I wrote this article for the local San Miguel newspaper. "Heartache to Joy" Five-Day Retreat Focuses on Honoring Loss and Grief" by Ri Anderson
When my father was diagnosed with a glioblastoma 20 years ago, I was stunned. Doctors did not use the word terminal cancer, but that was the reality. In one year, he underwent brain surgery and radiation. When the tumor could not be contained and he was ineligible for alternative therapies and additional surgeries, he began losing his physical mobility, then his speech, then his senses. He died in hospice as I slept on a visitor's cot just beside him.
I knew it was coming, I had a year to prepare, but when he left this earth I felt physically beaten. I had never experienced pain and grief of that magnitude.
When I learned of my father's diagnosis, I started on a new photography series. I was traveling in the southwestern US and fascinated by the haunting, expansive landscapes. Using a large format analog camera on a tripod and a self-timer, I would seek out the most desolate places I could find, then fit myself into the compositions posed as a dead girl in a black dress. At the time, I explained the series in art talk, but I was also dealing with my grief, giving myself a container to let it out, one structured photo shoot at a time.
In the years since my father died, my pain has lessened, but it is a part of me. Every year, about two weeks before his death anniversary, I am overcome by an insidious sadness. while these bouts have lessened in intensity over time, they are still present. There are moments of relief that he is not here, such as when 9/11 happened and he was spared the pain of that experience. More present are the bittersweet joys, where I feel his loss in my happiest celebrations: the birth and growth of my daughters, while working on art projects, in the midst of business ventures.
Over time, I was drawn to using the collage process as a venue for managing my conflicted feelings. When my daughters were young, I created art using the moment of birth as the main visual element. For me, it contained the basic contradiction of pleasure and pain--pleasure in the gift of life and pain in the first of many separations. As I experienced further joys and separation losses, I incorporated imagery of hair, fallen baby teeth, and fingernails into my work, and in so doing was able to work through the pain of complicated grief.
My most recent work uses elements of birds and nests to symbolize the changes in my life, including the breakup of the nuclear family, the loss of our family home, and the road to an empty nest. I feel fortunate to have followed my instinct, using collage work as a medium for managing the conflicting feelings that come with every loss, small and large. Art has given me the structure to explore these feelings, to go into the storm of emotions and through the process, come out the other side with a slice of serenity.
This five-day retreat from July 2-7 will address the complex journey that is grief, using a variety of tools.
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