When I see my story as a quilt, or my quilts as how I lived my life, (does art imitate life or does life imitate art?) I see the magical synchronicity that arose to greet me as I changed on the inside....while living life.
It is to start your role in life as a caterpillar and change into a butterfly adapting the new features onto the same platform.
I believe we all are born unlabeled and quickly they are added to us and we then believe this is who we are. I also believe that when you are sexually abused within your family, these labels have a double twist or perhaps two sets of labels.
To get down to your real self, you have to first see your family in their true colors and often this hurdle alone is enough to keep folks from doing any self exploratory exercises and or doing things that will remove the labels.
The labels are covering more than the essential self or soul, but they are also there to cover up abuse.
It is to swim through hell in order to finally be free to be you.
I think what is so remarkable about my journey, is that I was able to rip off a label while exploring my new self and using Art as a way to keep my balance; for I felt comfortable and secure while quilting.
I was terrified of the consequences of losing who I was, how I engaged, what I said, how I felt...and more importantly how would my inner change rock my outer world.
And then, would I change so much that I would no longer fit into old relationships.
As the new awareness movement arises and they are asking folks to shed their old labels and beliefs and to view life from a new angle, they are unwittingly asking many to dive into a hell hole they themselves didn't know existed and if they knew, have worked to skirt around.
It is all good and well to ask someone to be here now...to accept what is, when it doesn't carry the vestiges of abuse.
Most think it is the pain of being abused.
It is the pain of a past not being what it is.
And, then...you not being who you thought you were.
AND, you have a whole life built upon a false premise.
Now what?
Be here now??? In a life that doesn't come close to matching reality or a reality that is too terrifying to know.
Perhaps the tools we all need is to to let go and grasp on....and to maintain something that will transcend both lives....Like Art.
Or, whatever your passion is.
For, I believe that your passion is your true self, the one beneath the labels and the beliefs and stories you were given in the years after your birth; it goes beyond the social titles we need in order to organize our world.
It is as Richard Rohr spoke of on Super Soul; that we need to embrace, not only our soul, but our physical body and life as well.
I wonder if a holistic living is to embrace all of who we are and not segment out things that steal your peace.
Richard also said that he believes that the soul grows with pain and suffering or on negative experiences. I agree.
I never even knew I had a soul, let alone was connected to it, until everything I thought I was was torn away. And, all that was left was a sense of something I had never encountered...a Me that appeared to live brilliantly despite what my physical body and the life experiences I had endured.
The symbol of the cross is what I was forced to live and what in the end served me well.
"Crosses symbolize spirituality and healing. The four points of a cross represent self, nature, wisdom, and higher power or being. Crosses suggest transition, balance, faith, unity, temperance, hope, and life. They represent relationships and and a need for connection to something."
And, what I know for sure, what you don't transform, you do transmit....as Richard shared.
This I believe was my greatest fear; that IF I wasn't able to change enough, I would transmit the legacy of my abuse unto the next generation...
We are either transmitting a new signal or rebroadcasting the old.
