Miriam’s Wisdom

I have learned so much in the last four years of my life.

The inspiration for this painting started with my friend Miriam who passed away in February. She taught me so much about myself and the knowledge I already had. Last year before I went away I wood burned a box for all of her cards, oracle and tarot. I burned an owl on the top and angel wings on the inside lid with a quote from Rumi. At the time neither of us knew she wouldn’t be here when I came home and that she would get her wings to fly.

In many cultures the Owl is a symbolism of death or a bad omen of things to come. They are tightly tied to the spiritual realm and messengers of the dead. To me they represent, wisdom, death of my old self and rebirth and my stronger self, protection and guidance.

Owls have played a part of my life off and on for as long as I remember. I was a little girl staying at my Grandpa’s house and I remember a big owl sitting in my window watching. I feel now that he was a protector. It’s a good, clear memory all these years later.

So this is my rebirth. I came home wiser and more aware of the preciousness and importance of life. How time is fleeting and I know to be grateful for everything and everyone that has come and gone. There have been so many lessons for me about the people in my life. I have said it before, I know a lot of people, but have very few friends. Pay attention to who is there when you hit your rock bottom and who extends a hand. I also know that I am stronger than I ever gave myself credit for and I know that all the knowledge I thirsted for from outside myself was always within my reach. It was inside of me all along. I trust myself more than I ever have. If it doesn’t feel right, whatever it may be, it has to go.

This painting has tested me, I seem to like to test myself. I wouldn’t touch it for days, I couldn’t get the eyes where I wanted them. It taught me to be easy on myself. It reminded me of words that Miriam shared with me, of the family of owls that lived on a window ledge in Arizona, of my Grandpa. It reminded me that I hold my own answers and knowledge.

This is for Miriam, this is Miriam’s Wisdom, it will hang on my wall with many pieces of art I love that are from special people in my life.

Miriam, “Your acts of kindness are iridescent wings of divine love, which linger and continue to uplift others long after your sharing.” ~ Rumi

Peace for your Friday

First things first…

Being gone for almost a year and really having time to think about some of the things that took place prior to me going away is the first thing that is on my mind.

In 2020 I had to reach out to my closest friends and family members to ask for character letters for my Judge. The amount and substance of these letters brought me to my knees. I had letters from friendships that spanned over thirty years and friendships that spanned two years. The genuine support I had was and still is overwhelming and deeply felt. Every time I went to the mail box and there were letters, I knew tears would follow.

Which brings me to the reason I am writing this piece in the first place.

There were three people who I asked to write me a character letter. One, I had worked with in the same industry and had been in and out of contact with over the years. The previous conversation we had he asked “are you dating?”, I told him no. So when I asked for the letter his response was “I don’t know what you have been doing for the last 15 years”. Bitch!

When I told my Mom what happened, she knew him, she said to me….”Someday he will need someone and no one will be there for him. Just let it go.” I did, but I was angry. I thought way too much of the people who were supposed to be my friends.

So, I had similar experiences with three women I know. One I have known since I was 16…”I will write you an amazing letter…blah..blah..blah…we have been through so much together..blah…blah..blah…I love you…BLAH….BLAH…BLAH!” Two weeks before my letters were to be delivered to my attorney I reached out to her. Calls, messages, texts….dead air. My last message was “Just let me know if you cant/dont feel comfortable writing the letter.” DEAD.AIR. Technology…when you can see the messages have been picked up. Someone close to me said, “Call her on her shit!”. For what? At the end of the day there is nothing that can be said or done to undo what was done. The other two….different stories but along the same lines.

Hurt?? In the beginning, a lot. Venting…completely!

When someone asks you for something don’t say yes, if you have no intention of doing it. Don’t drag ass or bullshit them. Especially when it’s something important to them. They will have more respect for you if you just say no.

A character letter is about how you see and view the person you know, the relationship you have with them, their qualities and familiarity with them. It’s that easy, it’s only about the way you know them.

So, yes, I am back. I look forward to writing about my experience and hopefully helping people get through similar situations.

There is more to come….

Peace

Tiny Broken Hearts

A few days ago in a still moment I thought about all the tiny broken hearts we leave behind.

The most recent hearts are those of lost friendships. So a brief conversation with a co-worker yesterday made me aware I have always thought my friends would treat me the same way I have treated them. Most recently I have learned this is not the case. My co-worker said she never expects anything from her friends, not even for them to treat her as she treats them. It was a little hard to swallow, I would do anything within my power for my friends, I didn’t realize until recently some of my friendships werent like that at all.

So I think those tiny broken hearts come as let downs, unspoken words, long silences and having to give up on people you care for and love.

I think we all scatter tiny broken hearts throughout life, like footprints.

Rock the shoes Drea

And weeks have passed and life moves forward….I’ve lost myself. My cup is empty right now. No color graces my hair, my nails, or my lips. I ask myself “where have you gone?” And maybe “who are you now?” 

I think that many times when life keeps handing us situations, good or bad, it can be overwhelming.

The hard fucking truth is that my childhood friend is dying and I cant ease that in any way. Not for her or her children. If she could I wonder what she would tell me that she wished she would have done on this 50 something year journey. It makes other things so trivial. 

I am angry and sad and indifferent. So many and so little emotions all at once. Sleep comes and goes and comes and goes. Maybe her disease has triggered something that has been lying under the surface all along. I am too fucking nice….I have never had it in me to just say what’s on my mind. I just let shit slide….and I am tired. 

I lay out the olive green sweater and matching shoes for tomorrow. I think I will feel better if I feel like me for a little while. Pink toenails with pink rhinestones peak out from the toe of the shoes I love. Maybe I will wear black…

She would say “Rock the shoes Drea” and put color on your lips. She would tell me like she did not so long ago to be the woman she admires. To be the fire and be happy.

And I feel a deep sadness…. I know mentally I am not healthy right now and my spirituality is suffering and I know my creative fire needs to be stoked and I know I am sad and should be happy about a lot of things. 

And so like sleep, the night comes and goes…and goes.

For her children

These are my childhood memories of your Mother….

I met your Mom in middle school, she was my first friend at a new school. I remember sitting down in Mr. Northwood’s homeroom class and she wouldnt stop talking to me. She kept asking me questions and I didnt want to turn around. Everyone knew each other and I was new. I wanted to stick to myself. Well, she was relentless. We ended up on the same bus home, with different stop, but within walking distance from each other.

She love Prince and because of her I know more songs than most people think. She forced me to watch Purple Rain like eight thousand times…not really…but maybe close to a hundred over the course of our friendship. She covered her tiny room with every poster she could fit on the wall. She loved hats and eyeliner and crazy hair like his. She danced and sang every song there was. Some days I thought I would lose my mind if I had to hear one more thing or song from him. And I know there were occasions where her nails were purple and so was her eye shadow. She cried and cried when he died.

She also love Michael Jackson and a boy name Tony from high school sang like him. I think she talked to him for hours just so he would sing for her.

We danced to all the good 80’s music in the living room at the home at the end of the dirt road. Her house was the last one on the road and could be scary at night.

We talked about ghosts and scary stuff.

About a frog in the window which is a joke only we will ever understand.

She would wash green grapes, roll them in sugar and freeze them. They were so good in the summer. We made a lot, A LOT, of macaroni and cheese. And she cooked everything with butter.

She ate instant coffee on occasion, along with a spoon full of creamer and sugar. We were 13 and you do dumb things at 13.

She convinced a group of girls to sleep in the desert in the back of the valley. So in the early evening a bunch of us hauled our stuff out there and spent the night. We walked half way to the front of the valley, we thought we were going to the store and decided half way there to turn around.

She had a donkey named Jessica. We would walk her on a lead and put big clown sunglasses on her. And Bobo and Swanie, pigmy goats. They were so much fun.

She would put curlers in her and when we met at the bus stop she would say that she looked like a poodle.

We smoked cigarettes and drank together, talked on the phone for hours, listened to music and sometimes we would draw.

We went to the Reno Rodeo with her step-dad who was a horse shoer. We stayed all day.

We played in the desert and she would pick things up….snakes and horny toads…she wasnt afraid of anything.

She texted me old pictures of us a couple years ago..I didnt even know she had them. Those were good times.

She made me crazy and I am sure I repaid her. She is fun and funny…I got her on levels where others didnt.

The way she squinted her eyes…she always needed glasses.

Or touched her tongue to her nose…

When we were baptized at 14 in the little Baptist church in the Valley.

And I know that she loves you…more than you can even imagine. She told me how wonderful you are, who looks like her, who acts like her….this makes me laugh and she laughed too. How smart you guys are and how good. How proud she is. She even gave you credit for pulling stuff on her she never would have thought of when we were kids.

The last few days I have listened to the Prince station at work…a song will come on and I will drift to a time and place that I shared with her. I love your Mom, in all her craziness and chaos, it makes her who she is.

I just wanted you to know things about your Mom that we shared throughout the last 36 years.

Human Touch

I woke to the alarm at 4:30 this morning and didnt want it to be Monday yet. As I got ready for work I thought a lot about a friend of mine who is not well. I have know her since I was 13. She was my first friend in the new middle school I was going to and although there have been times where we werent in touch and a few times we didnt speak, we found our way back to each other time and time again.

This morning my mind went to the thought of human touch. I think, sometimes, we take it for granted like so many other things in life. I thought of my Mom and how she took care of my Grandpa later in life. How she rubbed his weathered hands with lotion, or his feet and put socks on him. How she combed his hair and washed his face. How I sat at the kitchen table and told him I loved him…and held his hand.

And my thoughts drifted…to my friend.

I hope they comb her hair and hold her hand. I hope they tell her funny stories and happy memories of things they shared. I hope they put lotion on her hands or paint her nails. Its the small things in these hours that are so important. I hope she has fuzzy socks and pictures she loves. I hope she knows how much we love her.

I hope they hug her and hug her and hug her. I hope they crawl in her bed and sing her songs she sang with them and I hope they kiss her cheek.

But most of all I hope someone touches her hand and heart every single day….

For you Alyse….

Sorting through my emails just now, I came across the last two and the the prompt sisterhood caught me right away. This is the second time today this word has found its way to me… Its been too long since I have been able to spend time with you writing….so this prompts for you.

Sisterhood

The ease of the chair, the music filtering through the air. Sisterhood, my friends, my sisters by marriage, but oh..my…sister. Her name is Cindy and I have had her in my life for the last 7 years. I flip through the images in my mind. The time she came to visit and we had our pictures taken. I look at her and look for me. In the beginning we shared all of our “me too’s”, likes and loves, gains and loses. We are so similar and very different. She is one of my biggest cheerleaders and my confidant. She is 21 years older than me, but the years fall away between us. We missed so much and gained so much when we connected. She is beautiful and kind, she loves people and people love her. My sister ❤

Sisterhood

Alyse, she is my sister too. She pulled me through the self conscious door when it came to my writing. She watched and allowed me to feel my way through the process of shutting down my inner critic who was concerned with what others thought about my wiring. I admire her, her gifts and her friendship. She is one of many. The Sisterhood, the intuits, the executives, the homegirls, the chicks I love. The Green is for you One. The Rain washes away the unnecessary one, the strawberry shortcake one, the lick your face one. The Pittsburgh one. The artist. The writer. The supportive. The blonde one. The three of them. The German and the French ones. I honor all of my sisters. They all bring something very unique to the table and always a lot of love.

So this prompt is for you Alyse….I miss prompts with you.

Broken people….

We talk about people who hurt people, sometimes…

I have been thinking a lot about broken people today. Left unhealed or unwilling to do self-work and practice self love, they continue to break others. I know many women and men who have been broken and have given up on the thought of finding someone they can love and will love them in return.

Before I really got to know my life partner, a young woman I know spoke powerful words to me. She said “you will meet someone someday who wont need you to fix them and they wont want to fix you”. Our conversation continued about fixing other people and about the broken continuing to break people. I often think about the men and women who treat each other poorly and my first thought is….”how would you feel if this was done to your child, family member or friend?”. So the partner cheats, would you want your son or daughter to experience the heartache of someone she loves treating him or her this way?

There are so many broken people in this world and they continue to break the innocent because in some warped sense they justify their actions. I have said it before and it just came to mind again, “If you wouldn’t like it or want it done to you, DON’T DO IT!”.

Acceptance….Risk….Happiness

Acceptance…….In order to accept others I think we need to truly accept ourselves, all of our darkness and all of our light. We need to look back at the past and take the lessons that have been presented and move forward with that knowledge. Every obstacle and triumph will teach you something if you are willing to look. Someone will treat you like you are irrelevant and unloved only to show you what you really deserve, someone will treat you like you are not intelligent because they are intimidated by your knowledge. Someone may hold you down until you have no choice but to come up for air, fighting for yourself. We are all human and all worthy of valuable, healthy relationships with people who appreciate us.

Risk….Without risk there will be no reward. Even though you have been hurt, betrayed or broken, however you want to define it, you must find the strength to move beyond it. Self-care. There was a time I painted, or created in some way, my steadfast method of self-care takes the form of writing. It always has and will always be where I find the medicine of life that heals me. Replenishes the layers that have been peeled away. There was a time I sat for hours tying Mala’s (prayer beads). Seems interesting now to realize I was healing while tying prayer beads, but for a time thats where I found peace. I think we need to find an outlet and in it we will find the inner peace that was interrupted by circumstances within and beyond our control. Once I felt like I had time to process and decompress from life’s little messes I was able to consider risking again. I made new friends, after losing trust in old ones, I dated again…after, well, just after. That was risk-taking again to me. Finding strength to trust others in the aftermath of so much pain.

Happiness……Finally. I have been presented with a tremendous amount of happiness. For the first time I really feel like I am living the life I deserve. I never really felt like I deserved good things, I am not sure why. I just felt like I didn’t. I have a lot of good now….just incredibly good. All the bad situations laid ground work and taught me important lessons. I really appreciate the sweetness of life. Unhealed people taught me how they can and will break you, because that is all they know. I think these lessons, however painful, are important. I have learned how to let go, how to risk, and how to trust again. I know how to love and I now know what it feels like to be loved for who I am.

Someday, if you experience broken people, you need to find the strength to try again after you have taken care of yourself. Meet your needs, put yourself first, discover who you are, and find inner peace. You will find them, your people, the ones who know what it feels like to be broken and who would never inflict the pain they have felt on another. You will find people who you can trust, who you can love and love in return, who wont hurt you. And most importantly, wont bleed on you.

Peace in your Saturday evening…..

Someone once asked….

And someone once asked her what she wanted…

She wanted to sit in a coffee shop on a rainy afternoon and work on the book that she had written a million times in her mind. She wanted to feed her soul with the things she felt most connected to. Words.

Her friends painted and wrote, weaved and crafted treasures for little shops and big. They took pictures of objects and people who fed their souls. They healed their wounds by creating beautiful pieces and places in this life. They left their mark. Yes, she wanted to leave a mark in this life that had meaning.

What did she want? Peace, calm…steady, easy rhythm to life. Not a roller coaster and of ifs and maybes. She wanted certainty. She wanted rain, coffee shops and bookstores. Tea and rosemary, lavender and honey…random simplicities. Big coffee mugs and good people. She wants to listen and be heard, to lift people up and kneel down with…laugh, cry and live life with.

She learned about crows and eagles alone on a desolate road at 12:40 am on a Wednesday morning. She knew about darkness and diving into the depths of it and resurfacing with some clarity. She knew about sleeping and rising alone, and feeling connected and disconnected from life and people.

But it wasnt about what she knew, it was about what she wanted.

Love and happiness……pens and paper….paint and canvas.

Life.

Today she wanted life more than yesterday.