Artwork
This art piece is a personal and symbolic depiction of the spiritual connection between my sister and I. It has taken a lot of processing and deep work to get to the place where I could honor this connection with her after her death by suicide in August 2017.
After her death I was consumed by my search for her. That search started in total darkness and in deep pain. It was the natural place to start looking as it was where I happened to be. Even though she was not in total darkness, she was there with me. I just could not see her. Eventually, even in this darkness, I was able to move and to grow. I was growing towards the light. I didn't know that then. For a while it felt like I was moving through my perceived world that was so full of light and things to be joyful about and grateful for, but beneath me in an upside-down space, always underlying it all, was my sister dead and her death felt so dark and terrifying to me. It wasn't until I integrated all that felt and was so dark and everything that was so full of light into one space; the perception of my world, that I could see the shadows. The shadows, the grey spaces were there to teach me. I walked into them and what I found was confronting and often confusing, but I held space for all of it and kept searching for clarity, for her. This search has been a mentally, emotionally & spiritually expanding experience that has also been deeply painful and challenging. I now know in the depths of my soul, with every fiber of my being that I couldn't find her in the dark because she is in the light, in every color that I see, and in everything around me and within me. She is at peace. She was with me in the dark. I couldn't see her because I couldn't see the light within myself.
She is at peace. I would like to share that these words were not at all comforting to me at the beginning of this journey. I felt that those words reduced her life to suffering. She did suffer greatly in the depths of depression and the frantic highs of mania. She also experienced not just the lowest lows and the highest highs, but all that lies between on the spectrum of emotion. She knew peace and happiness, and wrote about her gratitude for life and the smallest and biggest parts of what life offered her. I believe that knowing this breath of experience was what in her grounded self made her an immensely compassionate person with a lot to offer.
She has transformed, moved on from this human experience. I miss her physical presence everyday, but I now see and feel her love and her energy in all things, and in all spaces around me, connected to me, and within me.
Dedicated to: Rebecca Kate Passero 1988-2017