WHERE have I been?
I have been busy for the last many years – working at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh, NC. It was the BEST job of my life and it used every bit of what I learned through 40 years of medical labs, pharma research, clinical trials and medical ethics. And my creativity, painting, play and prototyping with Play-Doh…it was a return to my childhood of dissecting frogs, chemistry sets, and reading about the adventures of undersea-shipwreck explorers. That job was literally PLAY that drew my long-dormant 10-year-old back to the surface. I could reach and excite kids about all the weird tweaky details of science and its stories, because I returned to BEING that kid.
I did it for 15 years, every day a new exciting topic to create an activity or class or show for all ages. The topics, the ways to spin it, the ways to get people involved, surprised, laughing even, fed my soul to no end I would have done it forever, but finally, arthritis plaguing my joints, a really bad bout with the flu and subsequent infections this past year, and just plain tired no matter how much I loved it all, I knew it was time to stop. I’ll be 70 next year. It was a good run. I “did good!” 🙂 But yes, it was time for new blood, and so I retired.
So now what?
However…that doesn’t mean I sit in a rocking chair. I have a manilla folder full of things I want to do – take all the poetry and literature classes I never had time for when I went to college in the 70s – only enough money and time then to get my requirements, my lab classes, get out and get to work. But now, the adult ed classes at local universities have these classes and I will take them.
I want to learn to play chess well. I know how to play – poorly 😉 – but it would be nice to get better. There are a few small trips I would like to do.
And I now oil paint every day — partly for me — partly to sell — and partly to brighten people’s lives. As I do a painting I post pictures of the progress on my Facebook page as I did it during Covid. People then found comfort and joy in watching the evolution of various paintings. And these days the world has so many “issues” going on, I figured people could use “a Moment of Respite” from it all, if only to follow along with my oil paintings again.
If you too could use a “break from reality” come visit my Paintings of Light and Hope Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61568762302738
And if you like what you see, there are links on that page (and below) to my DebsWritingandArt Etsy store where I sell the originals, or to my FineArtAmerica pixels.com website page where I sell prints and originals, and also blog about the paintings:
https://debra-bailey.pixels.com/
https://www.etsy.com/shop/DebsWritingandArt?ref=seller-platform-mcnav
And yes…finally, I have returned to writing.
First, I restarted by posting essays with the pictures of related paintings, on the platform Medium in a publication there called Pure d’esprit
In addition to the posts I write about my artwork on the Facebook page I also blog on my FineArtAmerica Pixels.com page
https://debra-bailey.pixels.com/myblog.html
But why am I bothering to write here then, if I have all these other places I show up on the internet?
It’s because the “Soul Mosaic” concept has never left me…
The truth is, that mosaic idea is the truest metaphor of my life – broken, mismatched, unwanted — rebuilt into a beautiful mosaic. The truth is, it may have taken me a lifetime to get here, to learn what I needed to, but I am STILL HERE…and in spite of all the havoc that went on in the first half of my life, I THRIVE.
The work of my lifetime?
So that brings me back to the writing work of I am doing and have been working on for the last few years…the writing work that has waited a lifetime for me to come back to it…my memoir.
In short, I was abused – physically, sexually, emotionally, mentally — from infancy through age 27. I should never have gotten out due to all the brainwashing, gaslighting, shame, and frankly ignorance that what happened to me had a name – incest. I thought I was an aberration of nature, and instead I found out it happened to others. Many others. And all of us who lived it walk through life, silent, SILENCED, and broken. The key to healing – understanding, speaking, finding our strength – are denied in silence.
I have fought back for most of my life. I left it behind, rebuilt a life, a good life, and I have done well in spite of the scars I carry. But life has a way of coming back with the well of emotional pain left behind that demands to be heard…in fact, MUST be faced and heard if one is to heal…learn…understand…LOVE.
Why go back? Why write?
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks commented about Holocaust survivors that most spent the bulk of their lives LIVING and BUILDING a life. THEN, only after that, was it time to “look back” – T’shuvah – return to it, and examine what it all meant.
The book – Deep Memoir by Jennifer Selig, PhD – has some pithy answers:
Later in the book she also has a quote from another author who sums up the “why”:
”You too are driven by the desire to understand…Beneath your desire for knowledge writhes the hunger to understand and love yourself.”
So – understand…heal…connect with others…and finally PUT BACK TOGETHER FRAGMENTS….LOVE YOURSELF
And to anyone who thinks it is just a litany of just this happened and that, or gee, why me? It is the story of hope…after despair. It is the story of evolving over a lifetime, from a pile of broken-bits rubble, into that mosaic.
It is told through almost 100 paintings and photos that helped me remember, feel the trapped emotions, then find the right words to understand and move forward.
So it is the story that says: “In spite of what you did to me…in spite of how I struggle...I THRIVE.“
As to Questions – that tired old “why me?” – that was NEVER the question that plagued me.
MY QUESTION was always:
“Because of what happened…what do I do with it?”
That is the final reason I write – MEANING. All that destruction has to have meaning, and if that comes by writing and helping even one other person in pain with my story, it will MEAN SOMETHING.
Why use the blog?
A way to get my book written, is to have a place I can write posts that discuss one topic at a time that will be covered in the book. This can be my place for “rough-drafting and brainstorming a concept” that I will later more fully develop in the book.
By the way, to write the book I am using a software called Obsidian. I LOVE IT! And it has been a gift to come across, both for gathering thoughts, storing easily accessible info I need to have available, but also to hold the drafts as I build the book.
Anyway, I realized that this Soul Mosaic blog could be my “scratchpad” or “sounding board” place for things I need to explore so I can then expand on them and put them in the book.
Some of the topics I have written about in related essays I published in the Pure d’esprit Medium publication, and I will share those essays here too because the Medium platform is only open to paying members.
But some of the topics I just prefer to write here, in my “old friend” Soul Mosaic because emotionally, it is my place for broken bits being reformed into beauty…and always has been.
So I will be posting here again. For anyone who decides to follow along, welcome.
Soul Mosaic 