The inner child

Posted on Instagram on February 16, 2019

It is quite impressive, how trauma can sneak up on you, triggered by the most - apparently - silly things.
And drag you back to that place - that uncomfortable painful dark cold place - that you didn't particularly care to visit again.
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It's where I am right now.
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Feeling small, unsafe, powerless.
Unseen. Not heard. Not understood.
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The difference from the past is that I am aware this is my trauma talking, and that I can stay with these emotions. That I don't have to go down the old path of self harming, that I have a choice.
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The choice is to find shelter in creating.
Because when I am there, in the presence of my work, everything fades. I can take a little distance from what would otherwise feel overwhelming.
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When I went to work on this little Child, I had in mind the expression of my pain: she would have sat inside a teardrop, holding a stone that reminded me of tears.
I am glad of how things shifted during the process...
She ended up sitting inside a pod.
Safe. Held.
Holding a Spessartine Garnet - something round and warm and cuddly to hold to her soft tummy for comfort.
The bail allows the pod to swing back and forth - soothing rhythm, play.
The Quartz that hangs from the pod is a luminous reminder, with its internal fracture and rainbow, that I am not less because of these wounds I carry.
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I am not ready to say I will get over this. I am still curled up in a blanket of deep sadness and tiredness. I am still tending to the wound.
I am weeping rather than rising. It will come.
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But this little one brought me a message to hold close while I go through this...that there is comfort to be found in this discomfort. That I can experience this pain without making it worse as I used to. That I know ways to give myself comfort - exactly how I did for her, by giving her some warmth and color, some play and some hope.
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Hand fabricated in sterling silver, hand forged pod, one of a kind