Be Kind to the Suffering

Written on 01/05/2019
Jeane George Weigel

A note about the photos in this post: The blog’s platform has been updated and I don’t know how to upload new photos so have drawn from the library of past posts…

I have been wanting to talk to y’all (this fresh word compliments of some new friends, I like it so I’m using it) for a long time now. You have been on my mind and I’ve been trying to put my thoughts together in a post.

Photo: http://khpstudio.com/

I was told when I was younger that I was not a manifestor. And I believed it because I really haven’t seemed to be. It appears I can wish and wish and wish but the wishes just never come true.

Photo: http://khpstudio.com/

And yet one quiet day recently I stopped to consider the life I’ve built for myself and I realized that I have everything I’ve ever dreamed of right here on this mountainside in northern New Mexico. I’ve made a simple, quiet, peaceful, creative life, one in which I continue my personal search for meaning. That’s all I ever wanted.

Photo: http://khpstudio.com/

I could do with a little more money, that’s true, but I have everything else. And the fact is I don’t think I ever dreamed of money, so there you go.

Photo: http://khpstudio.com/

My life has been perfectly imagined into being, likely by the child I used to be, toddling on the beach with my Great-Grandma Casson, herself an artist—a painter and a songwriter. So I guess my wishes have come true, many of them. I just didn’t notice them when they did.

All except for my preference to be healthy and strong.

Photo: http://khpstudio.com/

But the fact is I’m rounding a corner on this whole Postherpetic Neuralgia thing (see http://high-road-artist.com/14047/an-artful-life/stick/ and http://high-road-artist.com/14102/an-artful-life/grief-first/). I realize I’ve been hating it, fighting it, deadening it with toxic drugs, resisting it. But I’ve been counseled more recently to try to approach it in new ways, endeavoring to “be kinder to the suffering.” That seems to be helping.

Photo: http://khpstudio.com/

And I’ve gone back to therapy to see if that can help me hear the message my body is sending. Because I used to believe and I think I may be beginning to believe again, that when something is wrong with our bodies, it’s the soul trying to speak to us.

Photo: http://khpstudio.com/

But bottom line, and this is what I wanted to share with you, I’m taking my life back, pain or no pain, and I’M PAINTING AGAIN!

Photo: http://khpstudio.com/

I want to encourage any of you dealing with what life throws at us to perhaps take a step back, breathe into the challenge and be “kinder to the suffering.”

Happy New Year!

Love to y’all,

Jeane