Love Note For Hard Times

best of 2009 Challenge. Something that really made you grow this year. That made you go to your edge and then some. What made it the best challenge of the year for you? [Mahala's note: Not all challenges have the rush of excitement and the thrill of the pushing the limits. Sometimes the edge looks over an abyss. This growth can be beautiful, transformational, but also painful and lonely. Here is a love note for those at their edge.]

For the first few years after my accident, I thought everything that was wrong or hard in my life was because of my brain injury.

Needing something more than numbing rehabilitation therapy I took a freeform watercolor painting class, with normal people.

We would touch paint filled brushes to paper soaked in water and watch the colors feather out in magical patterns. There was no attempt to paint recognizable objects. We could guide the images but not control them.

Along with the play of water and color there was companionship as each of us spilled our stories onto D’Arches paper. One woman spent the first four weeks of the class painting sheet after sheet with brushstrokes of nothing but black. Another’s work mirrored her own painful sense of self as she labored over each with mounting frustration and tossed the finish painting on the floor when she was finished.

In the paintings and in evolving conversations we told our stories we offered small details of our lives.

I discovered clearly and quite stunningly that my brain injury, which seemed to sever my connection to the world at large, had in fact connected me in the smallest most intimate and true way to nothing less than humanity.

In the face of life-crushing despair I also discovered the seeds of unflinching compassion. You do not have to pretty up your life for me. No matter what you are facing, I can stand beside you. I may well cry with you, but I don’t have to run away.

I send this out as a tiny love note to all of you going through hard times. You may feel isolated, but I promise you are not alone.

Your tears and your courage do not go unrecorded.

I went into that class filled with grief and despair. The accident had shattered my life and the losses where still continuing. I could barely navigate through my days. My nights were filled with nightmares. I understood the woman who was painting only black, exorcising deeply buried secrets. I thought it was a genius idea and I was tempted to emulate her.

Yet when it came to putting color paper what I needed was to create beauty. I needed a palette of light. Not in denial of my fear or loss.

In recognition of the inexplicable luminosity that needed an outlet even more than the pain.

Tagged as: love