In Support of Life

    This sculpture stands as a marker of a reverent petition to Creation for Love, connection and healing 

for this world and beyond. 

Life is wonderful and I’m grateful to exist at this moment in time. I am committed to living fully while supporting life in all of its forms, supporting the deepening of connection to ourselves, others and the natural world. Part of this commitment is to right the wrongs so the future generations can live as healthy and happy as possible. Righting wrongs is about dealing with my own trauma as well as other people’s unprocessed grief, all of which brings disconnection to ourselves, others and the natural world around us. 

We are living through an interesting and challenging period in human history, wrought with unprocessed trauma. We don’t have to search very far to find the results of living with unprocessed grief. Look around during your daily life or turn on any news station and you'll witness the atrocities. When we live with trauma too long the effects begin to take hold. At the extremes, we disconnect from life and lose the desire to live. In the United States, in 2020, suicide was among the top 10 leading causes of death for people ages 10 - 64 and suicide was the second leading cause of death for people ages 10 - 14 and 25 - 34 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2021). 

Much of our distress, grief and misery can be traced back through time and can be understood as historic trauma. “There is now converging evidence supporting the idea that offspring are affected by parental trauma exposures occurring before their birth, and possibly even prior to their conception. On the simplest level, the concept of intergenerational trauma acknowledges that exposure to extremely adverse events impacts individuals to such a great extent that their offspring find themselves grappling with their parents’ post-traumatic state. A more recent and provocative claim is that the experience of trauma – or more accurately the effect of that experience – is ‘passed’ somehow from one generation to the next through non-genomic, possibly epigenetic mechanisms affecting DNA function or gene transcription” (Yehuda and Lehrner, 2018). In these times, if we want to live fully into our human potential, supporting life and living happy and healthy lives, we need to heal our collective historic trauma. 

Healing needs to occur for us to transform our grief into usefulness that benefits ourselves and those that have not been born yet, rather than continue to compound our dis-ease, our disconnection sickness. Healing or reconnection can happen for anyone.  

One way to re-move trauma and the disconnection sickness that we are living with today, is through ceremonies. Ceremonies have been used for thousands of years and for many different purposes. Over the past 10 years I have been working with ceremony to connect people to themselves, others, nature and the unseen world. A ceremony can be simple or complex, held with a group or as individuals and be used for various reasons. 

As individuals, we can send our voices into the wind, into the Unknown as a form of prayer. Collectively, we can use our intent to transform and heal ourselves, our relatives and others in the seen and unseen realms. We can call upon our ancestors for help. We can cry out in need and send our messages to the four winds and the four directions, which cultures throughout the world have long held as powerful forces. We can ask them for assistance. We can use a group effort or public event to send our love into world through our intentional breath. 

        Through ceremony, I am supporting Life and am sending my love and voice into the Unknown. Anchoring this project’s ceremonies are the “4x4 Monolith Sculptures” or four stones that are representing the four directions and the four winds on four different levels of Creation, 16 sculptures total or 4x4. The sculptures expand from a local site in Lancaster, out to the four directional edges of Lancaster County, to the directional edge of Pennsylvania, to the directional edges of the United States that extend past the imaginary border to the entire physical world and beyond. The sculptures stand as markers for actions that are being taken to right the wrongs, to heal trauma and ensure a healthy and happy future for those yet to live. 

     As a creative individual, an artist, I work consciously with intuition, creativity, creation and the creative powers to manifest ideas and concepts into physical reality. I understand how Creation can work with and through me as a co- creator on this planet. Working from inside of myself, to the connections close to me and expanding the inner work outward as far as possible is what these sculptural prayer markers embody. 

• “Fast Facts.” Www.cdc.gov, 21 Jan. 2021, https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/pdf/NCIPC-Suicide-FactSheet-508_FINAL.pdf
   
• Rachel Yehuda and Amy Lehrner, “Intergenerational transmission of trauma effects: putative role of epigenetic mechanisms” World Psychiatry, vol.17, issue 3, Oct. 2018, pp 243-257, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/wps.20568