Photo by author, of her lab manuals over the years
Before I could create my toolkit, I needed to have a handle on the full scope of the challenge.
Writing is the heavy lifter of excavating the wisdom….but what do you do when you can’t feel…when you can’t reach the emotions locked away…when you may not even realize the emotions are there?
And worst of all…even if and when you can get at them, what do you do when they so overwhelm you with pain and intensity that you are rendered mute in your trauma…you literally cannot find the words to fully express and release what is flooding through you?
That is where I started this journey. And so many times I just walked away because I didn’t know what to do. It felt almost impossible. I say “almost,” only because I had been here before in life and I knew there was a way to bring order to chaos – that whole “Pick a nipple” experience decades earlier.
Thumbing through that tan notebook from my son’s infancy, its pages starting to come loose, I felt hope that I could find the right way to do this, that an organic structure would suggest itself.
Certainly, this book couldn’t be like writing a nonfiction “how-to” book. Nor was it a “sit-at-the-computer-open-a-vein-and-it-would-all-neatly-come-pouring-out” process. It needed to run wild before it could show me how to proceed. But even “running wild,” needed some boundaries.
I wandered around the house and stopped in front of the ham radio receiver from the WWII tank that my Dad used for years. I stared at it on the shelf, played with the dials. Tactile memories stirred. And yes, there is the question: “Why do I have that WWII tank radio receiver in the first place?” That was no small clue.
The music on my laptop drifted in. Songs from 1965, 1966, and 1969 brought me right back into those years. One particular one came on. Several nerves twitched. Suddenly I was 12 on a violent Sunday afternoon, cowering in my bedroom.
A copy of Jacques Cousteau’s The Silent World was on the next shelf — one of my treasured 1960s Scholastic Book Services purchases that I’d kept. Again…why did I hunt these books down — these very editions? Why did I need them?
Carefully opening the book, I shoved my face right into the middle, right against the pages and inhaled deeply. I just love the smell of books from the 1960s — the ink, the paper, the age. They don’t smell like that anymore. But as I took in that sensory moment, I was back in 7th grade at Sacred Heart School on a fall afternoon, trying to sneak past the nun who told me to stay after school.
Each item on that shelf — smelling it, feeling it in my hands — generated a force that surged through me, as if these objects were Talismans infused with the power to take me back and reveal secrets I’d long forgotten or locked away. Talismans. That is exactly what they were. Objects of power to open a door.
Throughout my life, as is true for many of us, there are difficult days when the weariness of spirit becomes like a hand shoving us down against the mattress as we try to get up. The body struggles and the mind asks: Why bother? Why try?
Moments of “respite”
Decades ago, through years of childhood abuse, I found a way to survive — not a “dissociation” thing, but by living “Moment to Moment.” There would be the bad things and at that moment you just did whatever you must to get through it. Later though, when alone, I took comfort…escape…in a moment here, a quick experience there, but essentially in some small “detail” that I could lose myself in even for a little while. In those breaks, I could eke out sustenance where none seemed possible. And that let me keep going. At the time, I didn’t recognize consciously what I was doing–I just did it intuitively I guess– but it was my survival. Now I call them my “Moments of Respite.”
When autumn is in full color, I am reminded of one of the Moments of Respite from my late 20s — during a lonely day full of despair and a sense of abandonment.
Nature’s abundance
I grew up in New England, where the cold of fall harvest days conjures up images of steely gray skies and bare orchard trees. Even now, remembering that day gives me a reprieve from current problems…
Pulling into the dirt driveway of the farm I parked near the barn, the only car in the lot. Dried leaves crunched underfoot as I approached the building, and the air was heavy with that sweet smell of damp earth and composting plant matter. The sun hung low in the sky as the late afternoons were already taking up the appearance of night sooner than I wanted.
Inside the dimly lit barn, my breath visible in front of my face, bushel baskets of nature’s bounty were arrayed in rows before me. Grease pencil writing on cardboard signs listed the varieties there: Early McIntosh. Golden Delicious. Baldwins and Cortlands. Empires and Granny Smiths. So many to choose from thanks to nature’s gift to us of abundance… of flavors and textures, colors and sensations.
Questions, questions, questions
That gift though, presented the dilemma — which one or ones to choose? Even the questions came in abundance: Sweet apples or tart? Crunchy or soft? All? How much money was in my wallet? (Farmers then didn’t take credit cards and there was no Venmo or Squarespace.)
More questions followed. Would it be pies for the freezer? Or applesauce? Caramel or candy-apples, or baked ones? The type of apples makes a difference, of course, depending on how you are going to use them. And then there was just that simplest of delights, eat them fresh and raw before they made it into anything!
I walked the rows of baskets, gravel of the barn floor grinding against my boot soles. Back and forth, assessing the red ones, the green-red stippled. The sizes. The shapes. You look for the best ones with the fewest bruises…unless, of course you waited too long and there aren’t many left to choose from.
Even before I finished shopping, I couldn’t wait any longer to sample one. I was buying the basket anyway so I grabbed the largest one off the top, rubbed it against my jacket and tore into it.
The joy of a fresh apple
When you eat apples that are fresh off the tree, the sensations come all at once: the aroma of sweet and spice mixed together; the snap of crisp skin giving way under your teeth; a flash of tanginess as the soft flesh hits your tongue, and the syrupy juice that sprays out and runs down your chin. It is an overload of delight. In that moment, that “Moment of Respite” — the despair temporarily evaporated. In the raw air of a fall evening, drowned in the sensations of a fresh apple, I felt the totality of an autumn miracle right in the palm of my hand. And refreshed, I could go on.
It’s all in the details…
So many times in my life, those Moments of Respite saved me, fed me, gave me the energy to try again. For all the times when your world may be torn apart, life is sustained in the small details. It is those precious details that preserve the life-blood of our souls. You can draw a circle and color it in with a red crayon and call it an apple. Or you can underpaint it with burnt umber to put in the shadows, then layer in increasingly bright pigments of cadmium red, cinnabar green, lemon yellow, and titanium white. You can vary the intensity of the colors and the depth of the layers. Whatever you choose, the details make it all the richer for the moment. And it is in seeing the details that we are reminded there is more to life than just the pain we are struggling with at the moment.
Finding the calm
Moments of Respite provide the reminder that life still offers little worlds of richness and sensory escapes where our overwrought nervous system can retreat to find calm…where we can bind our wounds, restore our minds, and then return, ready for another round of the battle.
I no longer live in New England, and my life is much happier and serene. But even now, whether I am holding a crisp fresh apple from the store or the leaves hint at shades of crimson and burnt sienna, the evenings get a chill and the light departs sooner than I want, that moment comes flooding back. And I remember that Moments of Respite can make any chaos seems a little less daunting.
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 