I have been sharing many deep and painful things. And it is helpful for me to speak openly and feel “worthy.” But I also do this process while staying grounded in the present and celebrating life’s current gifts.
A current gift is that this month is my 70th birthday. I will be taking the coming week off to share time with my family and savor the joys of each other’s company. AND celebrate that I have my wonderful family.
As important as this writing process is, it needs to be paced well for my health, and it needs to be connected to the joy of my present life, filled with love.
My “gift posts”
While I am away from my desk, I will leave “daily gift posts” for all.
The gift post will include this post’s text (for context to anyone new). But at the top of each new day’s post will also be a quote — one of the many I keep handy to feed my soul as I write. That will be my gift to all while I am celebrating.
The painting is also part of the gift posts. While I worked at the museum, there was a small puffer fish in one of the aquariums. When I needed a moment’s break from things, I would stand by the tank. The puffer fish would always come right up to the window and hover there. I don’t know what it was thinking, but I hope it was happy. He seemed to linger longest whenever there was a group of happy children waving at him. So one day I took his picture and painted him. So, as part of this gift, I leave you with the puffer fish.
When I return, I will resume my memoir posts.
Painting by author
In the meantime, a reminder of the purpose of this blog:
This blog is my way of honoring what I lived through and had to do to reach “today” in as healthy a way as possible.
I’ve spent a bit of time in my posts talking about who I am, why I’m writing, how to do this book, why now, and what kind of tools I need.
Why have I “wasted” so much time on those things?
Maybe this post can answer that question. It will be the first entry in the book and sets the stage for the first chapter — Packing for the Journey, which will include the information I mentioned above.
I recently wondered how a caterpillar — this slug-like crawling thing, emerges from a cocoon as a multi-colored, fragile-winged, flying beauty.
Being a retired science geek I of course hunted the answer down. While I sensed it was a sort of “magical” process, the specific details surprised me. Attached is a Scientific American article for those of you who would like to know the nitty-gritty process.
The short version is that all of the tissues of that caterpillar are literally digested and become mush! All its various structures are gone…with one exception: Imaginal discs.
Imaginal disc magic
When caterpillars are forming in their original eggs, they contain not only the structures needed to be a caterpillar but also an imaginal disc — an organized group of very specific cells — for each of the adult body parts they will have.
Once in the cocoon with the caterpillar reduced to mush, the imaginal discs take over and start reconstructing that soup into the adult butterfly. When the transformation is complete, the butterfly will emerge, mate, lay new eggs that will form new caterpillars carrying imaginal cells, and so on.
So…what do imaginal discs have to do with choosing not to write a memoir?
The very personal cocoon of transformation
Writing a memoir is a very personal decision and requires a careful assessment of risks to you and benefits to you. It is also a matter of personal timing in life as well as so many other factors. There is no right or wrong decision. It’s taken me seven decades to get to this point, even as I tried several times at different ages. It’s just that I was still mush in a cocoon and wasn’t ready.
Now, I choose to write. But after a lifetime of healing and transformation, I could have chosen the opposite instead. And I wouldn’t have been wrong. It’s not about the decision to write a memoir or not. It’s about growing, healing, and finding peace.
The Middle Path
The Buddhists say there is a Middle Path — not one or the other, but some road in between that fits you and lets you do what YOU need to do to heal. It doesn’t only have to be “write a memoir” or “don’t write.” Another way to heal could be to work with a therapist, paint, write only for yourself, or pursue some spiritual exercises that give you peace. The real point is to grow, heal, transform, and find peace.
“Spiritual” imaginal discs
To that end, I guess I relate to the caterpillar and butterfly story because I think we all have our own special “spiritual imaginal discs” — an inner part of us that came with us at birth and which holds the seeds of who we are meant to be in life. At the end of the day, it isn’t about a particular path to realizing our potential and our life mission. It is about finding out the mission itself. So find your own imaginal discs within you and follow your best path.
Take the time to consider things
Now, if you feel drawn to writing but aren’t sure , check out my previous two posts on “Is Writing a Memoir Worth it?” — the first on Risks of writing,
These two provide a number of points to consider before you decide. Maybe consider the lists, honestly answer the questions, and make your own decision. No one should ever tell you what to do, or that you are wrong.
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.
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:
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…
Logo for this blog, incorporating a picture of a mosaic the author took at the NC Museum of Art
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:
Photo quote take by the author from the book, Deep Memoir
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 