It was in the void of being newly separated and going from fulltime mom to part-time mom that the image came. It cracked opened a secret buried in tiny pockets of fat just beneath my belly button. It arrived in the same manner as its predecessors, in a flash and in one complete image. Except this one did not have a title attached to it and had no color.
The image drew itself, bypassing terror. It lingered on my lap as I stared at it motionless. I didn’t rush to the store and buy materials to paint it, as was my norm. I couldn’t move. Maybe Dali had not listened to my detail of discernment. Maybe I was becoming mad like the other surrealists. I had spent some part of every day for the past four years painting. But I couldn’t go into my studio. I was afraid I would get lost in that mental institute of a painting. I paced and squirmed in the spaciousness of alone time.
It took three months before another image arrived. A woman/me appeared in the center of my painting, walking like a queen down the hallway in a purple velvet dress and high heels. She was whole, not splintered like the others. She could hold all of my parts. With her I started painting again.
It was shortly after that time that the body memories began. My son called that time period the “crying years.”
