Always a Butterfly Emerges

Original artwork by Jennifer Belanger

Recently I submitted one of my blog posts to my favorite online community for publication.  
This particular blog was inspired from an untimely, yet all to familiar death of a young man.  It quietly streamed from my souls desire to expand in wisdom and my hearts tender tears for those in such pain.   The process of writing allows a channel to flow through me in which emotions buried so deep within me are given oxygen to expand, roam, grow, understand, reconcile , and with intent,  release into my wise and evolving soul to become acceptance, peace, wisdom and love.   It is this process, along with my art (doodles), I am able to settle just a bit more into "I Am".  
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The rawness of this blog was especially difficult for me to write because of the sheer enormity of pain those around me were feeling.  A pain so deep  I felt the pull to share it with my online community.  
At 2 am I chose to send it via email for approval.   By 11 am I received a response.

Dear Jennifer,

Thank you for putting yourself out there and sharing something that could be of benefit to many. 

There are many interesting parts in your piece but I would like you to dig deeper into one theme. Now it's a bit hard to find a clear message in this. What is the point, the take away here, for readers? It will also be helpful to include more of your personal story for readers to connect to. What inspired you to write this? Think big (in terms of your universal message), but write small (make it personal).

WHAT?!  ####!  ####!  How personal is personal? !

I am, at my deepest core self, a sailor, so colorful language as a part of my "artistic communicative" side, is not only vivid, it is offered quite frequently  in very  generous amounts.   This would be no exception.  I knew I could continue to create with colorful language or create with my paint brush and easel.  Being a well rounded Gemini, I opted for both.  

I also opted to invade the art room where my son Alex was quite contently painting his Warhammer models.  The boy is a Saint.  

I had no idea what was to emerge from my brush, but the desire to flush my emotions onto canvas rather than lock them into a pretty box somewhere inside of me  to be puked out during what would inevitably be an inappropriate time and directed at most likely an innocent bystander was a wiser choice.  I grabbed some grey and allowed the stillness of my being emerge.  

I thought about my personal story.  I thought about the 7 year old girl who lost her mother to "God" because he "needed her in Heaven" 

I thought about the 8 year old girl who lost her identity when her father remarried 14 months after that death.  

I cried through the years that followed up to the 18 year old who was forced to become an adult on her own in a world that she believed hated her under a God she believed betrayed her with a dysfunctional and more often than not abusive father who deserted her at the words "she is your mother now".  

I raged at the past with each stroke of grey.  I cursed the  circumstances that led  to the birth of my older sister to a 15 year old mother and a 17  year old father,  my birth  to a 17 year old mother and a 19 year old father and  to the birth of my younger brother 7 years later which resulted in the death of a 26 year old woman after giving birth to her premature son.

I allowed the  fury to focus on the woman who claimed that boy as her own just a few short months after the passing of his mother.  
I allowed resentment and hatred to expand towards the man who was supposed to be a father to his dead wife's daughters.  The girls,  who at 8 and 10 were much to young to understand death let alone the ego driven insecurities of a woman who would be asked and agreed to "take her place."  

My rage at the childhoods altered, the identities stolen, the years of abuse and subsequent erasure of sisters, family, hope... beginning  with   "she is your mother now, you will never speak of your mother again.  Your brother is not to know."  

Grabbing some yellows and oranges,   I painted lines and waves, weaving the colors around one another, my son quietly constructing his models on the table beside me.  Each and every tear dropping onto my pallet blending the colors together.  Grey becoming almost unnoticeable with the addition of salty tears.  Yellows loosing all vibrancy and oranges almost brown.  Pain, words, memories, experiences, family betrayals taking shape onto a canvas. My entire young life being played over and over again through older eyes.  Painting, blending, crying, creating,  until I noticed a shape emerging.  Out of the hate, the rage, the betrayals, the guilt and shame for who I was, who I had to be, who I should have been, who I wanted to live and who I wanted to die,  a small butterfly was taking shape.  The yellows began to brighten and the oranges shaped themselves into wings.  I laughed at the irony of the butterfly from the cocoon and the total lack of originality emerging from  my  painting a butterfly during this time.  I mean, really, who wouldn't have painted a butterfly? It is over simplification at its finest.

Redundant.  Simple.  Boring.  Uninspired.  One of the herd...
   
Hello Ego self...  Hello all the voices in my head telling me how unimportant, uninspired and completely transparent I am.  Everyone's life is shit.  Get over it.  You think you are the only one to feel pain?  Suffering?  Despair?  Baby.  People die.  People make choices.  Live with it.  Deal with it.  

Hello deep self hate, it has been a while. 

"What have you to teach me"?

"Keep painting, keep feeling, keep allowing, keep purging, let the butterfly emerge".

For hours I added more and more lines of anger, swirls of sadness and drops of tears.  I added every ounce of hate I could muster towards every person, place, circumstance and event that popped up and then I turned on myself.   I listened as my ego belittled me.  I listened as the words penetrated so deeply that I though I would drown in their disdain for me.   I added purples and blues, blacks and more black to the hatred I had for allowing so many years to be wasted on situations, people  and circumstances  that were way beyond my control and quite frankly way beyond my  pay scale in this abundant Universe I have now just begun to understand and work for.  

I sat for what could have only been a minute to an hour looking at my butterfly in its newest stage until my son made his presence known in my bubble of pain.  

"I like the colors, Mom.  You've always been great at matching colors".

"I think I am lost, Alex." "I think I am letting anger get the better of me again." "I'm full of hate."

"Nah, none of that is true, you are interpreting.  It's what all great artists do when they need inspiration to go further."
 
"Yeah?"

"Yeah, just don't cut your ear off and you will be fine."

Like I said, I raised a saint.

In that moment I saw a totally different butterfly emerge.  I saw an ugly, manure filled past  unfold into a radiant and often very messy life filled with remarkable achievements  and crushing defeats melding into some sort of harmonious life.  
My life, a life that could have ended early had I not married young to a man who is an exceptional father and extraordinary role model as to how a man should love his children with or without his wife,   and had I not been so determined to make it "right" with the birth of my own two amazing children,  will continue to take on new colors and interpretations.
I will always drench my soul in new colors while retaining some (maybe still too much)  of that grey it began in.  There will always be moments where I am triggered to go back to the past to fuel more wisdom, more growth, more understanding, more self love  and as long as I don't cut off any ears, I will be fine.  

As for sharing my blog?  I am keeping it the way it is.  I'm not much for altering the past.  I'll stick with the messy perfection of the moment.      

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