I am grieving.
I have been working quite a lot on a new course I am delivering to mature students in Salford on Art for Healing, which is all good and I am very happy, but the bottom line of what is going on deep within is that I am grieving. This intense inner work I have been doing in detaching myself from an existential melancholia that did not belong to me but that I sucked up as a sponge and made mine, leaves me now stranded on a metaphorical beach. I can only describe the sensation as if I was set free from an iron maiden, one of those "mythical torture devices, consisting of a solid iron cabinet with a hinged front and spike-covered interior, sufficiently tall to enclose a human being". I am now free but my skin is thin and sore and exposed. I feel exposed. Now I need to recover my strength, to soothe. To protect myself. The skin is fragile and blistered. Washed ashore after being set free, the white sand is hurting me. I need protecting from the sun. I need shelter. I need fresh water to clean the cuts, and fresh food to restore my body and my soul. No longer sheltered by a set of ideas and beliefs which were so ingrained but that I have now left behind, I need time and a safe space to adjust myself to whatever new I know to be real to me. Now is the time to integrate this beautiful Shadowy aspect within my set of Truths. The presence of the righteous entitled protective bitch is what I need. She is here to help. I let her guard me. There, the guardians of this liminal space, Hekátē and Hermes, will protect this liminal woman, this in-betweener who just lost her old skin.
During this time, journaling is intense, experiencing and feeling are paramount; dreaming is revelatory. Tarots confirm. But then I also need Ruth: I need her solitude, her pragmatism, her no-nonsensical approach to life. I need her salt marshes, I need her bones.
I am ok and I will be ok.
I just need to experience the passing of this time.
so, onwards + upwards
mx
________________________
Date : 22 NOV 2023
Duration : ----
Steps: ----
Location : home
Weather : cold and windy
T : cold & damp & dreadful
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