I want to reflect a little bit on my life. In a meeting the other day on prayer and meditation, I was piecing together my journey of prayer and spirituality. I remembered a poster in a Lutheran church Sunday school room that read “When you sing you pray twice.” My impressionable young mind soaked in these words. I sang in girl choir when I was in elementary and middle school, and I started singing and playing guitar when I was twelve. As I grew through adolescence into young adulthood, singing became my prayer and my connection to my authentic self and God. I also was a vegetarian from ages 10-19 and a vegan from ages 16-19. I believed in astrology, and these three things, music, vegetarianism, and astrology created a foundational spiritual life.

I realize reflecting on my younger years, that I was always a spiritual person. As I grew up and married a chef, I began to eat meet once again and gave up active astrology. Theology/mythology, numerology, and astrology would find there way back into my life in my late thirties as I began to study the Tarot and the tree of life/ Kabala. In my twenties, I continued with my love of nature - the forest, river and mountains - and a passion for reaching young children. I became a teacher of young children, escaped to the mountains every chance I got, and I developed a passion for painting. I continued to also practice writing and wrote regular poetry and a memoir when I was twenty three.

I was a risk taker and an adventurer most of my life. I loved to snowboard, and I was always pushing the limits to everything as a teenager. I went to the most prestigious and expensive four year college that I was admitted to, and took seven classes my first semester; five for credit (two of which were senior level classes), and audited two. This began my slip into a psychotic break that I was hospitalized for when I was eighteen. I also suffered with major depression my senior year of high school, as well as anxiety and some psychosis. Later in 2004, when I was being reviewed for Medicare disability at the age of twenty five, while looking at my history of mental illness, I was given Adult Child Disability as it was deemed that I was disabled before I was eighteen.

The foundation that I built, with music, veganism, astrology, painting, nature, running, swimming, writing, and working with children, all have contributed to skills that have aided in my survival with, and a thriving with, mental illness. I am sure we all wish we had realized what was going on much sooner, but along with having a passion for all of the things I listed above, I was an achiever and wanted more than anything to be strong and to rise above it. Now, in my later years, at forty-three, I can say that I have found strength in accepting my weakness and vulnerability. There is something to be said for being “too strong”, and I lived much of my youth this way despite the obvious onset of mental illness in my life.

As a middle aged person, I have now had the privilege and experience to have spent a decade and a half painting, a decade of accumulated teaching, I’ve been married for almost twenty five years to my rock and savior, and though I have only practiced music on and off, I have always had my voice. My illness only provided the backdrop for me truly discovering faith and spirituality. I have faith when I sit under the willow tree, when I exercise on the elliptical at the gym with my new Spotify playlist, when I pet my dog, when I listen to chanting on my yoga mat, when I play cribbage with my loving partner, when I play with my niece, when I sit by the pond and have long conversations with my mother, when I check in with my dad daily, when I write, and when I attend meetings. I realize now that this has always been the purpose of my sometimes rocky life; finding spirituality, and leaning into the lessons, in order to build a strong character and a faith that is almost unshakable. Yes, I have more work to do. This is the best part of it. Here, as I crest the center of the timeline that is my life, I know that I am only at the beginning. Every day is new, and with each step there will be some to follow. Knowing my authentic self and finding healing on a spiritual path has been the purpose all along. My path is sustained by roots in both my adult and young life, back to when I was just a young child learning how to sing.