Little by little... bit by bit...

I used to have a fear of abandonment

Until every person I ever deeply loved

Abandoned me - including myself.

As a small child

I would have this recurring dream

I'd be chasing my mother through a very large crowd

Running after her with all the strength I had in my tiny body

Sobbing and arms stretched out reaching for her

She always evaded my grasp.

This nightmare mirrored our relationship

I never truly felt like she was mine

Nor did I feel like I belonged to her

She was the only parent I had and yet

She failed to parent me in the ways I really needed

She abandoned me when she was alive

and again when her spirit left her body

She left me to fend for myself and survive

The grief of losing her was so unbearable I stopped creating art.

I stopped dancing.

and as a former dance major, I used to dance everyday!

But I put to bed that version of myself and closed the door behind me.

10 years later

I met someone, fell in love, and married them two years later.

For almost 11 years our lives became very intertwined

In this marriage I came to understand that I was in fact lovable

and capable of deeply loving a partner.

However, little by little... bit by bit...

I began to give up on my dreams to help them build theirs

We took codependency to new heights

In fact - we were so close that people would often call us by the others name

Time and time again, I chose their needs over mind and chipped away at my sense of self.

Then in 2023 they broke my heart

They crushed it.

But sadly the most painful part was how hey treated me afterwards

I couldn't believe I could so easily be discarded

At some point just after the breakup I asked myself

"Sabine - How many times did you choose to abandon yourself?"

I realized that I became so grossly immeshed with this person

That my identity, my dream, my goals, my life revolved around them.

I had completely lost myself.

So... over the past 2 years I have had to apologize to myself

I had to reconnect with my spirit.

I had to show her (me) that I know I fucked up but I learned the difficult lessons.

I did this apologizing by creating art.

Sculpture, photographs, collage, scanographs, writing...

I used art as the medium to make amends with myself

and to process all I had been through.

I was healing in ways I had never imagined.

And little by little... bit by bit...

I begin feeling like myself again.