Recalculating Life After Rehab
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Recalculating
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11x14 fused glass face in black and white surrounded by at least 20 different
black and white types of tesserare indicating the decisions that we seemingly
think of as black and white but turn out to be a case where we find ourselves
recalculating to make the path work.
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Taking Flight
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Reverse painted Great Blue Heron taking flight from the driftwood perch
backed with hues of purple, blues and deep pinks and green stained glass. The
Great Blue Heron teaches us that some of our hardest challenges are our
deepest strengths. The greatest challenge to the Great Blue Heron is ability
to take flight and yet it is one of it's greatest strengths.
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Still Life
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Having many meanings, the words Still Life can refer to the life that is
still, life is still life, a moment when nothing seems to move. A fossil,
anemone fossil, tumbled blue, turquoise and pink glass embraced by sea shells
throw a brilliant reflection of inner light indicating that even when still,
life lives within. This piece is surrounded with beach sand from the nearby
ocean symbolizing life is all around us.
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Shedding
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Garter snake skin left behind on a mossy rock. In order to move forward,
renew and rejuvenate the old must be left behind. Shedding is a tribute to
leaving the past behind and finding the new skin to move ahead.
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Metamorphosis
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Simply put, change CAN be beautiful. This reversed glass painting strikingly
coupled with stained glass gives a feeling of a life not well defined but serene.
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Developing Confidence
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There is a point in life when you have lost confidence and developing a will to fake it (confidence) until you make it
can play a strong role in your recovery.
Even when confidence is weak, a skill in pretending that you have it can start to produce the effects of having confidence
until it becomes second nature.
Developing confidence was water-colored onto grade quality paper expressing a lack of confidence,
that the painting will not be good enough to spend money on using expensive materials.
The paper has been rubbed and scratched in, as a cloud overhead, looming almost as doubt, gently visible, ever present.
This is a representation of the past and present that lingers as a puff of dust waiting to fall on the fur or blow away.
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Old Bart
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The family truck knew its purpose long ago: keeping the farm working.
With old age, wear and tear, it has been put into the woods to decompose, however, magically reinvented by nature to be a home for little creatures.
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My Brain
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This is my brain on injury.
What does your brain look like?
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Protection
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A condition of need driven by desire to live
Your herd will chose whether to provide
A weakness to be preyed by lurkers in the woods
Your herd will chose whose turn to stand
A quest to regain strength, reduce stress that weakens spirit
Your herd that cares will chose to protect
May you be blessed with a strong herd willing to provide, stand and protect.
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Happy Friends
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Friendships are the key to moving forward, leading a new life, enjoying successes and working through failures.
Forming new friendships is a learning process when focus has been self survival.
And although you may feel like you are not necessarily a part of the pack, being with them is enough to change your day.
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Drifting
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I Wander: Bobbing out at sea, looking for where to go next
I Stray: Pulled by the tide off of my course, I must refocus.
I Gravitate: Longing to head toward shore, I position myself into the flow of that direction.
Flow: When I get into the right spot, progress comes.
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Exhibit 3
It will be my 4th year anniversary after the accident that changed my life. I have been through the recovery process that spiraled in and out of getting better and getting worse until my 3rd year of recovery when I was well enough to enter into outpatient rehab for brain injury which lasted 10 months and 10 days. From that vantage point of graduation I thought the universe laid before my feet. With strategies in hand, a game plan in my mind and friends and family for support I set off into my unknown. With a holiday season and a big event to follow, I had my life set for several months and when those plans were over, I needed to recalculate.
Go this way….recalculating…go this way…recalculating….go this way
The different avenues I was trying to take didn’t seem to be working even though most of the decisions seemed black and white. “Follow the path I made for myself while in therapies,” I would say. But the path seemed all over the place as I attempted to make seemingly easy decisions about what to do next. Without a plan, focus and attention seemed elusive. My son suggested to do only one thing at a time, but there was too much to think about. Life became overwhelming and what seemed like easy decisions became confusing pathways that led nowhere.
And so this short period between graduating rehab and returning to some therapies to find direction and help again with daily living skills has been a period of recalculating whether I could live life on my own without reporting to anyone and leaning on others. What I have learned is that with all of the seemingly straightforward, easy, black and white common sense decisions and doings that are involved with life it really is as easy as just saying to oneself “all you are doing is recalculating”.
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