It is not until all other lights go out, and we are left to forage in complete blackness, that we finally look up and see a heaven full of stars.
The past 3 years have been exceedingly difficult. Every area in my life has been challenged, forcing me to question, re-evaluate, re-invent and in more than one area, re-claim what I had given away.
My family and my relationships with them are more important to me than anything else. Circumstances arose that created a series of unfortunate events, escalating to the point where I feared things would never be the same and those precious relationships would be forever fractured. My intensions, my integrity and everything I hold dear, were under attack. I can’t remember a time when I felt as low. I couldn’t fix it, no matter how hard I tried. My heart was breaking and I gave myself permission to surrender to what I felt more than entitled to, a deep bout of depression.
The same thing was happening in my professional life. I have always taken pride in being able to over deliver in any professional endeavor I have embarked in, but no matter how hard I worked to satisfy my clients, every and anything that went wrong was somehow related to something I either did or didn’t do. Every day was accompanied with at least one uncomfortable incidence either by phone, text or email where I was defending my ability, my professionalism, my intent or my integrity. Some were so traumatic, I had to just sit there and process what had just happened, thinking no one would ever believe it. No one could possibly understand what I was experiencing, so I just stopped talking about it, and consequently developed an ulcer. I couldn’t eat or sleep and laid awake dreading the next day, asking the question over and over again, ” How much more of this can I take?”
It started to effect my spirituality and my humanity. I felt like Bilbo Baggins in J.R Tolkien’s Lord Of the Rings, when he says he felt like butter spread over too much bread. I started to withdraw as to limit my view of life taking place outside the bubble I had created. I shielded myself from anyone else’s pain or suffering and stopped asking God what He wanted or needed me to do, in an attempt to protect my vanishing reserves.
Because I can’t create with a misaligned spirit, that part of my soul felt like it was dying. I was literally using all my energy to just get through another day. I started believing the voices in my head telling me I was of no use or value to anyone, so why would anyone care if I stopped creating my art anyway? Everything I wanted to express through my art was locked up. I was the jailer, with the only key.
Then Covid-19 hit the world like a meteor and we were all living in a life, interrupted. It felt as if the Earth was turning on me too! My professional career was instantly put on hold, as was my husbands and as a result, our income stopped. There I was, stranded inside my bubble. The lights had completely gone out, leaving me in total darkness. It was like being deep in a cave where the absence of any light is so thick and heavy, it paralyzes you. I had no other choice, I would have to somehow navigate out of the cave, out of the pity puddle that was now surging to the top of the bubble where I was gasping for air through a straw , or I would suffocate.
Then something wonderful happened, I looked up in the pitch black and saw a heaven full of stars. There was so much beauty already in my life and I hadn’t seen it because I was looking down trying to figure out a way to stop the water from surging, instead of looking up to see the way out. As I started to emerge out of my self imposed isolation, I could see more light. Home and in quarantine, with my day job and it’s accompanying stresses on hold, I dove into creating again. It was the therapy I needed to express and heal. I had the emotional reserves I needed to address and mend my strained family relationships and with my increased capacity, the desire to be there for others that needed my help, returned.
I started eating and sleeping again, learning better how to do all I can, then granting others their agency, while taking back my control over how I would respond to it. I started listening to my body and what it needed to be whole. I identified the triggers that aggravated my ulcer and headed them off at the pass.
I embarrassed the gift of re-invention in every area of my life and feel more fulfilled and complete than ever before. God knew what he was doing the whole time! He had led me into the cave and into the dark and deep until in utter terror and desperation I cried out, “I have nothing left!” To which He replied, “Of course you don’t. How else could I show you what I’ve got……………. a heaven, full of stars!”
“Full of Stars” is cast over a substrate of organic and synthetic substrates the represent the originating events and circumstances that had to exist in order for the “stars’ to appear. The darkened resin base reflects the contrasting darkness from which the darkened skies reveal a heaven,, “Full Of Stars.”
Enjoy