Unblocked

For a long time, or what seems like a long time I have not had the desire to draw.  My passion is my art.  All day yesterday that is what I did, draw, draw, draw.  I am thrilled!!!!!!! I have been wondering why the block because at one point in my life I drew obsessively.  I have never gone thru this wanting to draw.  It was a need, deep inside of me.  It is where I am my most happiest.  Think drawing for me as a little child was my escape from all the craziness I had to endure as a child.  If I drew I could forget the torment I would feel on a constant basis.  I have also realized that where I live, in my mother in laws house was not a safe place to be creative.  I think living here was at one point all about survival.  Wondering when the next confrontation, the next blaming me or demeaning me in front of others would occur.  When one is being abused verbally as I was, it took me back to that time as a child where I was not of value, was not loved and cared for.  I was invisible.  My art in some way made me visible.  I had something that was all mine, my creativity.  I would get compliments on the drawings and paintings I did.  Never did I hear any of my foster parents compliment me on my art.  I wanted so bad to know I had something that would make me feel worthwhile and of value.  I often feel sad that my talent was not looked at as something valuable in the foster home.  Had it been, I think, I would have gone to art school.  But instead I was told to be a clerk instead.  I worked at the same place my foster mother worked.  I was her puppet.  So sad to not have a mind of my own and do what gave me joy, my art, my creativity.  I remember once going to an art happening in my town.  I walked around town looking at other peoples art and at one point started to cry.  It was the grief I felt for not pursuing what I dreamed I could become, an artist.   I feel that grief now in writing this journal.  Oh, to have gone to art school and to be taught how to do all kinds of art and to work in a creative environment.  I have a gift and that gift has been dormant for a few years living here.  Funny, or not so funny how creativity and abuse is not a good mix.  Being hyperviligent, wondering when I would once again have to survive the onslaught of my mother in laws vicious words.  So I wrote poetry instead.  Gave my pain a voice in my poems.  Guess that creative person was still there but in another avenue, another genre.   Maybe I need that voice thru this time, in fact I know I needed my voice to express my pain in a way that made me look inside and see what Little Jeanette was feeling.  I am grateful for that time.  I am so thankful that I have these gifts.  And they are gifts.  I hold them sacred inside of me.  These gifts are gifts NO ONE can take away from me.  They are truly mine.  I would think my creativity saved me often when I had no other outlet but to draw, paint or write from my soul.  These gifts I have received are soulful gifts.  This Christmas when asked what I want for Christmas I asked for art materials.  Not clothes, not jewelry, but art materials.  Maybe some new water colors or better pastels that what I have.   Or an art program where i can draw on my computer.  My goal is that when I retire I will have my artwork as a way to make money.  Not that money is important to me.  Money has never been a God to me.  Don't care for a lot of money, don't care for a lot of material things.  I am very simple as far as what is important to me.  My family, my art, balance in my life and also that I love what I do if I have to make money.  Seems I have all these things in my life now.  No matter what my struggle has been in my life, I am more at peace than ever before.  Never thought I would or could come to this place in my life.  Oh, I still feel some residual grief over my childhood, but grief is temporary.  Knowing how persistent I am in my own healing and recovery, I know it can only get better.. and it has.  I know who I am, what I want in my own life, what I will accept and not accept from others in my life.  Boy, that is a wonderful place to be.  It has taken 20 years of hard, hard work on changing my perceptions of who I am and who I was.,  It is working.  As I sit here and write I am proud of the strong person I have become.  It, for me is all about hope, and faith.  Faith that as long as I stay focused on my healing that I would be on the other side of the pain.  Faith that a power greater than I would get me thru.  I have faced my fear.  I used to think I would go crazy if I felt all that was needed to heal.  Especially the rage.  The rage was frightening.  But once I faced my rage, it did not kill me, I did not go crazy.  I would think every surivor at one time or another felt that if they felt the strong emotions being abused they would go into the abyss and never come out.  I have been in the abyss, in the depths of despair.  I had to find my voice to come out of the abyss.  I had to tell my story over and over again to make sense of it.  I had to Love Little Jeanette and feel her pain and have compassion and empathy for her experience.  Only then did I heal the wounds of my childhood, for there were many.  I can remember feeling this big black hole inside of me when I first opened Pandora's box of wounds.  I no longer feel that black hole.  I have filled that black hole.  I have allowed others to love me thru the most difficult of times.  To hold me, to comfort me, to be there for me.  I remember Cheri, a soulmate of mine holding me in her arms when I found out I had breast cancer and rocking me, and telling Little Jeanette that she will be okay.  These are the people like Cheri who thru their love have healed me.  I have also embraced that love from others.  Once I started to accept love from others, did I start to love myself.  When you are not loved as a child you basically feel unlovable.  I no longer feel that way.  I am a child of the universe and therefore belong here.    I pray for all who have been thru the abyss  (I use the word thru because there is a way OUT of it) that they too experience the healing I have experienced in the last 20 years. As I see it you must first go thru it.  No feeling, no healing.  But one does not have to go thru it alone.  I was alone with my despair, my sadness for many years and did not think anyone cared about my pain.  I was very much mistaken.  I have love in my life and only that love has created in me a love for others and their struggle.