My Mind Runneth Over

Dear Mike,

I have been doing mindful therapy with our family therapist.  While you have been dead for over 16 years I still get hit with these bouts of sadness.  I used to call them crashes but I don't don't feel I crash anymore.  I am still able to function just not at the full capacity I like to.  I decided to give this different approach to therapy a shot since I hadn't tried and what is there to loose.  Plus, I would like not to be continually hit with these bouts of sadness multiple times of year my whole life.  Or I guess if I had to I would like to be able to function more fully and be more present for my family.  When I have this bout of sadness my mind runneth over.  It's overflowing with imagery, imagery I want to turn into art.  Imagery full of powerful feelings and emotions.  Some I don't even realize I have until I examine more closely.  I have for years felt like something was wrong with me, like I'm crazy or something, because I get these pictures in my head.  My therapist said she thought it was human.  I thought otherwise because it was so dark.  But I was thinking about it and I realized it isn't just then.  I think it's when there is something I am passionate about that it happens.  Like Fionn's school for instance.  It's coming up against some significant change.  Change I want to be apart of because I want to ensure there is a school for him to attend next year that he will thrive at.  Since the announcement about the coming change that must take place for the school's survival I am again overflowing with ideas.  I am passionate about Fionn having a school to attend that is a good fit for him and I'm passionate about serving our community.

I was talking to Mom the other day about this project I am working on and how Dad helped me solve a problem with figuring out how to make my idea happen.  At a later time he mentioned to me about a project he was working on and how he accidentally invented a pinhole projector.  He's working on all kinds of stuff in his mind and is frustrated because he needs more time to produce them.  Matt has helped him figure some problems out with projects he was working on.  I love the collaboration going on in the family.  Then I realized it wasn't just me.  Matt must have all this stuff bubbling away in his head.  Remember his sketches?  On napkins, paper, sketch books, whatever was around.  His facebook timeline cover...classic Matt, pouring his brain full of stuff out into production.  Then I realized you too,  all of your lists and ideas.  For a period of time I thought that part of you was something else but when you look at the whole picture of our family I'm convinced this is a family thing.  Grandma Cullen had her concept about Chaucer's Canterbury Tales I think while in the bathtub.  I don't know how long it was before she was free to work on it but I think it was years.  Can you imagine how full her head must have been?  Is this part of the creative temperament?

The other thing I discovered about myself was that this has been apart of me before you died.  I have vivid memories of a pair of pants I was designing prior to your death.  They were going to be the four elements...earth, water, air, and fire.  I had fabric strips ready and colorful, shiny thread especially for the project.  I remembered wearing the unfinished version to work when I went to talk to my boss after you had died but before you were buried.  I never finished them.  I remember living in Las Vegas planning this stained glass, lighted false ceilling of "our tree" (the tree Kerrigan and I would lay under in Santa Rosa).  Later in Portland I was creating these branches wired for lit blossoms and leaves for show centerpieces, all in my head.

Here I've thought this was some messed up part of me and now I realize it was part of me from the very beginning of my life.  My creative soul born.

Love,

Gabby

P.S.  While I was writing this I realized even more.  Like a full pot boiling with the lid on...at a point the contents just can't be contained any longer and they're boiling over.  My feelings were spilling out all over my life.
 

I Bought Fionn a Nerf Gun

Dear Mike,

I never thought I'd do it but I bought Fionn a Nerf gun.  I have been 100% anti-gun since you died.  I don't know what I was before but I was totally ANTI-gun after.  When we were going through the process of checking this school out for Fionn, attending Free School 101, applying, interviewing, attending experience days and then deciding to give it a shot I was aware I was going to have to step out of my comfort zone if he was going to attend the school that seemed to be the best fit for him.  I learned that in the current culture of the school a popular game was zombies and the kids used toy guns with no ammunition.  They had rules about playing with guns...you can only point at someone if it's okay with them and there was no use of ammunition ie. suction darts, or other foam bullet type things.  I actually thought the rules were reasonable.  I also recognized that my extreme sensitivity to guns was because of my personal experience, not Fionn's or probably anyone else's at the school.  I didn't think it was fair for him to miss out on a potential wonderful, perfect for him opportunity because I was hypersensitive.  So, I decided to be okay with him playing guns at school according to the rules and maintaining out rules at home.  At home there is no pointing guns (or gun like gestures or things) at people.

But just the other day I saw we may have to enter a new level.  Fionn has adjusted well at school and while it has taken some time, probably do to his infrequent attendance, he has made some real connections at school and has a few friends.  He was invited to a birthday party.  It's a Nerf Gun War theme...bring your own Nerf guns and ammunition.  Playing with Nerf guns and no ammunition is one of his favorite things to do at school with friends.  I wanted him to be able to attend and participate with the others.  I want him to feel like he belongs.  So I bought him a Nerf suction dart gun and he'll have one to use at the party.

Afterwards, I still couldn't believe I did it.  ME...buy him a toy gun.  I'm okay with it though.  I recently told him how you died.  I didn't go into much detail but he knew you were shot with a gun.  He was sad for me...that my brother had died.  I left it at that.  But, I think it's important too for anyone playing with toy guns to know that real guns DO kill people.

I am still anti-gun.  No one will will ever convince me that it's a good idea to carry a gun or keep a gun at home.  I will never be comfortable around guns.  I will never cross the line into supporting guns for sport for my family.  But, I can support my kids playing toy guns with friends within the parameters we've agreed on.  And most of all, I can support their having and experiencing wonderful opportunities in this world despite my hyper-sensitivity.  So, while I realize some may feel guns for sport or protection might be a wonderful experience, I also know it might not be too and that's a risk I'm not willing to take.

Love,

Gabby

Even More Pictures of You

Oh my gosh, Mike!!!  I found tons of pictures.  And best of all I found the picture of you fixing the Christmas village piece.  It's the one that I have always felt encompassed the overwhelming quality of you.  Like, if you had to choose one description of you, it would sum it up...likes to tinker, take things apart, and fix things or create them into new things.

But it's funny how our mind holds some things to such high esteem and in reality at any given moment something else says so much more to us at the time.  I also found a picture of you doing a wheelie.  I don't remember the picture but, man, it's awesome.   It totally makes me think of the similarities you and Fionn hold.  So today that one is my favorite.  There is one too of you from the last Christmas we shared together.  If I could put that smile into the Christmas village picture I would.  And you were smiling over razors!  

There's a picture of you, Matt and Grandma on your trip back east.  You all look so poised.  And there's another one of the popular golf bag and clubs Christmas present but this one has Grandad too and your expression is priceless.

I also found the pictures of the funeral, a concept that will never settle well with me.  You should have seen our faces.  So strong or maybe even frozen so as not to shatter, yet so, so deeply sad.  I can remember when mine shattered.  I had wanted them to play Tears in Heaven  during the funeral and they told me there wasn't enough time to with all the other specific requests.  I was really disappointed.  And then, out of the blue, there it was playing, but I hadn't expected it, and I just cried.  I couldn't hold it in anymore.  I'm crying now too.  I heard that song on the radio on Friday when leaving the parking lot at Fionn's school.  I was crying and thinking to myself, that if you ever really love a song and you want to keep loving it, then don't play it at a funeral.  You'll always be reminded of being there and feeling the way you did.

Is that what I've been doing all these years, trying not to shatter?  But every so often a few pieces start to fall and I'm left scrambling to pick them up and glue them back on before more and more and more fall off.  By now I think the adhesive is old and it just isn't going to hold up.  The door to my creative soul has opened and its coming out.  

So without further ado here's the pics I told you about, sans the funeral ones.

Anyway,  I did some sketches I'll tell you more about another time.  I also found the books that hold the primary sketches that started all this thirteen or fourteen years ago.  

Love,

Gabby

VULNERABLE

Dear Mike,

I'm feeling too vulnerable.  I'm not sure that I can share all I wanted to with the world.  I hope you can understand.  I think in this case and several others a picture is worth a thousand words.  So I need some time to create what I have to say.

Love,

Gabby

My Broken Heart

Dear Mike,

I was at church recently and was introduced, through the sermon, to Parker Palmer.  It talked of this concept he coined, the broken open heart.  This time that I went it was like the sermon was made for me personally.  Here's Parker's explanation of the broken-open heart.

"There is no way to be human without having one’s heart broken. But there are at least two ways for the heart to break— using “heart” in its root meaning, not merely the seat of the emotions but the core of our sense of self.

The heart can be broken into a thousand shards, sharp-edged fragments that sometimes become shrapnel aimed at the source of our pain. Everyday, untold numbers of people try without success to “pick up the pieces,” some of them taking grim satisfaction in the way the heart’s explosion has injured their enemies. Here the broken heart is an unresolved wound that we carry with us for a long time, sometimes tucking it away and feeding it as a hidden wound, sometimes trying to “resolve it” by inflicting the same wound on others.

But there is another way to visualize what a broken heart might mean. Imagine that small, clenched fist of a heart “broken open” into largeness of life, into greater capacity to hold one’s own and the world’s pain and joy. This, too, happens everyday. We know that heartbreak can become a source of  compassion and grace because we have seen it happen with our own eyes as people enlarge their capacity for empathy and their ability to attend to the suffering of others."

I wondered how is it possible to transform my heart, the one on the floor in a thousand shards.  So I may have picked up a few pieces over the last couple of years, but I can't do that my whole life.  I have felt a tremendous healing but I know there is still significant wounds.  I have just started on the road of thinking I have to open my eyes and heart and face it.  Then I read this.

"First, in a culture where the answer  to the question “How are you? ” is supposed  to be “Just fine” even when we are not , we must  learn to acknowledge and name our suffering honestly and openly to ourselves and to others. This is called “becoming vulnerable”—a hard thing to do in a culture that does not respect the shadow, where even among friends we are at constant risk of someone trying to “fix us up,” an act that drives the suffering soul back into hiding no matter how well - intended . We need to find a trustworthy friend or two who knows what it means simply to receive and bear witness to our pain. As we cultivate such relationships, we will find ourselves rewarded with a comforting,  “Welcome to the human race.”  

Second, once we have named and claimed our suffering, we must move directly to the heart of it, allowing ourselves to feel the painfully, rather than doing what our culture teaches numbing it with anesthetics, fleeing from it with distractions, or fighting it off by blaming and attacking the external source.  The only way to transform suffering into something life-giving is to enter into it so deeply that we learn what it has to teach us and come out on the other side.  Third, if we are to learn from our suffering, we must cre-ate a micro-climate of quietude around ourselves, allowing the turmoil to settle and an inner quietude to emerge,  so “that of God within us” can help us find our way through. Nurtured by silence, we can stop taking our leads from the voices of ego and world and start listening instead to the still, small voice of all that is Holy.

None of  this can be done on the cheap.  It requires what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “costly grace.”  But if we are willing to pay the cost, that grace will be given and we will purchase the pearl of great price — a chance to participate in God’s continuing creation of  the beloved community."

While I think about transforming MY broken heart into the broken-open heart I can see that mine might take  on another aspect too.  I have to do something with all the mental imagery it carries with it.  My heart and soul can carry only so much at a time.  But, as I experience the release I feel when I write you a letter, or Fionn a letter, or work on the art gallery in my head, I can feel the clarity of mind they provide.  I long for an even greater clarity.  Or is it clarity?  Maybe simplicity is it.  The film playing in my head, or the picture I look at trying to figure out how to convey the image through my lens, or the strobe of an image waiting to be unleashed.  It would be nice to be alone in my brain with nothing fluttering about for a while.

Love,

Gabby

P.S. Ivan is working on some awesome photography right now.  You'd love it.