To Get To The Center

Have you ever had that feeling you've been someplace before? 

You know the feeling, same experience, different circumstances. Or exact same circumstances, different life stage. Or exact same life stage, exact same experience. 

How many times do I have to go through this? How many times do I have to learn this same lesson? Am I ever going to get this right? Will this thing ever stop tripping me up?? Why do I have to deal with this again??

Why am I here again???????????

You know the feeling. When you're lamenting to God and he simply says "look up". 

For Mature Audiences Only (Or for those who need to hear they are enough)

It’s been interesting watching myself dance around being as authentic and honest as I wanted to be in my writing. Having made a triumphant announcement in a sort of public way, by broadcasting live on Facebook, my intention. 

It was never about being able to say whatever popped out of my mouth unfiltered. God knows, I do plenty of that. It was about an awakening I’ve had through this process of creating my shields series. Awakening to the realization of the number of ways I edit myself. In person and online, in order to present a more pleasing and acceptable version of who I am. 

So with that awakening came conviction. I want, need, must take off the masks, put down the shields. You know the ones, the faces we carefully craft to show the world a polished up version of ourselves, the shields we construct from learned behaviors that have helped protect us for a time. 

Protection seems like a strange choice of words for this particular shield. Adaptation to early conditioning in order to gain approval might help you understand. We grow up in home environments that teach us different lessons throughout early life. 

Shake Your Money Maker        Encaustic Assemblage Shield by Crystal Marie Neubauer

Other little girls grew up being told they were the apple of their daddy's eye. One strong image of a little girl being tossed in the air and twirled around the room in her daddy's outstretched arms while he looks at her adoringly stays with me. Not a memory of my own experience, but memory as witness to my childhood friend and her father when he returned from work one evening. The kind of reception I craved from mine. 

Shake Your Money Maker-detail     Encaustic Assemblage Shield by Crystal Marie Neubauer

Messages other girls grew up with might have been on their beautiful smile and bright eyes. Perhaps they were told they were beautiful, smart, funny, curious, strong. My messages were always directed toward my body. I was clumsy, awkward, knobby kneed, flat chested. My messaging repeated throughout the years from my father included an encouraging "so lucky you got your ass from my side of the family" and "she doesn't need a bra, she needs a box of bandaids."

Puberty brought unwanted attention from drunken old men, eye's waggling as I trailed behind my father, chortling gleefully after me- "she's such a tease, jail bait, that one is". and "don't worry honey, I'm more of an ass man myself!"  

Shake Your Money Maker      Encaustic Assemblage Shield by Crystal Marie Neubauer

Girls growing up in the 70's and 80's were bombarded with messages about our bodies. Sure, we could bring home the bacon, but we damned well better fry it up in the pan wearing something pleasing. And for god's sakes eat a salad! Look at you, just packing on the pounds! How are you ever going to keep a man like that?

Girls growing up in dysfunctional family systems got the message compounded, mixed thoroughly, shaken, stirred, and offered up on the rocks. We knew what our worth was. We knew what was expected and we knew how to be accepted. Like many women my age, I grew up believing it was only skin deep, needed to be outfitted in short skirts, and flaunted. You caught your man looking sexy, and you kept him by being pure. Be rugged and outdoorsy and learn all the drivers names on the Nascar circuit. Sit entranced with the boys during the boxing match. Fix him his favorite snacks on Super Bowl Sunday.  And be in the mood at the drop of his pants. 

Shake Your Money Maker      Encaustic Assemblage Shield by Crystal Marie Neubauer

Inspired in part by the visually graphic coin purse placed in the center of the shield, (a symbol made iconic by artist Suzanna Scott) Shake Your Money Maker represents all the ways I learned to use my body to find safety in an unsafe world. Safety, I believed, that could only be found within the confines of marriage. The number of shields that I've had to put down before this one could be unearthed was surprising. 

But the biggest surprise in this awakening has been the shift from believing my body was my worth to understanding that my whole being is my worth. That my being is not weakened or missing something vital without a man. That indeed I am powerful and whole. 

And enough. 

When Helping Really Hurts and Other Life Lessons

I got really tripped up in my newfound commitment to writing more this week in an obsessive desire to tell you a funny story about this crawfish and this dog. I wrote and wrote for several days trying to get the story just right to connect it to a deeper lesson, life as allegory, if you will. 

As that post grew lengthier, the point grew more elusive, getting mired down in my laborious explanation. I was doing exactly what I said I didn't want to do anymore- trying to curate the moment, give you a laugh and end it on a high note. 

After several days of this circling the drain exercise, that lightbulb finally went off, the one that shines its damned light on the thing I don't necessarily want to see. But there it is, daring me to look. Sitting at the table under the single bulb hanging from the ceiling, a suspect ready for my interrogation. Who are you, and What business do you have here??

Avoidance. My name is avoidance. I come to offer you distraction. Distraction is a lovely way to pass the time so you don't have to do that thing you're convinced is too scary to do. 

Distraction is what you do to justify avoidance. You look busy, you have important things going on. Distraction comes with a benevolent partner that enables you to keep doing the thing that distracts you. That partner is cleverly covert. It's name is denial. 

Denial, let it have its way long enough and pretty soon you find yourself in a freefall to the bottom of a very deep pit, wondering where the hell the last three days went.

It hurts to wake up at the bottom of that pit, realizing shame is having its way with you. Shame is the master orchestrator of this evil plan. Shame is insipid. It begins its work long before you wake up in that pit. Long ago, it slithered into your life and buried its lies deep into your psyche. 

It trained it's voice to sound just like your own. 

Or your mother's.

Or your second grade teacher's.

Make no mistake about it, shame wants to silence you. Shame thinks it is a superhero, there to serve and protect. But shame doesn't help you face your giants. It tells you that they are invincible and the only thing left to do is hide. It does anything in its power to knock the glasses from your face, it keeps you from opening your eyes. 

If you're lucky, you'll look up from the bottom of that pit with an unobstructed view and call shame out on it's bullshit. See the liar for what it is, and do the thing it wanted you to be afraid of. 

This shame buster came in the form of an innocent walk with the dog. An encounter with a crawfish. Distraction told me I could be a hero. I could save that damned mudbug, whether it needed me to or not. Avoidance played it's part by convincing me I could weave a story about how sometimes helping can really hurt. 

A long story it was. So let me tell you the Facebook version: 

This is me falling face first down a rocky incline into a pond, after getting caught in a fist fight between a crawfish and the dog. My finger happened to be holding the camera button while I went tumbling down. No one won.

The End. Akeru. 

Freedom's Just Another Word

Freedom's Just Another Word
Encaustic Mixed Media Assemblage by Crystal Marie

Remember that song from the 70's? It must have been the 70's, when I think of it I can remember feeling that freedom in my bones as I rode my banana seat bike with it's pink plastic daisies and streamers around the neighborhood. 

My commitment to getting messy here on the blog and saying all the things out loud is really challenging me this morning. My thoughts are swirling around waiting to be heard and yet I can't seem to get them past the back of my throat. 

My teeth are clamped. The old accusers have stirred from their slumber to begin lobbying their complaints against me. The one side shouting "get a grip! nobody cares!" The other side arguing that my inability to put fingers to keypad and spill, is evidence of my cowardness, and even more evidence that in spite of my realization that I might be "the one person" I seek to help with my own writing, thus my commitment to write as if it's just for me, I still do actually care what other people think of me. 

And I know I do, care. I do.

I don't intend to get so hardened as to notreallygivearatsass about you at all. I simply want to be able to speak my truths and release you from responding. Or myself from needing you to. Let alone from the pressure of needing you to prop me up with applause. Because isn't that what approval seeking is really? The need to feel affirmed by others? I want to care about you and still be okay if you don't approve of me, or downright disagree with my words. 

And lest you be confused. When I say, spill, I don't mean spill all the family secrets. Good Lord, how much time do we all have anyway? No, it's the daily stuff, the ways that early conditioning is still dictating how well I manage my life. That's where I am right now. That's where I think so many of us get stuck. Where I worry over the shield of "what will people think of me?" it's a tough one. 

So back to that song..."Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose". Exactly what is it I am afraid I'll lose if I speak all of my truths here? 

Exactly what is it if you do?

This Blog Is About To Get Messy!

The Acre Of My Soul   
  Collage Mixed Media Assemblage by Crystal Marie

Oh the bunny trails I can follow when I'm avoiding doing what I should be doing. The shoulds should mean the stuff that is unpleasant to do, but really I can twist the most pleasant of activities into a should if you give me enough time. This morning I should be writing. Because I want to be writing more. 

Yesterday I went crazy and broadcasted live from Facebook with a radical idea for my blog that might not sound so radical or earth shattering to you, but  because you're not the one about to get naked in the middle of Times Square. 

Okay that might be a little bit of an exaggeration, but that's the feeling of it for me. To decide to get more raw, more real, more truthful and honest here on the blog in my writing style is to expose the thoughts behind the thoughts I typically show you. To be messy here means to stop editing myself out of fear of what some mysterious internet reader, or a long lost acquaintance, or friend who's ghosted me, lurking around on social media might think.  It is to stop trying to put a positive spin on everything out of concern that you, my readers *(reader? Is it still just you out there mom?), might think I sound like a victim or a drama queen.

Some would say I’m addicted to drama. They see someone who’s life seems to always be in chaos and they say maybe I'm just addicted to the pain. They don't see the woman who is pulling herself out of a pit of early dysfunction and conditioning, and attempting to pull others out with her. 

But I’m done with that self blaming talk- not done like I’ve conquered it- but done like I’m actively working on recognizing all the ways the Insipid blame the victim game works inside my head. It doesn’t serve a higher purpose to self-flagellate and it sure as hell doesn’t lead to recovery. It simply serves to shame the person into going even further into hiding.

That’s what addiction really is, it's hiding to numb old feelings of abandonment, fear of rejection, inadequacy. A sense of not belonging. 

It is the action, the symptom of the issue, not the issue itself.

Those behaviors aren't caused by addiction, they come from conditioning. Addiction is the thing I do to try to run from, hide from, or even agree with that conditioning. Addiction doesn't always look as destructive as we think. Addiction is simply the actions we take to numb the conditioning. 

Taking drugs or alcohol, maxing out the credit card, hopping from abusive relationship to abusive relationship, people watching, and judging others (so much easier to do anonymously with the internet now), mindlessly scrolling through social media, people pleasing, perfectionism, codependency, these are all the addictive behaviors we act out of desperation to numb, to hide, to avoid what we really want. 

To belong. 

Because we don't think we do. We might believe we don't deserve to, or that we're too flawed too. We might have found ourselves as odd man out so many times we believe the only way to find acceptance and belong is to pretend to fit in. To present to the world a persona. We put on masks and pick up shields to avoid rejection. But this armor we believe we need to be accepted by or cope with the world, is the very thing that actually prevents the world from knowing us. From seeing us. From connecting with our true selves. Our true flawed and broken beautiful selves. 

It keeps us from truly feeling like we belong. 

So here I am. Putting down my armor, shield after shield. One layer at a time. I'm committed to showing up here and relaxing a little bit more. Letting go of the fear of rejection - which I manage by carefully curating what I write. Letting go of my need to please you by always putting a positive spin on even the most miserable of situations. Laying down the armor of people pleasing and control. The one that is the chameleon to help me blend in. The one that is more concerned with hurting your feelings then telling the truth. 

This blog is about to get messy because I plan to write more of what I really think. To stop editing and curating and spinning my life to make it more palatable for an imaginary critic. I might swear a little. Or a lot. I'm sure I'll express opinions you disagree with. There might not be a happy conclusion. Or even a conclusion at all. Basically this is going to be my morning dumping ground before the coffee kicks in  enough to stop me. 

So if you just subscribed because you watched that facebook video, welcome to my mess. 
You've been warned. 

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly, And The Sublime - A Progress Report In That Order

Hope Medallion - Encaustic Mixed Media by Crystal Neubauer

Looking back at the date of the last post, I realized it was time for a progress report of sorts. Here's the skinny on the time that has lapsed in the past month. 

I continue to get settled in to my new home, a lovely townhouse in a beautiful community in Gurnee, Illinois. It is 40 minutes to my Racine studio, but an easy enough drive, which I am committed to making at least twice a week. 

I made the decision to move back to the Illinois side of the border for a number of reasons, not the least of which is to be closer to my children, grands, and several close friends. My doctors are all located in Chicago, and I've applied for and received my license for medical marijuana. Shocking I know, but it is the only thing that's even come close to helping with the chronic insomnia that is a major symptom to the illnesses I'm living with. No weird side effects, no new meds to control the symptoms caused by other meds, and the added benefit of helping to manage my inflammation, which is astronomical in lab numbers, and the pain that it causes. It is also reported to kill the Lyme virus.

The home - it really is lovely. Each day I've gotten a little more organized, a little more used to waking up in this space, and a little more attached to this feeling. The one that feels like love and light and gratitude. So much gratitude. 

I've spent the month and a half since moving here reflecting on the astonishing response to the gofund me that my friend and guardian angel, Jana started for me. The ability that money has given me to relocate, not just flee a bad situation (read that post here), but to actually have the peace of mind of knowing there were deposit monies and first months rent, moving helpers and truck money, and all the millions of little expenses that chip away at the savings during a move. I can't really describe that feeling yet, it's still feels fairly new to me. 

More than knowing that there were funds available to help me get set up in a new place, to pay for the initial doctors visits and labs not covered by insurance, and the meds that have been helping me get physically stable, has been the feeling of being lifted by a community, bigger, wider, deeper, than I ever understood was there. 

You all had my back. And then some. 

Letters, messages, cards, and gifts of encouragement continue to come - and I continue to receive each one in awe and gratitude. This above all else, has been a defining moment in my life. I close my eyes and see myself being held - skimming across the top of a crowd of people, hands outstretched to lift me, as if surfing the crowd at a rock concert. I still can't quite describe that feeling. 

Physically the move has been one of the hardest I've ever experienced - and people who have had to devote entire pages in their address books to updating my information can testify to the enormity of that statement. Emotionally, well, reread the few paragraphs above. The daily waking to a profound sense of emotional well being regardless of physical status is more than I can put words to. Thank you. Thank you. And a thousand times thank you.

The initial doctors visits yielded a prescription for Ketotifen and an over the counter supplement called HistDAO. One is a histamine blocker, the other breaks down histamine in the stomach, and both are mast cell stabilizers. The consistent use of these two products has helped diminish that constant stabbing pain in the gut feeling, alleviate most of the pounding heart, and many unfortunate bathroom symptoms after a meal or an environmental trigger, broke the whole-body migraine that nearly crippled me, eased some of the facial flushing, and has enabled me to start adding certain foods slowly back into my diet. As of today I've gained 10 pounds back - and let me tell you, the difference between 98 pound me and 108 pound me went from looking like a sad nutritionally starved anorexic teenager to a slightly underweight but leaning towards better life adult woman. 

Life is good - but many challenges remain. The next steps on the health front involve more tests and upcoming appointments. Exploring other meds to add to the regimine, and still to be determined stage of the disease progress. 

The month of June was brilliant, beautiful, rare in the midwest, with daily temps hovering just below 80 and low humidity levels reminiscent of my stays in California. Each day I started out sitting with the dog on the back deck soaking in the rays and sweet breezes. But summer has arrived, and with it, the need to turn on the AC. This is where my story takes a turn. 

The new house has mold in the HVAC system. 

I am devastated at this realization and at having to report this. It's toying with the old ingrained sense that I need to make sure everyone else is okay and that I'm responsible for what you think about me. That's a screwy sentence to write, but bear with me. 

I can't wrap my head around the fact that this is the sixth home I've moved to with a mold problem. I can't wrap my head around the fact that I only rented the last home for six months, two and a half of which were spent staying in other people's homes. I can't wrap my head around the fact that I was meticulous in my search for a safe, clean environment. I didn't let myself look at the old houses that I gravitate to and love. I let my nose do the inspecting after ignoring tell-tale mildewy smells in said older homes in the past. I opened closet doors, inspected the utility closets, counted the cost of air quality living in apartments, verses houses, verses the townhouse I finally chose. I was eager to get on with it, but I didn't let my actions become desperate - that was part of the gift from you all with the support you gave. 

The ugly truth of it is that living in the US, more then 50% of homes have had some sort of  water damage and a good majority of those are in the midwest and southern states. With my genetics, and compromised immune system, multiple former exposures to toxins - mold, Lyme, and last years food poisoning, have left me with a full bucket of toxins and a system that has a very difficult time properly emptying that bucket. An average person with a healthy immune system and functioning detox pathway could live with this level of exposure without much notice - the exposure is not good for anyone long term- eventually there might be tell-tale symptoms like sinus allergies and unexplained illnesses for most, but for me - with that bucket already full, the symptoms are more serious and come on more quickly. 

I've been hard pressed to talk about this to many people. I get stirred up in the "what will people think" and "no one believes me" lies that have bound me for most of my life. Don't even get me started on the one that says "you got what you deserved." Hell, I don't want to believe it so how can I blame you for not understanding? But here I am, living in a new place that I am in love with, dealing with the very thing I moved here to escape from. 

So what now? 

Luckily, at this time, the problem seems to be contained in the HVAC system - only presenting itself to me upon turning on the AC. So I purchased an enzyme solution recommended by the remediation company that my mold health group recommends, talked to the landlord's brother (he's responsible for the carpentry and maintenance of the properties),  and he took the unit apart piece by piece cleaning it with the solution meticulously. He spent hours on it and reassured me that if the problem continued, he'd go into the crawl space and open the ductwork and treat it from down there. 

This week the temps have dipped again, though Wednesday it was nearly 100 so there was a brief time of AC and so far so good. Some of the exposure symptoms remain - but I am in a wait and see, don't panic frame of mind. If the problem is indeed only in the system - which isn't uncommon for central AC units, then fingers crossed, and prayers said, the solution is enough to remediate it. It is when there is water damage to the structure of the house that it becomes too big to be safe for me to hope for remediation. Add your prayers and light and energy and well wishes to mine for a good outcome to this unexpected bump. 

Work wise, there has been good progress on the shield series for my solo show opening at RAM Wustum Museum in Racine next month. The ideas that have been pouring in have begun to take shape in the studio. But I'm down to the wire and don't have time to do some of the experimentation I had hoped to do for this series, this show. I've promised myself to keep playing with these materials even after the show is hung. I've been posting progress shots of the works on my Instagram account here. 

I'll be taking a short break once the pieces for the show are complete, to clean up, tear down, and reset for my September workshop. My wheels are turning for future endeavors and ways to make the actual studio profitable enough to justify keeping it. I'm badly in need of some time to start developing my video courses -  time has been flying by with the focus being on the move and the RAM show.The pop up shop will open Monday - with expressions of interest having first dibs at the offerings on Sunday. Keep an eye out for it here. Leave me a comment on the blog below (be sure to include an email address) for the Sunday advance opportunity. And sign up for my newsletter here if you don't want to miss out on this or any of the future pop ups planned. 

This time there will be a series of 4" square encaustic paintings, each with a small bit of a book spine set in the middle, which symbolizes inner strength to me. That spine of the book is typically hidden beneath the skin of the books cover, but it enables the book to stand - and it is what I have hidden beneath my own surface, the stuff on the inside most eyes cannot see, that enables me to stand through all of the challenges and thrills life has sent my way. 

It is the spirit of those whose arms are raised to lift me, the spirit of my own being, The Spirit of a God who loves me, and the spirit of knowledge, and hunger, and thirst for living my best life, not in spite of these challenges, but because of the transformation happening through them. 

It suddenly occurs to me I actually do know how to describe that feeling. It is sublime.