I can't believe I didn't write the Stag Dream down in this blog. Well, its not like my mind has been clear. But tonight, I have to get the story down so I can go to sleep. 

On September September 12, Stephen and I had the same dream about a White Stag. Here's what I put on facebook: "Y'all know metaphysical isn't unusual for me/us. If you're around me long, you know weird stuff happens, its part of my normal life and always has been. OK, so yesterday morning, I wake up from a weird dream and wonder what it has to do with anything. 

It fades into the daytime and I don't think much about it. Stephen said later: I had a weird dream as I was waking up, but i was awake. We took Mom home where she could "go" and not be in a hospital. We took her to her back porch. A huge stag, a buck was bowing down in front of Mom and he had does around him." 

I cut him off and asked "He was white or really light, too. Did yours have fuzz still on his antlers?" his eyes got big and he said yes. I asked if he was huge, I mean enormous and healthy-- and also welcoming her? He said yes, he was bringing peace. I said... and the antlers were rounded on the tips and there were does and babies around them, too. I know, I had the same dream. Something in the dream told me that it had something to do with Jesus."

I look up stags, white deer and found that they are messengers from the "otherworld" in Celtic tradition and also are symbols for Christ. Other names for the stag is "Hart". Her doctor's name is Hart and the trauma doc is named something like Hartlong. Here's what else we found: "Allegory/Moral
The stag is a symbol for Christ, who tramples and destroys the devil. As the stags crossing a river help each other, so should the Christian crossing from the worldly life to the spiritual life help others who grow weak or tired. As the stag is renewed and sheds its horns after drinking from the spring, so those who drink from the spring of the spirit are renewed and shed their sins." Here:http://bestiary.ca/beasts/beast162.htm

They gave her a breathing tube, a feeding tube and new antibiotics to give her all the resources available to fight this bug. So, lets hope the Stag opens a can of you know what on that devil ♥"

OK. Backstory: It was as if All of nature was welcoming her. The Stag wasn't Christ himself, but a manifestation of Christ Energy. Gosh, that sounds so weird, but thats what it told me. It was Majestic, frightening in the awe it carried. Light eminated around it and we were aware what a treasurable gift this was to experience. . 

Allright, so here it is October 28 and so much has gone on since then. If you continue reading FB (or this blog, lol), you'll see that there were ups and downs, denial, contradictions, declines, changing diapers- adult and a baby's, doling out morphine, dilaudid, atavan, a weeks worth of diarrhea diapers and MEDS that didn't touch it, nausea, throwing up, itching, with trial and error. I had told her over and over it was OK to go, we would be allright. She was so weak. 

Warning, adult language and really weird subject matter ahead. Stop now if you're not an adult or are either so narrowminded or conventional that information from "sensitives" scare you. You've been informed. 

Something odd happened tonight and, admittedly, I needed it :) I had a rough day. My Mom is awake, but she's not eating, she doesn't feel hungry. She says no to a feeding tube, says no to wanting to die, but says no to food by mouth. I mean to tell ya, it is a full time job making sure she eats something. 

Ok, so after today, I ended up pissed off. Most of the day was spent force-feeding mom, literally, with a syringe and ensure. I didn't want to do that, it felt disrespecting, but I kept asking her if she wanted to be ill from not eating (no), if she wanted to eat (yes), if she wanted to fix her low blood sugar (yes). She was so hypoglycemic that she was cold. I wasn't mean, I was stern and loving.

Good news is that after doing that, she was more alert and felt better. I just took the syringe and wiggled it in her mouth, through clenched lips and all, and gave her a squirt to the inside of her cheek. I'm used to this stuff with dealing with Devyn's GERD and that NAAAASTY meds the docs gave him. He had quit eating at all when he was 7 months old from the pain that esophagitis had caused due to the acid repeatedly burning his throat.

So I get home and I'm mad. Maybe it was justified. Maybe it was a pity party. How long is it going to be for me to have a life of my own? Am I willing to continue this at the expense of my little boy? Haven't I suffered enough by saving her life over and over? Hasn't she suffered enough? What fresh hell is this to work so hard to get someone to survive when they say they want to, but all their actions are going against survivability? And finally, just open your mouth and eat, dammit! I don't deny I want to spend the time helping her survive or saving her, but get with the program. (And, yes, I know that her mind is inhibited by toxins, but it doesn't make the feelings any better.)

Knot in stomach, heart in vice, I go to paint. Dev's having some sleep, I start writing all I feel and what I want to say on the canvas and start getting ideas of what its going to be. The letters' lines are going to cue me in on color change. Plus, I'm letting the poison out onto the canvas so it doesn't mess with me later. 

I take a break and walk outside and hear a bell, one sound, over and over. It feels like someone is trying to get my attention. I feel it in the pit of my stomach. I feel someone there. All of a sudden, I was compelled to say "I know you're here, I just wish I could see you." I then started to feel the other person's protectiveness and that I'm never alone. They don't want this dilemma for me or us. But I get the distinct impression it isn't one of my blood relatives. 

I ask Stephen who it might be on his side: the person is protective, not to the I'll take your head off extreme, but by way of getting in between an experience and the person and shield the person. He said that sounded like his Mom. "the person is also very "polite" and would never invite themselves in... they're waiting on being welcomed in. They're not boat rockers, but they wouldn't hesitate to be fierce if they needed to" so, I said it outloud... "hey here, Mom Hill, go ahead and come in. I hope you know you're always welcome here."

With that, I went to get a cup to make some putty and didn't think any more of it. While I was getting the cup, I was overcome with motherly love, all these feelings at once just flooded in like a tsunami... all for Stephen and what he was doing with his life, how he was handling things, how well he loved, what kind of father and husband he was. I was so full of sentimentality, pride and joy (like he was MY son!) for him that I started crying. For me, thinking of my husband as a child, my child, just doesn't happen.  

I stopped what I was doing and went to tell him I was sure it was his Mom and couldn't get out what (I?) she was feeling for him because I was crying too much. I AM NOT A CRIER. I listen to slipknot, I take blows like a champ- get ticked off about situations, not hard, but not mushy, either. Sensitive, yes, empathic and compassionate, but not this.
 
Finally, all I could do was hug him and tell him how wonderful he was and that she was so so so proud of him. She was proud of his choices . He was just a good man. 

I got ahold of myself and told him that was why she was outside, she didn't want to intrude (thats one of the feelings I got) and that if he wanted to be alone with her, he could go outside. Seemed fitting that was where she was "concentrated" seeing as how he was taking out the garbage a minute or so ago. 

Stephen got some things and went outside. And, apparently, so did she... because the tidal wave was gone. I was done and was by myself to do what I wanted and my mind was quiet. What was left in her wake was contentment, gratitude, serenity. Something I'd needed all day long. What a huge gift to the both of us.... she is still mothering both of us :)

I've always considered, probably because of my upbringing and the shame surrounding that-- that I was not the kind of girl one takes home to mama. But oddly enough, as blunt, wild, bossy, outspoken and fun as I can be, but I got the distinct impression she did approve of me :)  I am honored. 

Don't read this if you don't want your mood to drop like one of those jets with bad batteries. Read on if you want someone to relate to or just out of curiousity.

I've got so much work to do, but I'm taking a mental health evening. I read Damn You AutoCorrect! and got a good laugh. I even had a nap. I needed a mental health evening instead of working at every available minute cuz Mom had to be taken to the hospital again at about 5 a.m. this morning via ambulance. She started vomiting and had other "issues", while her hands were tingling and burning like fire. Sounded like an allergic reaction to me. I didn't take her, but that didn't mean that I wasn't up bothered, tho. Yes, I prayed. 

Today was my day. Stephen and I started switching days (one day is his work day and the next is mine) and we get a bunch more done that way. I was glad today was mine; I got to paint. It didn't help with my attitude, tho, like it usually does.

I'm just tired. Bone tired. What triggers my depression is stressful events that just keep coming, like ocean swells knocking me down over and over, and I think thats whats going on.

Normally, I'm a conqueror- I don't worry, I deal with "it", attack whatever it is head on when "it" happens and I'm not afraid of much of anything. But this shit keeps coming. Just when I think I've got a little while to recuperate, I get hit again. And I'm starting to get pissed off about it. God, fate, bad luck, whatever it is, give me a freaking break for about two months. Just let me catch my breath and get a few steps forward, ok?

Not that I think life shouldn't be this way, that these experiences are unfair, it what it is and I could be anybody. I would feel better if I could get a leg up out of this pit that keeps getting deeper. Every time I get my stuff set up to go out and network with other art sellers/dealers/interior designers, something serious happens and all forward progress has to cease. I get a project going and momentum (you know, the "flow" where its coming together and you're in the zone) I have to stop to write some dry assed complaint form with the Mississippi Board of Realtors or Dispute of Settlements and Fees. Its both draining and distracting, then there's this recuperation time (that may or may not happen) and then shit hits the fan again:

continued below this line.............

So anyway, after watching Brene Brown, the painting's meaning finally became comprehensible. It is about how the outside world lives in a space of ego and armor and I didn't. Never have. I tried and it felt completely un-natural, so I shut up and shut down.

Because of this, the feeling of belonging never came to me (until many years later when I met fellow artists/sensitives). Until then, "Fitting in" was something completely alien, and never so evident as when I was in the throws of my breakdown. The scream came from the feeling of not being able to escape it, this emotional knowledge of the disparity between what is inside people and what they show. There is a real person in there somewhere beyond the armor and spikes. Although people's internal workings are none of my business, open-ness is a gift not many people give. Sad, because they get so much more out of the interaction.

The rabbit is the Velveteen Rabbit. Like the Velveteen rabbit, you become real once you have been loved to the point of pain (intimacy brings pain). Real relationships bring arguments and misunderstandings... the rabbit has a scar on its heart and also its wrist. Its in the shape of Edvard's original person, with the same acidic colors (agitated depression heightens adhd or any of your senses, everything feels like an assault). Besides that, check out the dudes walking up the pier. You can't get a read on them, they don't want to look you in the eye. The one without the spikes actually smiled.

In the background are the tell-tale trees painted by every MS gulf coast artist that shows. All the trees look the same, so since this is about not fitting in, I put them in there. Most of the artists of the region also painted shrimpboats and magnolias at some point, so I have a shrimpboat in the background (that didn't exist- due to Katrina) and after feeling shunned at several art shows there (and not from this painting, either, lol) I painted USS FU as the boat's name. 

The struggle of my entire life had revolved around this ONE topic. When no one lives in the space you do or is willing to take off their psychic clothes either, the hunger for intimacy of being real with another person like yourself creates a starvation, a famine of the soul. At the time, I didn't know why or where it was coming from, but the depression had stripped me of any psychic skin and exposed the real guts of the matter. God was part of this, but God had stepped into the background... I suppose to allow me to be taken apart to be put back together again. How many other artists cannibalize their creations to make something new and improved?

For more information about psychic upheavals and re-integrations, read here about "THE POSITIVE DISINTEGRATION THEORY"

How do we learn to fear being vulnerable? When do we learn to hide our feelings? One of the first times I remember something like that happening, I was playing with little neighbor kids. They were a little snooty, I was 5 or 6. I think I had mosquito bites and bruises all over my legs (being a tomboy) and they picked on me about it. Unrelenting in the torment, I went home crying.

That didn't change me, it didn't bother me that much: what stuck with me the longest was when I wrote them a note telling them how it effected me, my Mom telling me to stop crying and to tear up the note. It was the look on her face and the message "don't give them the satisfaction" and then something deeper... "how can she be so weak?"

My Mom is a strong woman who had a hard life. She cries for no one while they are alive and the only times I've seen her cry was for a pet, her brother and my Dad when they died. She has the hardest time crying (when she does) and her whole body shakes as if in a panic attack. So this is evident in her fear response towards anyone else's vulnerability. Cry if you fall down, sure, but the rest? Suck it up.

I'm not alone and neither are parents in these messages, given or received. So, that is how life went for me for 30 years. I never could understand why someone just couldn't be honest with their perspectives and perceptions and so I was completely conscious of keeping "it" all in. My art was the only release for the real me underneath so much so that I forgot how to talk about it. I had a realization something about me felt different from how everyone else appeared... and I wanted something unintelligible. Life felt like it had been inhabited by hard-shelled hostile entities, but I didn't know why. I felt de-skinned, ultra sensitive and exposed. 

Fast forward. Not only had I been dealing with invisible constraints and saw them in other people, I had also been dealing with a mild to moderate depression since graduation in '03, in '05 Katrina hit. The depression until then had taken the form of anxiety and agitated depression also known as mixed state or mixed episode (a very dangerous kind that infiltrates your thoughts, behaviors but with an anger and anxiety that makes one very scared of one's own capabilities. Most depressed people would kill themselves if they had the motivation, with mixed episodes, you have the energy, PLUS rage.)

Anyway, after Katrina, the need struck everyone everywhere and I couldn't help. People died, families were without anything, children didn't have homes, food, toys, anything. (I cannot stand suffering and have to do something.) At the time, I had JUST gotten into therapy. My father had just had a quintuple bypass (yes, quintuple. 5 arteries!!) and had lost everything in his home that had gotten 4-5 feet of storm surge.

The stress was too much to bear. One day, my Dad walked up to me in the kitchen while I was cooking chili for my whole family and instantly a tape played in front of my eyes in my mind of a scene of him with that expression, and I, when I was 3 years old. Front to back in complete clarity of me trying to talk him out of killing himself and trying to talk him into living. The "movie" included the sights, smells, sounds and emotions of that time. I was three, helpless, had no idea that the world existed outside my front door and that my dad's life--- and mine- were about to crumble.

That, my dear, is a flashback. And not the post-acid induced kind (which I never took, btw) or the fluffy, fuzzy flashbacks of romance movies. Its also symptom of PTSD.

For the first time since my teen years, I had been put in the position to care for my father. The first time was an unhealthy, parasitic version of exploitation in which I cared for his emotional health when I was only 3... the second was a natural progression of his own age and mortality, but the similarity was there enough to trigger the flashback.

I caught my breath, said nothing and finished dinner. It wasn't easy, but i did it. Throughout life in other areas, things had gotten progressively worse. People don't know that depression filters EVERYTHING that comes through your senses into your thoughts and heart and then filters everything that comes out of you into the world. It is like a black filter.

Something as simple as walking down a dock can be turned into an Alfred Hitchcock scene. As I was walking down a dock (we were looking at hurricane devastation), we encountered some fishermen on what was left of the dock. (what the hell???)

Instantly, I had the painting of Edvard Munch's The Scream flash before my eyes-- and I understood what he felt like. The people looked hostile (probably dealing with depression on their own, too, from Katrina) and had no friendly expression whatsoever. I got home and painted "Velveteen Scream". It was the pictoral expression of what vulnerability, and the lack of, feels like. Disconnection. Click the picture for more information on the painting and its symbolism.    

Do YOU compare yourself to others- or, even just as dangerously, yourself at your best? I used to. Wake up. You were never intended to stay who you were, thats why human spirits grow long past the point when they grow old.

"Put it in the light so he doesn't have to fear it". That is my LIFE and what this blog is about. That is my art. And I heard these words coming out of Dr. Robin's own mouth on Oprah's Super Soul Sunday, the flood of appreciation opened that God was giving me the validation that I am on the right path. This is why I chose to be open, honest and naked to anyone who will listen. I made the conscious decision that I hide nothing from myself, Stephen, friends or clients. It doesn't mean I tell things that are hurtful for no purpose (Your butt looks like two fighting balloons in those pants), but when it comes to myself, my experiences and my capabilities, I shine the light on it.

My life had been marred by so many things I hid out of shame. BUT you can't be hurt by something that you put in the light. You don't have to fear it, you don't have to fear being found out, you don't have to waste time, energy and worry about hiding it. This can be something as profound as being molested as a child, accidentally murdering someone while driving drunk, or as Dr. Robin and Oprah are talking about, Lionel Richie not being able to hit the same high notes as he used to. 

We were never intended to keep recreating what we were or what we already have. Thats not creation, thats copying. We are intended to create something NEW with our art, our lives and our spirits.

We as growing spirits must come to the realization that we create our lives as we move through this spiritual space-- and the spiritual space changes, so we must change and recreate accordingly. The mud-house doesn't hold tight in a rainy marshland, so rebuild your house and keep growing. The question is then, how?

By being open and honest about yourself. What you find out will influence your life and ultimately your art. Nothing that influences one doesn't influence the other, they are intertwined.

What is really going on now? What is my life made of now, what does it consist of, what do I need to feel completed NOW, what are my most basic needs and the needs of those that I love? KNOW yourself, who you are, your limitations and perceived inadequacies. Know your highs and lows and keep them in the light. When those questions can be answered clearly and truthfully, then the answers will direct you to a path that is yours in this time and space alone.

First let me tell you that...

I dedicate this new year to love, joy and integrity.

So, now the website is finished! And I sit here and wonder if there is more I should do to it because its become a habit, like having a piece of cake every night. I've gotten so accustomed to having this to do that I haven't "primed the pump" with inspiration for new pieces yet. I've got to say, I am PROUD of it and need to send Weebly some love! Its not like I don't have a billion other things to do, but it does feel nice to take a break once in a while. I sat here and "optimized" over half of the pages, so I hope search engines will pick up and grab what crumbs I've left out.

In other news, apparently President Obama had his fill of people sending him communications about the Newtown shooting. He had a press conference about it. I'll wait a month or so before I send him my proposal via mail :)

This year is starting out with hope. The last one ended minus some innocence... isn't that the price of living sometimes? Devyn got his first haircut today and I was both proud and sad. I gave it to him and seeing the hair that was growing on his head in my womb come off was somewhat of another umbilical cord being cut. I saw a shooting star, a huge one, streak across the sky perfectly overhead. Its been a good night.

I'm not letting roots of negativity grow anymore. I wrote a letter to a dear loved one, one of the closest we can have in life, requesting that I am not the only person they rely on for comfort when their anxiety becomes too much to bear. I also asked that person to not call me with their health worries until after they have contacted their doctor because I don't have the answers to give. That is unfair to ask of anyone, unless its a professional. That took courage on my part and I'm giving myself credit for it because it wasn't easy.

I am here to tell you that you are the only you that you will have. You are the only source of comfort for some people, like your children and spouse- which is completely OK. But when it comes to others, they need to "diversify" their burdens and it is completely ok to ask others to not use you as an emotional dumping ground because you will become so heavily weighted that swimming in what can be sometimes murky, deep and treacherous water of life becomes impossible.
People sometimes need to be reminded that we have lives outside of what they know of us. If change doesn't happen, I'm willing to change myself to sidetrack the side-effects.

Because of all this, life feels hopeful. Things have ended and things are beginning. My next piece I'd like to be fun, clear, clean and blue.