I see the project "Call Me Mental" as a great invitation to stand up and be real. It was an unveiling if you will, about my whole life...and how I live with its truth.
How interesting that there is a need for a documentary to show our 'whole' lives. That we have been taught and conditioned to just wear our 'nice' things out in public.
Is this what is called "mental" to fully reveal your darkness?
When others see me as being courageous, it seems odd to me...now.
However, I do recall the sheer terror and choking sensation of uttering words about something that has been kept in the dark for generations...and to admit I had no idea who I was...for I had built a life minus my truths.
And, I also instinctively knew the cost of breaking the silence. Which I guess is why I am seen as brave.
How many of us are keeping things in the dark and what is the cost?
It seems to me we all pay a cost, it just depends on who carries the weight of the truth or handles the burdens of silence.
My Self was the cost of 46 years of silence.
I lived a life minus me.
I lived to support others lives and to ensure their comfort.
Mostly I lived to keep the abusers happy...and the legacy of abuse going...unknowingly when I turned away from my truths.
The only ones whose disapproval I feel, are those who still are actively supporting the legacy by their own silence and lack of owning their truths.
The stigma or disgrace that I am asked to carry is to be outspoken. That is a no no in the land of abuse. I am called mental for doing so, and being punished by silence.
It is funny, in a sad and peculiar way, how my speaking out is viewed...
It isn't my words, my quilts or the newspaper articles that I shared, but rather where each person is standing in their own lives with the truth of who they are...that makes the difference.
Their truth or the lack they live it, means more in how they hear me, than what I can say.
It just seems that in this day and age, we should have evolved more in awareness and consciousness to be more truthful and open with not only ourselves, but with those we hang with.
If the "Call Me Mental" tour is inspiring others to live their truth, it will be a huge success. To have folks from all walks of life, displaying their lives in a way that will lend courage for others to do so. We will evolve into more aware humans if we can all do this.
It will be to break down the wall of perfection...that is disabling us from being ourselves.
The stigma is to disgrace perfection as its false strength... It wasn't that I have disgraced a warm loving strong family, but rather one that is steeped in abuse.
We don't applaud perfection; but rather those who have overcome great odds to live a life of peace, love and joy, coming from whence they came.
No one would see me as courageous for creating quilts. It is to create art when you don't know who the hell you are.
To have the quilts showing me the way out of my darkness...for that is where I escaped when the rest of my life didn't make sense.
I had to make sense of the abuse. I had to accept a father that was less. I had to lose family in order to stand by my truth.
My courage is to find a new me while lossing huge portions of the old me, and to live it out loud.
To show how mental it was to be removed from the truth and then how mental I am accused of being for standing by it.
I see those of us who refuse to bow back into the land of pretend, called Mentally Challenged, for we will not conceed our truths for your comfort and ease...and I guess grace.
We are willing and able to disgrace your life of pretending... as you pretend nothing is wrong...we continue to show you there is. We are mentally challenged when we can't pretend to pretend to pretend.
Call Me Mental tour will be seeking those who dare speak their truths...when their families and society would prefer us to remain silent for their comfort. It will be those of us who can't live in the oppression of the silence.
