My sculpture arrived broken during transit today from the art exhibition, despite being well and safely packed and in a hard case. Luckily her head is ok, but the neck and shoulders are shattered.
After a massive cry and rescuing her out of it all, I eventually sat and meditated on the meaning of this, on all my feelings.
L'Alba (Dawn) is a strong talisman of ny personal journey of recovery, I made her in 2017. But I also know that I no longer identify as 'in recovery/the recovered person', I have grown beautifully beyond it and am in a different phase of my life. Some might think 'why you would give such a worried looking head the name 'Dawn'? ' It is because growth begins with ending, beauty begins from chaos, so a dawn begins from a night, I sculpted the night in order to realise dawn.
So perhaps she also needed to be shattered in a way to keep up with this new evolution of mine, the same way seed pods must break in order to give life to new growth. I am on the midst of a new growth again, this one spiritual. I feel like symbolically this happening has had great meaning for me. Evolution was one of the themes I spoke about at the art exhibition itself.
So whilst I feel very sad, I will also eventually find help to get her reset on a new stand somehow, and also, I intuitively feel that it is a message of growth from the Mother Earth. Endings little and big always happen and new beginnings, little and big, always occur. Change is inevitable.
It is a confirmation for me of how I already felt, that I've moved beyond, and that part of my life that was so painfully valuable to help me grow deeper and wiser in myself, and to create this work and in2gr8mentalhealth, is something I take with me and it grows in its own way. I am no longer the only mother for in2gr8mentalhealth in its development, in2gr8 is grown more and is now being looked after by a small group of people.
If this sounds like a eulogy, it is, because I'm marking an ending and a new beginning again in a way, a realisation and an evolution.
So I am very sad, it is core painful to see something that grew from a flow state of intensity in recovery, that came to mark something vital in my life, that I had to speak to my therapist before I could even open her from the mold the first time because I thought I could only create something bad, and that she was then so beautiful to me when she was born...and she is now shattered.
But, clearly, the universe would like me to reimagine her in a new way, as I have myself as in2gr8 itself re-shapes as it grows. I will eventually find help somehow to re-set her in a new piece of work, like the team here reshapes in2gr8mentalhealth, and she'll yet again become a symbol which moves with my life and it's changes.
This happened a week before I go into my Druid retreat in Corfu, generously given by my Druid teacher who lives on his permaculture farm there. There could be no better timing to flourish with this.
Take care,
Natalie x