Last July I served as doula for my mother in her last hours. The word 'doula', which comes from a Greek root, refers to "a knowledgeable support person", normally associated with childbirth. In the case of my mother's dying, I felt myself to be a midwife to her spirit-birth. What I didn't realize until later was how deeply I would also be transformed through the experience.
My art has always served as my eyes when I find myself in a place of not knowing. I trust intuition to pick the colors and shape the forms that tell me of my interior landscape. When my mother died, the physical world became scrambled. Habits, friends, and activities that had long served "well enough" were no longer tolerable. Since I knew these to be mirrors of what lived inside me, I wondered what parts within me were yearning to be healed.
In time, I noticed an attraction to the innocent knowing in children’s faces. They called to me from the New York Times magazine, from a Global Fund for Children book called Faith (celebrating children of different religious traditions), and from the compelling photography of Steve McCurry (1). Each day in my studio, I would clip a fresh piece of paper onto my easel and then allow a face to come forward. I would begin my drawing by looking at the paper only occasionally, allowing distortions to express themselves. Standing back, I would find eyes uneven, hands too big, heads outsized.
What had these beings come to teach me? The expressive arts therapist, Shaun McNiff says that our art pieces, once finished, become angels or messengers (2). I felt this to be true, looking at these children. I didn't yet understand what they were trying to tell me, but I trusted that what they offered me was a great gift.
In my surrender to the intuitive process, I opened to the synchronicities and signs multiplying around me. Discovering a quote from Abraham Kuk, I finally recognized the hand that my angels had extended. This is what he/they said:
"Every person needs to know that he is called to serve based on the model of perception and feeling unique to him, based on the core root of his soul. In that root, which contains infinite worlds, he will find the treasure of his life." (3)
Each of these children invited me to feel complete in my own sensing, confident in my own path to grieving. I look at these portraits now and recognize a child who connects to inner knowing through prayer, and another who finds peace in surrender, just as another expresses her wholeness through defiance. Some find balance through non-attachment, while others find their grounding in the working of the earth.
There are as many perfect journeys as there are people. The gold that lies hidden at the center of any crisis is how confusion gives way to a clarity that can only be claimed through trusting one's own process of healing.
I am grateful for these angels who tell me that wherever I am, I am safe. With my mother present in a way that clings to the edges of my searching, I embrace the unknowing that guides me forward. All is well.
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NOTES
(1) Steve McCurry. Portraits. London: Phaidon Press Ltd, 1999.
(2) Pat B. Allen. Art Is a Spiritual Path. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2005.
(3) Marc Gafni. Soul Prints, Your Path to Fulfillment. New York: Fireside, 2001.
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A final note: altogether, I have created nine portraits, and with Shaun McNiff's words in mind, I believe that these angel children are destined for a ministry of their own. I am working with a local hospice to exhibit them as part of a children's bereavement program, and I also plan to display them at a pediatric trauma center, which is one of the largest on the East coast. I have set the intention for them to go where they are meant to serve. Please go to www.spiritworksonline.com/Site/Children_of_the_world.html to find out more.
