I am a woman who loves inspiration. I also love words and writing. I actively seek out ideas, experiences, images, and other people’s reflections that inspire me to live a more enriched, meaningful, and compelling life. Conversely, this has made me more receptive to noticing or being moved by that which enlivens me. This process has been an evolution of my creative, intellectual, and spiritual development for decades.
The propensity to inspire myself and others was born of necessity. I was one of four children, the oldest sibling born to a woman who struggled with a profound personality disorder labeled manic depression at the time. My mother’s mental illness catapulted her into catatonic depressive bouts offset by vengeful rage, interspersed with periodic spells of beguiling charm that was disarming. The latter was unfortunately usually eclipsed by the darkness of her depression and rage.
I was no different than any other child, all hardwired by nature to attune to their primary parent in an ongoing effort to find secure attachment. Through experiencing my mother’s psychological and emotional fragility I learned by the time I was five years old that her inner turmoil drove her to seek death over life, more often than not. My mom’s repeated suicide attempts all through childhood awakened in me early on a sense that I needed to inspire her to choose life and by association I was inspiring myself to transcend the dark shroud that permeated our household.
Thus, through necessity my child self organically stepped into the role of a little inspiratix – a female child who strived to inspire her mother towards life rather than death.
I came to understand that the lifelong darkness my mother struggled with was truly the womb out of which her longing for light was born. Mom was a seeker, driven by her demons to discover their opposite in the guise of some form of light. This trajectory propelled her to explore myriad religious and spiritual disciplines with her children in tow. Sitting in the tranquil chamber of one more church or temple is one of my earliest memories of discovering that I carried a well of tranquility within myself when the chaos around me stopped. And within this pool of stillness I found a sense of my own light.
Although my mother never ultimately found her own calm interior or internal light, it is my feeling that the endless search for that mysterious force which survives and transcends suffering is one of the greatest gifts she passed on to me.
The content in this blog is a compilation of personal experiences, lessons, and insights gained through my life to date. My intention for this depth of sharing is to possibly illuminate, inspire, or touch another human to lean into and embrace all aspects of their life experience as the complicated, brilliant, sensitive, dark, and light beings we all are.