Ever since I found the Support Group On Facebook I feel less inspired to write here. I much prefer the interaction, the communication. Still, this can be my little island that I come to visit once in a while. It seems that I am growing, out-growing, growing out-ward.

I am willing to be an artist. I would not have chosen it. But, it happened upon me. I grew into it. I accept it. I am an artist. And a healer. And i put them both together and I know the art of healing and I know the healing of art. And I admit it, I have become an artist and I have matured into a healer. I don't have much to say about it. Everyone has there own god-blessed or god-damned destiny. There is only futility in denying what I truly am. Out of fear? It isn't humility, though I can feign humility. It is simply fear. That same familiar fear. I was always different. Sometimes admired for that difference, mostly ignored for that difference. The things I saw were different. The things that I felt were different. The things I thought were different. The spiritual was always intermingled with the 'mundane'. In places where the mundane was the norm, I felt alone and misplaced. I preferred to be alone than to feel alone. I chose to be alone when the choice was to be like everyone else or not to be. I chose to be just for myself even if it meant having few friends. When I was 13 and 14 it meant having no friends. I was angry, very angry at that. My fate changed. My fate was always changing but it took me a long time to heal from the pain of having no friends for two years at school. I learnt too much and it hurt too deeply. But I was stubborn and I knew that I would not forfeit myself to whatever it took to be liked. It was mundane, clothing, make-up, boys....I refused to let go, to submit, to hand over my spiritual self to that world that was not only mundane but that was cruel. I wanted no part of the cruelty that I saw around me. I rejected it. I hated it. Inside I scoffed at it. And so I was destined to be a part of it. I accepted my fate, though it hurt me, deeply.

I was always living on different planes of reality. I was always creating new realities in my mind. Where I lived was clear to me but it sometimes baffled those around me. I lived in a deeply spiritual world, a world inhabited by animals and trees and stars, a world where stars spoke to me and where God was One with me. There was no separation between me and God. We were one and there was no doubt about this. God was compassionate and caring and cherished life deeply. God felt each squirrel that was run over and knew which soul needed a hand. I lived in my private world. Few entered that magical world with me. I learnt to not speak of it. It was weird to be connected that way to something that much larger then myself and to feel that it was me. I accepted that this space was mine to inhabit privately though I longed to share it with a friend, even one.

My relationship with that world became rockier as I grew older. I was angry more. I was desperate for answers. i was impatient and impulsive and I developed a huge appetite for travel and for change and for movement. I was thirsty for life and I felt gypped. And there was only so much time to make up for my losses. I went to India, to Africa, to South America. I traveled on  my own, I traveled with a partner, I traveled and traveled and when I was not traveling I felt that same uncomfortable and sad feeling that life was passing me by. What I wanted was to travel but I could not disconnect myself from the world of 'degrees' that I had grown up in. Yale, Harvard, Columbia...B.A., M.A., PhD....I studied psychology. It was lame and it lacked soul and spirituality. It was mundane and stupid and had no insight into healing. That was the way that it was taught in Israel. Theories and text-books and useless memorization of irrelevant facts. I felt my life as though it were a sand-castle, each tide stripping another layer and another layer away...each day another day that I payed for with my dreams. I wanted to act. I studied acting. I wanted to travel. I traveled. I wanted to love. I loved endlessly and relentlessly. I never gave up on loving even after being bruised over and over again. For a time, I hated men. The men in India left my heart filled with brutality towards them. I had been harassed endlessly. I hated them for taking away from me my dream of traveling and exploring. I learnt that I had explored enough. I learnt the painful truth about India. And I finally accepted that I was tired. India had defeated me. I wanted peace and quiet and nature and creativity and healing.
I took on Pottery. I fell in love with the Galil, the North of Israel. I felt blessed by the animals and by nature and blessed by my soul-mates that I met there. And still I was restless, still I felt that there was something missing.
Today, nothing is missing.
I know the girl.
I know the teenager and the young woman.
I know more then I ever wished or imagined I would know.
I can heal and I meet the girl and she knows that I need her to hold my soul. And she does, with patience and love and compassion. She knows that I never lost anything, that I lived with a burning passion that left me exhausted. She does not judge me. She understands. She knows exactly what I was running away from and exactly what I was slamming into. And she just stays with me. If I need to stand, she stands with me. If i can sit, she sits with me. She watches me forget the pain and when I look at her and smile, she smiles back with love and compassion in her eyes. She does not judge me or harbor jealousy or anger towards me. And when I am angry or jealous she reminds me that she loves me just the way I am and that i am exactly where i should be. Because she is by my side, I know that I have truly not lost anything. I still look at the world with compassionate eyes. I still feel pain when I see a squirrel crushed on the road. I still feel when a soul needs a hand and I still give it.

So, why then can I not call myself an artist or a healer? And why are we not permitted to call God by his name?

It really makes no difference at all. It isn't feigned humility. It just is the spiritual that needs no name and never asks to be named because it is constantly changing. And I watch it and become a part of it again. Thank God. My God would never have put me through PN. So, I still have a God to thank and a soul that is sane and as familiar as this childhood room where God and I spoke to each other with love many many nights.