Did you know that white light is actually a combination of every color on the spectrum? It has every shade of the rainbow. 

This might sound strange and unrelatable, but when I think back to certain periods of my life, my brain automatically assigns it a color. I’m assuming it chooses one that compliments the overall mood of the time.. Does anyone else do that? For example, 2022- green. And not just any green! Like a hunter, olive green. 2018? Coral. The last year or two coincidentally have been white. Feels appropriate since it seems I’ve gotten a taste of almost every emotion during that time.

It took me quite a while, but I let go of familiar chaos. I abandoned abuse. I was grateful to let the foundations I had crumble to dust. Terrifying, but necessary. I only knew how to run so I started the road back to myself at a sprint. The only person who held a roadmap was me and God knew I couldn’t trust her, so I took off with no path, no walls. At least this chaos was new. I was impatient to get to the end of ‘healing’ so I could rest and feel in love with life again. But how can I know when I’ve arrived if I don’t even know where I am?

You can’t run forever, but you can try! Eventually, I collapsed. I didn’t take up much room on the ground, I was the smallest version of myself I’d ever been. Emotionless. Colorless. A lifetime of disassociation hitting me at once. I let myself breathe, that was all. For the first time in my life, no one was telling me how to feel. I was skeptical.. Was I safe to explore what that meant? To decide who and what hurt me? To choose who I was? I paused, I sat, I stayed quiet. Putting myself back together like a puzzle. At first, my efforts were concentrated on getting back to who I was before realizing it was impossible. She didn’t exist! I was learning so much- where would all of this knowledge go? There wasn’t room in the old haley. I had to silently grieve the pieces that didn’t fit and find out how I fit in the world without them. What was reality now? Who do I lean on? All I had left was myself, but I barely knew her. I was in a relationship with a stranger, observing myself react in new ways. A disorienting blessing. A state of observation and absorption. I was a total social experiment, but I had never felt so alive!

White light is also what we see when we look at the sun. Every shade of color, every emotion was and is illuminating my life with more life. With more feeling. With more understanding. I’m starting to register that the road to yourself has no ending- there’s always a deeper layer with new colors. I’m trying to make my running more intentional, and more balanced with my pause. Silence is like white light to the heart. It contains everything! I’m writing down my thoughts here, not to be heard, but to listen. A paradox. 

Somewhere between a need for distraction and connection, I was learning about the world, too. Topics such as: identity, conclusions, black & white thinking, duality vs. non-duality, energy’s relationship to us, cymatics, yoga, and most importantly, ART. Finally I was finding things to help align my heart, mind and body! It kept me mentally and emotionally moving during my crawling stages. This internal movement was a source of strength for me and frankly, still is. I so appreciate the people that share their raw experiences online. There are people that do it much better than I ever could (Vulnerability is Cool is a great example of that), so I will leave that to them and instead take a slightly different approach. Yes, this is personal, but my brand’s always been! We can’t fully grasp what another feels, but we do share roots. I hope this is a place of growing minds and experimental art, not only a portfolio. Welcome to my heart projecting outward!