speak - self portrait - © jaeda dewalt

A B S E N T I A

 I forgot just how deeply I’ve missed, my second passion, writing . . . until recently.  It feels so good to let myself spill out in words. As I write this, the musical ecstasy of David Avarados, “Mayasongs” washes over my sensual soul.

I didn't want to come out of seclusion, I was quite content swimming inside my serene sea of solitude.  I was kind of jolted out of seclusion by a magical series of encounters and events.  After which, I realized, the box I was living in was getting smaller and smaller as the outside world loomed larger and larger over my isolated existence.  I knew it was time to make some fundamental changes.

BEFORE this strange series of recent events, I was quite the idealist.  I wanted to give my friends my undivided attention, enjoy, connect and celebrate them during stress-free times in my life. Because on Planet Jaeda there are no interruptions when friends are over, no phone calls, text messages, all sense of time slips away. And I love giving my friends the 5-star treatment :).  Good food, magical environment and a whole lot of love, creativity, caring and sharing.

As a result, a pattern developed, wherein,  I would go into seclusion, crank out art, get my business stabilized and then take a break and seek to spend time with friends, make time to dance with life and explore this vast and vital universe. I thought It was a great plan, until recently . . .

I had a long stretch of struggle as an artist, made worse, when I recently had to close out all of my Cafepress shops.  It was a huge financial blow and I am now struggling to get my head above water and have to start all over, rebuilding my business from top to bottom.  The road to friends, fun and connection was getting further and further away from me.  I realized if I waited until things were “stable and stress free” I would be away from the outside world and my friends, indefinitely.  But I don’t like anyone to see me struggle or know how much I struggle and prefer to hide out until I get stable.  It’s difficult for me to invite people into my world when it becomes deprived and desperate, I can handle it, but worry others will have difficulty with it simply because they care about me.

So I knew it was now or never, I had to change course.  At one of the lowest points in my career as an artist, I started inviting my friends back into my world.  And I thought about what it would feel like to have a friend, like me,  that disappears on you all the time, won’t answer her phone and floats in and out of your life when it’s best for her . . . well that would feel LOUSY!  And the message I was sending was, “I can’t be bothered, I don’t care, this is the Jaeda show, don’t ya know”.  The real message was, “I want to wait until I can completely focus on you”. BUT that isn’t what my actions were communicating.  Which is another reason I changed course.  Stress or no stress, good or bad, chaotic or serene, I knew I had to learn how to have people in my life on a consistent and normal basis (which is actually very uncomfortable and unsettling for me).

This attitude also carried over into my art.  I stopped creating for a long period of time, because I was determined to not create any new art until I got my business back up and running.  But I was dying a little everyday that I did not create.  I realized I would have to learn how to consistently create no matter how bad business was.  I  had several friends encourage me to keep creating, telling me that, expressing my creativity would help to fuel my business projects.   It took me until now to follow that advice.  And i am so glad I did!

So today begins a new chapter in the book of my life.  One with friends, creativity and connection, CONSISTENTLY.  My walls are coming down and it is simultaneously terrific and terrifying.

Good news is, I will be doing a photo shoot in a couple of weeks.  It was difficult for me to pick a subject.  I really wanted to delve into my deeper issues and more conceptual, photo-construct type work.  But decided I needed to keep things simple for now, due to time constraints.  So the photo shoot is going to be a celebration of pin-up and old Hollywood glamor, Jaeda style :).  Will feel so good to get back into the studio!  And this is where ABSENTIA abruptly ends . . .

To continue on this journey with me, please read the blog, “SPEAK” below.
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S P E A K

After a freakishly long period of self-imposed seclusion, I have emerged from the ethers of my tiny little universe . . . ready to reconnect,  reach out,  risk and GROW.

I had forgotten how a relationship and new friends can ignite creativity and emotion  in new and novel ways.  I have a 24-hour imaginarium going on in my mind and don’t naturally seek outside stimulation or inspiration and forgot how powerful it can be!  It causes me to push up against myself and take a new inventory. This leads to the discovery of unexplored personal and
 creative terrain as old selves are extinguished and new selves rise up from the ashes.

And that is what leads me to S P E A K.  I am so grateful for every relationship I have ever embarked upon.  Each one offers me a chance to learn and grow, it’s a love evolution.  The lessons are often bittersweet.  I have no regrets.  It’s always worth the risk. One of the greatest lessons, I have come away with, is that we teach people how to treat us, we really do!

Recently, I had a chance to revisit certain aspects of myself, reminded that people often reflect us back to ourselves, though we may not recognize our own reflection right away.  S P E A K seems such a simple thing to do, but it is something I struggle with.  My voice, my power, were taken away so young, I am still learning how to find my voice.  For so long I didn’t have one and took a passive/aggressive approach to getting myself heard.  Took me awhile to realize that the reason passive/aggressive people irritated me so much is because it was a disowned part of myself, that I
 could only acknowledge through others, possessing the same tendency. 

This, of course, also has to do with boundaries.  I desperately wanted them and always expected others to set them for me.  My boundaries were torn down as a child.  I didn’t know what boundaries felt like, looked like or sounded like, it was a foreign land of security and protection that I desperately craved.  And instead of people setting boundaries for me,   they crossed them.  I realized I wouldn’t draw people that set and maintained good boundaries until I became a person that set and maintained good boundaries.

I’ve come a long way on all fronts.  I still struggle to be direct, to stand up for myself, to set and enforce boundaries.  But over the years I have been able to weed all of the toxic relationships out of my life.  I am free and clear that way, and it feels so liberating!  We ARE the company we keep, I have learned this one the hard way.  So every once in a while we should look around ourselves and ask ourselves how we really feel about the people in our lives.  Some friendships are seasonal, some relationships are seasonal . . . they are only meant to be a temporary part of our journey, other friends, other relationships are meant to endure to the end. 

People tell you who they REALLY  are by their actions, their behavior, the way they speak of their past, what they share and what they don’t and by the way they treat others in their life.
Through everyday conversation and the unraveling of time you can tell what a person wants, what their issues are, what they need, what they want from you.  All you have to do is be a keen observer and a good listener.

One of the best gifts we can give people is our integrity and honesty.  If we don’t want to be friends with someone and do so out of guilt or fear, are we really doing that other person any favors by placating them?  Set them free, let them discover a new person that really wants their friendship. Sure they will be hurt short-term but give them some credit, they will manage and they will move on.  I firmly believe that one-sided attractions and friendships are a recipe for needless suffering.  Relationships   need to be balanced and interdependent.

Relationships are best when they encourage us to give from a place of love, freedom and abundance.  Relationships shouldn’t steal from you, they should enhance your life, enhance your world.  This is why toxic relationships never work. Love is not possession or manipulation.

And I am going to say it, the big “E” word.  The Ex . . . When I was younger I would try and stay friends with my ex’s, not wanting to completely miss out on the love we once expressed to each other, the friendship, the emotional investment I made. This made it really difficult to heal from the relationship and move on. But then, inevitably,  someone new would come along and being entangled with my ex’s meant  the new person in my life didn’t have a clean emotional slate with me . . .  as my past was in the present, haunting and complicating a budding relationship.

I feel that Ex’s are best left in  our heart,  memories and photo albums.  They played a significant role in our lives at one time and we shouldn’t pretend they don’t exist but it’s also good to live in the present and be fully ready to embrace new experiences free from sticky emotional residue.  Emotional limbo is NOT a good place to be. However, I am not referring to relationships where children are shared, I have no experience with that and I can’t really speak to it.
                                                      
Patterns are meant to be broken . . . we are romantically drawn to the ones that hurt us at our core, that bring up our wounds from childhood.   They call to our inner-child and that makes us feel whole and alive with fantasies we will change the ending, and unlike our caretakers, they won’t hurt us, instead they will heal our old hurts and we will  live in love’s bliss.  It makes that persons love GOLD to us. We all have a hurt panel with the wrong buttons waiting to be pushed by the right person.  That’s what gives us our pattern. BUT patterns are meant to be broken.  We can make a conscious choice to not fall into a pattern. We can seek to heal our wounds and co-create/nurture healthy relationships.

I am so far from being a relationship expert!  LOL But I have learned so many of the above lessons, the hard way and was bursting to share my experiences.            

More and more, people are showing me fundamental aspects of myself, that I need to change on a core level and I am grateful for the revelations and the chance to learn and grow :).  Relationships can go a long way toward self-discovery and enriching our interior lives.  Each person can open up a new universe inside of us.

Thank you to every single person that has touched my life, transforming it in the most amazing and unexpected ways.

PEACE and LOVE
j a e d a