The Spirit Blows Where It Wills. Ginger 5/11/14

Blog by Zara Kolasinska

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Today in gratitude and honour of my daughter's memory, I finally pressed the launch button on my long-awaited website - which subsequently led me to write my first-ever blog.

In my humble opinion, nothing else could be more poignant than acknowledging her spirit in this small but fitting way.

Firstly I would like to thank everyone who takes the time to read this blog and visit the website.

It's been a challenging process getting to this point. Enduring the internal dialogue of self-sabotaging and procrastination, all brought about by myself was hands down my biggest challenge and setback to face.

Fearing what we want in life can be a scary thing... Coming up against our horizon, we find ourselves in a borderland where the old must pass away for the new to be discovered. Becoming oneself by becoming a stranger to oneself, one fears what one has to be when it's unknown.

I hope you find this website all I have anticipated: a place where you can find vibrant, insightful, meaningful art and intriguing paintings that capture the subject's essence. Whilst the body of my work consists of vibrant colour as a testimony to my love of creation, I hope to provoke thought into the nature of heavier weighted topics so often misunderstood or suppressed in the depths of self.

My aim is that you find insight in the accompanying blogs that will merge my artwork with the psychological aspects of the topics that I intend to bring to the audience.

Although I primarily focus through the guise of humans and animals, I anticipate future exploration into more expansive subjects that are currently unexplored as my process with art continues to unfold.

With no previous background or training in art, it isn't easy to consider myself an artist in the technical sense. Art offered itself to me unexpectedly as a channel for immense loss and suffering, taking me on a journey into paradoxical insights into a deeper understanding of my own life and life in general.

It seems fitting to start my first blog by sharing with you a little about myself and how I became initiated into the world of art through the loss and grief of the worst kind - the loss of a child.

I write and paint nearly always from intuition and heartfelt emotions. And sharing like this, although raw and sometimes messy, is the best way to reach those places we often reject. Today, a dearest friend reminded me to write as if I'm only writing for myself, not the audience. Then from that place, truthfully aligned with my soulful intentions, my words can be heard.

What a wonderful reminder and I continue to write this blog with that wisdom in mind.

I'm curious, reflecting on the past and present life, if it was ever supposed to unfold in a neatly-planned linear way. If it was, I understand that perhaps that may just be unsuited to the expression or blueprint of my beinghood. After all, paths are not paths unless walked upon, whether crooked or straight.

Those who know me will be aware of my and my family's tragic loss of our baby daughter at 40 plus weeks of pregnancy in 2014. Our daughter, whom we named Ginger, a greatly anticipated child lovingly awaited by her family members, was tragically born sleeping on the 5th of November 2014, 8 years ago.

Ginger was stillborn without any known cause, and there on in began the breaking apart and dismantling of all I knew to be. By this, I mean myself and my reality that appeared to be familiar, the good or not so good, were all summoned to be examined in ferocious encounters with what I now know to be "THE SELF", i.e. the deeper subtle truthful understanding, of our unconditioned untouched self that is so often hidden, suppressed, or denied.

In this space, I learnt that the unconscious really is unconscious. We only know it or fully understand it once faced with becoming what we are. This means becoming a stranger to oneself, a stranger to all you know yourself to be.

We may not understand what perils we encounter... what attachments we may have to set aside, and what tasks we will be called upon to perform… that moment is where I met my own encounter with the creative process.

I have my daughter to thank for many things since her passing, but the biggest of all was her helping me see myself through the lens of witnessing her.

Through all the chaos and grief, she gently turned my visions of her back upon me to then express out into the world. To briefly name some, there were courage, strength, growth, wisdom and vibrancy of life in all its forms, but the biggest was facing my fears.

I remember clearly how unimportant those weighted fears felt compared to the loss I felt when losing my daughter. How on earth had I given them so much significance? Allowing them to control and dominate.

Almost instantly, they became the first to burn into insignificance upon Ginger's passing.

I felt gracefully guided and placed in the lap of the arts as a tool and gift, not only for my own healing but for perhaps others too.

The painting was the beginning of an unknown yet familiar place awaiting my arrival, and, trusting that, I put aside my mind and judgments and let my instincts flow through me to be expressed without any expectations. Which, in turn, has opened me up to the fundamental nature of my own being.

By this, I mean to speak from the truest sense and not to use it as an egotistic expression of self to aggrandise or inflate one's ego. The process in itself took much wrestling to fully understand what was being dismantled within. It was an incredibly hard message to grasp in its entirety and then move into with acceptance of who I am without hiding behind another: i.e. (false persona). Essentially the message was about "becoming who you are afraid to be".

Ginger... the spirit, the muse, the daughter and child. A symbolic representation of the divine… was the guiding force in all that was about to unfold, both internally and externally.

As I dig deep in exploration of thoughts around this blog, I ask myself, what will the meaning hold for others? Of course, on the surface, it's simply exploring and sharing about myself and my experience with grief and all its devastating consequences, which in turn may help or resonate with others who have lost loved ones. But, I would like for it to offer more than that. I hope it touches the audience and evokes or pushes one to see more of one's nature beyond external conditioning. To recognise the call from within that invokes a journey of internal exploration. Which, for me, happened to come about through loss and art. That said, as mentioned above, there doesn't have to be meaning for others, and that's okay.

Grief is not to be denied but rather followed with an open heart. This may sound contradictory, given how broken a heart feels in the grips of sorrow. For me, grief brings many components, but underneath it all can come greatness and healing when you surrender.

Therefore fundamentally, my message is going to be focused there. I simply ask you to listen from a place other than your mind, as that tends to analyse and judge.

I am also not about to gloss over grief. As I move forward in my own journey with it, I will share the importance of acknowledging grief rather than bypassing or denying it, as therein lies the danger of complicated grief and stagnation.

Grief is not something to war with or deny: it's a slippery trickster who can fool you into illusory false senses of security, so I'm not writing in naivety or shirking of its power. I am simply sharing my experience with you of my own journey and process with loss, which I hope we can explore together and perhaps see the layers down to what can be unearthed and, therefore, carefully processed with others who may have experienced a similar situation. In turn, this may offer an exploration into one's understanding of having lost something or someone dear to them.

"Grief" comes from the Greek word meaning "to have been robbed". It seems a fitting word as, although somewhat of an understatement, it leaves us feeling empty with a huge hole, as if we've been robbed of something significantly meaningful. Grief is a reactionary response that includes the physical, social, emotional, intellectual and spiritual. It can leave you feeling hopeless with a shattered sense of identity.

Emotional numbing can become a coping mechanism to enable life to persist. Looking back, I did a lot of emotional numbing as seeing others in pain felt unbearable. It felt necessary to project a false persona rather than allow others to witness my own suffering, as that somehow felt shameful and unacceptable.

Grief can leave you in physical bodily pain, somatic symptoms, and intrusive thoughts. Some, if not all, I endured and witnessed ripple through my own family in one way or another. (I recall clearly the physical pain my body experienced without any known underlying cause.)

The life that was so easily taken for granted became a tornado of unsettling internal and external battles from there on in. I am unsure if grief is, or can ever be, fully understood when losing a child. All I could put into words is worthless: as any parent who has lost a child will know, there just aren't any that can describe what you will endure.

I think "hell" is the closest contender, albeit cheesy and obvious.

Death stripped me of everything when our daughter died. It left me open, dangling, frantically clinging to the identities I had constructed in life: mother, wife, daughter, sister, and friend. All became staged and unfamiliar. It is work to be them when the core of you has lost its centre.

What was once automatic became forgotten and confusing. It felt like wearing wet clothes and shoes on the wrong feet... My identity towards myself, and others, was dying alongside with my daughter's death. Part of me longed to join her as the pain was so unbearable, yet another part clung to the life I had in reality taken for granted.

The roles I never really observed became magnified as grief leaked upon them, asking for my attention.

Already a mother of two sons, my primal instinct was to mother them through this and remain watchful of them, whilst the pitiful inner pining to mother my daughter wreaked havoc upon my mind, body, and spirit. Both desire and denial battled it out within the perimeters of my soul. Milk filled my breast, and my arms remained to cradle an empty space as I circled through the rooms like a caged wild animal you see in the zoo. The uncanny instinctual circling on the brink of the edge trapped between the brutal reality and fantasising mind. Longing for the nightmare to end, sleep seemed my only brief refuge where a slither of peace remained. Then upon waking, the nightmare awoke with me day after day.

A blanket my daughter was wrapped in offered me comfort as the smell of her resided there. Daily, I held it close to my heart, fantasising with my eyes closed. I was holding her as her mother. The blanket came to bed with me, and I smelt her sweet, unique smell until the time came that even that left. Who could imagine the scent left upon a blanket could be clung to so dearly in the hope it never leaves?

That day came with another devastating blow as I held on frantically with my senses to a fading perfume encoded with my daughter's scent, which was destined to finally fade.

Each sunrise brought a new unwanted surprise in the forms of rage, anger, and pity - to name a few. It was a cruel existence of never-ending heart-wrenching sadness in that I couldn't see or find the light. My mind became stuck in a looping projection between what could have been and what was to become.

As I look back over those days, it seems crazy how I was walking a path unknowing that in one day, within seconds, that path would do a 360-degree turn and never be the same path that I had projected into my future again.

As time stood still, somehow, in amongst all this pain, an inner whispering inside had a more profound understanding that I had an opportunity to grow. A subtle feeling unable to put into words, led by an emotional intelligence weaving instinctual internal inquiries to understand the process, started to unfold. An invitation to come home to oneself felt like my only option in the face of such grief.

One fears it and yet wants it at the same time. The forces in the way of change feel more significant than the ones that support it. If change were so easy, we would all become our desired version.

We fear discovering that we are more than we think because, if it's true, we leave all we know behind.

This is where for me, I was intuitively guided to paint. It made no sense. I was confused, but the internal call was undeniably powerful. Unable to win out with my mind, the call from my heart spoke the loudest, and my daughter's whisper of calling up the arts became an unstoppable force.

Ginger's loss was the most devastating blow to my heart, and yet, the ruinous irony was to be that she became the guiding force to heal. Without a doubt, all that I had moulded and constructed until her death was, in a sense, unfitting.

Art helped guide me through exposing and dismantling those layers. I became confronted with behaviours I didn't know existed. Boundaries I had never erected. Coping mechanisms. Learnt behavioural patterns. People pleasing and codependency all arose to be finally witnessed through grief-inducing art!

Layer upon layer arose to be examined as I merged with paint to canvas. A collaboration with a part of myself, foreign from the known (the unconscious) and I met together in this space, and through art, we connected in the heart where a mythical understanding of self unravelled through the guise of art. The healing began from the grief that shattered my illusions of the identities attached to the ideas constructed of myself. This a humorous irony, as one of my biggest fears was in feeling exposed and afraid to express myself for fear of being shamed.

How could I begin to thank this devilish nightmare enough when its pain awoke such wisdom?

The understanding of your own nature is, in fact, a lifelong quest, and perhaps the hardest of all. According to the Mythologist Joseph Campell, we must be willing to let go of the life we planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. This quote couldn't be more accurate.

I'll end here with the hope that my readers find this blog useful in exploring their own ideas of that subtle calling that speaks from within. Moreover, I pray you may find light in those darkest places where we all can shine.

Zara x

Ps … I would like to mention that the charity SANDS helped support our family through those toughest weeks.

I will continue to support them By donating 5% of sales from all original Artworks.

If you would like more information on the charity Sands, please visit www.sands.org.uk

#ArtTherapy