The City of the Eternal Spring

Art by Leti C Stiles

Every now and then we engage in deep self inquiry.  We ask,  who am I, where did I come from and where I am going?  This intense period of recapitulation brought me into the spiral of the past to discover and reclaim the destiny that lied dormant in my unconscious.  My mother's passing and my husband's health challenges brought me to an inner crisis at a deep psychological level.  I began to explore the labyrinth of my childhood memories.  Looking back help me  see the past as a tapestry that I had woven through my life's experience, challenges and successes.  I saw myself through a difference lens and from a  new vantage point in my time line.  As years, and decades had gone by, they have left their mark.  Like ghost footsteps that can't be seen by the naked eye. 

Where did I come from?  In asking this question, I was seeking to understand the new direction my life was taking.  Shy from turning 60's, my identity was changing fast, especially after my mother's death and going home for her funeral.  I was standing on the threshold of something mysterious and unknown. 

I am from *The City of the Eternal Spring, a city in which flowers bloomed all year round, filled with gardens and easy living.  As I remembered the life before immigrating to the US at the tender age of 7, everything changed.  My childhood was filled with the joy and the wonder of a child.  There were splashes of color and scents in my memory, the flowers lingered in the recess of my subconscious mind.  My mother was very social and I attended many garden parties and gatherings with her, as I was the youngest, so I went everywhere with her.   Then my world was shattered when we immigrate to join my father in California.  Life changed forever,  like a young plant I was uprooted.  The trauma began of never fitting in and being an outsider.  The memories of the City of the Eternal Spring faded as I struggled to adjust. 

As my young self adjusted to living in the City of the Angels,  my innocence had  died like a flower out of water.  I had to face the cruelty of being an immigrant and the prejudice and racism I encountered daily.  Ill prepared for the harshness of the world, I  turned to poetry without knowing it would be my saving grace.   I would sit on a short cinder block wall outside my house for hours and read Pablo Neruda and other Latin poets.  Other times I would day dream laying on the grass watching the clouds and wishing to be elsewhere.  I  began to write poetry as my personal journal to makes sense of my teenage angst and how different I was from my own family and classmates.  My family was not able to understand me, as I was definitely different and was rapidly becoming acculturated.   It is a divide that split me and created an inner conflict that would take many years to integrate to become whole.  

It was not until my mid-twenties that I discovered that I was creative and this hunger for self expression  emerged when I participated in a weekend mask making workshop.  I was reborn in an explosion of color.  I had discover an unknown aspect of my soul self.  I dove deeply into a two year intense program to become an expressive art therapist.  I quit my corporate job to follow my heart in pure faith and courage.  These were such important years of incubation and growth. It was a time of great transformation.  This program was an adventure of a lifetime into all the arts, spirituality, ritual, ceremony, dreams, goddess lore, and transpersonal psychology.  I finally was able to bloom and soak up many experiences, I devoured books on everything spiritual and creative.  This period brought me so many answers and deep healing.  I learned to honor my creations as sacred aspects of my process and divine expression.  It took me another 10 years before I claimed and utter the words "I  am an artist".   During my training, I began meaningful work in the non-profit world working in domestic violence, drug and alcohol and sexual abuse trauma as a case manager and counselor.   A  training ground that  would prepared me for my future vocation.

Creating and painting became my meditation and refuge as I raised a son, went through relationship and career roller coaster rides.   I became a self-taught artist,  I barely had a time to take classes, but in stolen moments of busy schedules and family obligations, I found time to paint, and to get to know my muse.  I studied with various local artist in their studios instead of a formal class room .  I grew as an artist by experimenting with many mediums because, I needed room to explore and try everything without boundaries or rules.  Eventually in my 50s  I stumbled upon a teacher that would nurtured my soul.  She was a  master silk painter that painted these amazing and vibrant larger than life flowers on silk.  I was hooked when I attended an intensive workshop in her home studio.  I began my painting adventure on silk and of course I painted,  flowers, flowers, flowers.  My unconscious memories flooded into my art work.  My home became filled with large paintings of flowers and nature.  My Art unconsciously brought me home to live once again in  The City of the Eternal Spring within my imagination and spiritual practice, Art.   

Today,  I teach and share with others the gift and miracle of creativity and self expression.  I am a wild and free creative spirit with roots in my creativity.  My spirit inhabits all I create out of love, remembrance and healing.  Art brought me all the way back into wholeness so I could embrace the brilliance of my souls expression.  I had to journey back in time to uncover my destiny and integrate fragments of my soul self left behind in the void of a childhood cut short. 

* Cuernavaca, Morelos Mexico = also known as, The City of The Eternal Spring