living a small, slow life in a small, slow town and loving every minute of it...please join my journal about aging, overcoming c-PTSD, living with chronic illness, and being creative in spite of it all.
Just in the last few years myself and my only child, now middle-aged himself, have realized that we are on the autism spectrum. And probably ADHD as well. Neither of us have been clinically diagnosed, but I’m sure that wouldn’t be hard to do. It has certainly provided a missing piece of life’s puzzle for me.
My son and I enjoy watching certain slow moving television shows together. One of our favorites was The Detectorists, arguably one of the best television shows ever written and produced. Absolutely brilliant. It’s 3 seasons and one Christmas movie ( “why not more? she cries!” ) It is poignant, irritating, and hilarious. With a little mysticism mixed in for intrigue. As fans will attest, there is some magical ingredient that made us fall in love with life while watching; your heart can’t not open. All the characters are fabulously quirky, but the main character seems obviously autistic, and he is clairaudient. He thinks he needs a metal detector, when in fact he is the detector. Our kinda show.
So I wasn’t at all surprised when my son bought himself a metal detector and began exploring the local beaches. It’s only been a few short months, and nothing much as of yet…just a bunch of pull tabs and washers. What is up with all the washers? Then I found Annie Lighthart and she explained why she always has a washer in her pocket:
“If I have helped one fainting robin unto it’s nest again, I have not lived in vain.” – Emily Dickinson
Part of me feels like I should come clean about something. All this soap box espousing about raising our consciousness and waking up and becoming more self aware sounds inspiring, doesn’t it? Did I forget to mention that it makes life harder? Yes, that’s right. Not easier. Harder.
When you are committed to personal growth, or perhaps you naively just want to live a more creative life, things are gonna get rough. You’re a boat rocker. You want more than the other people around you want for you, or believe you are capable of. Those people you lived with growing up are not going to like this. The people you work with are not going to like this. The friends you know you can count on aren’t going to like it. They have an agenda, consciously or not, and it is not your agenda. 99.9% of the time it will not leave any space for you to stretch your wings – it will be all about slowing and deferring any change. To the best of their ability.
In an interview years ago, I remember Oprah talking about her friendship to Gayle, saying that she stayed “after the leap,” and that the majority of people will not. But she didn’t know that would be the case when she decided to up her game and strive for success. None of us realized what it would mean to develop healthy boundaries, to speak up when we became aware of dysfunction around us. We didn’t know that it would be so challenging for those around us. We didn’t know.
Heads up: your relationships are going to fall apart. There is a popular tarot deck called This Might Hurt. Haha! While I am not a fan of the artwork and don’t use this deck, I sure love the name of it. Yes. The tarot is a brilliantly designed tool for self development. Practicing with it will open you up and make you more self aware and much more intuitive. And it will hurt; that’s a guarantee. That genie ain’t goin’ back in that bottle.
I remember at one point in my 20’s thinking all my families’ troubles were caused by my father’s alcoholism…and then a decade or two later realizing that some of us are autistic or had ADHD. And then learning about narcissism. And it goes on and on. You see it and you can’t unsee it.
The truth will out. What you think today is the cause of your frustration, or your unhappiness, or your illness will open a can of worms. Today is the tip of the iceberg and it is melting faster than you can imagine. And you are going to have to take responsibility for having started the fire underneath. Oh, and learn to swim…
I was in my sixties when my father died and my four siblings stopped speaking to me. I was recently divorced, grieving and more isolated than I ever could have imagined. My son wanted little to do with me. When I lost my elderly dog I grieved like never before; I suspect it was a cumulative grief. I could justify all of this discord; I had learned through hardship how to set boundaries and they did not like the new me – the person they could no longer gaslight and manipulate. I had been told one too many times that I would never be able to take care of myself. I had better stay. I had better be quiet. I had better be nice.
My darling Mother used to say to me, “It must be lonely at the top, Susan…” It was leveled as an accusation. She didn’t understand why I was so different, so confrontative. Obviously I thought I was better than the rest of them. But that wasn’t true. I saw them as remarkable, brilliant, so very full of potential and settling for so little. I wanted them to join me on this journey. I didn’t want to be lonely; I still don’t. Please don’t leave me…yet in truth, I was leaving them. I had seen through the superficiality of their choices and I wanted deeper connection. I wanted to matter. I wanted them to know that they mattered. Really, really mattered. But they didn’t see what I saw.
Almost every person I have ever loved has struggled with addiction. Eventually I have lost most of them, either to death, or by extricating myself from their insatiable neediness in order to have some semblance of peace. I stopped housing them. I stopped driving them. I stopped working for them for almost nothing. I stopped giving them money. I stopped defending them. I stopped allowing them to use me.
Codependency is my addiction. It is theirs, also, masked by alcohol or drugs or gambling. By the grace of God I have not had those to overcome. But once I realized this and stopped tolerating bad behaviors, I woke up and saw the part I played in the destruction. And I can’t do it anymore. I’ve had to re-evaluate my values, my priorities, my own behavior. And yes, it is lonely at the top. But something deep inside me knows that this is the only dance in town, this seeking for the truth, this prioritizing mental health, this commitment to growing up.
Decades ago in meditation I heard “do not squander your father’s inheritance.” I dismissed that as I knew my father had no money to leave his children. What the heck did that mean? Now I wish I could remember when I heard that, but it still applies today. Today I would write that sentence differently: Do not squander your Father’s inheritance.
“You don’t have to be a genius. You can just be honest.” – Yulia Mahr
Can I? Before I can possibly be honest with anyone, I must be honest with myself. I have so many blind spots in my psyche, so many un-self-awarenesses. It’s not for lack of trying. I do want to grow up before I outgrow this life. Now at this late stage I tend to be repulsed by immaturity, by any lack of humility or gratitude in anyone I meet. The second I sense an inkling of entitlement I am frantically searching for an exit. And yet I catch myself expounding my entitlement in the most unaware statements of idiocy. And cringe.
And so I am drawn to humility like a moth to flame. I also know from a lifetime of experience that false humility is the narcissist’s favorite coat. The wolf has gutted the sheep and stolen it’s skin, and it is dangerous to get too close. As life threatening for me as the dis-eases I have battled these past few months – Lyme, Covid and E.Coli. Deadly.
Yes, I do believe there is an equal psychology to every pathology. The truth will out; which is to say that our unconscious and unresolved childhood hurts will eventually kill us. Every one of us. Even you. Science informs us that the unstressed human body would live far longer than we do, that number being somewhere between two and five hundred years, debated in the higher echelons of biology. But we don’t.
And while I did learn studying Neuro-linguistic programming that “the reason is always a parent.” (- Virginia Satir, Peoplemaking, The Emotional Hostage) we cannot blame our parents for this. They were just as embroiled as we are, perhaps more so. They had far fewer resources and opportunities. That is not meant as an excuse for their hurtful behaviors. But I am increasingly convinced that there is an entity responsible, and it is an unhealthy culture.
There is no actual biological justification for war. Or famine. Or poverty. Or control of any kind. Again: OR CONTROL OF ANY KIND. It is entirely unnecessary and it is unhealthy. Here we are in the 21st century of recorded history just beginning to catch a whiff of the fact that perhaps the indigenous tribes of the world were doing alright without colonial intervention…they lived in a culture of cooperation. What was good for an individual was good for the collective. They lived instinctively, intuitively. They didn’t need weather radar. They sensed inclement weather and acted accordingly. We built defenses.
I am not about to go live off the land at this age. I am unequivocally uninterested in surviving any major disaster, natural or manmade. I fear pain and suffering, not being dead. How do we heal our culture? Hell if I know. I do know, however, that we are not getting out of here intact without exercising our creativity. I know it’s the way. Remember, ultimately, it will be the artists who save us.
“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/
Watching YouTube videos about these artists has been fascinating. It’s been heartwarming and inspiring. And I am wondering if maybe I could be an artist. In her classic (or should I say epic) workbook, The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron tells us about shadow artists. I remember identifying with this immediately, which would take me back to somewhere around 1993. I’m a shadow artist. For whatever reason I don’t believe I could ever be a real artist. And so naturally I have never worked at any art form – including this one – seriously. But this morning I pulled my original copy of the book out to investigate further. I treasure this book; we’ve been through a lot together for more than thirty years now. I was surprised to find all kinds of cards and notes, and even some of my small paintings, stuffed inside. The pages have yellowed. I can document how my handwriting has changed over the decades in the notes and scribbles throughout.
But what actually shocked me this morning was looking up shadow artists in the index and turning to the page. It’s the entirety of WEEK ONE. As in, start here. And the title of the chapter is Recovering a Sense of Safety. Hit me like a ton of bricks.
For those who don’t know me well, I have been in bed for the past three weeks quite ill. I’ll keep it short here, but what began as an upper respiratory infection led to a diagnosis of E. Coli. On my third trip to the doctor in as many weeks she wanted to admit me to the hospital. My body doesn’t seem to be responding to the antibiotics, which have increased in strength the past week. I objected to being hospitalized and agreed to being monitored every 24 hours this week. I am getting better, it’s just slow. The respiratory infection is gone, albeit leaving behind an annoying cough.
But the doctor is more concerned about the E. Coli. She told me “it is rampant here right now.” Again, oh the joys of living in a resort area where hundreds of thousands come from all over the world to swim in the pristine lakes. I mentioned this to my therapist the day after the diagnosis as she asks to have health updates to keep tract of in her notes. Come to find out she knows 2 unrelated young people who are in the local hospital with this, one in intensive care.
So of course, because I believe that every physical pathology has a psychological/spiritual pathology, I asked in meditation several nights ago; what is at the root of this? And I got it! ROOT. The answer was in the question. That was fast! This is a root chakra blockage. What is the root chakra all about? SAFETY. Not feeling safe in the world.
Am I in any actual real danger? No. But when I ask my sweet innocent inner self if I feel safe? Absolutely not. And I’m old enough and maybe just wise enough to know that affirmations are not going to turn this around. Some internal archeology is required. Joni said it first: “when you dig down deep you lose good sleep and it makes you heavy company.”
So here we go! This is my theme for the coming week – to investigate and report to you dear souls everything I can glean about healing with yet again an ever deepening exploration. I try to suss it out – when did I originally feel unsafe in my environment as a child? I was cared for; I was loved. I was also sexually abused, only snippets of which I have any vivid recall of. That inquiry was quickly shut down by my family and I was gaslit to doubt those memories. Only with the help and wisdom of many counselors, insightful physicians and gifted bodyworkers have I realized over the course of several decades how truly unsafe my childhood home was – and how I unconsciously recreated that environment in my adult life. Never mind waking up to the realization of the macrocosm – that I live in an unsafe culture.
I do know that this exploration, guided by the infinite wisdom of The Artist’s Way, will bring us full circle. You heard it here first: ultimately, it will be the artists who save us. Let’s see if we can become healthier on every level. Let’s heal our bodies and our psyches and then our culture. We owe it to ourselves and our children.
She wanted more freedom in her life. But she was “too normal, and too happy.” She felt trapped…so Katherine Bradford started making things. She wasn’t looking for a lifestyle change, but she wanted an artists’ life. Born in 1942, she felt trapped in the cultural confines of expectation – to be a helpmate to her husband, to be a mother, to stay at home and raise her children. And then she dipped a brush in a pot of paint, and the rest, as they say…
“Like art, revolutions come from combining what exists from what has never existed before.” – Gloria Steinem
Jean Banas seems to be onto something. She has certainly stumbled upon the true fountain of youth. Such a sweet little old lady…hahahahaaaa! Not. Sweet, yes. Old, maybe. Lady, mmmmm, okay, I’ll give her that. I wouldn’t want to mess with her in a scuffle. She began painting in her 70’s.
She reminds me of my Mother, who didn’t live to see the age of 70. She was tiny and soft-spoken and easy going. And a force to be reckoned with. Let’s not assume that “little old ladies” are ever what they seem. I have a confession: when I started watching some YouTube videos about older artists, I expected to find them discovering their creativity in their sixties and 70’s. Retired, children grown. Making cute things in the basement or garage…I was not prepared for the magnificent inspiration of many, many older artists. Even well into their 90’s and over a hundred years of age – and anything but retiring. I feel as if I’ve only just begun to uncover some tantalizing promise of renewal and rejuvenation. Join me!
“The academic world is shifting. Nobody’s going to go into art. Who wants to pay all that money and then not make a living?” Funny, that…I was just having that conversation with my son the other day. There is a shortage of teachers. And doctors. And nurses. And pharmacists. And….and….who’s going to pay all that money for an education, spend their life struggling to pay off that debt, and have their work and livelihood strictly limited by the insurance conglomerates? I believe that we are experiencing an artistic renaissance the likes of which will rival DaVinci’s time in history. Because why not? What has art to teach us? How could it lead us to freedom? Why is freedom the goal?
Surely you don’t need me to answer that. You wouldn’t be here if you did.
This week I want to take you along to meet some artists. Most of them I do not know personally. I met them the same way you are about to, via the magic of YouTube. How old was I when YouTube began? I’m not sure, but I sure am glad it came along when it did. It has certainly enriched my life and I count it high on the list of things I am grateful for. Since my teen years I have subscribed to magazines and have always been grateful that I was born in such a time as this – when the publishing industry was thriving. Of course magazines, at least the affordable shelter magazines that have inspired me most of my life, have become a rare commodity. Like much in our culture, the cost to produce them has become prohibitive. Along comes a new publishing medium – because we are information addicts, after all. And now that so many of us are learning to live in insolation it is another way to connect. You might be surprised to know that I’ve met wonderful people and had some very meaningful conversations through connections I’ve made on YouTube. People are infinitely creative and resourceful.
You will notice a pattern in the artists I choose to showcase this week. For one thing, they all have grey hair. Perhaps we will visit younger artists soon, but right now I am obsessed with older people like myself telling the stories of how they reinvented their lives. Damn they are strong. They work in different mediums, styles and genres. They are messy and they are wise. You’ll notice they all have a glimmer in their eye. They have a lot to say and aren’t afraid to say it. They aren’t afraid. I like that about them. I want to be more like each one of them when I grow up.
Who said “Remember, ultimately, it will be the artists who save us.”? I did; I said it. You’ll recognize that quote if you’ve known me any length of time. I’ve been saying it for decades, in conversations, on social media, in my writing. I mean it, too. Let me tell you why I believe it is true, and why I think history proves it.
Artists are the truest reporters of the culture they are living in. They have never fit in, and they never will. They observe subtle, often unspoken, patterns. Long before we see them in everyday life. I’m not sure why that is the case. Perhaps by the very nature of the traits that make them artists they are slow moving, intuitive, and sensitive to nonverbal communication. They find ways to communicate that will bypass the obvious, that will sneak in the backdoor of our mind and get the point across before our beliefs have had a chance to object or rationalize. Think of all of Joni Mitchell’s brilliant lyrics. “Richard got married to a figure skater and he bought a dishwasher and a coffee percolator and he drinks at home now most nights with the tv on and all the house lights left up bright.” You instinctively know exactly what is going on.
This vulnerable transparency is true of visual artists; it is certainly true of musicians, and it is true in the healing arts. Where intellect and education will stretch to conjure a solution, a cure…intuition picks up and extends a loving offer: try this. It doesn’t have to make sense. And something inside us, and our body, recognizes the truth of it.
I remember a fever induced dream. Convalescing in my bedroom during a long illness, I looked longingly out the window – and saw a horse walking down the street. Oh, dear, I thought, someone’s horse has escaped. I grabbed an apple from the bowl on the dining table and ran down the stairs and out into the street, extending my arm to lure the horse. That’s when I realized it was wild, ghost-like, not from around here. The horse smelled the apple and nodded for me to eat it, and I woke. I knew I would begin to heal now, and that apples held some nutritional element I needed for that. I’m not sure that has anything to do with being an artist; however I did get right up and eat an apple. An artist trusts their intuition. They inherently know that God, or whatever you want to call spirit or a higher power, is at play in our lives all the time. And the more we honor that the healthier we will be.
Whether history being unearthed on cave walls or Lady Gaga telling us God makes no mistakes and we were born this way, the artists carry the declaration of our existence, of our why, of our “YES, and I will not be denied.” Because as the poet David Whyte reminds, the world was made to be free in.
A Painterly Home 