Over the earlier years of dealing with the ouchies life passed my way I lacked the understanding, the knowledge, the education and self-education, the history, the whatever you want to call it, to actually work through a truly meaningful healing process. I spent years thinking I was doing right by myself if I could just "get over" something that hurt. I spent years mostly "getting over" being hurt by burying my pain and never truly dealing with my issues or my pain. Certainly, I was never truly healing.
My understanding of healing began to change when I started traveling along behind my youngest child on what eventually became her Crow Road. Her struggles with mental illness, her attempts to self-medicate that eventually dragged her into addiction, and the darkness and pain that filled the people who filled the worlds she lived in forced me to start searching for the truth about what healing really means so that I could try to help her. Her death in January 2017 forced me to continue that search so I could try to help myself.
I was having this conversation in my head today, and I went and looked at myself in the mirror because, you know, sometimes you just have to say this stuff out loud, and sometimes you have to look yourself in the eyes while you say it. And no, that's not crazy.
"Oh, child," I said. "What were you thinking?" Child me didn't answer; I think she's busy elsewhere these days.
"All right then. Girl, what were you doing all those years?" Girl didn't answer me either. I stood in front of the mirror, staring back at myself in total silence.
"Woman!" I tapped on the mirror. "Are you in there? Have you got your head in this game now?" Opening the door to my emotions these days is always a gamble; I am definitely a work in progress. If Woman was going to answer me, I wasn't sure what to expect. Angry me? Wise me? Grieving me? Slightly crazy me? I was pleasantly surprised when the face that looked back at me from the mirror just smiled that smirky smile we sometimes wear. Yes, she said. Her head is in this game now. Or at least in this moment.
These days I am surrounded by a chorus of change. My husband and I bought a new home. We closed on it just a little over a month ago, and still have a month before we can move in. We are in the process of boxing up, clearing up, and cleaning up the rental we have lived in for six years while we are simultaneously in the process of clearing out, tearing down, rebuilding, and repurposing our new home - the house and grounds that are becoming Bear Path Cottage.
The former is much easier than the latter in some ways, but on the days when my mind and spirit are open and alert I am learning a great deal about myself and the healing process through the process of transitioning a house into a home.
The claiming of the Cottage started with an awareness of the surface changes that needed to be made. New paint, new kitchen, new flooring. In my personal history, when things felt off or if I was stressed or thought I needed a change, it was always the surface things I would tend to. New clothes, new makeup, new hair, new shoes. This is what many of us are taught from childhood.Those changes might have boosted my confidence or made me feel better for a few days, but they never addressed the deeper issues. They simply allowed me to distract myself by putting a Snoopy band aid over my wounds, and then ignore the injury until I could pretend it didn't need to be addressed.
Renovations of the Cottage continued beyond the cosmetic, and we needed to address some structural issues. The roof had to be replaced, and we also had to deal with some related problems in the attic. During the pre-buy home inspection we noticed that there was some poorly concealed water damage in the ceiling of one room in what we jokingly call the North Wing of the house. That water damage tied in with the bad roof report, and while we suspected there might be some additional hidden damage, there was no way to know until we took ownership.
What we weren't expecting was to find the damage in a roundabout way. On the old "long story short" curve of that roundabout, I'll just tell you that the measure tech for our flooring installer informed us that they wouldn't remove the flooring in the North Wing because of the age of the house and concerns about asbestos. (Note: the North Wing was added on to the house sometime after 2000, so, come on, no asbestos in the obviously vinyl plank flooring, but sometimes things happen for a reason, right?) Our friend with all the real estate connections introduced us to a remediation guy (Howard) who came out to test the flooring, just to be safe. When Howard pulled up some of the flooring in the back room of the North Wing, we discovered that we had purchased a house with an existing indoor pool. Just kidding. What we really discovered was that there was no vapor barrier under the flooring (which everyone on our realty team had suspected! AHA!), the flooring was laid directly on the concrete, and not only was the concrete flooring wet, there was some tiny pitting in the concrete that made little puddles that would seem Olympic pool sized to a gnat. We also found that the sheet rock walls had been improperly installed so that water had wicked up into them, and (drum roll, please) all of this was caused by an improperly installed French drainage system. As Rhodes later described it, Howard pulling up that piece of flooring was our "This Old House" Norm moment: just when they've been working and everything is going well, Norm comes in and looks at it and says "Oh, that's not good." In other words, here we have damage that is more serious than we realized or suspected. We can either cover it up again and ignore it, or just roll on through fixing it. If you know us at all, you know that we fixed it, 'cuz that's just how we do.
What the heck does this have to do with healing, you ask. Everything, my friends. It has everything to do with healing.
The roof is the apparent damage, the visual wound. My 28 year old daughter died of a fentanyl-laced heroin overdose. I miss her every day. The sound of her laughter will never brighten the rooms of my new home. She will never help me with the gardens, or bake holiday cookies here, or share a meal with her siblings on our deck. Her death and the grief that it brought is the apparent damage, the visual wound. I went to grief counseling to try to find some means of dealing with that wound, and for a while I thought I had done so. I painted. I wrote. I spoke to other people, I ran a support group, I did my best to help others. But there was some deeper damage there, and once I had taken a look at the damage to the roof I could no longer ignore the poorly concealed water damage. I just couldn't do that.
This is not a place I am ready to talk about just how badly damaged my personal foundation might be, or the ways in which the damage shows. I will say that I am working with a good therapist because I'm actually proud of myself for taking that step. Proud of myself for realizing that I needed help, and making sure I got it. I might be able to see the mold inside the walls, but I hired a specialist to help with the remediation.
I'm still writing. Still painting. Still meditating, still spreading love, still finding solace in nature. Some days, I feel like I'm standing just this side of crazy because grief and anger can drive a person there. But I'm doing the work to make things better. I'm slowly stripping myself right down to the foundation so I can get a clear picture of what needs to be fixed, and understand exactly what I need to work on healing.
The best change we have made to the Cottage was really a simple one, thanks to our window guys. Our bedroom didn't have any windows except for one in the door which will lead to the deck. Rhodes and I planned to put windows in, but Jim the window guy suggested a big change instead of two small ones, and that 45" portal to the natural world turned the bedroom into a sanctuary.
I know it can be a scary thing, but I encourage you to look at your on-the-surface issues. If you are able to do so, find someone who can help you on the journey of looking deeper to find out what it is you really need to work on so that you can take your own healing down to your foundation.
Peace out, peeps, and blessed be.
Sheri
p.s. Not the greatest pics, but here are before and after pictures of the bedroom. I know I haven't shown you much of the Cottage yet! Let the light in, my friends.
