Issue #4 - Islands in the Stream: Reflections on Loss and Recovery

My grandson. My touch stone.

You will find my article this month much less a "how to" and more of a "why to." While writing this essay my father of 80 became ill and and passed away by the beginning of the summer. The subject of process seems all the more apropos during this life marking event and a fitting testament to my Dad who used music and words to express himself throughout his lifetime.

Islands in the Stream:

Reflections on Loss and Recovery

One of the high points of my week is getting to the Sunday crossword in the New York Times Magazine. I also always take a look at the end page, which is called, simply, "Lives."

These personal vignettes allow me to meet such interesting people and hear stories I might otherwise miss.

One such essay was "The Shore Dimly Seen" by author and scholar, Tom Chaffin. It really struck a chord.

He describes his recovery following the removal of a benign tumor which left him with temporary expressive aphasia. While his thinking remained clear he could not find the words to make his cogent thoughts known.

During a speech therapy session one day he made a discovery that gave him solace during this frustating period. He found he was able to recall phrases from poems and lyrics long ago committed to memory.

"I can't help thinking of those words and images of my interior life as essential landmarks in finding my way back to the outside world."
— Chaffin

What excited me the most about this description was the concrete example it presented of the potential for healing we carry inside ourselves. (You may know where I'm going with this!)


An Unexpected Resource

From the moment we are born we are gathering material through our senses, visual, auditory, olfactory, vocabulary, if you will. I marvel at the frequency with which a dream can take something from a current movie, interweave it with real events or mythic chatacters right out of fairy tales common all across the world. (Such figures are known in Jungian psychology as archetypes.)

When we meet obstacles in our lives, whether due to illness, mishap or just day to day frustrations, we lose our way. This inner library can provide the "touch stones," the anchors through which we can reach calmer waters.

In my workshops I teach a way of painting that is focused on process and not the end result. In this way we may relax with whatever level is brought to paper. Proficiency in draftsmanship is not the point, being playful is. But perhaps the true gift is to be found is in the ability one gains in facilitating a visual conversation with oneself, now that access to the library is open.

I paint in my journal daily but that is mostly a way of keeping my "imagination" muscles in shape, like doing exercises at the gym. The pages I do then provide anything from meditation to pure play.

However, it is the times when I find myself at a loss to find a way through a situation, whether at work or personally that are most akin to Caffin's aphasic frustrations.

When logic does not serve me and words, written or conversational, fail that is when I turn to the image journal. I allow the brush to wander and in the wandering stumble on forgotten "lyrics" and visual poetry. They may not make sense in the moment but give me something to hold on to, a place to be and the wonder is, I am strangely comforted and renewed.

The answers I am seeking may not surface until the next day nor are they always spelled out in black and white. It may be that the mind is clearer or my energy is back. Usually it is because I am no longer pressing so hard or there has been a return of faith that they actually do exist(!) which now allows them to present themselves to me.

Sometimes, I only know that something somewhere has shifted and I am on solid ground again.

"Those lines that came back to me...provided a geography of hope, like some distant but clearly visible shoreline." — Chaffin

I invite you to share your own reflections, experience and feedback on any of the subject matter discussed in my articles.