Looking deep into the well of grief....

Today my teacher started our painting circle by talking about grief and the movement of grief in our lives and bodies and seasons.  She invited us to participate in a ceremony where we could offer up our grief in preparation for engaging it deeper through paint.  

I’ve been ignoring my grief.  Really.  I am aware of it.  I have had numerous transitions over the past 4 months.  Each transition has contained some major grief.  I acknowledged it at that time.  I acknowledged it when pushed to.  Then, I neatly placed it in a box and shoved it deep into my Shadow ignoring it, hoping it would go away...

But intuitive painting does not allow for that.  Over the past four months things have been popping up in my painting over and over again not letting me truly ignore my grief.  Each time, the images have come upI have ended up flat on the floor with tears, left wondering what they are.  OR I have wiped it off, covered it over, bumped up against it and ignored it.

Today, my teacher was inviting me to stop ignoring my grief.  Greet it.  Embrace it.  Welcome it.  Feel it.  Accept it as part of me.  Learn from it.  Release it into the Universe through prayer.

I resisted the exercise, but ended up deep in the grief by the end, as I lost myself in the experience, the moment, the paint.

What intrigued me about the process is that I began with two objects that have been appearing in my paintings which feel like representations of me:  A purple circle and a tree.

Then a story began inside me.  I followed that story.  I needed to follow it because that story is what loosened me up and took me into the grief of my heart.  I began to add blue as a river that flowed under the purple circle and along the roots of the tree.  Then I added green, a meadow, mixing with the river water, creating a plush sacred space in which I could rest and commune with the Holy safely; a space to allow the grief to bubble up, to notice it deeply in my Soul, to sit with it, acknowledge and befriend it, welcome it.

That noticing began with black creeping its way into the meadow and water.  I added black in areas where the white of the paper showed through the blue and green.  I rubbed it in, spread it out.  Shadow.  Grief.  Showing up...

Then white arrived, mixing with black, green and blue.  A conversation began between my shadow self (my grief) and my daylight self.  

“Here I am” said grief...

And all those grief oriented mythical symbols (to me) arrived on the painting at once: The Eyes in the tree; the blood red swirl in the purple circle; the intertwined hearts over the white...

And my teacher found me laying on the ground, flat -- never a good sign.  When asked, I was most intensely reacting to the swirl -- to the empty space in the swirl. 

My teacher asked for three things I could do to that space.

A purple star (although it couldn’t be purple); fill in the empty space; wipe it out (which is what I always long to do).

My teacher gently reminded me that I can not just wipe it out.  I need to engage it.  I need to work through it.

So I grab a yellow-tinted white and filled in the empty space.  This, of course, made the grief much deeper, richer and sent me to the opposite side of the room hiding.  I squatted partially behind a sectional that someone else was painting on.  I could still see the painting.  I could peak out and look at it and lean back and not see it.

What came in that peak-a-boo style pondering was the raising of the water-level.  I grabbed the blue and began to work it up and around the circle to the top of the painting.  My mind was giving a narrative that it is the upward movement of those intertwined hearts embracing that circle.

As I sit with this painting now, that is not what comes to me.  Rather it is an expression of the deepening of that grief, a raising of the waters, an expression of how overwhelming all those grief images can feel inside me when they show up at the same time.  It is my Creative self reminding me that I need to recognize that feeling of being overwhelmed by all that I have given up, all that I have left,  all that I have lost in the last 4 months.

The blue covers the tree.  I did not start off with the thought that was going to happen.  It just happened.  The blue ran into the tree and began to cover the trunk as it spread around that circle.  As it reached the top, the blue just ran right over the branches spreading out holding the Eyes.

One Eye remained safe in the purple circle....and one Eye remained partially safe in the top corner.  Hmm....

I sat for the longest time.  I sat taking it all into my heart.  I sat in silence before the Holy.  I sat tears bubbling up.  I sat struggling for the energy to make one more mark.  I prayed that the last mark of the day would be one of healing...one of movement forward...one of direction.

And it was.  I did not know it then.  I know it now.  The last brush strokes I put on that painting were an invitation to sink deeper into that image of grief, to pray for a deep inner awareness and recognition of its meaning, to pray for a holding by the Sacred as my Soul released that particular grief expression into the Universe, to pray for a cleansing of the wound that grief exposed....

The last brush stroke was a large yellow heart around the intertwined hearts at the bottom of the painting....Start here said the Holy....and I did....

And the Holy blessed and held me in my grief...

And Sacred Water washed and cleansed the wound...

And Healing has begun.