The Other Side of Pain: "BIGness" = Holiness

This little beauty came to life after finishing up some deep healing work around sexual trauma I experienced growing up and into adulthood.

Creatives, do you ever get that feeling like you just might explode if you don't get something on canvas right this very minute, but then find a million and one other things to do that just can't wait!? That's what I've been experiencing quite often lately. This need to create, but also a kind of fear holding me back that leads to nowhere.

It all just feels so unbelievably MASSIVE sometimes, but one of the most helpful, light bulb switched on kind of moments happened for me with this recently. My amazing mentor I work with, Kristian Strang, mentioned that this BIGness we sometimes feel.. it's actually HOLINESS. Wowza. #mindblown. The degree to which we feel something is the degree to which the epic/life changing/healing epiphanies and transformations are waiting for us on the other side. So much better these massive emotions feel now, right!?

So I finally got to the other side of sitting with and loving on all my many emotions from experiences that were ready to be looked at and healed, got out my paint brushes, turned on the Amelie soundtrack (best music to create to EVER btw : ), and I began.

I placed my hands on canvas, blessed it, talked to it, and then began to write. The words flew out like a song or story I had heard so long ago. The canvas, this painting was alive and breathing. Talking to me and showing me how she wanted to take form.

I used a photograph I took of a favorite place of mine. The little boy I nanny for, every morning we go on our morning walk together with the dogs and we pass by this place. A hill overlooking Forest Park with an old oak tree, wild flowers, and the sun rising behind it. Magic this place is, and spoke to me as I worked it into this painting.

So Incredible it is what can be birthed from not just pain itself, but from sitting with it, listening to it, and loving it until it dissolves.

I'm committed now in a way I hadn't been before. Committed to this journey, to this life. Of not only "getting by", but in true thriving. And that takes showing up every day, putting hands on canvas, and breathing in life.

With love forever more,

Xoxo Hannah

Excerpt from the words on the first layer of this painting:

"Love comes to me, in dreams, in the starlight. She whispers calling my name, my song. She listens, reaching for my hand. He whispers call me back, carries me home every time.
She dances, catching the light with each step. A calling within in her directing each movement, each breath".