Today I walked back through my life again, retracing my steps for the thousandth time since the day I knew I had breast cancer. It has become some sort of a right of passage for me, as I decisively move on to wellness. It is not because I am running out of time, but because now I could appreciate and use time in a new way, and I want to empower myself for personal growth, fulfillment and balance ...whether long or short the future may be.
Ten years ago today, I know exactly what I was doing. I was painting. I had a one-woman-show scheduled for the end of that year, and I was frantically working towards coming up with thirty artworks to display. I was trying to enjoy the process of making paintings that bore my soul while feeling the pressure of the critics’ write ups that would come the day after the show opened.
It seems like a lifetime away now, my days as a painter. In the succeeding years of teaching, ministering, raising my kids, growing our school, it seemed like the most logical thing to do was to give up on painting. After all, being an artist required too much of me. In creating art, I had to be true to myself and yet be brave enough to receive what my audience had to say. It was like setting myself up on a platter for all the world to scrutinize and cut up. And so, because I was not sure of myself, the joy of filling up a canvas with colors, of watching the pigments come together to create magic, slowly faded into a memory.
Thankfully, one of the great blessings of cancer in my life is that all these months of introspection has taught me to love myself in a way that I never did. Instead of letting this illness destroy me, it has taught me that I do have redeemable qualities, skills and wisdom to share.
Ten years ago today, I know exactly what I was doing. I was painting. I had a one-woman-show scheduled for the end of that year, and I was frantically working towards coming up with thirty artworks to display. I was trying to enjoy the process of making paintings that bore my soul while feeling the pressure of the critics’ write ups that would come the day after the show opened.
It seems like a lifetime away now, my days as a painter. In the succeeding years of teaching, ministering, raising my kids, growing our school, it seemed like the most logical thing to do was to give up on painting. After all, being an artist required too much of me. In creating art, I had to be true to myself and yet be brave enough to receive what my audience had to say. It was like setting myself up on a platter for all the world to scrutinize and cut up. And so, because I was not sure of myself, the joy of filling up a canvas with colors, of watching the pigments come together to create magic, slowly faded into a memory.
Thankfully, one of the great blessings of cancer in my life is that all these months of introspection has taught me to love myself in a way that I never did. Instead of letting this illness destroy me, it has taught me that I do have redeemable qualities, skills and wisdom to share.
This morning, I dug up old photos of my “masterpieces”. I no longer feel emptiness nor uncertainty now while looking at them. I reacquaint myself with each artwork, and even if they are no longer mine, I am no longer wary but proud that they will always be an extension of who I am.
I wonder how they are now still touching lives in different offices or homes all over the world, and this makes me more eager to paint again.
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