July 1975: Long Buried Treasures

(From Ritual Year, written in July 1975)
For tapestry class, I retrieved an old sketch pad from Biddeford Pool, and unearthed long buried treasures: the Hieroglyphic journey, mandalas from California, perhaps from the first return to Maine?  I wish I had dated them.  Also the loom I drew for the FREE YOU and the page about the apollo project.  Strange and deeply encouraging to find these fragments from my long-ago self, long buried and forgotten talents.  Some of the mandalas are really beautiful, I couldn’t see that then.

Wondering what is the significance of posting pieces written a long time ago, in a blog that’s about living with PTSD.  Like the entry “Long Buried Treasures” I’m finding things I wrote so long ago, while I was struggling with severe depression, which I didn’t know was “severe” because I had never known anything else.  I was also struggling with systemic yeast which had at least been diagnosed so I had some idea how to deal with it, and struggling with a serious, debilitating Phobia about the noise of local small planes.  Nobody around me, including me, had any idea of what I was really up against, so people were judging me for not being able to just “get past it.”  I was judging myself.  Sometime in this period (late 80’s to early 90’s) I read Ellen Bass’ The Courage to Heal, and found self-mutilation among the consequences of childhood sexual abuse.  That really helped me understand the seriousness of what I was dealing with.  So the entries in Ritual Year surprise me by their passion, color, and exuberance.  Something like the Truth Express.  It amazes me that someone damaged and disabled as much as I was, could produce these little bursts of creativity.

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