HeArtWork: Unpacking Our Baggage

I have journaled for as long as I can remember being able to write. One of my oldest journals is from way back in 1994. We lived in Utah at that time. 9 year old Stacey. I remember finding that journal in a gift shop at some place we had wandered into. I saw the beautiful book with the rainbow-winged angel and knew I needed to record all my deepest thoughts in there...even though most of my journal entries started
with,”Dear Diary, nothing much happened today”, more often than not .

Regardless of how much I had to say at the time, there was something about putting the words in my head onto paper that made life seem more official. It gave me a way to put words to the day. To make the experience more real and lasting. I enjoyed reading back on things that had happened, even if it had just happened. Re-reading about whatever incident I recorded would remind me of where I was, who I was with, and how it felt. 

I didn’t know it when I was younger, but journaling helped me to process some of the things that were hard for me. I had unnamed struggles that my child heart carried and didn’t fully understand. One of those struggles had to do with creating connections. My family moved to new cities and states often. The frequent moves caused me to struggle in the friend-making department. I had friends, sure. But I seldom tried to make deep and lasting connections to other people outside of my family…it seemed like a waste of time and caring. This was one of my first “walls” I made for myself.

When you’re young you dont understand the psychology of the things you do. You just feel, react and deal with the consequences, good or bad.

Like most people growing up in the 90’s, my parents didn’t have the mental health vocabulary to address the mental and emotional wellness of my brother and I. It was a different time, pre-helicopter parents, the last years of unsanitized childhood: Kids rode their bikes to God knows where, with whatever pack of children they could find, not a cellphone to be had and no parental worries about it either. Just be back before dark.

And you sorted out what happened amongst yourselves most the time too. I didn’t have a steady person to confide in, and my parents were living in Adult Land which seemed far and away from where I was. Writing became an outlet for re-living and re-feeling the day’s events. A chance to look over the things that happened and decide how I felt about it. This practice is something I still participate in, though it has evolved and changed over the years...as I have. 

Something journaling helped to make me aware of over the years is my walls. I can read in old journals what was happening in my life and how I was responding.

I can see how those walls influenced my reactions. I didn’t know why I was responding that way. Only that the person or event “made” me feel or react a certain way. It all seemed to be outside of myself and happening to me. I was unaware of how those walls kept me so out of control of my own life. And walls that started small as a child grew larger and more complex as an adult. 

We all have walls in us.....

barriers we’ve made to protect ourselves mentally and emotionally. Some that seem like they’ve always been there, and are a part of who we are.

It takes deep soul searching to start uncovering what is “us” and what is triggers and reactions we’ve become accustomed to.

Is that truely who we are, or is it conditioning we’ve made for ourselves?

This type of self discovery is my HeArtwork.

I have been involved in HeArtwork, consciously and not, for most of my life. I have used journaling, drawing, painting, poetry, and other creative mediums to make sense of life and how I exist in it. It is my hope to continue exploring what HeArtwork is to me, and hope that others might recognize their own HeArtwork in the process. It takes many forms and is unique to each person. It is painful sometimes....but it grows us.

I know now that this journey of my HeArtwork requires me to make peace with my past.

To let go of what doesn’t serve.
To see what is my walls and what is me.
To demolish what no longer serves, to build what does.

I have begun to unpack my baggage...so I can grow in the ways I need to.