Art has the power to heal and also allows us to express ourselves when there is no other safe place to put our emotions. It has been that for me for a long time. Especially in the 90s when I did this painting and a series of umber paintings about grief and loss. It’s not something I ever planned. I would just know when I needed to paint and from the depths of me, something would emerge onto the canvas without conscious thought or intent and a story would be told that I needed to see, to release.
It’s strange that since the strokes (a brain injury that I am still very much recovering from), that sometimes my memories of recent years are a bit out of reach, yet memories of older things, of things I thought I was healed from and had no more pain over, come at me during the night or day with the ferocity of sadness that levels me for a while. I thought I got over so much, so many traumas and losses in my life. I thought I had healed from them. I worked on them. I was at peace with so much. But since the strokes, it’s as if I had never worked on them at all and my years of efforts to heal were wiped away. When the painful memories come, all the horror and heartache feels like a hard punch in the gut that feels like it’s almost going to break me. Tears come, the heavy breathing kind of tears, and then the feeling that I’m just not strong enough for this life. I cannot take one more loss. But of course, this is life so loss is inevitable.
I do have to say that I love life. I’m enamored with so much about life and am constantly doing, learning, seeking, soaking it up in whatever way I can. It feels like small ways with my current limitations, but I think in some ways I find more sublime joy in life than I can put into words. It is sublimely beautiful. I cling to it, like I clung and fought for my life that morning of the first stroke and got the help I needed. I cling to life every time I push past the depression and anxiety and get myself out into nature and suddenly the mind very slowly clears away the old cobwebs and present worries and fears, and I’m free and in a state of being-ness. That is something to strive for every single day. That feeling of being-ness that is peace.
It’s possible to be in love without having an object of your affection. Love is a state of being. I learned this years ago. But it doesn’t come on it’s own and it doesn’t stay. Not while we’re here in physical bodies, anyway. It’s a state of being that we can achieve if we work on it. Not always easy, especially when we’ve had a lot of suffering in our lives. But it is absolutely possible. That peace is there for us whenever we make time for it and space and choose it. The suffering will come again, that is inevitable. This is life. It’s a freaking roller coaster ride. But peace within is possible if we make the effort to reach for it. Doesn’t sound fair that it requires so much effort and then doesn’t even stick around as a permanent state of being because we get dragged back to life and all its practical goings on. But such is life. It’s not fair. It is filled with every gradient on the color chart, from the ugliest to the most soothing. When we are faced with the hard parts, it’s really important to remember the power we have to reach for that other state of being on the opposite side of the spectrum. When we’re here, there is always an over-there.
