“Artists love other artists. Shadow artists are gravitating to their rightful tribe but cannot yet claim their birthright.” – Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way

Since I have been ill the past few weeks I have been binge watching a British show called Portrait Artist of the Year. Fortunately it has 11 seasons, each with twelve episodes. It’s so nerve-wracking, and so inspiring. Free to watch through YT. It’s ‘The Voice’ for visual artists; it launches careers. I couldn’t participate in anything like that; I’d fall apart. That is a clue about the psychological pathology I spoke of in yesterday’s post. I simply live too close to the ledge of grief to be so exposed in public.

I do remember one season where they chose to advance an artist who had behaved, to my eye, totally inappropriate in the first round. She was irritable with, and demanding of, the model – to the point of rudeness. She ignored the other two fellow artists who were also painting the same person from other angles. Never mind what they wanted! She micromanaged the group like a herding dog with a flock. The judges must not have caught the bad behavior which showed up in the editing room later. Had I been in that panel of artists I would have told her to sit down and shut up. And maybe decked her, who knows…I’ve never been violent. Yet.

Back in my twenties, going through a divorce from my abusive husband who is the father of my son, I sought counseling. I had experienced it first when a schoolmate in college recommended I see her psychologist sister. It was eye-opening and, of course, I’ve been an advocate since. Counseling is self care. You go to the doctor when you have a health issue, why on earth wouldn’t you get help sorting out the psycho-pathology? Don’t you want to experience your wholeness? If nothing else, this trained professional can offer some objective feedback and tract your emotional health just like a doctor does your physical health. That said, I’ve met some mighty dysfunctional and just-plain-wrong therapists throughout the decades. There are quacks in that field, too. But you don’t give up.

I’ve told this story before, about this talented and insightful therapist I would later study with at Wayne State. When she posed concepts that were foreign to me, I often told her, I need “tangible evidence.” In other words, I wanted proof – preferably in advance – that this crap would work.

Here’s the thing about therapy. And medicine. And art. The evidence takes time. It comes after the healing. As Steven Levine writes in the life changing book Who Dies?, terminally ill patients sometimes die and sometimes recover, and healing has little to do with it either way. Healing means becoming conscious, and it’s an ongoing process. It requires tremendous courage, because no one is coming out of that transformation as the same person they were when they went in. I remember being told that once, when my son was going through cancer treatment. He was going to attend Camp Make-A-Dream in Missoula, Montana. One of the attendant counselors warned me, “your son will not return home as the same person who left.” I was okay with that. I’d have been okay with any part of that bargain, whether I understood it or not. Just keep him alive.

So here’s the deal, McNeal…you have to let go first. You force the exhale before you’re ready…knowing you might run out of air. It’s called faith. That is the main ingredient of healing, of consciousness. Julia Cameron knows it. She calls it spiritual electricity. No lights without it. And it isn’t part of her 12 week process – it’s in the Basic Principles – prior to beginning. Before any tangible evidence that this will work.

You have to consciously decide to trust the process. You pretty much have to be at the point of no return, left with nothing to lose. Sickness will do that for you. Trauma. So will art. They rip you open and lay bare your entire being. Only by being raw and vulnerable do we realize any true healing. ACIM (A Course In Miracles) says it best: In my defenselessness my safety lies. That’s the only place any safety lies.

As far as any art I’ve ever shown, or writing for that matter, it has rarely met with any encouragement at all. I had one instructor who marked my essay “don’t give up your day job.” And a close trusted friend who I showed a drawing to respond with: “I don’t get it. But then I’m not one of your groupies.” I’ve also had some amazing encouragement from other instructors, both in writing and art. A grade school teacher entered a painting into the Detroit News Scholastic Art Awards contest unbeknownst to me and I won. I was in 6th grade. Again in 12th grade a teacher entered a poem into a student contest run by The Atlantic Monthly magazine, and they published it. If you don’t consider that tangible evidence, I don’t know what is.

And yet…here I am, at 70, wondering how and why I never pursued any practice in the creative arts. I couldn’t care less about fame or fortune, but some supplemental income would have been great. Some sense of confidence. Some joy. Obviously I am fragile of ego and easily led astray by others’ opinions.

But this ramble is to attest that the faith comes first, called blind because we have to face the unknown without the evidence. I want to heal my root chakra. And my throat chakra. I will speak the truth as far as I know it, always. And I will TRUST that I am safe – not in spite of my vulnerability, but because of it. I’m not done yet – but I am done living in the shadows.

I had the great good fortune of meeting and taking a class with my favorite artist, Elaine Dalcher. She isn’t done yet, either. A kinder, smarter person you will never meet. Nor a better teacher. Wow, has she got a healing story for us. Visit her website: https://www.elainedalcher.com/