Personal Journey

Glimpses of My Personal Journey

1976, at age twenty seven I lay paralyzed in a hospital in Uptown New Orleans....with two thoroughbred racehorses in training, a mother in a nearby hospital with cancer....an only brother, a quadriplegic, at home making it as best he could. Things for the "Golden Girl" were not looking up.

1959 childhood in Iowa....The enchanting and mysterious mist rises gently off the river as I awaken on the summer porch to the music of bird song. In the distance the horses neigh and I wonder if the deer are playing with them. Sans Souci Island surrounded by the Cedar River, a branch off the mighty Mississippi that flows through and gave New Orleans, the place of my birth, a reason to be. Rivers, the blood of this earth, our first Mother. "A River Runs Through My Heart." Ginny and her first race horse

It's my signature now on my art and the letters I scribble. Why? Who cares? I DO. I care about the rivers of the world. I care about The Mother that gives us all so much. The roots of our healing of mind, body, and spirit are in the Earth. "Heal ourselves, Heal the Earth."

"Ginny - The Golden Girl - and her first race horse"

8.000 feet high in the aspens, light dancing in the "quaking leaves". Here I sit at a computer trying to share with you a bit of my personal journey. Not because I think I have all the answers. No way. We all take our current best guesses educated by experience, intuition, divine providence, friends, loved ones - whatever has crossed our paths of late. The one thing I have learned, at least for myself, is that I must share and reach out to others. Maybe just a kind smile, a hug, "I understand, I've been there or close to it." Empathy, compassion, words the "Golden Girl" did not live with prior to 1976, and the onset of Multiple Sclerosis.

"High Colorado"

Never far from my mind and heart. El Rio Trocoman - "Condor huddled against the Wind" - in Mapuche native language. Ginny, in 1988, the new Mother, huddled against and with the winds of change. Deep, lasting change brought about with the visceral contact with the Earth. A newborn nursing at my breast, dependent on ME! No roads, no doctors, no grocery stores, no phone, a short wave radio that sometimes works....Oh, but a new husband I worshipped blindly...An adventure of a lifetime.
"A River Runs Through My Heart"

I must follow my passion...
To horse, to Mother Earth, to the rivers that flow freely I must....My body, will it follow my heart? It will try and possibly die trying and that is acceptable although not preferable. PREPARATION. Those are details that must be done and often weigh a person down to the point of inaction. It is easier to write about it than to do it. BUT, DO IT I MUST !!

So I begin yet another chapter in a life driven by passion...
From Island childhood dreams that led to race horses, log and stone mansions and cabins in Colorado....movies, art shows, black-tie affairs, carriages, and thoroughbreds race horses that raised millions of dollars for MS. Then a marriage to an adventurous, handsome, wealthy man giving me a precious child - the biggest and most life-changing dream of all.

The story is still unfolding...

As all of our stores will. We all have dreams. What is yours? Is it possible? Yes. I have lost count of the many times I have re-fit my dreams to my current circumstance. In truth, I've come to call MS, "Messenger of Spirit". After 26 years of coping with the loss of so many of my bodily functions, such as eyesight, speech, brain function, hands, feet, and legs, I have learned that after I change my ways, my attitude and my heart, a healing occurs.

"Change or Die" would become my motto.....
Everyone is different. I have what is now called relapsing-remitting MS. We still haven't figured out why some heal, go into remission, and others grow continually worse. For me, each attack has a metaphor in my life, such as, "I'm so mad, I can't see." "I literally blew my cool", "Stand up for yourself, Ginny". The list goes on and on. My health has led me. Today as I write, it is leading me back to the land and horses and a life that is more simple than here. How long will I stay in Patagonia? My body and spirit will tell me. I am dedicated to my child and will be available as long as she needs me. Physically, she is much more capable than I am, and cares for me lovingly. I can not afford the help I need here, or no one has appeared... I must change my living to be in a small, like-minded community - it is so alone here. I can not get it together in these moments, the timing is off, so I will have patience and wait for the opening in the "door" and then I will walk through, or who knows, wheel through ! Even if that is where I am headed, there must be some good, some opportunity for my heart from the perspective of a wheelchair. Vamos a ver.

Thank you for listening...
Writing is another way to work things out with yourself. When I started this web page, I was confused about whether or not to return to Argentina. Now I am ready, the confusion receding."It ain't been easy." Surely I will get better now. It is a test for my theories. We will see. I can only walk about two blocks with great difficulty. But I can RIDE my horses with "a little help from my friends...."

I will keep you readers posted via this website. Maybe I will get a digital camera, or, or, or, gee, the journey continues. Don't quit my friends. You, like a good thoroughbred race horse can "go the distance". The vehicle may vary in your travels, but keep on going and going and going. Smile, it helps.

After living 53 years, I have learned things about what keeps me going and well. Passion for life. Joy. Love. Living close to our great Mother...speaking through art and journaling for those who speak in a language other than our own that many do not hear. Do we listen? Sometimes. I am driven to communicate what I am feeling and hearing from those that do not speak our tongue. The plants, the rocks, the animals, the rivers and the hidden hearts of humans...The list is endless and my "job" description vast.

"Mother Earth Loves Her Children"

"Baby Beings"

"Sky with her father"

So often we that have made our living with art get trapped, focusing more on the final PRODUCT to be sold/or exhibited than the actual JOY of creating it.

Trapped and shut down for years, as my fears and insecurities ran wild stemming from the suicide of my father preceded by my older brother's car accident rendering him quadriplegic and my mother's subsequent nervous breakdown...Things only became worse - no soap opera would buy it as it was TOO much. I was 18, and at the university of my choice when the tragedies began. Actually, it all began at 9 years old, when my mother first broke down and left her family for nine months. We all have stories and I only recount mine to you as to say, I've been on the bottom before MS and after. I've never quit trying and readjusting and re-sighting. Always learning, sometimes intensely, sometimes simply to survive. Survival. Yes, for years to survive was the challenge and survival was only possible through the help of loved ones that literally rescued the "damsel in distress."

Sometimes the rescuers were men with ulterior motives that did not serve the "highest good". Say no more, save it for the soaps.

As usually is the case, for every bad, there was a good person and the good reigned supreme--- Thank you loved ones here and on the "other side." Now it is time to take a break from the creation of this website and link you to other resources - of which I will be continually adding on to. The process of writing these pages is an example of the insight gained regarding the decision to return to Patagonia with my child. Time is so precious. I must be careful not to smother her or trap her growth and spirit with my own needs.

Love. Always the ultimate answer.
As soon, we will be departing to Argentina, and I will be horse-bound, not house-bound, my email communications will be sporadic, as I must figure out the no phone trick. Never fear if you persevere.

Creativity Heals
Creativity is Love. Love is what binds the universe. The process of making "ART" is a link to the creative source of life. That source is our sustenance. Expressive Arts Therapy, as it is now called, is taking hold with individuals as well as many of our hospitals, with more therapists, medical doctors, and Nursing Homes. Why? Because it works. We get better faster and stay well longer, with a fuller and better quality of life.

Fire in the Soul...
Remember, my friends, I care about you and my heart and spirit will be with you on your journey...

We all have our ways of communicating with the spirits...fire is a way that has come to me since I began sleeping on and living so closely with this Mother Earth...so in touch. I feel as a "fire keeper"...

There are times our life force and inner fires are smothering and nearly extinguished. A little breath of air gently coaxes the flame back to life and our fires go on. Sometimes we bury the coals knowing that under the ashes is still life waiting to be re-kindled. It's a metaphor of life. I am a keeper of the fire and I will send my message out to you on the upward spiraling smoke of my daily fires.

It is my hope that these glimpses of my life serve as kindling or as a spark to keep the fire within you alive.

"Young Sky in Love at Buta Mallin"