Surfacing

Hi there, I'm here.

Hovering in this digital space for the first time in over six months I have more questions than content.

Should I write the blunt and honest truth about the time away from this space that I once filled with so much art and thought?

Do I share the details of my life in the way I once felt was natural, so intimate and open?

Does anyone even frequent this little old rusty page?

Lord knows I haven't been here much.

I had a rough descent and a hard-won rise starting in January.

None of it felt safe to talk about the way I'd become accustomed to talking, so I found myself silent at first from fear and the stigma of mental health issues, and then from life shifts and renovations and ultimately a big move.

My fingers feel creaky upon the keys.

I don't have new work to share as I've been gone from my mediums for nearly three months.

My head is full of so many details that I cannot seem to think of what used to feel like the 'right' thing to say.

I spent the last calendar year getting well from debilitating anxiety. The kind that shuts your life down, narrowing your list of safe experiences until there are very few and even those feel scary

or dangerous.

Every bump in the night created terror.

Every headache was a death knell.

The final straw were heart attack symptoms, so real and physical that I could no longer muscle through.

I committed to getting well and with the help of a gifted therapist, pure grit and a supportive family I retrieved the pearls from the deep darkness and surfaced.

In the midst of all that healing and excavating we as a family have found ourselves (as if by some miracle) in Washington state,

specifically in the basement apartment of beloved friends

while we sort out the buying and selling of houses

between here and California.

It feels tender in my heart to even type the word 'California'. It's knitted in my cells. 

I wanted to get away from it in the worst way, the overcrowding and sharpness

but it still calls from the south,

still reminds me of my vibrant middle-youth

and assures me I can visit anytime I want.

I will not be going home to it again after 13 years of doing so. Beside family and motherhood I've never been so dedicated as I was to a place, to an idea.

California. There's a reason so many songs are written 

about its cities and people: it's amazing.

And difficult.

I was nervous about this move and felt unsure of whether I was strong enough to endure the chaos of change so freshly 

on my feet from adrenal overwhelm.

We've gone through real estate hijinks and massive unanswered question marks

and though I've tried to take Rilke's advice and love those unknowns I have mostly just 

barely liked them

or kicked them under the table.

We are so lucky to know the tribe we already have here and daily living is a testament to receiving and breathing 'thank you' in a million moments. I am learning how hard it is for me to receive without

having much to give in return beyond friendship and cooking.

It's so humbling to be handed daily gifts.

It's beautiful and hard and cracks my heart open, so that's what I concentrate on:

what pours out when the fissure breaks.

There are opportunities to work here and there, but mostly with O out of preschool I am full-time mothering. He's miraculous.

I love belonging to him as he grows into a full-fledged boy.

Our move also means that he gets SO much more Daddy. Both in time and in the form of a rested man for whom weekends are now a pleasure instead of a forced period of rest.

This move was very much a soul choice, a chance to slow down and make room and draw nearer to each other. It's very beautiful to be living those choices.

I love watching our life here unfold, challenging as it can be to ride the real estate roller coaster

of shifting dates and funding fall-outs.

Seattle is so full of great food and introverted people and blessed blessed rain

and without a school to get O to or work to attend to we can tromp about

like semi-lost vagabonds and explore the weird and wonderful

emerald landscape and EAT all of the things.

Then some days in the late afternoon he draws and I paint a long-awaited project and we get a taste of our past rhythms

in this fresh new place.

I look around in the morning and everything is odd and beautiful,

the nature of traveling a distance underwater and then surfacing.

I take a deep breath

and

begin again

.

xoxo,

Sunny