Dear Gentle Readers,

In this post, I find myself particularly reflective. These nine months of being the midwife for the nineteen-year-old, providing space so that she could give birth to her story, has been unsettling as well as moving. She has helped me to experience a profound part of healing. She has shown me that trauma may unconsciously bury its effects so deep inside the body that only The Mystery can set it free. For me, The Mystery has manifest as these entries. Who is this ‘I’, this young one telling her tale? 

The situations, relationships, challenges, opportunities provided, even those pointing toward a way to put the pieces back together, can become distorted, layered over, and often lost. There may be shadowy echoes or imagined ghosts of the event(s) that hide within. We may not have access to clarity regarding what took place and the role we played.

I am forever grateful that the nineteen-year-old brought the clear reminder of the three gifts that she received:

1.) The band manager giving the gift of The Way of Life by Lao Tzu

2.) The Trip to The Farm resulting in the friendship with Alice substantiated by the talisman of her first letter followed by twenty-six years of correspondence. Her final envelope arrived just days after her death in 1994.

3.) Dr. Robert Perchan giving me his copy of Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz

“Before the mind can work efficiently, we must develop our perception of the outcomes we expect to reach. Maxwell Maltz calls this Psycho-Cybernetics; when the mind has a defined target it can focus and direct and refocus and redirect until it reaches its intended goal.”
—Tony Robbins

Thank you for journeying with me as the nineteen-year-old shared her adventure. Nineteen is considered ‘Young Adult’ and yet we all realize that there is so much Life and so much learning ahead. Due to deeply traumatic 1968, this young adult became frozen, essentially unable to move freely forward from this point in time. Over the years I thought I was bringing her along as I continued on.

I disciplined myself to continually move toward my goal of being the best artist possible so that, should we ever meet, my son would be proud to know me. I navigated years of agoraphobia tangled up with sixteen years of exceptionally challenging panic attacks. All the while I remained committed to my vision and, to the best of my ability, active in my art community. 

In 1989 I packed my van with art supplies and drove from Cleveland, Ohio to an island in South Carolina. My destination; a small beach cottage, a charming space near the salt marshes offered by my therapist, during eighteen weeks of fall and winter. In this sweet white-walled space I immersed myself in painting my ‘Island Home’ series while also writing hundreds of pages in complete solitude. While there the Berlin wall came down and I was able to break free of the panic attacks by enlisting Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) techniques.

I returned to Cleveland having a major solo exhibition at ‘the best gallery in town’. The gallery was packed with friends, collectors, and supporters. An elegant gentleman approached to introduce himself and to comment that, “I have been following your career. I am so proud of your accomplishments.” It had been twenty-two years since I embraced Dr. Robert Perchan, the giver of my third gift. The man that had said to me all those years ago, “I don’t want you to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders.”

 

As you know by now it was in 2018 (link to the first chapter) when circumstances once again proved traumatic with the fall. That event roused the nineteen-year-old. She took a chance and thawed out enough to whisper in my ear. She asked me to scribe her story using her words.

I honor her creativity. I see her story as one of the most, if not the most, important aspects of the creative work of my lifetime. This telling has been a true collaboration. 

I, at my current age, would have been unable to access the memory that she alone carries. She chose, over these nine months, to bring us into congruence. I could not know that even with decades of healing/supportive modalities, this younger self did not feel safe. She remained stoic yet also panic-stricken. It was dangerous, even life-threatening to be seen.

She had good reason to be afraid of being singled out. She had evidence hidden deep within the maze of her cellular memory. Memories of the ways in which women have been held stationary for centuries. I have intuitively been a ‘mother’ to her. For example, as recently as 2015 I had to soothe and contain her as I walked a wooded path exploring a place to set my kayak into the water. There was nothing inherently dangerous about where I was. However, out of the corner of my right eye, I glimpsed three men. They were walking in my direction. They were out in the open, walking through mowed grass beneath high tension wires. They were young adult men, with fishing poles. No threat. My inner nineteen-year-old, being frozen in time, panicked. I attempted to calm her yet I was not successful. I had well known physical triggers firing throughout my body forcing me to turn back to the safety of the car.

In the sharing of this deeply personal and vulnerable story, I have been able to remain in the Observer role. This has been profoundly important as the nineteen-year-old surprised me repeatedly in the telling of her truth. She honored me in helping me to embrace the courage that is required to maintain balance in the face of things beyond our control.

Her story reminds me that I am not a victim.

No matter what outside occurrence attempts to steal my power, I have the ability to remain in my center because of what she learned so early on. I am truly astounded by the gifts that she was given. To imagine the chain of events and the manner in which she received these gifts boggles my mind. I can literally trackback and see how as the education that I had dreamed of was thwarted, the education that I received has served me well. 

In closing her story she tells us about the poster that hung on her apartment door. This reference made me curious.

Why did she choose these specific Bradbury words? Why did she feel compelled to post them on her front door? What was the context of the Dandelion Wine story that these specific words came from?

Over the past two weeks, I have been shaken awake further by a revisit to Dandelion Wine. I have become even more appreciative of this young woman’s thinking as her harrowing year spit her out on the far end.

I have also been encouraged and uplifted, as we all travel through the current events of this harrowing time called 2020. Through her story, I am once again being offered substantial proof that we are each provided support and guidance all along the way.

I have been touched, moved, and inspired by the comments here and in my email letting me know that, for some of you, her story also connected you to a part of your story.

I leave you with a sense of true wholeness, and the words of Muriel Rukeyser that will continue to guide my way forward:

“I am working out the vocabulary of my silence.”

Is there a story that lies hidden within you?