I’m not sure how to do this. It feels out of place for me to put material about my physical health journey in the same venue as where I deal with art. But again, the concept of this website is to bring all those parts together into one place. As a mother of four, entering middle age, the care of the body and mind, for myself and my family, has become the drum-beat of every day. It’s unavoidable. It makes up a large part of the work I am presently called to do and the person I am called to be. This is my life.

I don’t envision posting too many gory medical details here (although, never say never), but in my conviction that art is a spiritual endeavor that is bound to the physical, I think there is a way to incorporate discussions about health and physical healing in a way that is meaningful. This is especially true from the recovery perspective. As the Big Book says: “any picture of the alcoholic that leaves out the physical is incomplete.”

As anyone who has been through any sort of health crisis knows, when the mortality of the body becomes unavoidable, the health of the body becomes inexorably bound to your spiritual aspirations. At times you may be desperate and trying to save your life, or you are resigned and surrendering your life, but either way, you find out for sure that life is a temporary gift. It was always this way, it’s just that some of us had to become weakened by age, disease or injury in order to truly realize this on a ‘gut’ level, so to speak.

It’s a little embarrassing. But I don’t know why it should be more embarrassing than making artistic representations of my innermost feelings and thoughts—even visual impressions of my own body—and publishing those for all to see. That’s the kind of intimate self-exposition I’ve been engaged in my entire life, both on the internet in the world as an exhibiting artist. Only this type of practical discussion will not likely have the air of artistic mystique to mask it. It will have to be more real. More naked. And that is a bit scary.

I hope whoever reads this may find it helpful.