[WINTER RECAP]
Treasure Hollowed had a really unexpected effect on me. I was not prepared for the level of enjoyment, inspiration, and pure joy I felt when I saw your work, when I heard your stories, and how deeply I connected to what you were crafting. It was unlike what I experienced in my Chakragraph workshops which I felt a lot of responsibility, duty, and stress from. This was a next level experience for me.
My own Chakragraph was little more than a hollow body. So much much life was happening around me but very little on the inside. I felt as though I was constantly standing on the threshold between everything and nothing all at the same time. I am in between ordinary and non-ordinary reality, happiness and grief, faith and fear, action and inaction, motion and exhaustion, light and heaviness, sickness and health. If I shifted my energy even a little, if I so much as moved a single spoon from one side of the table to the other, everything in my life would get thrown out of balance and taking me weeks to recover, if at all. I was not unhappy or happy; I could be both. I was grateful for my blessings and I spoke my gratitude for them every day. But it’s like I was just... here. Existing. As if I was the ghost in this world.
The magic of the Winter exercise was that it planted a very important seed in all of us. As always, Spirit timing is the perfect timing and my subconscious knew when to let it bloom.
THE UNCOVERING
It was nearing the end of January. I had cozied myself into a little nest of blankets in my bed and settled into Amazon Prime. My bed is my safe haven and since my pacemaker surgeries in November, I spent all my free time here. My energy has not supported any activity beyond my work, so much so that I was coming to the conclusion I could no longer offer my readings to my community anymore. I craved anonymity. I daydreamed about stepping away from intuitive work altogether and wondered how my body and spirit would feel.
What was so beautiful about this space was that my Winter Reflection had already been crafted. I had very strong desires and feelings of completely disengaging, but the artwork reminded me that I felt hollow, and hollow means temporary. The universe abhors a vacuum. Something new was ready to come in and all I needed was a little more patience.
THE ACKNOWLEDGMENT
That night, my television adventure led me to ‘Modern Love’, a rom-com series titled after a column in The New York Times. In one of the episodes, actress Anne Hathaway plays a character who is battling mental illness. The program walks you through how it interferes with her profession, her relationships, and thereby her self-image. There’s a point in the show where she demonstrates a courageous act of vulnerability and tells someone for the very first time that she’s bipolar. The person reacts in support and just like that, just by breathing the words outside of her, she gets the courage to seek professional help and for the first time begins taking control of her life. I cannot explain to you why, but at that exact moment, my artwork’s seed had sprouted. I just knew: I am bipolar. I spent the rest of the night researching bipolar disease and settled on the characteristics of Cyclothymia as what, without a doubt, 100% fit my current life experience. I scheduled a psychiatrist appointment the next day and two months later she confirmed what I already knew.
My technical diagnosis is Bipolar NOS (Not Otherwise Specified) and C-PTSD. Bipolar NOS means that I don’t fall in the spectrum of bipolar I or II. I experience hypomania rather than hypermania which is significantly different. My hypomania episodes just look like a cluster of really good days. I’m happy and I feel connected to life around me. I get really creative, come up with a lot of great ideas for projects, get a ton of downloads from Spirit and have some extra energy to spare. During my hypomanic episodes, I connect with friends and make plans because I’m genuinely feeling better. But those cycles don’t last long. It’s not long before I crash. My body begins hurting. I get really fatigued and I just flat-line. I begin to forget everything and struggle really badly to show up for, and to, what I’ve created. It’s as if I go from being a normal, healthy, creative person to being someone who is almost crippled and at best, existing. I spend most of my time in the latter state, which I believe is why I am in constant discomfort, fatigue, and pain.
Mental health is physical health.
Like everything in my life, my symptoms ride on the threshold. Learning how to be in this place with power will be my focus this year, as will my continued recovery.
While I hope your revelations were less dramatic, I do hope they were just as mighty and meaty all the same.
Here’s looking forward to Spring.
In full reverence to the journey,
Jamie