Blessed Natural Medicine and Natural Health friends,
I've been sharing this book, an art book that I created in 2006-7, around a journey I made by bicycle, train and ferry, from Scotland to Slovenia...
...And it felt appropriate to share some pages here, though I began sharing it on the big Art community. There is a great deal of #naturalmedicine in the book, the journey, and in my sharings around how the journey was one of healing and transformation.
Because of a relatively chaotic and abusive upbringing, my young adult life was laced with drama, addiction, and co-dependency in relationship-with-all-things. I couldn't find stability - financially, home life, continuity, health, etc. I flitted from one city and country to another, and felt more 'relaxed' in the familiar discomfort of upheaval and the big challenge of navigating the new with little or no resources.
This journey from Scotland to Slovenia epitomised the positive aspects of this metaphoric healing approach: it worked on multiple levels to support my strengthening of mind, body and spirit - and my identity within an art community, a hierarchy and structures of academia (though I moved on from te latter very quickly!). I came back home much more within myself, because the trip forced me to be present and focussed, attent to dangers and immediate physical needs, and ready for any eventuality.
Again, these pages were by my side throughout, because I created it as I was moving; in guesthouses along the way, on trains, seated in the huge Greek ferry bar chatting to the captain in what I could remember of my pigeon ελληνικά... The big loose sheets of tracing paper were my anchor, with my pens and pencils tracing forms, lines, words - without any agenda other than slowly making my way down through Europe and keeping to the south-east...
it was particularly beneficial to me at this point, to leave the home in which I'd been caring for my mother as she was dying, and where my miscarriage had occured. It felt freeing at the same time as I felt incredibly vulnerable.
The marks and words on paper helped to release the immense waves of emotion which were following me, and which the movement of travel was unravelling.
This page has some quasi-affirmations, where I'm trying to define the intense feeling of loss and pain of my mother's rejecting me, as a child. It was a terrible storm-laden whirlwind few years, with additional grief, health issues and poverty cycles to contend with, but this journey, and the book, grounded something - made me comprehend something truly potent about my own power to heal through spontaneous creative decision-making.
Read previous posts about the book here:
@clareartista/a-journey-from-here-to-here-cover-and-page-1
@clareartista/a-journey-from-here-to-here-page-2
@clareartista/a-journey-from-here-to-here-page-3
And follow my journey as it unfolds, via my profile.