Taken in Joshua Tree, CA September 2002.

PART I

Journal entry, September 1, 2002:

"My innocence is gone.  The pain I have experienced – and caused – in the throes of these ‘grown up’ relationships has extinguished a flame.  I fear that the fire in my heart that once burned for the hope of love in its purest form – free from the scars that day to day life gives us in the form of broken dreams, a troubled world, cancer, bills, traffic, violence and all the other realities we must navigate – is now gone.  I now wonder if, once we reach a certain age, or enter into a certain kind of relationship, or end a certain kind of relationship, that this light within us all is doomed.  The light we keep aflame in the hope that it guides us towards another soul who will be our escape, our haven and our home.  Once we have experienced certain kinds of pain, is it possible to trust any solace we may find in the arms of another?  Is it possible to be that sort of solace for another?  Or do the memories of heartbreak in its most devastating forms build walls that are impossible to penetrate?"

I am not sure why I felt compelled to share this today.  This was not written in one of my journals, but on a loose sheet of paper.  I found it among the piles of paper that began taking over my studio floor recently.  Of all the journals I have kept over the years, the one I kept during this time is one of the most…well, everything.  The most heartbreaking.  The deepest.  The most troubling.  The most beautiful.  This is the journal that recorded my crash, my burn, my wounds and some of my recovery.

I came into my studio this morning with a mental to do list, but immediately got sidetracked by the mess that existed everywhere I looked.  I spent the first half of my day clearing off shelves, creating an altar, re-organizing my art supplies and creating bags of items to be thrown away, recycled or donated.  There are still a few straggling items that need a home, but overall I feel much more serene looking around and seeing things tidy.  As an artist, I feel somewhat peculiar in that I need an incredible amount of order in my environment for me to really cut loose creatively.  If there is a mess everywhere, I get overwhelmed.  I’ve never been a collector, I am not a pack rat and there are very, very few material items that I am truly attached to.  I get stressed out when I feel like I have too much "stuff", so a few times a year you will find me sorting through all of my belongings and making donations.

But I digress.

When I came across this journal entry – black ink on a plain white piece of paper, fold into fourths – I did not have any recollection of writing it, but I most certainly had recollections of those feelings.  For a long time I struggled with the fears expressed in this journal entry, wondering if a loss of innocence automatically meant a loss of the ability to love deeply and with abandon.   What I had believed to be my strongest ties to the world and all its beauty had recently been violently severed, and I had a difficult time trying to figure out where to go from there.  Where was my home?  Where was my true north?  What was now going to be harder?  Easier?  Impossible?

When I think of that time in my life, it is without a doubt the chapter in which my innocence was, indeed, lost.  The life I had lived up to that point was my life as a girl; once I walked through that portal that chapter was forever closed.  For a while I existed in a limbo state, but I emerged as a woman and for that I am profoundly grateful.  How many ironies I discovered during this time – that I did not know the true meaning of marriage until I lost my own, that only by losing my innocence did I understand the importance of diving as deep into love as possible no matter what.  I love Rumi’s words on this subject best:  "If it is love you are looking for, Take a knife and cut off the head of fear."

I wrote that journal entry in 2002 when the shadow of fear had all but eclipsed any warmth and light that was available to me beyond its presence.  I wrote that before I fully grasped the idea that when innocence is lost, wisdom can take its place if we are willing to wield a sword and fight for the chance to continue to live our very best lives.   I wrote that when I was still broken.  To read it now is, in a strange way, gratifying.  For as enormous as that mountain seemed at the time, I know now that I climbed it.  I have found solace in the arms of another despite the laundry list of devastations we have each experienced.  Not only that, but through this metamorphosis I also found the place I needed to reach in order to do my life’s work.  My.  Life’s.  Work.

"Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over again to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us."  -Pema Chodron