Sunday, October 11, 2009

We Are Only as Sick as Our Secrets

I have fallen in love with the night.

The night brings me to the lyrical, magical spiritual world of ideas. I embrace my insomnia. It has afforded me the dawn to peruse the world of an artist living in the 21st century.

Living at the very center of the culture of women, I have been assigned the task of building theater that speaks to the reality of the modern woman's life. A life lived on the edge. This speaks to the wild, the wounded, the feral heart of the quintessential Bad Girl.

As fate would have it, I find myself face to face with The Virus. I should have known it would show up in our circle as we "check-in". Who have you told? How did they respond? How did YOU find out? What were you doing before the diagnosis? Has arriving at this place changed your life? How do you cope now? What new sexual expressions (intimacy) have you found?

Auntie Fi reminds me that the creative process begins with the "check-in", where we women listen and share our stories of survival, heartbreak, fury, fear and redemption. And yes, we do break our own hearts.

But how do we honor our bodies, ourselves, our children, as we struggle to get up off of our knees? Are we taking hits because we've been hit? Can we claim our scars?

If all this is a secret, why?