You see, my entire spine has sustained a lot of damage over time; to the point that the spinal compression was severe enough for paralysis and fatality. I ended up having two complicated neurosugeries (cervical and thoracic) over three months.
I am coming up on my one year anniversary of my first emergency hospitalization/surgery. I want to share with you two different art journal entries I created this year about my recoveries. To hear a much more detailed story with visuals, check out my You Tube video here.
This first page was made five months post op from my cervical surgery. As you can see, I felt stuck, angry and sad. This was most optimistic page I created at that time. I tried to envision hope with the yellow at top. But falling over and pain were paramount in my mind. The overall sense in this piece is being unable to break through brick walls, tears, pain and not being able to walk or balance. I felt defeated.
In the second art journal spread, I focussed on the physical realm and the emotional realms.
Having been to hell and back in both those worlds, I have adopted the phoenix as a special animal symbol for myself. Legend has it that the phoenix re-births itself after being consumed by fire.
You still see tears but I am now releasing some emotional tears (blue), not just the red ones of pain and fury. I incorporated butterflies for transformation and drew on the wisdom of my ancestors through the High Priestess tarot card.
I only used paper that I had drawn on, painted, stamped or altered in some way. I like working in layers. Can you spot the three hospital bands in each art journal piece? They are white, red and yellow. They were color copies of the actual bands I wore for a month. You can find the white band in the video. This photo cropped it out.
There is so much to say about this first year of recovery. It is like an onion. But what I take away is resilience, acceptance and yet, still I hold onto hope. And maybe one more . . . gratitude. Yes, I'll leave it at that.
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