Alchemy

It might seem as though I have been slack in the writing department. I assure you, I have not. Whether or not it gets put on paper, my brain is constantly writing. Ideas flash through the grey matter at alamaring (not really - it is not a schizophrenic flight of ideas and to steal from my favorite Sheldon Cooper - "I'm not crazy. My mother had me tested!")

While I am playing catch-up on my interview transcription and blog posts, I thought I would share one of my recent columns from the paper - that would be The Pickens County Courier. I have a weekly column and if you subscribe and say you are subscribing because of my column, I might get a raise or at least begin making above minimum wage (wink, wink - nod, nod) ... Geez! I am on a Sassy role this morning. Must be the high octance coffee.

This "post" might not relate to tattooing per se, but it does relate to one of my tattoos (story to come) and I think it will connect as this project unfolds. That said .....

I imagine most people are fairly conventional when it comes to relationships.

Two people meet and begin dating. They take ample time to get to know one another, to develop trust, emotional intimacy, strong communication processes. Maybe they also develop a physical intimacy built, again, on trust and communication. They share their individual needs and wants and begin to dream of a future together making those hopes and desires a reality.

At some point, they decide they want to get married, so they get engaged. The engagement process is typically proportional in time measurement to the months and (or) years leading up to the engagement. The couple gets married and settles into life together. Maybe they start a family. They evolve as a unit built on a foundation of unconditional love and acceptance. Mutual respect and appreciation.

I’m certain it will come as no surprise to my regular readers that I see love from a slightly unorthodox perspective, which is to say that the romantic in me believes in love at first sight and soul mates. The notion that God, in all of his infinite wisdom, has divinely created perfect matches that he unites when the timing is correct.

Recently I reread my copy of Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist (an AMAZING book if you’ve never read it). In hindsight, I believe that I was drawn to the novel at the perfect time last year. My Mom had recently been diagnosed with Breast Cancer, and my world felt like it was crumbling around me. Looking back, it was also around this time that my marriage was slowly unraveling, stitch by stitch.

The book offered me a renewed spiritual peace from which I was able to cope with the massive changes taking place in my life at that time. It made me feel grounded and it gave me hope for the future.

As I read back through it, the following passage caught my attention: “At that moment, it seemed to him that time stood still, and the Soul of the World surged within him …. he learned the most important part of the language that all the world spoke – the language that everyone on earth was capable of understanding in their heart. It was love. Something older than humanity, more ancient than the desert. Something that exerted the same force whenever two pairs of eyes met, as had theirs here at the well. She smiled, and that was certainly an omen – the omen he had been awaiting, without even knowing he was, for all his life.”

“It was the pure Language of the World. It required no explanation, just as the universe needs none as it travels through endless time. What the boy felt at that moment was that he was in the presence of the only woman in his life, and that, with no need for words, she recognized the same thing. He was more certain of it than of anything in the world. He had been told by his parents and grandparents that he must fall in love and really know a person before becoming committed. But maybe people who felt that way had never learned the universal language. Because when you know that language, it’s easy to understand that someone in the world awaits you, whether it’s in the middle of the desert or in some great city. And when two such people encounter each other, and their eyes meet, the past and the future become unimportant. There is only that moment and the incredible certainty that everything under the sun has been written by one hand only. It is the hand that evokes love, and creates a twin soul for every person in the world. Without such love, one’s dreams would have no meaning.”

I find myself exploring this possibility because – without even being consciously aware of it – I have ascribed to this philosophy my entire life. I’ve said it before, and I will say it again: I believe, without a shadow of a doubt, that everything – good or bad – just or unjust – happens for a reason.

Everything we experience in our lives – the challenges, the triumphs, the failures, the setbacks, the joy and sorrow, pain and heartache – all of these things mould and shape us into the people we are supposed to be. Following the Biblical analogy where God is the potter and we are the clay – being ever shaped into the most perfect form of ourselves at the exact moment in our lives when it is imperative.

There was a time when I thought my hopelessly romantic nature was silly. Childish. My perspective, however, has shifted. I believe in the divinity of soul mates because I believe that God’s love is limitless.

The biggest problem in my marriages has been that I have lacked God as a foundation. Ever the control freak, I wanted to be in charge of every detail rather than giving it up to God and allowing Him to take the reins. I lacked faith, instead allowing myself to be consumed by fear and uncertainty.

I am saying good-bye to fear as the guiding force in my life, and replacing it with Faith, Hope and the knowledge that, with God, nothing is impossible. 

Epiphany

Driving home from Liberty this evening - I had gone there to meet Tracey, one of the women who has expressed interest about being interviewed for my book project – I had an epiphany of sorts. Writing about it now, it seems silly that something so glaring obvious struck me like lightening even when I felt like I had thought through the variety of meanings this process would hold.

Even after careful consideration, which for me is typically tantamount to extreme over-analysis, I was headed up the Easley exit, preparing to merge onto Highway 123 en route home, and it hit me: interviewing, recording and listening to other people is going to teach me so much about myself!

It is completely fine if you are thinking “DUH … Nicole!” I’m ok with that because I thought the same thing. Of course I am going to learn something about myself, about my life, about the human condition. Talking with people and hearing their stories is no different than sifting through anthologies of American Literature: these individual stories give the listener (or reader) a new perspective to consider – a unique looking glass through which to view everyday life. Stories make us more human.

The only difference between the people with whom I’m meeting and my endless volumes of Norton Anthologies is that the people inviting me into their lives and homes are not published …. YET!

As the idea that I will experience personal growth through this process [said with an exaggerated overly twangy southern accent] slaps me upside my head  (dangerous while trying to merge onto Highway 123 I might add), it also occurred to me that coinciding with the stories I am telling – the ones that do not belong to me – I might have some stories of my own, emotional responses and reflections, or maybe even times when, dare I say it, I agree to disagree with the philosophies of any particular story teller.

And because talking with people sparks ideas and generates feelings, I might want to write about those things. But I can’t – can I? This project isn’t about me; it is about other people’s stories. Obviously I have a few tattoos that have stories behind them. Deeply personal meanings that I had planned to share, peppered in among the numerous other stories I am excited to hear and write.

One of my dearest grad school friends now part of my family, Kim, recommended I read Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat. Pray. Love. I purchased the book, and it sat on my book shelf for about a year before the universe drew me to all of the incredible insights captured between the covers. While I would never compare myself to Gilbert as a writer, this Soul to Skin Project upon which I have embarked is really no different than Gilbert’s trek around the world as she discovers herself. Of course I am going to grow as a human being throughout this process! Nicole, me, as a unique individual … I use writing as a way to digest my feelings and make sense out of what I have learned.

I say all this to say that, driving home from Liberty, my mind, heart and spirit were flooded with thoughts and feelings. Things I need to digest and process and write about, and I am going to allow myself the opportunity to do just that as I work on this project. I hope you, my readers, will not find it selfish that I am doing this – that I am giving myself permission to become a part of this project instead of being an outside observer who merely records and regurgitates (I don’t mean that to sound gross. I just love that word). Maybe, just maybe, some of my insights and observations will resonate with the readers out there?

I feel like a broken record in saying this, AGAIN, but I am terribly excited about this project, process and journey. Soul to Skin continues to evolve and is taking on a life all its own. I thank you all for your patience (as I learn to juggle all the responsibilities in my life that I am now doing as a single parent), your support and encouragement and excitement about the Soul to Skin Project (my baby in the making), and for making me feel like I have permission to grow and learn and evolve throughout this process. 

Blessed and Thankful

My mind, body and soul have been flooded with thoughts and emotions pinging, zigzagging, and ricocheting off of one another such that I feel like the Pin Ball Wizard.

Those of you who continue to follow me on this journey will come to know that I am a devoutly spiritual and faithful person. While I sometimes find myself bogged down by self-doubt or anxiety, like a cat that always lands on its feet, I find my focus and press forward toward whatever goal I have set on my horizon.

Hand in hand with my passion for writing (mentioned in an earlier blog post) has always been a love for reading. I have an insatiable appetite when it comes to written words – devouring books like a starved man in desperate need for nourishment.

Believing that everything in life happens for a reason, at the perfect time, applies to books as well. I have purchased books, brought them home with every intention of diving into the pages, only to be distracted by one thing or another. That book might sit on my nightstand for a week, six months, maybe even a year, before some current inside starts to stir and the next thing I know, I’m sitting with that book in hand.

The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho, is one example of being drawn to the exact book, the precise words, the spiritual nourishment I needed at the perfect time. It accompanied me to the mammogram and needle biopsy that diagnosed my mom’s breast cancer last May. And while I was unable to focus on reading at the time, it was in my bag while I impatiently waited for her surgeon to deliver a report after the lumpectomy.

So many thoughts and ideas in The Alchemist resonated with me at that time, making such an impact that it has become one of those books that I read over and over again. The pages have been marked with my own questions and notations – multiple passages emphatically underlined in pencil:     

“Because there is a force that wants you to realize your Personal Legend; it whets your appetite with a taste of success.”

“In order to find the treasure, you will have to follow the omens. God has prepared a path for everyone to follow. You just have to read the omens that he left for you.”

“But the sheep had taught him something even more important: that there was a language in the world that everyone understood, a language the boy had used throughout the time that he was trying to improve things at the shop. It was the language of enthusiasm, of things accomplished with love and purpose, and as part of a search for something believed in and desired.”

“When you want something, all the universe conspires to help you achieve it.”

“When someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that will carry him to places he had never dreamed of when he first made the decision.”

Making the decision to start the Soul to Skin Project has already started to carry me places I never imagined. With every fiber of my being, I believe this is what I am supposed to be doing at this precise moment in my life.

Like everything else I do, I am approaching this with unbridled enthusiasm, passion, love and purpose. Writing a book has been my dream since I was a child. Over the years I have come up with a million excuses for why I couldn’t do it. I didn’t have time. I wasn’t a good enough writer. People wouldn’t be interested in what I had to say.

I have come to the point in my personal and professional life when I am choosing to abandon my fears and doubts in order to pursue the dream that has always been inside of me. As I sit and write this I am awestruck by the surrealism of this very moment, everything leading up to it and the endless possibilities awaiting me in the future.

Thank you to everyone who has looked at the Soul to Skin Project blog, who have read the posts, who have ‘Liked’ the Soul to Skin Project page on Facebook. The outpouring of support, encouragement and love is truly humbling and amazing. I sincerely hope you will continue to follow this project, that you will share your thoughts and comments, continued support and encouragement.

Every morning that I wake up, I thank God for the blessings in my life. When I looked at the page views for the blog and had an email inbox full of Facebook ‘Likes’ and comments on the Soul to Skin Project, I was overwhelmed with feelings of positivity and possibility and immense love.

Today I feel especially blessed and incredibly thankful, and I would like to say thank you to everyone out there who has filled my soul with love, blessings, support and encouragement. None of this would be possible if all of you didn’t collectively care about this too. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!