just seemed to write effortlessly.
Six years later the me that is doing The Artist’s Way is completely different inside than the last time…I have a hard time recollecting the old me.
She was a compilation of her parents, built upon their patterns and beliefs, structured to fulfill their needs, a woman with very little sense of self.
Now my insides are bursting with me, my knowing and fully comprehending who I am, where I came from, how I made the choices I made etc. A woman with her History pretty much figured out, but a woman with an open slate and a big world to explore.
The other thing missing inside is the fear of changing, the dread of trying something new and even appearing silly or a beginner…all my sense of pride is gone, with nothing left to lose, I can only gain.
It is astonishing to me how different I am, the years slipped by and tiny layers of confidence grew on me, so that I am in a much better spot to now add accessories to the new me.
Just as a woman adds to her outfit, I will add to the strong core of who I am, colorful and exciting things, my bling.
I have never been a person to wear wild clothes or trends, to dress with flair and be fancy, but I can feel that I am standing here, in need of a bit of that.
Perhaps The Artist’s Way will change my outward appearance to match my insides…or at least begin the reconstruction on the outside.

The journal cover I made for myself yesterday!

June 19, 2011
Island of Love, Peace and Joy.

Today while writing my Morning Pages, I wrote that I am feeling more like a self I recognize. A self who feels normal being estranged from her family, that I no longer feel so odd to myself, this new me feels like me now.

That it is normal for me when it is Father’s Day to have no obligations or sentiments to deliver, nor do I feel the sinking feeling of sorrow…in its place is vast openness.

No reservoirs of wishing and hoping, just space where a father used to live…there is acceptance of what is, minus the agony of it being so different than what I want.

I am okay now.

I am amazed at the journey out of denial or blindness to his truths and mine.

In the first years of our estrangement I was riddled with grief and peace, hope and hopelessness, sorrow and fear and worry and wonder and angst of being a daughter with a living dad and not engaging with him in any way…I felt inadequate.

I no longer feel less than… for his life.

I no longer feel responsible for being a daughter with nothing to do on Father’s Day.

I read on facebook some daughters feeling the loss of their dad; of missing him and wishing he was here. I feel none of that. Nor, am I one who is praising and send him accolades.

I cannot relate to either of these kinds of daughters.

The space I stand in is one of peace and I stand alone…okay and fine.

It is not a land in between, but one of its own.

This spot isn’t a place most would dream about and crave to be in, but a place that we land in order to heal from sexual abuse, child abuse or neglect, it’s the place we come to feel safe from our abusive parents, like an orphanage, but one where we are not looking to be adopted.

Separation is key to our wellness and it is odd for others to phantom this concept, when it is their desire to remain close.

We crave space, we desire no contact, we thrive in our silent relationship…this no relationship brings us peace. We are more alive in the absence of interactions, more authentic and feel our sense of who we were born to be come alive.

This isn’t a purgatory state, or forgotten land, but rather a wonderful island of love, peace and joy.

June 19, 2011

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