Soul Connections
This past spring, I was visiting family and was given a stack of photos.
There was one of my dad I could not take my eyes off of.
I had never seen this photo, and had no idea what it was that struck me so deeply.
I just couldn’t stop staring at it.
Then it hit me.
I had seen that look before.
PHOTO BY JEREMY COWART | www.JEREMYCOWART.com
I was stunned when I pulled up the portrait Jeremy Cowart had created of me, something I still can’t believe even happened.
I wondered how it might look in black-and-white next to his.
It took my breath away.
I could not fathom this depth of connection across decades with a man I venture a guess no one truly knew.
I certainly didn’t.
When Jeremy captured that moment of loss and longing in my face, Matthew Perryman Jones’ Motherless Child was playing.
I was completely flabbergasted when this photographer I had exchanged a few tweets with but had never met, knew me to the depth putting on his music the moment I walked in the door.
I could not believe that in the random shuffle of Matthew’s catalog he’d put on for our session, Motherless Child was among the three tracks that played … A song that speaks simultaneously to the depth of what’s missing in my life, and the unimaginable power I have to create my dreams.
It was in a particular live recording of that song that my life permanently changed, when my heart shifted from a vague “I’d love to sing with him someday,” not even daring to imagine actually doing so, to tweeting this artist I’d met exactly one time, and saying “I have to sing with you. Where are we doing it? #OurVoicesAreAmazingTogether”
You could have knocked me over with a feather when he actually answered, and was going to be at my amazing church gig the next morning.
If you’re going to use a bold hashtag, you’d best be ready to back it up ... You may be called upon to prove it at 9am!
Singing with him was the first thing I ever wanted to a depth that was beyond my fear of asking for it, and his yes in that moment was life-altering.
It was the beginning of my practice of actually asking for what I want, and it changed every single thing.
It’s astounding the number of dreams I have watched materialize before me since I began embracing what I love and want, rather than criticizing, minimizing, or denying it.
There has been so much loss in my life, including losing my dad when I was 20.
It was a tumultuous season in my life - hello, I was 20, and had been through losses, abandonment, upheaval, and mental and emotional abuses no child should have to go through.
For decades I believed my dad went to his grave ashamed of me.
I believed I didn’t deserve to grieve his loss, because I wasn’t a good enough daughter.
I believed I'd contributed to his illness and death, having been told as much in so many words.
My 20-year-old heart was assaulted with horrific messages from deeply wounded and powerful voices who had no business saying such things.
Those things were etched into my soul as fundamental truth, and they shattered me.
My young life was a time of being lost in a dark and frightening forest.
A friend recently asked as he was giving a talk, what did our young selves want for our lives?
I realized I couldn’t answer that question, because my young self didn’t know how to want.
She was fully consumed with just surviving.
Even though I had both a mother and stepmother, their abandonment, deep brokenness, and viciousness rendered them sources of excruciating pain.
I have no concept of a comforting or nurturing mother.
Despite what I promise you were their absolute best and most loving intentions, I was a motherless child.
Finding the depth of my voice in that song reminds me that our wounds - when we know them and can speak OF them rather than FROM them - are our superpowers.
I have no words for the healing power of this image.
This portrait in which I can clearly see my absolutely unquestionable beauty radiating from the inside out, and the striking similarity and connection of my soul to this man in whose shadow I spent my life believing I was nothing.
I am grateful beyond words for the gift of this vision.
A vision which only exists because an artist had to create his own work on his own terms, and opened up his studio to the public to do that while putting food on the table.
Contrary to what we’ve all been led to believe, our work - and our lives - should not be “selfless.”
Our selves are the most beautiful gift we have to offer the world.
When we endeavor to cut ourselves out of the picture, we’re not only depriving the world of that beauty, we’re shattering the world by teaching every precious heart in it that they’re supposed to cut themselves out of the picture as well.
The ideal of “selflessness” does not build others up as we think it does.
It teaches EVERYONE to dismiss their worth and value from the inside out … The only place it can live.
My heart has been healed by artists who paint every bit of themselves into the picture, and souls who walk in the world taking care of their own hearts … First, foremost, and above all else.
They healed the years of shattering damage done by those endeavoring to “selflessly” put me first.