DEATH AND ART

It was my intention to share helpful embodiment and rest practices in these blog posts. And then my mother died and I stopped writing.

Intense feelings kept bubbling up unbidden. Instead of making myself keep going, as I usually would, I am waiting and exploring the process. I keep waiting. Where is my drive to share? It changed course. My energies turned inwards.

I made a lot of art. The act of creating was present, but not in the form I had envisioned (somatic writing). I still saw clients for movement therapy sessions, but did not reach out to broaden my practice.

I was underwater in the weeds.

Part of me was curled up at the bottom, part falling backwards into the unknown, part running away from the feelings, part standing my ground and part reaching for the surface.

You never know how you will feel when someone dies.

For months I had great unexpected upwellings of emotions and grief for my own life experiences. I wandered in the past and plunged into pools of nonverbal feelings that were both hidden and visible at the same time. For the first time I fully accepted that these feelings live inside me and I cannot rationalize them away or disavow them.

And then, perhaps, there was an underwater shift. A visit between a younger self and a wiser loving being.

I finished my quilt about anger/rage that had been languishing, waiting to be quilted.

I became obsessed with painting this 4’ x 2’ image of the tunnel of the small intestines. (which isn’t quite finished yet, so many villi!) There was something about traveling through the tunnel into the dark.

And now I am beginning to swim into new choices and ways of being. Still giving myself time to feel and be and see which doors open.