"Forevermore"

Posted - April 21, 2019

Updated April 26, 2019 / Completed painting 48" x 36" Acrylic on canvas.

Together, we are Love...within Love, we are Forevermore.

In January of this year, I lost my amazing mother. It has been the worst thing ever to happen to me, a devastating blow to my heart and spirit. Even though her long battle with heart disease made her eventual loss apparent, there was no way to prepare for the depth of grief that landed on me and my family after her passing.

Just a year before my father passed and I was still in the throws of negotiating grief when my mother began her heartbreaking decline in November of 2018. The challenges of this past year took a destructive toll on my creativity. To paint for myself from that familiar wellspring of inspiration and excitement, was gone. That in itself was a scary experience because painting, creating, imagining, have always been my touchstones, my way through challenges, my comforters. They were gone and couldn't be forced back into action. Days, then weeks, then months into carried with it a void.

The tension and sorrow amassed to an unbearable level and one night I surprised myself when I spontaneously walked into my studio, grabbed a large canvas, squeezed gobs of paint onto the pallet and began scribbling away at the canvas with a big fat paint brush and a torrent of emotion. The grief and trauma of loss that had knotted throughout my being were showing up on my canvas. Then, from the gnarled scribbles, sprays of inflamed color erupted looking every bit like a catastrophic storm...a knotted, spitting tempest of paint and brush strokes.

As the days ticked by, remarkably, moments in front of this canvas was causing something to soften within me. I believe by allowing myself to fully experience grief and express it freely helped release a little of the strain of suffering. A tiny bit of buoyancy came back and happier memories of my parents surfaced.

I had no clear direction when I started the painting, I just simply needed to push paint around and allow the composition to develop spontaneously. I was taken by surprise when the illuminated orbs and dove started to emerge from the canvas. It felt as if love flew in to protect my wounded spirit. I'm not sure what the dove represents other than love, perhaps the kind of pure, unconditional love a parent has for a child. As I continued to lay in the detail of its flight and feathers, I understood this experience of loss and the experience of expressing it will forever be a part of me.

As the days passed, each painting session brought about a different level of emotion; sorrow, hurt, breakage, anger, yearning, paralysis of the spirit, memories, so much love, and surprisingly, gratefulness...gratefulness for the awareness of the unconditional love that I have always known from my mom and dad. Gratefulness that I still feel their love in my life even though they are no longer here. I know I have a long way to go in my healing process and will continue to look grief right in the eye and voice its effect on me. And I know I will continue to feel my parents love and protection as I journey onward.

From the four progress samples shared below its easy to follow the process of working through grief with the wonderful tools of creativity. Creativity has been many things in my life, task master, mentor, teacher, counselor, guide, challenger, and now, comforter...and I am grateful.