It seems like a lifetime ago when I was so full of myself that I asked someone to write my life story. And the way I saw that story was this: Born an artist but followed a different path. That path was not only unfulfilling but also destructive in that it was not my inner truth. A crisis occurred which I took as a message designed to show me I was on the wrong path and that it was past time to right it. This book was to be about all that as well as my subsequent path-righting. Neat and tidy.

Now that story is written and is out in the form of a hybrid memoir, written by Kate Calder Klein (aka Kathy Kessler). The book didn’t unfold as I’d intended, much like my life. It includes my childhood and teenaged years which I hadn’t even considered. But the author found it all important.

So much like the living of it, my life as shown in this book, wasn’t exactly what I meant it to be. It feels private and personal. At the same time, reading about myself from Kathy’s perspective, I’ve learned so much, to the degree that I think I’m beginning to affect some deep repair.

When Kathy started out to tell my story she was surprised by all the blockages and walls she confronted. I suspect we all thought I was such an open person, a pretty deep thinker, me included. But from the interviews for this book and the memoir itself, I am coming to see how compartmentalized and hidden my life has always been, even from myself. I’m finally observing that I’ve developed various stories about me which have served, on a surface level, to keep me productive.

Kathy worked to find the truth beneath these well-built blocks of belief. I think what I’ve come to perceive from her efforts is a very beginning, fledgling understanding of how deeply fearful I’ve been in the world. This glorious life has been so threatening to something deep in my psyche that I’ve chosen not to truly be in it. I’ve chosen to forget my past and to block my present.

And for that glimpse at this truth I am very grateful. I have recently come to asking Spirit for 20 more years. I have so much more living to do and this time I will endeavor to truly live it, to be in it as much as I can be as I move along.

I hope this book shows you the resilience we all carry in us, playing out as Kathy and I both move forward in our individual visions of what living an artful life entails.

And I hope you’ll join Kathy as she reads passages of Purveyors of Light and Shadow Two Artists Search for Meaning at the magnificent SOMOS in Taos, on Sunday, September 18 at 4PM. I may be with you in the ZOOM audience.

Here is the ZOOM info:

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/5757580081?pwd=SnZncXlvUUZPY3F3OEhyOXM3TnVxQT09

Meeting ID: 575 758 0081
Passcode: SOMOS

Love to you all,

Jeane