How Do I Tell This Story?

Four weeks ago I boarded a plane that (along with a rental car) would eventually lead me to Sedona, where I would join an intuitive painting retreat with my teacher, Connie Hozvicka of Dirty Footprint Studios.

Five days later I returned home a completely transformed woman.

I do not know how to tell you the story of the days in-between. I do not even know how to tell you how I have changed. All the beauty and healing I experienced happened in a space beyond words. I feel helpless as I sit here trying to describe it.

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How can I tell you how it felt to paint under the light of the deep blue Sedona sky?

Or how it was I found myself only after I lost myself on a trail?

Or how it felt to spread myself on the red rocks and let the bright desert sun clarify me from the inside out?

And how it felt to have my pain and fear and suffering burn and leave naught remaining but a cool, celadon crystal in a pile of ash?

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How can I tell you what it meant to meet my dear teacher and find her even more loving and wise than I imagined?

Or to connect with five other women so bravely willing to paint deep into their own hearts?

And to know that loving support and intuitive guidance was there in the circle, whenever I needed it?

How can I describe how in the midst of painting I felt my feet connect with the ground?  And how can I explain just how important that was to me?

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Or how it felt to breath in the clear desert air?  And then allow myself to exhale not just carbon dioxide, but the old stories that burdened my heart?

I feel so lost in trying to explain these things to you, which is deeply ironic because I think what I am most trying to say is that my trip to Sedona ultimately led me home where I found my truest self.