Dear Readers: We are nearing the close of this 1968 rite of passage. In this chapter, the nineteen-year-old employs the method of healing and integration that she provided for me in December 2018 as my arm healed. She looks to a time when she was an empowered/natural child. She...
Donna Iona Drozda
Be Living Not Dying
9 Keep stretching a bow You repent of the pull, A whetted saw Goes thin and dull, Surrounded with treasure You lie ill at ease, Proud beyond measure You come to your knees: Do enough, without vying, Be living, not dying. From The Way of Life according to Lao...
The Benefit of Hiding
Dear Reader, WARNING! DO NOT read this post if you are triggered by any form of domestic violence, sexual predation, or PTSD due to personal trauma. All Readers proceed with caution. Take the best care of you. Thank you for your witnessing heart and mind. This Rite-of-Passage story has...
Don’t Say a Word
Dear Readers, I am standing for the courage and the tenacity of this nineteen-year-old woman. In 1968 there is no term for post-traumatic stress. Her support system helping to ferry her through these rocky straits are the letter from Alice and the two books. I honor the time it...
Carried By Words
Dear Reader, I was mistaken … PLEASE NOTE: there is no warning with this post. Read on … This listening role that I have been given by the younger self is revealing a fascinating aspect of the creative process. As a trained artist and an intuitive painter, I allow...
Intermission
Dear Readers, This week we push the pause button on behalf of my younger self and her well-being. To support her and to maintain her dignity this is an appropriate place for: ‘INTERMISSION’ At this point in her story, three empowering gifts, comprised of two books and an...
Alice is My Wonder Land
Dear Reader, I am remembering my commitment to my nineteen-year-old younger self. I share her story in her words. It is a story of courage as well as confusion. She is imperfect and deeply damaged. I hurt for her yet I remember that there is nothing to fix. I...
Tuesday Afternoon
He whom life fulfills, Though he remains a child, Is immune to the poisonous sting Of insects, to the ravening Of wild beasts or to the vultures’ bills. From Verse 55 Tao te Ching There is a quality of ‘no-time and no-place’ to these days. First thing in the...
Torn You Can Mend
Dear Readers, the nineteen-year-old continues to experience a year of separation. Separation from home and family, teen pregnancy, separation from her infant. She loses a sense of direction through displacement, entrapment, rape, and soul murder. Because of the LSD ‘medicine’, she becomes separated from her day to day consciousness,...
From Wonder into Wonder
If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment. Henry David Thoreau I wake inside a sleeping bag. I’m on the floor in the front room of the farmhouse. Band equipment fills the small space; guitars, amplifiers, drums, tambourines, keyboard, mike...