Everything. Everything about you can be healed.
You must have the courage and resilience to sit with the process of healing. And therein lies the rub. The ipso facto that causes people to side step healing. To attempt to slink past before the roar of pain wakes up and catches you in its bloody paws. Vainly.
To vainly try an avoid that which provides the most beautiful of all. Truth.
I was pretty young when I learned truth could hurt. In fact it was that very realization which led me to my very first lie— and pretty much all the lies that would follow. Truth could land me in trouble, a spanking, a grounding, a week with no music, no books, no friends. Truth caused me to get yelled at, and for days on end treated with a stony angry silence.
I don’t blame parents. Especially not mine. It’s got to be hard raising Hellraiser and little rebels. But parents often inadvertently teach their children that lies get you in trouble, but truth will get you in trouble too– the only safe bet is to lie so well— the truth is never discovered.
That is a small digression from the original point. Truth can be painful. But it is in wading through, admitting and accepting truth– that we can really be free.
The truth about ourselves is often the most painful to face and takes the longest to heal. Often, it’s not even our direct fault the toxic traits we adopted to survive. But it is our responsibility to face and heal them. If we don’t, we become the monster-in-waiting that sends hurt and pain spiraling back into the wild.
Truth bleeds through in my art. My art is borne from wounds, mine and my ancestors. Bubbling up through layers of dead earth, it pours through my veins. Sometimes I think it couldn’t’ wait any longer. That the fount of pain, like a volcano, had such enormous pressure it erupted into my being. Sprang forth out of my mom’s womb with me. Breathed free air for the first time when I screamed my anguish in announcement to the world. The pain I face, heal, and carry is not all mine.
I know that
I feel that deeply.
Ancestral pain is somethin’ else. And when I say it like that– somethin’ else– I hope you know what I mean. I hope you know how I say that. I could give it back. I could send it away, because we all have enough to carry without also carrying the burdens of centuries. And some I do send away. I send it to the earth, it can carry loads more than me. The earth has a symbiotic system waiting to metabolize the pain it receives. Something in me, my ancestors maybe, tells me that the earth can take the pain that I send it with grace.
But some of the pain I retain, and will attempt to heal. With truth and art.
cirque de la nuit 