Resurrection of Self: My Journey of Healing This Easter

Resurrection of Self: My Journey of Healing This Easter

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Easter arrives like a quiet whisper, not a shout - a gentle nudge from the universe. In its essence, it is about resurrection—about things that were lost finding their way back to life. The earth softens, the days stretch out, and the world, once bleak and gray, begins to bloom again. It’s a time of rebirth, of reclaiming forgotten things. It’s a promise that even after the longest winters, life finds a way to return.

And so, I find myself in a season of my own resurrection.

It wasn’t always this way. For too long, I wandered in the shadows, weighed down by a past I couldn’t escape, buried under the weight of an existence I was never meant to live. I had become so used to the darkness that I didn’t know how to see the light. But now, like the first crocus breaking through the frozen soil, I can feel myself waking. Slowly, surely, like a seed finally pushing its way to the surface.

This Easter, I’m not just celebrating the return of spring. I’m celebrating my return to myself.

The Struggle Before the Spring

For a long time, I wore my life like a coat that never quite fit. It was heavy, too tight in places, and I was never comfortable in it. The parts of myself that once felt alive—my art, my words, my dreams—had become brittle, like dry leaves underfoot. They were still there, but they didn’t flutter in the wind like they once had. They didn’t sing. They only crumbled, little by little.

And so I blamed it on the world around me. I thought it was the pandemic—how could anyone survive that strange, cold, disconnected world that we were suddenly thrust into? I thought it was stress. I thought it was everything but the truth, because the truth was something I wasn’t ready to face.

The truth was I had been living with an abuser. Not the kind you read about in headlines, not the loud, obvious kind. No, this one was quieter. More insidious. His control was subtle - so much so that I didn’t realize it was happening. His manipulation crept in like shadows, slowly, until I could no longer see the sunlight. I blamed the world for my sleepless nights, for my anxiety, for the deep, gnawing feeling that something wasn’t right. I blamed everything but him.

And like any good lie, the truth caught up with me.

The Moment of Clarity and the Breaking Point

There wasn’t a single moment of loud revelation, no dramatic confrontation. Instead, it was as though the fog began to lift, bit by bit. One morning I woke up, not in the usual fog of confusion, but with a sharpness, a clarity. I understood. The person who I thought was my partner, my companion, was nothing more than a thief - a thief of my peace, my joy, and most tragically, my sense of self.

Leaving wasn’t a grand, heroic escape. It was more like shedding an old skin - uncomfortable and painful, but necessary. It wasn’t just about walking away from a toxic person. It was about walking away from the false story I had been living, one where I told myself that I wasn’t worthy of peace, that I wasn’t worthy of joy.

The death of that old self was quiet. It wasn’t dramatic. But there was grief, like the grief of an old house that no longer serves its purpose, its doors closed and windows dark. And in that quiet grief, I began to realize how much of me had been buried, how much I had allowed to die. I had forgotten how to live.

The Resurrection Process

When I left, I thought I would be free. I thought it would be like flipping a switch, like waking from a bad dream. But freedom is not a single event. It’s a process. It’s not one big resurrection - it’s a thousand small ones. It’s waking up in the morning and feeling the sunlight on your face again, feeling the air fill your lungs as if you’ve forgotten how to breathe.

And so, slowly, the healing began.

The anxiety, which once had its claws in me, started to loosen its grip. I began sleeping again. I began feeling, for the first time in years, like I had room to breathe. I started to look at the world and wonder if it could be beautiful again. And with that beauty came a return to the things I loved. The things I had buried.

I returned to my art, but not in the way I expected. I didn’t just create dark fairy tale collages for the walls. No, I started creating things people could carry with them. I began making handbags - bizarre, whimsical, surreal handbags - each one like a little piece of art you could take with you. Some in cotton, some in denim, some with poems sewn right into them. They weren’t just accessories. They were expressions of my soul, and I realized that people didn’t just need to fill empty spaces on their walls. People needed to carry things. They needed bags. But why couldn’t those bags be full of stories, too?

The bags became a metaphor, a way to carry something new: a chance to reconnect with myself, a symbol of strength and resilience, an expression of my own resurrection.

The New Beginning

I am still in the process of becoming. I know that. Healing is never a straight line. There are days when the shadows creep back in, when the doubts return, when the weight of the past feels heavier than I’d like to admit. But there are more days now when I wake up with a spark of excitement. More days when I walk into my studio and create something that makes me feel like I’m alive. There are more days when I smile for no reason, when I feel the warmth of the sun on my face and know that I have earned it.

Improv, too, has become a space for me to reclaim parts of myself I had long forgotten. On stage, I am not just performing. I am speaking parts of myself that have been silenced for far too long. It is terrifying and exhilarating, and it reminds me that I can show up in the world, exactly as I am. Unscripted. Unedited. Real.

And my YouTube channel, Tongue of the Serpent, has become another outlet for my creativity, a space where I can weave the stories of my heart and explore the world in ways I never could before. This week, we’re exploring the origins of the "cursed objects" that wander into the shop of Lucien Devereux, one of the central characters in my work, and it’s a reminder that every story, every person, has a beginning, a middle, and an end—and sometimes, the end is just the beginning of something else.

A Quiet Reflection on Resurrection

This Easter, as the world begins to bloom and the earth finds its way back to life, I too find myself blooming, albeit slowly. Like the first flowers of spring, my own transformation is soft, quiet, but unmistakable. It’s a gentle resurrection, and I am learning to embrace it, piece by piece.

There is still much to be done. The journey is long. But Easter is a reminder of what can happen when the darkness lifts, when we allow ourselves to come back to life, even after we’ve been broken. It is a reminder that even in our quietest moments, in our grief, in our pain, there is the possibility of rebirth.

And perhaps that’s what resurrection is all about. It’s not a sudden moment of clarity. It’s not a grand event. It’s a series of small moments where you wake up to who you are, to what you’ve become, to what you’re capable of. It’s the quiet realization that even after the darkest of winters, spring is waiting. And so are you.

Happy Easter, my friends. May you find your own resurrection, your own spring, your own moment of quiet blooming.