Holding Simultaneous Heartbreak of Loss & Hope of New Beginnings
Broken Heart on a String . Photo by kelly-sikkema, Unsplash
Trusting the Mystery of Divine Orchestration
Whether or not you are a mother, imagine unexpectedly running into your child (now a young adult) who was taken from your life 17 years earlier. Not sure if it is real, you see them within seconds of arriving at a venue you are exploring to host a gathering with your children that were born after that tragic loss. Understandably losing your child broke your heart and left a hole still to this day. Seeing them again was as viscerally real as if it was yesterday. It was also like a jolt of blackness with no memory at all.
Simultaneously it brought back a flood of memories and tears that had been neatly tucked away. As the tears flowed, you felt deeply your strength, courage and resilience to have come full circle to this day, to this new beginning, to all the questions, to seeing them again after all this time. Thank God, you asked a friend to join you at the last minute to bear witness to the joy and shock of this moment. What are the odds of your child being there in that space, on that day, at that time, with your particular reason for being there?
It just happened to me.
Although I am not a biological mother, I am a mother of “humanity,” of “creative visions”. Most recently, I have been “pregnant” for several years with my current interactive Photography Exhibition project Fire to Gold: An Alchemy of Women’s Stories, and am readying to birth Her.
Caring About Others and Neglecting Your Own Needs
At an earlier stage in my journey, I was prolifically creating and exhibiting my photography that explored different aspects of being human and being human together, our diversity and our common humanity. At the time, externally, I was getting commissioned projects, press exposure and the personal fulfillment of expressing myself creatively in service to a greater good. Internally, although I value self-sacrifice, I did not realize until much later that because of some faulty inner foundation due to childhood trauma, not having an adequate support system, being a highly sensitive person, and varying systemic injustices I got caught in, it also ended up being at the cost of myself.
On this particular recent day I’m referring to, I was on my way to check out another photo exhibition honoring women’s stories at the John B. Davis Education and Service Center. I was interested in the exhibit itself and installation ideas for Fire to Gold exhibitions with accompanying conversation circles.
John B. Davis Education and Service Center Header from Website
John B. Davis Center Building Photo - Google Maps
Selfie in front of Sweet Potato Comfort Pie Exhibit at John B. Davis Education and Service Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Mystery Orchestrating Recall of Dissociated Memories
On our way to the Davis Center, I started to remember that my photo exhibition “Green Central School: History Comes Alive” had traveled there after being on display in Minneapolis Mayor Rybak’s office around 2008-9. What I didn’t know is that it had been on display for the past 17 years and was still there. I was certain the Universe wanted me to remember some things about myself and my life in preparation for my new beginnings.
As we drove up, the building was not familiar to me at all, even though I had vague memories of being at the opening reception many years earlier. You see, the first night of the exhibit at the mayor’s office, I fell and broke my right arm, not long after my left arm. This all led to disrupting my work as a photographer and a long, complicated and painful journey through foreclosure and bankruptcy as a first time (only time) homebuyer due to the 2008 economic crisis. This was also due to having been given two shady mortgages without proof of income as a sole proprietor. This led me to an “underwater” home. This led to my life becoming pretty much a blur the next nine years.
In short, as a self-employed single woman with tenacity, determination and grit, but limited income, no home, credit, partner or adequate support structure, I had to rebuild my life brick by brick by myself. And I since have in many ways. But at the time, I did not have bandwith to remember what I had left behind, realize what I had to block from my conscious awareness, or the toll it would take on my entire being. Although once I got my arms back, and photography returned to my life, I had to focus it and everything in me on generating income. My life as an exhibiting artist, community healer was necessarily on hold. I was living in survival mode for a long time. My inner foundation was not yet tended. I was navigating chronic health challenges. I didn’t understand until recently the full impact it had on my nervous system and body overall. Honestly, it was one foot in front of the other for the first nine years.
Imagine my surprise walking into the Davis Center and discovering that my exhibit was still on display.
Yellow Taper Candle burning on Black Background . Photo by thomas-galler-unsplash
Rocky Steps on Mossy Hill . Photo by Dawn Vogel
Shadow and Light on Sidewalk . Photo by Dawn Vogel
Green Central School: History Comes Alive: Signature Image, three boys on a bus, one holding a rock . Photo by Dawn Vogel
Dawn Vogel and Friend Mary Selfie in Front of Newly Discovered Green Central School HIstory Comes Alive Exhibit at John B. Davis Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Mount Rushmore . Photographs by Dawn Vogel
The Badlands . Photographs by Dawn Vogel
Jewel Cave . Photographs by Dawn Vogel
Resourcing Myself and Developing Spiritual Capacities
Selfie photo resourcing self in forest at Art of Living Retreat Center during Timeless Wisdom Training retreat.
The real tears didn’t hit until I got home that day from the Davis Center. Something about reuniting with my creative humanitarian self from an earlier part of my journey, the number of years that had passed, and remembering all that I’d lived through since the night of that exhibit was a shock. I was simultaneously inspired by what I had created so many years ago and the present-day mirror back to my own talents that I am reclaiming now and readying to launch publicly again. I was left with a curious un-nameable feeling that while my life was in hibernation, I’d left some kind of mark on potentially 100’s of 1000’s of teachers, students, parents, administrators and community members that had walked by these photos for years, with varying degrees of attention or seeing themselves and/or the hopes for their children reflected in the exhibit.
Understandably, this Divinely orchestrated encounter led me to reflect on my life since I last saw these photos in 2008. I felt deeply both the enormity of grief, and an honoring of my courage and strength through a life chapter that I’ve called a forced hibernation without rest. I was also comforted by the hopeful confirmations for my emerging next steps.
Finding the Gift(s) in Life’s Obstacles
Looking back, this often-unbearable chapter of my life did offer me gifts. I started to unravel my faulty beginnings. I found bandwith to resource myself in relationship to the natural and spiritual world. I am proud of the client projects I did secure; the income I generated on my own; the contributions I made to the evolution of technology and holistic advancements in healthcare; adding video strategically to my skill set and; my tenacious spirit. I’m grateful for the Noor family who became my family as I stored and lived my life in their basement and learned to care for their twin Rett Girls; the spiritual capacities and mysterious support I felt at times from the unseen realms and; at some level this unyielding life experience that expanded my extrasensory gifts and spiritual capacities such as determination, faith, perserverance, patience, detachment, surrender and more. I’m still cultivating safety and trust in others, myself, God and life. My body has kept the score. Whether these life obstacles were God given, man inflicted, or some combination, I did my best to harvest newfound qualities and strengths which I’m drawing upon now as I reinvent myself again.
“Obstacles are not in the way, they are the way.”
A Next Chapter of Rebuilding and Navigating Further Obstacles
The next 9 years bringing me to present day have been a different kind of blur hyper focused on rebuilding my life, finances, and health, tending my trauma, mending my heart, and cultivating the beginnings of a support network. I have been learning to calm my nervous system; healing in skillfully facilitated circles of humans, facilitating circles for humans and working a full-time job. In parallel, I have been incrementally creating Fire to Gold with different cycles of letting go to tend life’s twists and turns and tenaciously continuing on. (See my Leap of Faith blog for a more detailed story.)
This time period has included maneuvering a pandemic; getting a horrible case of Covid; accompanying my mother through an excruciating two year end of life journey; riding out recurrent PTSD from violence and ill health I encountered as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Africa that was reactivated during the George Floyd protests and knocked me flat for several months after being chased down by four men with a gun in my neighborhood; and recovering from a freekish car accident that knocked me flat for another six months and still affects me to this day.
Fire Shaped Like Phoenix . Photo by mariola-grobelskamariola-grobelska, Unsplash
And, like a phoenix I rise and rise again, stronger, a little more detached, more determined, humbled, wearied yet with growing compassion about what it is to be human, what it has been to be me. This includes a passion to “return” my voice in service through my creative and humanitarian inspirations in this increasingly tumultuous world. It seems the threads of my trauma journey have uniquely shaped me to see and begin to name the individual, collective and ancestral web of layers that harm us and can strengthen us. It has also inspired me to be there to accompany others in their transformational journey through pain to power to purpose.
In the end, my prayer is that ultimately we all are given the opportunity to transform into new heights of inner peace and purpose in our lives; we are each able to contribute our unique part to creating a healthier ecosystem; and we are all reconnected to the greater life giving web of life. I’ve witnessed in each woman I’ve interviewed for Fire to Gold and heard said in multiple forms that: “Our pain becomes our medicine to offer others.” I believe it’s true. This feels good and gives meaning to what has been insufferable.
One woman, by one story, by one circle and then another and another combined together to impact the greater whole. I remain steadfastly devoted to Fire to Gold’s and my arrival in the world. I have been making my way through life’s twists and turns and stoking our combined flames as best I can until we are both ready to blaze forth.
“So many of us who think and work creatively have highly sensitive nervous systems. We literally see more than many people around us. We hear more, notice more. It’s one of our super-powers. ”
Adverse Impacts of Collective Trauma
Although I see further gifts in these past 17 years and I did not lose a biological child, I did lose a child, in fact, children. I lost the children I would have bore had my life and my creative expression as an exhibiting artist not have come to a crashing halt for an extended period of time; had the mortgage practices been honest; the health care system more conscious of the interconnected mind / body / spirit / energy causes of health or disease; the parents who were not traumatized by their parents who unintentionally traumatized me; the systems of their time; the church; the wars; the racism; the colonialism; the sexual revolution of the 60’s and 70’s when I grew up and got caught in the crossfires; the men who felt it their right to sexually violate a little girl and a young woman – me; the selfishness, corruption and greed that have stressed our humanity, earth, our bodies, my body, that led to toxins in our air, our soil, our food, our guts, nerves, brains and bones; that have let loose pandemics and a resurgence of disease and long haul symptoms; have left our elderly, our young and all ages in between unnecessarily suffering, including me and probably you; that have led to election of a president and just another oligarchical regime that is on a dark path of destruction and chaos for the entire population and the earth and all its living beings.
But all of that has happened and is happening. In fact, as you know, it’s worsening quickly and getting uglier and more real by the day. I also believe that the shadow of humanity is showing itself as a catalyst for us to see how ugly it has been for a really long time. It is time to grow our capacity to recognize the darkness more clearly, be with it, take responsibility for it, make amends, and shine our light even brighter as we collectively arise into our interconnectedness and wholeness . From here we revamp our faulty foundation, repair the harms that have been done and co-create something better.
“You are not alone. We are not alone. There are more of us than there are of them. Build your communities. Find your people. Organize. Organize, Organize. And fight back. In little ways. In big ways. This is the French Resistance. This is up to us. ”
Although I wrote this blog post several months ago, it’s taken me months to post it as the impact of some of these collective threads are still tender for me. Honestly, all of the above broke my heart and my body which requires my ongoing attention. And, part of me is afraid to “love again” in the ways that I love as an artist. I’m also seeking my own forgiveness and courage for the part of me that is afraid to open my heart again publicly as I move from the studio back to the world. Yet, as I’ve been held in healing spaces these past months and had parts of my story witnessed with love and presence, even though a part of me still feels vulnerable, in service to something greater than myself, I’m choosing to take the risk to click publish and keep moving forward. I am excited to step further into my resurrection as a modern-day visionary artist and social entrepreneur. As we speak, I’m steadying my foundation and readying to unleash my voice through Fire to Gold. I’m also joining with others who are unleashing their voice, finding my people, my groups, my tribe, offering spaces for women to find their voice and their tribe.
Women Leading the Way Through Joining Together, Sharing Stories and Growing Relational Skills
I believe that by bringing forth the stories of women from a diverse range of backgrounds who have made it through some excruciatingly painful experiences and transformed that into personal power and goodness in their own lives and the lives of others, we will shine a light of hope as we join together in ancient and emergent practices of art and circle. Imagine a place where we gather and listen to each others stories; learn relational skills in brave renewing spaces —we claim our right to be, become and belong; be seen, felt and heard; be witnessed in our pain; held to discover joy and rise into our purpose.
We gather in this place to be inspired by others who have arisen or who are arising and be in community as we all arise. This place is a place to remember and become “our humanity”. This includes places and practices where we get real, we breathe in and take intentional out breaths. We share, we listen, we learn, we rest, we play, we pray and are held by ourselves and each other as we renew and ready ourselves to go out to be and do what is ours to be and do. We remember how to live in reciprocity with life and how to be together.
This is one way we can and will make it through this growing collective darkness and transform it into something that better meets the needs of all. And instead of the chaos we find ourselves in leading to our collective demise, it will lead to a breakthrough of epic proportions as we humans rise up together and declare we are done with endless repetitive cycles and ready to co-create the Divine human civilization we are destined for, with we women leading the way. Together we will navigate the mystery of Divine orchestration guiding us all forward as we hold simultaneous heartbreak of collective loss and hope of new beginnings.
