I am becoming
Tuesday October 24, 2006
Dear Alice,
I was very happy to hear from a friend of mine about your website and especially that a person can contact you by email and that you respond. So, here I am, writing to make contact with you to personally thank you for your courage in taking the arduous journey inward! I am a 45 year old woman, living in Canada. I grew up in the Midwest of USA and I was the youngest of 6 children. My father was a violent alcholic and pedophile. My mother a religious fanatic in a depth of denial that is alarming and so damaging to all of her children. I grew up from my infancy sucking his penis, and being brainwashed and tortured by him. I split into many selves, I went insane, but I was clever enough to hide most of my insanity from the rest of the world, I became a lay missionary in a reliegous order and fled into the work of serving the poor, the homeless. Then 5 years ago, I had a mental and physical breakdown that shattered me to my core. I carry in my body a sexually transmitted disease from my father. I have had it all my life, but for the most part it was in remission, but when I broke down it nearly took me to my grave. The strain of this infection that I have is antibiotic resistent, and so I have been using alternative medicine to manage the symptoms and carry on as best I can. At the same time, all my coping mechanisms broke in my psyche and my whole world as I had constructed it collapsed.
During this breakdown, I happened upon some of your books and began to read them and something in me broke loose, because I knew there was another woman out there who had made the journey into the pit and come out on the other side. I had made a deep inner choice that I wanted the TRUTH, at any cost. As you said in one of your books “Why was I able to give up the repression? Because I wanted at all costs to know the truth and finally did find a witness who helped me search for that truth.”
I, too, finally found a true enlightened witness. A serious, faithful and competent psychologist who was willing to take this journey with me. When I saw him the first time I noticed on his book shelf that he one or two of your books and it was a little sign of hope that maybe he and I could work together. I had dabbled with some drawing and painting but was feeling pretty blocked. Then I read something you said “My spontaneous painting helped me not only to discover my personal history, but also to liberate myself from the mental compulsions and concepts of my upbringing and training which I recognized as being wrong, misleading and fatal.”. I made myself a big sign with this quote on it and hung it on the wall where my easel stands and I took the leap…to paint from my core and the result has been just as you said…I discovered my personal history. I let it out. I have done more than 300 paintings and it has become such a healing tool and joy for me. And my enlightened witness stood by me and helped me to interpret, to love, to embrace all this of myself and to grieve, grieve, grieve. I am by no means done, but I have been on this journey inward for 2 years now and for the first time in my life I have days of joy and gladness. I have pain and sorrow. I feel. I am. And I have some self respect and self love now that was unthinkable before I took this journey.
I am becoming.
And you have been and continue to be an invisible witness to my life, my story, simply because you are a sister who has taken the leaps to liberation. Your courage and honesty strengthened my own so I could leap too.
I would love to hear from you.
Thank you, Alice, for your journey. And thank you for this website.
Your sister, Luminous Child
AM: Thank you for your letter and your trust. Your life was first the logical consequence of what happened to you in childhood – as it is always the case. But you find the courage to confront your history and have the good fortune to do it with an enlightened witness. Even if there is much suffering on this path you are no longer in danger because you KNOW now what happened and you WANT to know. I wish you all my best and hope that my books and my paintings (on this web-site) will help you to bear your truth and to BELIEVE in what your painting is telling you.