DISCLAIMER.  If you are looking for a quick fix or a clean and graceful story you may as well look away now.  This is my experience and tidy and vignetted is not my style. 

Years ago when i thought about forgiveness i thought i was pretty good at it.  I would say sorry to fix things and keep going.  i tried very hard to be nice and to keep people happy and to turn the other cheek.

Then it slowly dawned on me that i got very sore cheeks.  And that the taste in the back of my mouth was bitter.  Each time i swallowed what i was dished out it left a residue of resentment that no amount of nice would rub out.  

This was very confusing because i was following all the protocols i had learned about how you became deserving of love.  The not causing conflict, the not being confrontational, the demurring when things hurt, the turning the doubt and distaste on myself when things were painful.  I was a good and able student of the school of self abnegation and yet despite my passing with flying colours i felt less and less able in the world.

The situation did not change, perhaps getting incrementally worse if anything.  Even when bigger circumstances changed, where i lived, who i lived with, what i did with my days; despite running to the other side of the world the patterns of damage were such deep tracks in my heart that i just found the same things occurring with different faces and different accents.

If i thought the retelling of the woundings would help at all then i would lay out the details of my story here but checking in with my motivation, i feel a twinge of wanting to cause suffering so i will leave it at this.  I was treated badly.  There was meanness, a lack of respect and understanding and i incurred some long term damage.  But the details are not the results.

The results were i was corroding from the bitterness.  That anything that i had that was shiny inside me became tarnished with the resentment.   My unhappiness was like a "see i told you so" statement about my lack of goodness and yet something in me was circling around the idea of being free of that feeling.

And in my search to find what would set me free i kept coming up against forgiveness.  The idea of pouring a balm on the wounder and erasing the misdeed.  Ethereal, harps playing, lots of soft light.

Oh i could say the words and i so wanted to be in that state but the bitterness in my guts did not dissolve.

The truth is i wanted them to pay for what they had done.  Maybe it was my socialist upbringing but Fairness and justice are immutable laws of balance in my mind.  I wanted reparation.  

So i tried to talk about what was ailing me.  Pollyanna-ishly approaching the wounder with my story i thought if i was brave and found the right way to say it the heavens would open and... cue harps.

But no.  This just ramped up the pain and suffering.  I was looking for solace in a place where none was available and all that did was make a new cave for resentment.

Oh i tried.  For years.  I sought help and counsel, healing and wisdom.  And yet each pearl i came with very quickly made it to the mud heap and i was trounced again.

Then i went through a phase (a decade or two) of being really really angry with the perp.  I mean wanting to commit physical harm (oh the pushing off balcony fantasies!) Joking.  Just.   I wanted payment for the wrong.  I wanted reparation.  I wanted compensation.  I wanted suffering to be felt on the other side of the fence because damn it i had paid enough and now it was their turn.

ut the anger was a fire that was neither kind nor soft.  It burnt other unrelated things in its path.  It raised dreams and hopes.  It scorched tender parts of me that will never recover and yet there was a seed that made it through and in fact needed that fire to germinate.

And that seed began to flourish in prayer the other day.  It has shifted my heart in a way that makes me stand straighter and that seems to be emptying out the cave of resentment with a soft scoop.  And that softness is key.  I no longer want shallow solutions of "sorry i'll be good".  I no longer want the solution of being really seen and heard.  I no longer want the solution of an eye for an eye. 

The solution i want is this.  

"I release you and set you free.  You no longer owe me anything.  In order to save my heart your debt to me is forgiven."

"You are free to be yourself and i am free to treat myself lovingly and have excellent boundaries to keep safe from your harm."





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i wanted to write about my creativity.

i wanted to disabuse anyone who wonders about the ease with which something gets made.

i think i have been fooling myself about how easy it is.

i mean get some paints, make some marks, keep going until it feels done, put it out in the world, receive acknowledgment.  it works like this right?  Creativity is natural, native to us all right?  

i have been thinking about this a lot.  because at the moment i am in a real slump.  emotional and creative (no prizes for guessing they are interconnected like oroboros to me)

i think it began (weirdly) with a drum tobacco ad when i was a teenager.  There in the magazine was this groovy looking woman, jeans, tshirt, slightly dishevelled having obviously worked on the beautiful wooden chair in the workshop in the background.  I think the slogan was "the satisfaction of doing it yourself".  I looked at that woman making something, working with her hands to make something beautiful and i thought i want that. i want to look beautiful in that way, have the satisfaction she has (lordy do i sound like an advertiser's dream - and yes i did smoke drum for a time)

i wanted to look only slightly like i had worked.  i wanted to make things.

always drawn to paint i began (with a great sense of being an impostor)  to make things... at first taking courses where i learned to make things just like the teacher.  Always disappointed because my things were never as beautiful or haunting or pretty.  that disappointment was familiar because i was used to not measuring up.  As uncomfortable as it was it was familiar.

then i began to reach out into the possibility that i could make my own things (maybe i have something to thank that drum woman for after all)  that my things didn't have to look like someone else's was a possibility that began to drift in and out of my work.

i made stuff that i thought was ugly - not a lot because it was terrifying to think my soul's offerings and best tries at this would be ugly so i scampered back to making things with my mind on the necessity of making things that were pleasing to others, that looked like other people's things.  As safe as it was it still chaffed somewhere.

i learned from people who encourage liberation i learned about allowing freedom, i followed my love of story and the wisdom of others and now i work in a way that doesn't really look much like anyone else's and it is the point i am at now that i want to talk about.  A point typified by this painting above.

i worked hard on this, went through the stages i seem to go through loosely in this order 1. ooo paint.  let's just spread it around and see.  2 oo paint.  it's expensive. you don't make much money....  you can't afford... not so much....  3.  everything looks meagre.... you are too much...4. It looks ugly 5. remember what Flora said about the ugly teenager stage. 5b.  ahh that feels better, look at the possibility, freedom (this is the shortest phase by the way) 6. God not this ugly.  7. oo that line looks like a .... (usually a face for me) 8 lets just sketch that in  9. here are about 30 more characters 10.  i feel like i have to destroy them.  11. i feel bad but i can't keep them all lets define these.  What if i chose the wrong one?  Someone cleverer, more accomplished wiser more arty than you would have known what to do.  12. who the hell do you think you are? 13 keep going keep going 14. that's enough.

each point along the way (including 15 which is usually typified by "who the hell do you think you are showing THAT to the world???) is riddled with self condemnation, doubt, the wish to run away from it all.

Creativity is terrifying.  Putting your work into the world is terrifying.  At each step i am confronted by my insecurities soul injuries and introjects.

And yet something, keeps pulling me in.  maybe my martyrish tendencies come in handy - they keep me banging up against the sharpest edges of my psyche over and over again in the pursuit of work i care about.

There is nothing more i can do but to say that the world needs more creativity and not to be scared off by the fact that it is terrifying.

I have a sneaking suspicion that it is the very act of meeting your creativity with courage that makes your contribution valuable.

p.s. i still look at her and want to gesso over her!
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