Coming Back

Grief is real. 

I moved back east from my beautiful mountain home out west at the end of 2021. It was time – Mom was dying – and – materialistically, the cost of living out west tripled in less than a year.

I have felt like a ghost in my own life since then.

I don’t know what happened to 2022. Thinking back now – broken heart. I had a broken heart. Accepting the west was no longer home. Not finding home in New York – though trying. Trying. Making music. Chanting about Divine Love. Getting the ball rolling for outside help for my mom. Trying to fit art making into the chaos.

2023 was putting art ideas into action. Slowly. Slowly. Fed up with transactional relationships. No. No. No. Heart turning to stone. So much tossing stones into the pond with nothing rippling back. Promise to my mom that I would be present with her whenever I was with her. No home. No home other than Now.

2024 So much searching for place. Where do I belong? It feels like I have to bleed to live. I made almost no art in 2024. Home base too slippery – no real home base to be. Heart Stone broken. Nothing to do but shake. Living among other people’s stuff. Living among dead people’s stuff. I took my late sister’s bed to the dump. Erasing traces of cigarette burns and smoke stains. I tended to my mother. I learned to love myself by just being. Mama died. I have nothing to offer but my voice – which turns out to be love.

Slowness doesn’t pay the bills, at least not now. Surrender.

Now I feel like a ghost in my own country, but my life is taking shape.

Flexibility and persistence. Slowing down has been the way through up until now.

Next action is yet to be revealed.

~ ~ ~

January 25th, 2025
Hudson Valley, 2025

image: maker © Holly Troy 2025

Process Video – from working January 23, 2025