Questions + Answers

Hi Substack friends. I hope you enjoy this question and answer series, which I hope to post weekly, on Fridays. It means the world to me to have you here, so thank you again for joining me, and thank you for providing these great questions.

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Thank you, Gina-Marie C., for this thought provoking question.

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What helped you heal the most from your childhood?

Dear Gina-Marie,

The first answer that popped into my head was time. And that’s an honest answer. But while it does take time to heal from things that hurt us, anyone who knows grief knows that it, nor its sister, trauma, moves in a linear fashion. We can be going along thinking time is doing its work and we’re getting better only to have the wind knocked out of us and our timers set back to zero.

The truth is, I’ve worked hard at healing. I’ve been active in the process because I have wanted healing for myself, and have also wanted it for the sake of the people who love me so well, and I still do. I’m not done yet, and I know I’ll always be healing from something. Though we aren’t always responsible for our experiences, we are completely responsible for the effects we allow them to have on our inner lives, on our relationships, and on who we are.

Here’s a sort of list of the things I think have helped me:

I make art. I’ve been so fortunate to have been given opportunities to make my living as an artist. Much of my work has been about processing what has come before or what I’m going through at the current moment. Music has been a balm. But writing prose has done the most work on stitching up my heart. I think that’s because songs come in flashes and shards of light and can be abstract — you can dance around something without really saying it and you can sort of keep yourself safe within a blanket of sound. But writing prose will not put up with that sort of thing. You must say it. To say it, you must first think it. And when you take yourself through the paces of actually thinking all the way through an event that had or is still having a big effect on your life, you gain clarity. And maybe this just pertains to people like me who on one hand are always dealing with the heart and on the other are trying to analyze what has ripped it apart, I don’t know, but taking that thinking and putting it into sentences and seeing them in black and white serves as a sort of exorcism for me. I can get to the end of something by excavating every detail that has gotten buried in my guts.

I consume art. It saves me on the daily — whether it’s a scene in a movie, a song, a poem, a book, a painting or drawing — I am comforted and my levels are reset by finding common ground with others who distill their experiences into beauty.

I spend time on the little things. I sew, I take deep breaths, I meditate and journal when I can find the time, I read, read, and read some more, I watch for birds and set feeders out for them (I’m watching right now as I type this from the front porch because the hummingbirds have just recently shown up and they are my favorite), I try to take time to cook for my family, I have a cup of coffee in bed each morning if I am allowed while I read something beautiful, I try to reach out to friends and not let them slip away into this crazy current our present days threaten us with, I talk to my dogs, I talk to my son, I talk to my husband, I talk to my sister, I talk to my therapist, I tell my best best friend good morning every single morning.

I have never given up on the idea that love is the greatest force in the universe, and I work hard at trying to learn to accept the love I am offered.

Onward,

AM

10 Sept 2021

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