When I was a little girl, one thing I was known for saying was: "when I grow up I am going to leave and find my real family!"
Many years later, after the years of therapy during my own single-parenting years, I have come to the hard realization that what I was trying to be heard to articulate in a child's way of knowing the truth, was that the absence of love inside that family of origin was not normal! That as a child, I was so impacted by the chaotic reality of that primary world that there were no other choices for me to be safe, but to eventually leave. What I did know was that love existed out in the world because I could feel it, so, in a child's way of knowing, I would just leave when the time came to find this love with others who would want me.
I now sadly understand that the there in fact exists in the world, many different expressions that are jaded perspectives on love... that more families come from a lack of whole, healthy love than not, and that chief among this state of world-wide sadness is the negatingly limiting view that: " well, we just get on with our lives anyway."
Without going into the complexity these views represent right here and right now, let us consider this door ajar to be returned to, at another time during this coming next twelve months after I can get my household moved, and can begin my studio work on the painting/ research series that now has earned
fiscal sponsorship.
(scroll down to "Timeless Rhythms")This is my call: I need (outright personal) financial help today plain and simple in order to
make this move. Yet, the details surrounding the urgency of my need for us, vacillates between the concrete and the abstract, and yet this is a wholly realistic frame of reference taken in context. I have initiated on many fronts over a period of a few years a unique transition from the chosen social isolation when my path into therapy, and new parenthood path began in 1987.
In 2004, as I prepared to turn fifty I initiated, planned, and found the support of my mentor of five years, the creation of a 'return to community' ritual to celebrate this benchmark birthday on many levels. Once I realized this was something that I wanted for this time in my life_ I gave myself to weeks of listening and following inner visions that guided how this ceremony would manifest and express itself.
My vision, her ceremonial guidance and intonement as my witnessing elder-mentor, guided my preparations for such a healing celebratory approach to this life-milestone.
I found inspiration in the work of
Karla McLaren, "Emotional Intelligence," and the words of
Carol Lee Flinders, "at the root of this longing, reconciling a spiritual hunger and a feminist thirst."
In Karla's work is a blueprint body of wisdom compiled by her training in psychology and study of African culture, in combination with her own healing from a marked experience with childhood trauma. She has made the brilliant connection that in a primitive culture's transparent practice of stealing a young person from all that is familiar to them, lovingly taking them into the natural world to enter their own vision quest for a defined period of time, and then ritualistically returning them to all that was once familiar but is now different as it is they who have changed and are returned to family and community as a young adult, we as modern displaced persons who all share at some point more primitive origins, can look for creatively intelligent ways of healing in our journeys here in this life. Karla McLaren's work reasons wisely that in primitive culture are our own roots for recognizing what is lost to us creatures of a 'removed' modern society. Briefly, and yet specific to my own history, I continue to learn the value of healing this non-ritualized practice in Western culture; that of traumatically stealing a young person's life away through sexual trauma, and then never returning them... could in fact, in my mother's name, as an impacted young child of her traumatized legacy of being stolen away from all that was familiar and was supposed to have protected her_ I could definitely choose to return myself as part of this life healing path I am on. My mother's own experiences of never being returned even to this day, my own many years of wandering lost after the knowing I had to leave if I were ever to find my real family of love, to reaching out and making my own connection to resources in order to do the hard healing work, I approached turning fifty with a sense of recognition for the gift in this milestone birthday. That to act on this knowing would be deeply empowering in the ritualized returning myself to an inner, and eventually, an external sense of community. Briefly, as a result of fasting and sitting with visions over a precursory period of time, I ultimately enacted a series of ceremonies both private and public over a four-day period with words, music, food and celebration that culminated in my fiftieth birthday party! The impact inside me has been powerful!
And yet it has been surreal socially-speaking in the town where I have lived beginning in 1979, since this ceremonial celebration. I have come to believe that I am truly one of the many of those who is pioneering living this path of a consciously healing life. There are no joiners from the community to my circle at this time even two years later. I admit that having a simultaneous desire to leave plays a roll in not attracting people to me, but mine has always been a personal desire to leave. As this has been the place of my healing work, and a place I can be from, where there have been thirty years of opportunities to bear witness with me. Few have shown up, but they are the keepers, wherever I may go from here!
Since my "return to community" birthday, even as my daughter and I have gotten her off to a good college which is now coming to a good conclusion at the end of her first year, I am facing a deadline to get our life moved from our home of seven and a half years, by June 1st. Without the monetary resources to do anything but sit and wait to be victimized by circumstances is unacceptable. In general, this referential description sums up the adult relational context around my life of the past twenty years.
More concretely today, I am looking for a transitional amount of $18,000.00 or greater to move out by June 1st. Then, look around for a home base in a metro environment_ I currently have two cities intuitively in mind. Get settled in and either continue looking for work, or have the good fortune at last to follow an application/ interview process to one or both of these locations. That would definitely influence my decision to move to (a) particular area because I have found the "day job," and believe I could be relatively happy there. My success work-wise is also a strategic factor as is my daughter's relative comfort with a new home-base for her emerging adult life.
Over the past twenty years, I have worked very hard at keeping our home-base as reasonably stable as possible even as this has been very difficult and challenging. This practice of consistency is one measure of how I have gotten on with my life for us both thus far on many levels.
Please contact me here. I know that you are out there. Consider that your support is also an investment in what your life is also worth_ that an investment or contribution to support my need to move and relocate to a job market environment now, is also a psychological and emotional investment in your own willingness to be well, and to live in a world that is well around each of us.
Perhaps taking this detail of my personal life out into the world this way, is also part of my path... that in doing so, I can learn directly that there really are people who care about me, and would want me at least functioning well in my own life. Able to continue contributing to what healing work can be and look like in the world, to the best of my abilities as an artist and an individual who is another healing pioneer, and as a single mom thus far.
Healing work, IS life-long work. I know no other better way to live my life.
Thank-you for hearing my request for a dignified sense of loving support, to transition our life into the working world for me, and a new home-base for us both. Time is of the essence, so it is with hope and trust that you can see yourself as available to show up for my request for reasonable financial assistance today. Blessed be!
The face of a dignified female artist in her chosen life career
