“I caught sight of my reflection

I caught it in the window

I saw the darkness in my heart

I saw the signs of my undoing

They had been there from the start

And the darkness still has work to do

The knotted chord's untying…”

-Peter Gabriel (from The Blood of Eden)

When I gaze into my art studio and see the remnants of my beloved Haunani surrounding the remnants of my once thriving creative practice, I could fall onto my knees in a pile of “my undoing”. I have been fighting hard to stay emotionally afloat and positive amidst the stresses of the world and my life of late, and I see now that that fight is doing nothing but creating more stress. When I heard “Blood of Eden”, one of my favorite songs of all time, this morning on the way to a challenging appointment with the vet, I crumbled. In that teary moment, it became very clear to me that surrender is my only option…surrender to the “knotted chord’s untying”. I am being called to allow myself to unravel and melt into the hard places. I can see (at least for right now, in this lucid and raw moment) that this is my only path to deliverance and healing; that this is the only way to rebuild and reboot so that my offering will be even stronger and clearer. So today I surrendered to the chaos of my studio and my heart and jumped into the river of my feelings. I started to create, and within 5 minutes I could feel the strong arms of my creative lifeline wrapping snuggly around me and keeping me just safe enough, as the rush and flow of my grief and despair swept me away. It is a new beginning…a rekindling of a timeless love. It is in this dive into spirit and into my creative practice that I know I will find what I need.

As I surrender, I am reminded of this passage by Matt Licata……

“It’s okay to be sad, and to allow your heart to break. To fall to the ground and bear witness to the dissolution of a vision of the way things were going to turn out.

Rather than spin away from the death as if it were a defeat, the invitation is to travel inside it. Within the core of the heartbreak there are jewels, and a golden bridge which connects you with others. Now is the time to recommit to what is most important and to remember why you have come.

It’s okay to fall apart, and in this to see if you were ever “together” to begin with. What you are is the vast, majestic field in which “together” and “apart” dance as lovers, revealing to you that the path of the heart is endless. And needs you now more than ever”.

Here is to falling apart in order to come together, because the “darkness still has work to do”.