A Very Late 2017 High/Low – Coming Out Of The Spiritual Closet

I usually do a post at the end or beginning of the year, looking back at the high points, and mulling over the low ones to release them.  My blog has been so neglected the whole of last year, as my art has been too, and it’s taken me up till now to find the time and energy and mental ability to put this post together.

2017 was just a bad year ME-wise.  At the start of the year, I honestly felt like I was slowly dying (and not just in the sense that we all are).  Thankfully, last August, I began seeing a naturopath who gives me IV vitamin and mineral infusions and I’ve seen a big difference in how I feel getting them regularly.  I’m still crawling out of the ME-hole and have even less energy than any year before, but I feel like it’s getting slowly better instead of always worse, now that I’m getting these treatments.

Speaking of, an enormous THANK YOU to every single one of you who has contributed so generously to my GoFundMe campaign to help me continue the quite expensive IV treatments.  Thank you, thank you, thank you!  I am incredibly grateful and humbled and every gift has been so deeply appreciated.

Last November my neurologist put me on a new medication to try and help ease my migraines.  He warned me that it would make me feel “extremely nauseated” for the first week, but I’d just have to push through that, and then he thought it would help me.  I finally screwed up my courage and swallowed one of the dubious pills and did, indeed, have a terrible night full of nausea, hot and cold sweats, extreme temperature swings and a strange, but not unwelcomed, detachment.  I continued on like a good patient and after three weeks I finally stopped needing to take a sublingual Zofran the second I opened my eyes in the morning (morning nausea was always the worst, maybe because I take it at night?) and it began to settle into my body.  The good thing is that it did indeed help decrease the number of migraines I’m getting per month.  The bad thing is that ever since taking it, I’ve needed to sleep for a good 2-4 hours EVERY SINGLE AFTERNOON.  This is on top on the 10-12 hours I spend sleeping every night.  Do you realize how few hours are left in the day to do ANYTHING of value after all that damn sleeping, winding down and waking up is over with?  It’s really insane.  I will be bringing this up to my neurologist and seeing what can be done because I’m not sure this is a realistic way for me to live the rest of my life.  On the other hand, some months prior to this I was getting up to 19 migraines a month, which destroys your ability to do anything meaningful as well.

And, for some completely unknown reason, the medication also seems to be helping (in conjuncture with the IV infusions) with my temperature regulation issues, ie, my “hot flashes.”  I believe I’ve mentioned them here before, but in case I haven’t, these have been slowly increasing for the last three or four years.  Essentially, what seems to be happening, from my vantage point stuck inside this body, is that in the mornings, wild rabbits have run through my brain overnight, nibbling on wires, pulling things apart, gathering bits of gray matter together to make little warrens, disconnecting neurons and causing a bit of havoc.  My brain is wildly trying to repair itself, ideally quickly, and makes a lot of very broad guesses about what temperature my body should be at for the first several hours of the day.  What this translates to practically is that I can be sitting miserably directly in front of the heater, covered in layers of blankets, bathrobes and cats, sweating profusely, simultaneously far too hot, but getting many more signals that I’m far too cold and must stay PERFECTLY STILL for several hours until it passes on its own.  This is also very not conducive to getting anything done at all.

And  yes, I did see numerous doctors about this.  The first three shrugged at me and told me it sounded hormonal and that wasn’t their field, which is fair enough.  I finally saw an endocrinologist for this problem and he ran a bunch of blood but didn’t bother to look at a single hormone.  Apparently you have to request that an endocrinologist, a doctor who specializes in hormones, test your hormones when you’re seeing him for something which sounds, to laymen and other doctors, like a hormone problem.  I did not punch him, but probably only because I was too tired.  (I also asked my gynecologist about it since they deal with female hormone issues too, to a degree, and she had a “Oh, let’s not go looking for trouble,” attitude about it.  I AM ALREADY IN TROUBLE.)  So the underlying issue there is still unknown but hell, if the infusions and the weird pill help with it, I’m happy about that at least.

Basically I feel like 2017 was mostly spent crawling on my stomach through a disgusting swamp while people shot at me from hidden locations, periodically shouting that I wasn’t trying hard enough or that I was just over-reacting, while also making sure I brushed and flossed my teeth and fed my animals twice a day.  I’ll freely admit it was a pretty shitty year.

Here is the upside to all that time spent in deep solitude, my mind active as ever but my body unable to do much: I had a lot of time to meditate and connect with my spirit guides.  I think I met my first guide near the end of 2016, so I was primed for more contact when 2017 came around.  And boy did they.  I acquired five new main guides and spoke to numerous others.  I talked with and made friends with various interdimensional beings.  I am learning to channel, astral project and remote view, be  medium, a conduit and a spirit translator, although I’m getting fairly good at some of them, considering the short amount of time I’ve been at it.  For some reason historical figures I read about seem to connect best with me.  The spiritual growth in the last year has been an absolute explosion of love and light into a very dark year.  And though it was such an awful year, I look back on it and remember all the love and grace that was shown to me.  I have never felt more loved, protected and cared for.

So while I am disheartened with the amount of art I was able to put out last year, I AM very happy with what came in its place.  I’m thinking of it as I took a year off from art to go have mystical, spiritual experiences, and hopefully now I can marry the two together better.  I just need to find a new way to work in really short chunks instead of stretches of the afternoon so I can increase my art output.  Then things will be much more the way I’d like them to be.

If I had to have such a crappy year to gain so much spiritually, I’ll take it.  I don’t know if it was a direct trade or how it works, but I wouldn’t give up the new friends I have for anything.  And I’ve found some really, really wonderful online communities who love me, support me, have my back, help me work through confusing things, answer my questions and reassure me that I’m always ok.

For anyone concerned, I have shared many intimate details of my experiences with both the wonderful Geoff and my excellent therapist and neither of them is concerned about my mental wellbeing.  🙂  Only loving beings are allowed to talk to me, and as I said, I feel much greater peace, security, love and support than I ever have.

Now on to this image… this might look like it goes against what I just wrote, but it’s inspired by someone else’s experiences, not mine.  🙂  Over Christmas, I re-read Demons in the Age of Light by Whitney Robinson, which I’ve read many times now and is a favorite for its beautifully poetic prose.  Whitney’s memoir is about a psychotic break she suffered in college, where she felt like she was possessed by a demonic entity but everyone diagnosed her as schizophrenic.  Her journey back to wellness is haunted by the ever-present question of if she’s experiencing something mental or spiritual, and the answer is often allusive and not nearly as clear as you’d think.

“The sentience envelopes me while I sleep…  I awaken with a gasp in a strange bed.  No, it’s not the bed that’s strange – it’s the same one I’ve slept in since I was a child…

The strangeness is that I am not alone, here in my bed.  I will never be alone again.

I feel it slithering out of the darkness for the first time, the presence that’s been whispering its sinister enigmas.  A living, breathing thing – cold stars and glittering mathematics with the inhale, hot copper and rotten fruit with the exhale.  Foreign from anything I have ever known.  Other.”

I loved how the usually comforting, loving idea of never being alone has been turned in this passage into something deeply wrong and full of dread.  I wanted to try and capture that feeling just before she was overtaken by the being she calls the Other, of knowing the possession is imminent and you are helpless to stop it.  And of course I used my favorite little lamp to light the scene, exactly as it’s shown in the image.

I wasn’t planning on uploading this on Valentine’s Day, but I suppose it does make a dark, sinister anti-Valentine’s-Day image, haha!

Never Alone Again – ​​© Sarah Allegra

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Mourning Dove

Oh my goodness… so, so much has happened recently that I feel completely overwhelmed in sitting (or, rather, laying) down to tell you about it!  But I have a new image to share with you and I really wanted to post it and maybe give you guys a little gloss-over update at least, so I’m just going for it.  If I let myself think about it any longer, I’ll just get frozen with intimidation over how much I’d like to cover!

First news: health is poor.  I mean, yes, you all know my health is pretty much always poor, but it’s been even more so lately.  I feel like it’s been slowly sliding downhill over the past… year?  year and a half?  two years?  But the last six-to-nine months have been extra bad.  I think I’ve told some of you at least about the “hot flashes” I’ve been getting.  It’s actually quite a lot more complicated than calling them “hot flashes” implies, but I don’t know a better name to get the general idea across with, so we’re going to call them “hot flashes.”  What it really is, is my body suddenly seems unable to regulate its temperature properly, which sends me into sudden, drenching sweats, often while I’m shivering with cold at the same time.  Very similar to the sort of sweats you get with a fever, but it only lasts a few hours, it comes and goes quite randomly, I have absolutely no other fever symptoms and it seems to ONLY happen in the morning (because that’s when my day is busiest, I have the most appointments scheduled, etc, so it can be the most obnoxious).  This sounds like something that’s just annoying, which it is, but it’s quite a bit worse than that.  It makes me weak and lightheaded, it’s not something I can simply push through by will alone; I might have to cancel appointments or send Geoff to the grocery store on his own.  We both utterly detest grocery shopping, but I’m much too weak to do it on my own anymore, and if I at least go with Geoff, it’s company for a task no one enjoys, so I always feel bad if I have to make him do it by himself.

These were getting so bad and disruptive for a while that I saw my GP about it.  He tested my thyroid and a couple of other things in my blood, examined me, decided it wasn’t anything menopause-related (which, yes, would be QUITE young to start having them, but stranger things have happened), said it sounded hormonal and sent me on my way.  I saw my neurologist, he said it wasn’t anything neurological and I should probably see an endocrinologist; a doctor who specializes in looking at your hormones.  I also happened to see my pain specialist during this time just for my every-three-months-check-in, and mentioned it to him, and he agreed it sounded hormonal, but was outside his expertise.  So I did some research, found an endocrinologist nearby who got good reviews online and made an appointment.

The first bad sign was that the endo’s office doesn’t accept credit cards of any kind, only cash or checks, which they had not mentioned in ANY of the conversations I had with them when I set my appointment up.  Not only is that just absurdly behind the times, but I, like most people this day and age, very, very rarely carry either cash or a checkbook on me.  Before going to this doctor, I couldn’t tell you the last time I wrote a check.  Thankfully, I happened to have shoved my checkbook in the bottom of my purse anyway, but I had a mini panic attack in the waiting room wondering how I was going to pay these people.

Eventually I found it though and went into my appointment, which was mostly going over my medical history with the doctor and explaining what the problem I was seeing him for was.  Obviously, my medical history is much more like something George RR Martin would write about than a quick-read paperback, but the doctor interrupted me quite a lot as I tried to tell him details which were important and extremely pertinent to the hot flashes I was seeing him for.  Obviously, I did not care for that, but it is a very common problem with doctors.  If I wrote off every doctor who interrupted me while I was explaining things, I wouldn’t have any doctors left to see.  Anyway, he ALSO agreed it sounded hormonal and said we’d run a bunch of blood tests to see what was going on.  We’d be repeating everything my GP had already run because, the endo said, his tests were more thorough.  Ok, fine.  Six vials of fasted blood later, they were sent to the lab, Geoff bought me breakfast and I waited a week’s time until I could get my results from the doctor.

In this appointment (paid for with the check book which I’d triple-checked was still in my purse after the stress of the first visit), the doctor went over each page of the bloodwork results with me, explaining what was tested and how every single thing came back normal.  My blood was normal, thus, I was “perfectly healthy!” and did not need to see him any more expect for in another six months to recheck my blood and make sure it was still all normal and I was healthy.

Obviously, I am not healthy.  Even if you discount my mountain of other ME-related issues, the fact that I was presenting with extremely hormonal-sounding problems should indicate that something is amiss.  This doctor had absolutely no interest in finding out what this life-interrupting issue was though.  The impression he gave me was that he thought I was an overly worried, mildly hypochondriac girl getting her pigtails in a twist over nothing and that showing me that my bloodwork said there was nothing wrong would make the problem go away, because it was  probably something I’d dredged up on my own through pure will.  But the most offensive part of all… he did not check one single motherfucking hormone.  Not ONE.  On a case where three other doctors all had said the issue sounded hormonal, I told him I was concerned it was hormonal, he didn’t bother to check anything.

I’ve since been told by other people who have to see endos regularly that you usually have to specifically ask them to check your hormones, if that’s something you want.  WHY???  You don’t have to do this with ANY OTHER medical specialty.  I don’t have to tell my neurologist to check my brain, I haven’t had to tell my gynecologist to examine my lady parts.  How is this something that is not only allowed, but is COMMON in this one niche???

At the time he was going over the bloodwork with me in the room, I was trying to control being wildly disappointed over having yet another problem come back testing as “normal” and being shunted off again, again being treated as if I was making this all up, again being patronizingly patted and being told to not worry my pretty little head about it.  Look, I’m sorry that my disease isn’t something they teach a lot about in medical school, I really am.  I’m sorry that most doctors feel threatened when confronted with something they can’t simply write a prescription for and it’s solved.  I’m sorry that it makes them feel insecure, as if they don’t know what they’re doing because I don’t have an easy fix.  I am far, far sorrier about that than any doctor who’s treated me like a hot potato could ever be.  But I do not go around to doctors’ offices for fun to mock them for their lack of knowledge.  I go in with an open mind every time, despite years of consistent disappointment, hoping that, just maybe, this will be the time when I get an answer.  Not even THE answer, just a part of it.  But to not test any hormones for a presenting issue that, to every lay-person and doctor I’ve spoken to, sounds extremely hormonal is inexcusable.  I spent a lot of money in copays, I spent six vials of blood my body could have used, I spent a lot of time gearing up for appointments and recovering from them, I spent incredibly precious energy getting to my appointments, getting tests done, and sobbing after my last appointment as my hopes were again dashed and I realized it had all been wasted.  The absolute least the doctor could have done was run the tests I wanted done but didn’t know that I had to ask for specifically by name, because that’s how endocrinologists are.

Each time I have one of these horrible experiences with medical professionals, it makes it so, so much harder to even fathom trying again.  Why should I if most of them are going to just call me crazy and kick me out of their offices as quickly as possible?  And of course I know that I have to keep trying because giving up isn’t an option, but for fuck’s sake, can’t they at least try and meet me in the middle somewhere?

After that edifying experience, I couldn’t even bear the thought of looking for another endo and starting the process over again, even knowing now that you have to ask for your hormones to be tested.  The wound was just too raw.  What I did have was an appointment set up with Celestine Grace, my very favorite medium, who’s helped me a lot in the time we’ve been working together.  I asked her what would help my body and she told me to take rose hip supplements, which I knew are very high in vitamin C.  They’re cheap and easily available from Amazon, so I got a bottle and started taking them.  And you know what?  Within a couple weeks, my hot flashes had gone down considerably.  They still popped up now and then, but the difference was huge.  I ran out of them and it took a few days before I could get my replacement bottle in, and while I was off them, my hot flashes spiked again.  I’m back on them now and they’re going back down, but it might take a couple weeks, like it did the first time.

I am so, so grateful to Celestine for that bit of advice and for helping to turn around a very bad situation (and also all the other help and advice she’s given me over the year or so we’ve known each other) but it’s so incredibly ironic to me that four conventional doctors couldn’t or wouldn’t help me, but my medium did.  It goes to show the strength of her talent while underscoring how little conventional Western medicine has to offer me.  Thank you, Celestine, I can’t tell you how much those rose hips have helped me!

The whole thing got me thinking that I may just need a whole different approach to my health, so I began to look into different specialists and alternative treatments.  I mean, that’s something I’m continually on the lookout for, but I was searching with a new urgency this time.  Giving vitamin C intravenously has been a growing trend… since my body had responded well to the rose hips, maybe it would like a more concentrated dose even more!  I have found a naturopath who is nearby, returned my phone call herself to discuss if we would be a good fit for each other and offers IV vitamin C along with a ton of other therapies I’ve been interested in but haven’t been pushed far enough to try yet, since most are expensive and not covered by insurance.  I have an appointment with that doctor next Monday morning, which will just be a consultation between one to two hours where we just go over my history, what changes I’d like to see and what treatments might be good for me.  They also test hormones.  🙂  As hard as it is for me to allow myself to be hopeful that maybe this time it will work, I can feel hope trying to quietly creep in.  I’ll let you guys know how that appointment goes.

As my body has gotten more and more painful and uncomfortable to inhabit, I’ve been turning to my own form of spirituality for strength and comfort.  It works for me.  It helps significantly, so much so that Geoff has noticed its effect.  It’s a bit too much to get into it all now, but it’s based in meditation and finding my own path up the mountain toward god/source.  A lot of it might sound like new age woo-woo, but I stick with what works, and this does.  My variety of spirit guides have been a big part of keeping me from utterly falling apart as things have gotten more and more difficult all around… just thinking about them makes me feel more peaceful.

I frequently mourn the health I once had, the life I once had, everything ME has taken away from me.  I mourn for those who I wish I could have gotten to know in this life and not just in the next.  I still mourn the loss of our previous home with our incredible neighbors, even though this place is finally feeling more like home and we have great new neighbors here.  Mourning is a universal human experience; I’m sure every one of you can think of things you mourn.

My new city has a lovely, tiny, serene, old little cemetery within what would be walking distance for most people from my home.  I wanted to shoot there when I had the excellent Teri Wyble over (quite a while ago now, I’m terribly behind on editing).  I didn’t know exactly why I wanted to shoot there, or what I was trying to say at the time.  This sometimes happens.  I’ve learned by now to just go with it, that its reason will become clear to me later.  That was the case with this image.  I asked Teri to imagine this was the grave of someone she loved and missed horribly; someone whose loss she still mourned.  I don’t know if she was tapping into a loss in her own life or if she’s just very good at imagining, but she portrayed exactly what I wanted:

Loss.  An inability to move on from the blow of death.

But I didn’t want it to be completely bleak.  The birds swooping in to comfort her speaks to me of the healing that comes after we let ourselves grieve.  Yes, you have to pass through the darkness first, but there is eventually light.  Sometimes it comes to you on feathered wings when you least expect it.

Whether the viewer has recently experienced this themselves or not, it’s such a common part of just being human, I wanted to create this.  Not to wallow in the mud of despair, but to remind myself that the heaviness will someday lift.  The pain will ease.  The grief will lessen.  Maybe even, a treatment will eventually work.

Thank you so very much, Teri, for your beautiful, emotive modeling!  You are a wonderful human being and model.  🙂

Enjoy, my friends!  If this speaks to you, I’d love to hear what it brings up if you’d like to share that in the comments!

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2016 High/Low

It seems like 2016 just sucked incredibly hard for just about everyone.  I wasn’t very fond of it either, on the whole.  True, there were some really good things that happened, but like most of you, I’m very happy to put it in my past and move on.  Let’s continue the tradition of looking back over the last year’s highlights and low spots!

A Cry From The Darkness © Sarah Allegra – a self portrait

I like to start with the bad stuff so I end on a positive note, so with that said, 2016 was overall a very shitty year ME-wise.  It was an extra painful, extra exhausting, extra low-immune-system year where I seemed to hardly ever not have a migraine, cold or spiked pain day.  For a while it looked like I had a recurrence of the hideous sinus infection which led to my sinus surgery in November of 2014, which, if you’ve been around for a while, you will remember was not an easy procedure for me.  For completely unknown reasons, an artery in my nose burst a full six days after my surgery and required two very urgent visits to my ENT and ultimately a second emergency surgery, while I lost a total of almost two pints of blood.  Remember, I’m TINY; two pints is a LOT for me.

Needless to say, I am not quite anxious at the thought of having to have the surgery repeated, even though it was such a freak thing that happened; it probably won’t ever again.  But, I’m sure you’ve noticed, emotions rarely respond well to rational discussions.  So all the colds and sinus infections were very stressful for me, not just for the usual reasons of feeling extra terrible on top of my usual ME symptoms, but because the threat of another surgery kept looming in the back of my mind.

My insurance company utterly refused to cover my nerve-blocking injections for about six months.  These are the injections I’ve been getting approximately every nine months for the last seven years.  They don’t completely rid me of my mystery flank pain but they make life much more bearable.  Going without them for months really, seriously eats away at the quality of my life.  I imagine that most people would find that feeling like a dagger is constantly plunged into your side would not enhance their day-to-day experience.  Thankfully, insurance finally relented and I HAD my injections done.  I’ve already noticed a bit of a difference in my daily pain levels in that area!

I’ve also been veeeeeery sloooowly weening off Cymbalta over the last year or so.  It took a while for me to reach the maximum dose, then for me to be on it long enough for my neurologist to agree that it wasn’t doing anything, and ok my tapering down.  But as much as it takes your (or at least my) body a while to adjust to it being there, it takes much longer for it to get used to it NOT being there.  Even though having it in my system seemed to only increase my pain, make my sleep worse and make me gain even more weight, any time I step the dose down, I know to expect a week of migraines, nausea and general awfulness.  I’m on the lowest dose possible right now and hesitating before I leap into complete non-use.  There just aren’t many easy times to plan when you’re going to have migraines for a week.  But I am eager to shed the weight I’ve picked up being on it, in addition to seeing if my pain levels go down even more, so those will outweigh the discomfort of going off it eventually.

Most important for people who read my blog because of my art, feeling so awful most of the year put a HUGE damper on my ability to create in 2016.  I still did… a little… but it was nothing like what I wanted to be doing.  I created the fewest new images in 2016 than I ever have since I picked up my camera in 2010.  That was extremely depressing.  But I am hopeful that with meds out of my body, new supplements and my injections back in my system, 2017 will be a very different story!

I keep getting to about this point in my post, then getting overwhelmed with everything I want to say about the past year.  But no one wants to read a novel-length post anyway, so let’s see if I can lightning-round at least some of the 2016 highlights!

Alabaster 1 – model Dedeker Winston. © Sarah Allegra
SarahAllegra.com

It must have been planned by the fates, because shortly after I wrote the beginning of this post, I simply forgot to take my Cymbalta one morning.  That has NEVER happened ever in the whole time I’ve been taking it.  I didn’t realize I’d been off it until the next morning, at which point I decided to just suck it up and let myself go completely off it.  There were migraines and nausea, extra fatigue and need to sleep while struck with insomnia, but best of all, there were lots of what the Cymbalta literature describes as “brain zaps,” where you feel like you stuck your finger in a light socket for a second.  At first this was happening whenever I made any sharp movement or looked quickly from one place to another (even if my head didn’t move), but it’s been getting a little better each day, and I’m hardly zappy at all now, thank goodness.  I also have a variety of medications which help curb the zappiness, which helps a lot.  I HAVE already noticed a big difference in my general level of motivation and desire to do things… I’m not really able to actually DO anything more, but I have the DESIRE to do more back, which is a wonderful, frustrating relief.  This is HOW I AM.  This is my normal.  And even though it sucks to always wants to do 50,000 things when your body will only let you do 50, it feels SO GOOD to want the 50,000 again.  On Cymbalta, I wanted to do, I’d guess, about 5 things.

One piece of somewhat sobering news: Calantha had two small growths removed in November.  One was just a little wart, no big deal, but the other was a type of cancer called spindle cell cancer.  Of course, the bad news is that “cancer” is part of the name.  The good news is that the vet appears to have removed it entirely, leaving clean margins behind, and it’s not terribly common for spindle cell growths to recur.  If they do recur, they tend to not spread very much; Cal’s growth was on her toe, so if drastic action was needed to keep it from spreading, her toe could be amputated with relatively few adverse effects.  Calantha just turned 12 on the 20th (happy birthday, Cal!!) so getting little growths isn’t shocking at her age.  Silkens are generally a very long-lived breed, especially for their size; some can even make it into their early 20’s!  That’s nearly unheard of for dogs at all, let alone any dogs that aren’t very small.  That’s all thanks to extremely careful and ethical breeding.  Thanks, Joyce, who is responsible for bringing Calantha into the world!

Anyway, my instructions from the vet are simply to wait and watch her toe.  If it looks like it’s coming back, the toe may have to be removed to keep it from spreading.  I don’t relish the idea of having to have one of her toes amputated, but I think she’d agree that if it kept the cancer from spreading, it would be worth it.  But it does seem that the most likely thing that will happen is that it will never come back and the stress and tears Calantha, Geoff and I went through over this will stay in the past.  But if you’d like to say a prayer, send healing energy or light a candle for my girl, that would be fine with me.  🙂

This year has been a HUGE year of spiritual growth for me, which was a pretty good use of time when I couldn’t do much outside of laying in bed!  I’d like to say I planned that, but I know better.  No, I am not “religious;” although if you are, I fully support you perusing that as long as it makes you happy.  I was already certified in Reiki level 2, but this year I became a certified Fairyologist as well as a Unicorn Healing Practitioner™.  The Unicorn Healing absolutely changed my life and I would strongly recommend it to anyone who feels called to it!  If you’re interested in learning more about Unicorn Healing, my best suggestions would be to listen to the podcast on the subject from Calista, creator of the course (who is the embodiment of all things Unicorn and just the most loving person ever) and then read the specifics about the course here.  It is WELL worth the money.  You guys know I’m always on a budget, but this is one of the best things I’ve ever spent money on.  Possibly the best part?  You get to meet your own personal Unicorn spirit guide(s)!  🙂

I also discovered and threw myself into the Channeling Erik movement.  Erik was a 20-year-old kid who struggled a lot with bipolar disorder, along with other issues, and in 2006, he killed himself.  However, while his family (and especially his mother) obviously grieved heavily for a very long time, his mother, Elisa, eventually turned to mediums to see if her son was still alive… somewhere, in some form.  And the results she got completely convinced this once hard-core atheist that there not only is an afterlife, but Erik is in it and he’s still Erik.  He’s since become a spirit guide for many, including me.  My first personal experience with Erik was while I was listening to one of his channeled YouTube videos, when Siri was set off on my phone (I was not using or even touching it) and said, “Hey sexy!”  My jaw dropped and then I burst out laughing; what a 20-year-old-guy thing to say!

Second piece of Erik evidence came during my injections.  As I’ve said before, I’m put out during the actual injections (and thank god because I woke up once during them and they hurt like a motherfucker).  My usual experience of the injections is that I’m wheeled into the OR, I start to feel sleepy as they give me drugs, I decide to close my eyes just for a second, then I instantly wake up in the recovery room what feels like half a second later.  This time, the familiar sleepy feeling came, so I closed my eyes, but instead of a nothingness, Erik appeared, holding my hand.  He was crouched down so his face was level with mine, he was smiling and speaking soft, reassuring words the whole time.  What struck me was that while I obviously recognized his face from the photos I’ve seen, it was also just a little bit different.  Have you ever met someone you’ve known for a long time online, and when you meet them in real life, they look exactly the same, but also slightly different?  It was just like that.  Also, for some reason I’d thought he had brown eyes, but when I saw him, I noticed they were blue/green.  After I’d recovered, I looked up some photos of him and he did indeed have blue/green eyes.

Last, and possibly most convincing Erik evidence has been in the private sessions I’ve scheduled with two of his translators.  I won’t get into the whole story here, but there were some emotional issues I’ve struggled with for years and years, despite therapy, self work, meditation, crystals, Reiki, and every other kind of healing I could seek out.  The first session, I asked him why I felt X when Y happened and he immediately said, “It’s because of Z.”  Instantly, I knew he was extremely correct.  His answer rang out through my soul, echoing up and down it, the truth of it shining forth from every bit of my body, mind and soul.  I can’t put into words exactly HOW TRUE I KNEW that he was, I can only describe it to you, but if you’re ever in that kind of situation, you know the feeling.  No one could ever convince you otherwise because you know in your deepest, most sacred, inner sanctum of self that it is true.  And that was only my first question, at my first session!

I know some of you will roll your eyes and skim over those last few sections and wonder why I’m so weird and why I feel the need to experience these things, let alone share them, but it’s incredibly important to me.  Not because I want to convince anyone of anything (although I do strongly believe in the truth of what I’ve learned and experienced), but everyone is here on earth to have different experiences.  I can share things that work very well for me, and they might not be a good fit for you, and vise versa, and that’s fine!  Take what you like and throw the rest away.  As long as you’re ultimately striving to be an embodiment of love, I consider that we’re on the same path, no matter how different they might look on the outside.

Another reason for sharing this is because I KNOW it will come up in my work.  Everything in my life seeps into my art; I am my art, my art is me, we cannot be separated.  Every new experience I have will color what I create, even if it’s not in a way that’s obvious.  I consider myself a fulltime student forever because I’m always learning (about a very wide variety of subjects from historical figures, spirituality, unicorns, nail art, baking, making natural products instead of buying things, how to best tea-dye cotton, how to sing Sia’s Chandelier [which I am not very good at yet, so don’t ask], animal behavior, animal communication, how to grow roses, basket weaving, applying makeup really well, the tenets of Druidry, everything I can about ME, the life lessons of Kurt Cobain and Joan of Arc, why lentils taste so good when they’re cooked with just a little care, meeting and talking to my angels [my main guardian angel lets me call him Richard, after Richard Harrow, so you know he’s just awesome], if Bigfoot exists, the exact definition of a kirtle, how the hell those medieval women kept those pointy, princessy, fairy-tale-looking hats on their heads with seemingly no support systems ever recorded… anything and everything).  Occasionally, I also study things that are directly related to photography, such as using artificial lighting; something I want to learn how to do better.  Whether you’ll ever see Erik or Kurt or Joan of Arc or pointy princess hats turn up in a photo is beside the point.  Everything I learn goes into my brain where it all marinates.  My subconscious gets all Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung, the collective unconscious chimes in, and art comes out.  That’s really the best explanation I can give to my “creative process.”  Sometimes I’ll try and work the images out more directly, but the best ones usually come from me stepping back and letting my subconscious work it out.  Everything is connected, in the macro and micro sense.  It’s all going to work into my art somehow.

Changing the subject, I feel DEEP down the rabbit hole of nail art this year, especially after discovering Cristine from Simply Nailogical.  I discovered it was something creative/artsy I could do when all I felt well enough to do was lay in bed!  Sorry/not sorry for all the photos of my nails on my social media feeds.  😉

Speaking of creative things, I’ve also been helping Geoff with a really amazing project of his own!  You guys of course know him as an incredibly talented photographer; if you’re in the LA area, you can see some of his work at The Hive Gallery through March of this year!  What you may not know is that Geoff is an even more talented writer!  He’s been working on a graphic novel called Frontiers for many years.  The story first took root in his brain when he was all of about 10 years old and has grown, matured, been refined and reworked since then until we have a glorious version of it before us today!

Frontiers is a beautifully original sci-fi story summed up as “sex, violence and sarcasm!” by the astute Katie Johnson (yes, Katie, my muse, who also acts as Geoff’s spokesmodel for Frontiers, and who is also a very talented writer herself!).  The longer tagline is, “It’s the humble story of a man destined to destroy humanity… and why that really isn’t such a bad thing.”  In addition to those delightful tidbits, Geoff skillfully mixes in striking social commentary, humor, horror, fate and love.  And yes, I did do some work on the issue too.  Mostly coloring, but a fair bit of digital art as well.  🙂

Don’t you want to give the first issue a read?  You should!  And lucky for you, you can get your very own copy for a mere 99 cents right here!  If you’re in the area, you can also see Geoff, Katie and Frontiers at the Long Beach Comic Expo’s Artist’s Alley on Saturday, February the 18th, from 10am-7pm and Sunday the 19th from 10:30am-5pm.  Go check Frontiers out, online, in person or both!

Mountain Dweller 10 – © Sarah Allegra. Model: Teri Wyble.

I also had the pleasure of working with a new (to me) model last year, Teri Wyble, who goes by Aeir online.  She lived in New Orleans, but I am so, so excited that she is moving to Los Angeles shortly!  She’s not only an incredible model, stunningly beautiful, immediately understood what I was looking for from her, but is just an incredible human being as well.  I’m really looking forward to shooting more with her as well as just going to get coffee and have pillow fights in our underwear and doing those things that girls are supposed to do together.  🙂

Oh yeah, I launched my Spiritual Skincare line of skin serums on Etsy!

I’m sure I could go on and on, but I’ll stop myself there.  Briefly, briefly, I’ll try and give you a little taste of what to expect for 2017….

More DreamWorld.  This is my main goal for the year.  More shooting, more editing, more promoting.  Being off that brain-sucking Cymbalta will improve all these areas.  But if you’d like to help to spread the word about my little world, I certainly won’t stop you!  🙂

I suspect there will be some connections with my art and New York, but I’ll wait to see more of what happens before I talk too much about it.

In a similar vein, there will be some very cool new things happening with Connor Cochran, my business manager, of Conlan Press!  Including some new, more affordable, but still extremely high quality prints to be coming!  I don’t have a date on when they’ll be released yet; there are many steps to go through first before they’ll go up for sale, but I will keep you all informed!

Hopefully my body will stop zapping me soon and I’ll regain the strength and clarity I had before Cymbalta took over my brain and body.  And hopefully that will lead to many excellent things!  Yes, I do believe 2017 is going to be a better year for my art and health.  That’s my affirmation and I’m going to do my best to make it happen!

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Good New Goods

It’s been quite busy in my life since I last posted!  It seems that’s always the way though, isn’t it?  Part of what I’ve been so busy working on is what I’d like to show you in this post: three whole new product lines!

Well, to be strictly honest, one is brand new and the other has been around for a bit but I’m just getting around to blogging about it.  I’ll start with the one I’m most excited about and I think you guys will be excited about too!

I have a new Etsy shop!  I’m sure you guys know about the one I use to sell my prints through; this shop is for completely different kinds of things.  I’m calling it “Spiritual Skincare!”  Let me tell you how this came about.

I have long been on the quest for the perfect skin serum; something completely natural, vegan, with ingredients which not only help my skin in the short term, which prevents premature signs of aging, but is also extremely gentle, healing and will only make your skin healthier and healthier the longer you use it!  I’d narrowed in on several key oils that I knew my skin responded to well so I decided to create my own custom blend!  And, as it turns out, the oils are all incredibly good for your hair, nails; basically every single part of your body!

In addition to all that, you also have the option of having vitamin C serum added to your oil blend!  Vitamin C acts something like a bouncer for your skin; it keeps all the bad stuff out.  Anything that might try to sneak it, it finds and throws it out on its ass!  I have not been able to find reliable information on what vitamin C serum might do for your hair; until I do, I can’t recommend its use in hair, but it’s fabulous for your skin!

Artos The Bear’s Wares: Spiritual Skin Care Products and More – All images © Sarah Allegra

My exact blend is proprietary, but I can tell you that my blend contains vegan squalene oil, argan oil and rosehip seed oil (and vitamin C serum if you choose).  I won’t bog this post down even more highlighting exactly what INCREDIBLE things each of these oils do, but I’ll give you a brief highlight!  My serum:

• Is all natural, vegan, completely cruelty-free, fragrance-free and pure, with no fillers.
• Is extremely gentle, suitable for all skin types and (despite it being an oil) actually fights acne!
• Fights virtually ALL signs of aging – lines, crows feet, sun damage and stimulates cellular membrane and tissue regeneration.
• Heals scars and stretch marks, dark circles, under-eye bags and acne.
• Is extremely moisturizing, penetrates deeply, yet absorbs quickly and feels light, not heavy.
• Is incredibly good for your hair and scalp!  It can be used as a flyaway-tamer, added to your conditioner or styling product, or a few drops can be used on their own for a light hold (I love using it this way myself).
• Comes in three sizes so you can try a little before you stock up.

In addition, to make it really my kind of serum, each and every bottle is infused with the divine, healing energy of the angels and Unicorns.  Every time you apply your serum, you are getting a little dose of unconditionally-loving, magical, ethereal angelic and Unicorn energy absorbed straight into your being!  Geoff even asks me to apply it to him every night!  I utterly adore it, I’ve gotten wonderful feedback from it and I think you’ll love it too.  🙂

I think you all know that I’m a big fan of the site Fiverr!  It’s a wonderful site where people sell products (mostly digital) and services of ALL kinds – all starting at, you guessed it, $5.  What you probably don’t know is that I have several of my own gigs on Fiverr!

Do you like the textures I use in my images?  I sell my own grunge-style textures in this gig.  For the base order, you get a total of 10 textures, perfect for adding atmosphere and mood to any image!

One secret trick of mine is using layers of light textures!  I use them in almost every single image I create these days.  They can be a bold or subtle wash of color, which helps lend a dreamy, ethereal, beautiful look to your photos!  I have a LOT of these textures which I have all shot myself, so while the base gig starts at $5, if you want more, you can get up to 25 at a time!

sarahallegra.com

sarahallegra.com

sarahallegra.com

 

I’ve been a Reiki practitioner for a number of years now.  It’s a really beautiful and powerful energy healing modality which does not even require the person I’m working on to be in the same room as me.  Pure, healing energy knows no boundaries of time and space!  I’ve had wonderful results from this as you can see by the reviews, and I can also attest to having had incredible feedback from people not on Fiverr!  I offer Reiki sessions for people (yourself, a friend, a child, anyone whose permission I have to send energy to), or I can send it to the animal (wild or domestic) of your choosing.  Animals respond very well to energy healing!

 

Now that I am an officially certified Unicorn Healing™ Practitioner, I can also offer Unicorn healings, again for yourself (or any person who has given permission) or animals, wild or domestic.  Unicorn healing is like nothing else I’ve worked with or done before.  It has a very different feel than Reiki energy; neither is better than the other, they’re just different.  The best way to describe it is that Reiki feels more earthy and grounded, while Unicorn energy feels much more celestial and divine.  I have been COMPLETELY blown away by the incredible changes I’ve seen in myself and others, often after just one treatment!

Both kinds of energy healing work to restore balance and vitality to every part of you; mind, body, emotion and soul.  By its own nature, it can never harm and will always work for the recipients’ highest good.  I highly, highly recommend trying one of them, it can be an absolutely life-changing experience!

Last for my Fiverr gigs, I now have an oracle card reading gig!  I tested this with both friends and strangers before I decided to start charging, even just $5, to make sure it would be worth peoples’ money.  Boy, was that an overwhelming success!  I really enjoy doing oracle card readings, especially with the beautiful deck my sweet friend Andrea gave me!  Got a question?  It doesn’t matter what kind of question it is, the cards will help reveal the answer to you!

Lastly, this is not a new product, but it has a whole new price!  My online self-discovery-through-photography course Introspective: An Online Quest is currently hosted on Udemy.com.  Udemy recently changed its pricing structure and capped all its classes at $40, which is WELL below what Introspective is worth.  However, until I figure out a better way to deal with a host for the class, I’m happy to let people get in on this deal!  Prior to this, Introspective was priced at $75 for the entire 8-week course, so enjoy getting almost 50% off until I have time to deal with this!  🙂

Here’s a brief description of what Introspective is all about: Introspective is an eight-week, on-line course in which you will use your camera to explore your inner self.  Each week, you will receive assignments challenging you to delve into your secrets, fears and joys.  This is not a class about camera basics such as f-stops, apertures and shutter speeds…although links to helpful technical articles will be provided.  This class is about digging deep into your core and capturing what you find there in photographs.

So there you guys go!  Enjoy, and please feel free to leave feedback on any of these!

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Angels, Unicorns and Faeries… In DreamWorld And Not

I have new images for you as well as some updates about my personal life!  Since most of my personal life ends up coloring my images in some way or another, I suppose that makes everything relevant, right?  🙂

Mountain Dweller series teaser – © Sarah Allegra

I recently had a shoot with a model who was new to me, the lovely Teri Wyble!  Sadly for me, she does not live in Los Angeles, but she does travel here now and then and we’ve already made plans to do more shooting next time she’s in town.  She was such a joy to work with; she’s not in modeling just to look pretty or puff up her ego, she’s interested in telling compelling stories.  She has a natural grace and beauty which lend themselves perfectly to my kind of photography.  On top of that, Teri is also just a really wonderful soul, full of love and kindness, and we share many of the same interests.  It was a perfect collaboration!

I’m also going to be sharing a bit of my spiritual journey with you guys here.  For anyone who’s curious, I am a lightworker, but I don’t define my spirituality much beyond that.  Organized religion does not work for me, but I know many people who love their branch of it.  If it’s a good fit for you, stick with it!  If not, you’re still ok and you can still be a spiritual person.

Mountain Dweller 1 – © Sarah Allegra. Model: Teri Wyble.

I believe in an unconditionally-loving higher power, which I like to refer to as Source.  “God” brings to mind all sorts of connotations which I personally find hindering.  I believe that everyone and everything is made up of energy, as physics teaches us, and since energy cannot be destroyed, it’s most logical to me that life continues beyond death.  I have no doubts about this.  I have spoken to and had contact with those who have passed over… which would have been enough on its own to convince me of our eternal life, but I do feel science supports this idea as well.

Toward the beginning of the year, I experienced an EXTREMELY powerful guided meditation with a lovely woman named Mojo.  If you’re interested in her services, you can find her page on Fiverr here!  She currently doesn’t advertise her guided meditations, which she does live over the phone with you, but if you contact her, she can arrange it for you.

Mountain Dweller 2 – © Sarah Allegra. Model: Teri Wyble.

During this guided meditation, I actually got to meet and speak with my two main guardian angels.  Prior to this, I had believed in angels in a vague sort of way, but despite how much I would have liked it, I never felt that I could successfully connect with any of them.  I have also done other guided meditations which are supposed to introduce you to your angel without much success other than feeling more centered afterward, like with any meditation.  My point is, the meditation with Mojo was very different.  I could actually feel and sense my angels; I could hear and even see them in my mind.  I know now that they have always been with me every second of my life, and they will for the rest of my time on earth.  I am never alone and they are a great comfort to me.

This new connection with my angels led me to buy a handful of books about angels; I wanted to learn EVERYTHING that I POSSIBLY could about them!  As I’m sure you all know, my passions are all-consuming.  When a new one ignites, my life becomes focused on that and only that until I feel I have a grasp on it.  For anyone else interested in learning more about angels, I recommend Angels In My Hair by Lorna Byrne, and The Angel Therapy Handbook by Doreen Viture.  Both are fascinating, well-written and impart excellent knowledge.  Angels In My Hair is more of a memoir while the Angel Therapy Handbook is more of a textbook.  I feel they compliment each other well.

Mountain Dweller 3 – © Sarah Allegra. Model: Teri Wyble.

I mentioned being a lightworker a little bit ago.  What I mean by that is that I am certified at level 2 in Reiki.  I do energy work, sending positive energy to people, animals, places, situations, objects, whatever you want.  It’s healing and can never be used to harm.  I also began meditating much more regularly this year.  In the past, when I’d try meditating, I would always enjoy the effects of it, but I had a lot of trouble making myself do it with any consistency.  I’m not sure what changed, but for some reason, this year I was able to push past that.  Once I got over that initial block, I discovered that I LOVE meditating!  It’s incredibly healing and healthy for your body, mind and soul.  I found it was a bit like starting to work out.  At first, you don’t really want to do it, but after a little while of making yourself stick with it, you like it and actually begin craving it.  I now have meditation (guided and not) as a regular part of my life and I’d highly recommend it to absolutely everyone!  One thing I discovered are the millions of meditation tracks on YouTube; literally something for absolutely everyone and every interest.  There are also long tracks of nature sounds and/or music, some with binaural beats in them, some lasting up to eight hours, so you could listen to them all night while you sleep.  I’ve been learning a great deal about crystals as well from my dear friend Jessi who owns the shop Mineralism Crystals.  I HIGHLY recommend her if you’re in the market for anything!  Even if you don’t see something in her online shop, chances are, she has it.  I’ve placed numerous orders with her and they always exceed my expectations!  Also, she is a fellow spoonie, so your money goes to help support her as she’s unable to work a “regular” job; win-win!

As all these new revelations were opening up to me, meditation, angels, being able to “hear” animals more clearly when I contacted them energetically (for example, I was able to help one very special cat overcome his abandonment fears when he was newly adopted, something I was honored to have been a part of), Teri came along and we had our shoot.  I knew that I wanted some of this deeper spirituality to be reflected in something we shot, but I wasn’t really sure how.  However, I did know that I wanted to photograph Teri in a beautiful lace dress I had… that combined with feeling inspired by some images Geoff shot recently with a back-lit model that made me decide I would shoot an “angelic” look with the gauzy white fabric and light behind her.  (Although really, just try and make her NOT look angelic; that would be a far more difficult job.)

Mountain Dweller 4 – © Sarah Allegra. Model: Teri Wyble.

As I suspected, Teri made the perfect angel.  Sorting through the images later, I realized that I was creating a new race of DreamWorld beings.  The Aethereans, as I called them, are DreamWorld’s angels.  They live high in the mountains, away from the more populated areas so they can be focus on devoting themselves to spiritual studies.  They are very wise from their decades of pursuing the truth in every facet of life, as well as skilled and compassionate healers.  Many of the other DreamWorld inhabitants send their young to train with the Aethereans for several years, where they are taught empathy, love, plant and animal care, healing, sacred geometry and the mysteries of the universe.  I thought that the Aethereans needed some kind of uniform or mark that visually informed everyone of who they are and the spiritual life they have chosen for themselves, so I decided they would all have a flower of life symbol on their foreheads.  I wish I’d thought to actually apply this in real life to Teri, but this idea only came later.  Thankfully, Photoshop made it possible to add it to all the images!

Teri did such a spectacular job modeling, she made it so very difficult to choose which images to work up!  I ended up editing quite a few more photos than I typically would pick because I simply could not narrow my selections down any more.  It took a bit longer to finish these because of the volume I had to work through, but also because of a couple other wonderful new journeys I was taking…

Mountain Dweller 5 – © Sarah Allegra. Model: Teri Wyble.

Through a very miraculous series of events, I discovered Calista Ascension.  Calista is one of those very rare spiritual teachers who actually embodies and lives everything she preaches; I have met very few more accepting, genuinely loving and wise people in my life.  She offers numerous classes which I was lusting after, but when I saw that she created her own Unicorn Healing System which I could take online from the comfort of my home, I was hooked.  I had to take it.  Immediately.

I’ll let Calista explain the course in her own words:

Unicorn Healing™ is a hands-on healing modality for empowerment and wellness, but also a development tool that can awaken your Souls’ gifts and purpose. It can be used as a stand-alone therapy or complemented with other energy practices.

Brought forward in 2009, direct from the Unicorn realm via Calista, it is a very sacred modality that can provide all that you are ready to receive.This is a course for those who are ready to step-up, break-through and arise in their POWER!

Just as you have a Guardian Angel that walks with you so to you have a Guardian Unicorn. Once regarded as the fabric of fairytales, Unicorns are very much real. They have walked with us since the times of Atlantis and are now returning to our awareness to help us awaken to love and the infinite potential we hold within.

As this is a distant learning course, you can set your own pace and progression. A commitment is required however as this course is deeply transformational – the more you put in, the more you will receive. The Unicorns are ever-present to those who wish to better themselves and assist Mother Earth to ascend with grace. 

Yes.  Unicorns.  REAL Unicorns.  As I mentioned earlier, I am well-versed with Reiki energy, which, I learned, is apparently an earth-based energy.  The Unicorns however hail from another planet (bear with me here) so their energy is cosmically-based.  (For those interested, Calista recorded an excellent podcast all about who and what the Unicorns are, where they come from, etc, with much more detail than I’m giving in this post, which you can listen to here.)  I hadn’t expected their energies to feel particularly different from each other; I just hadn’t thought about it.  You may believe that these Unicorns are simply a pretty fantasy I’m escaping to in my imagination (which I’ll freely admit is an escape I would likely pick!) but OH MY GOD – once you’ve felt their energy, there is NO mistaking them.  They are every bit as real as we are, and their energy is incredibly powerful… yet also full of the most unconditional love I’ve ever experienced.  It’s nearly impossible to describe how energy feels in words, but the ones that keep coming to mind when I think about my Unicorns are high, clear, clean, bright, powerful, silvery, shimmery, penetrating, deep, beautiful, wise, loving, celestial, ethereal, and immense.  I love Reiki, but the Unicorns really kicked things up a huge notch for me.

Mountain Dweller 6 – © Sarah Allegra. Model: Teri Wyble.

As part of my studying, I went through an attunement with their energy, where I met my three guardian Unicorns, who all serve different roles, and who are all equally exquisitely beautiful.  I spent 30 consecutive days meditating and communing with them every day in different ways so we could really get to know each other.  And I also practiced doing healings with the Unicorn energy, both in person and across distance, much like you do with Reiki.  The Unicorn healings I’ve done so far have been the most powerful I’ve yet witnessed in my life.  Problems that have bothered people for very long times suddenly lose their sting, allowing the people to let go of them.  Hurts are overcome, trauma is healed.  They are truly miraculous.  And my guides assure me that I will become physically healthy myself in time.

My guides… yes, I should mention the other guides too.  Meeting the Unicorns as well as my angels has opened my mind up to the idea of there being more spiritual guides for us in the universe than I had previously realized.  Currently, in addition to my guardian angels and Unicorns, I also have a dragon guide, a pegasus guide and a mermaid guide, although I have not worked with them nearly as long or as deeply as the Unicorns.  I’ve also started to sense and sometimes communicate with the elementals all around me.  The trees in my yard, for example, will remind me if the bird feeder has gotten low or the plants need watering.  I’m becoming a MUCH better gardener with their help!  🙂

Mountain Dweller 7 – © Sarah Allegra. Model: Teri Wyble.

Then, right on the heels on my finishing up my Unicorn Healing course, I began taking Doreen Virtue’s Fairyologist course!  This is more or less what it sounds like; you learn all about the various fairies that exist, what they’re about (the fairies are mostly concerned with environmental and animal issues, but certain groups emphasize different causes), how to communicate and work with them.  At the end, you take a quiz and, assuming you pass, you become a certified Fairyologist.  As I’m also in the process of having all my Unicorn work reviewed by Calista as we speak, I’m on the cusp of becoming both a certified Unicorn Healer and a certified Fairyologist… both are NOT things I expected that I’d be saying if you’d asked me at the beginning of this year!

I’m telling you guys about all this for several reasons.  One, working with my guides and walking my spiritual journey is becoming an ever-more-present, ever-larger part of my life.  I wanted to just lay it all out there in one go and not feel like I had to tiptoe around it on my own blog.  Two, everything in my personal life effects my art.  Case in point, the images I’m releasing today.  I probably wouldn’t have even shot them if I hadn’t met my guardian angels, and I certainly wouldn’t have added the Flower of Life symbol to the Aethereans (who would not exist) without having learned more about sacred geometry in my studies.  In my life, there is very little separation between the real world and my art.  It’s all one big pot of stew where each ingredient enhances all the others.

Mountain Dweller 8 – © Sarah Allegra. Model: Teri Wyble.

And lastly, I’d like to invite all of you to explore your own spirituality.  When you find what works for you, there is very, very little in life that is as rewarding!  There are many charlatans both online and off, so you must be discerning in who you choose to listen to.  A strong connection to your intuition and sense of truth will help you navigate the waters.  Any of the people or authors I’ve mentioned in this post have gotten the thumb’s up from me if you’d like to start there!

Mountain Dweller 9 – © Sarah Allegra. Model: Teri Wyble.

I am an energy worker.  I work with Unicorns and angels.  I talk to animals, fairies and elementals.  I am a creator.  I collect crystals.  I am an empath.  I am a photographer.  I am clairvoyant and clairsentient.  I am a fulltime student of truth.  I am a healer.  I am a woman.  I am an artist.  I am Sarah.  I am me.  I don’t apologize for any of that.  You go be you, and don’t apologize for any of it either.  🙂

Mountain Dweller 10 – © Sarah Allegra. Model: Teri Wyble.

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2015 – High/Low

It’s time for all those end-of-the-year blog posts!  I admit, I kind of like this tradition.  It’s a nice way to look back on things from a larger perspective.  And I have a brand new DreamWorld image featuring Travis Weinand for those who want to just scroll to the bottom 🙂

I Felt It Was Glory, detail. Model: Travis Weinand. © Sarah Allegra

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2015 was a… challenging year, to say the least.  And it turns out I’m starting it with a fresh, new cold and fever.  It has been the worst year I’ve had, ME-wise, so far.  It didn’t help that the year began with a crunched-for-time move of houses which literally took me several months to recover from.  Medication changes gave me months of terrible headaches and migraines, which also meant that this year was the least photographically productive year I’ve had yet also.  Between feeling terrible physically and not having nearly as much access to my art therapy as I wanted, it was a very depressing, frustrating and emotionally trying year as well.  All said, I’m happy to leave 2015 behind me and have set my intentions to have a much more fulfilling 2016.

I made a short video about my experience living with ME for last year’s May 12th (ME Awareness Day).  I generally really dislike making videos, so you can see that this was important to me 😉

There was some drama in the larger world of ME as well.  The US officially changed its name from the very belittling “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome” to the vague and incredibly widely-defined “Systemic Exertion Intolerance Disease.”  Most patients and advocates were very unhappy about this and there was a big backlash, which the powers-that-be mostly ignored, as is their usual method of dealing with us.  I’m still calling it ME, which is what most of us wanted it to be changed to.

Silenced © Sarah Allegra – model: Travis Weinand

Then the Senate rubbed salt in the wound by proposing they slash ME’s funding to absolutely $0 per year.  The paltry amount we currently get is the same amount given to research hayfever, despite ME being as deadly and serious as congestive heart failure and HIV/AIDS.  I extolled people to write to their representatives in protest of this; we’ll see what comes of it.

Please save this graphic and send it to the email addresses above!

I got to meet fan-turned-model-turned-friend Noemi Regalado and photograph her for DreamWorld.

Apprenticeship © Sarah Allegra, model Noemi Regalado

I officially started a series dealing with mental health issues; Eternal Storms.  It seeks to help break down the stigma associated with these illnesses and show sufferers how they are not alone.

A Cry From The Darkness © Sarah Allegra – a self portrait

One of the first models I ever worked with, Dedeker Winston, who has continued modeling for me over the five years we’ve known each other, despite me forcing her to wake up early, pose laying in cold, slimy, creeks, regularly get naked in forests and once helping me discover what stinging nettles look like when I accidentally had her pose nude in a patch of them, left for an extended time abroad.  She is having a wonderful, life-expanding time and I’m able to keep in touch and follow her journey online and through social media and texts.  I was sad to see her leave, but glad that we’d gotten in as much shooting as we did before she left, such as the Pink Mother for DreamWorld.  Speaking unselfishly though, I’m really happy she had this chance to do so much traveling and is having such an incredible time!  But I won’t be sad when I have the chance to photograph her again 🙂

The Living Sepulcher © Sarah Allegra, model – Dedeker Winston

My dear friend Danica gave me a priceless chance to work with an incredible, stunning, cream-colored Gypsy Vanner stallion named Booger.  As soon as I discovered she was horse-sitting him, I began planning a shoot with Katie Johnson and him together, utilizing him in every way I could think of.  I have a LOT of his shots still on my hard drive waiting to be edited, but I did at least complete one image from that magical shoot!

Safely Through The Shadows © Sarah Allegra, model – Katie Johnson

I tried my hand at a more editorial style, which is fun, but not going to be the main thing I do any time soon.

Wall 8- model: Travis Weinand. © Sarah Allegra

Alabaster 1 – model Dedeker Winston. © Sarah Allegra
SarahAllegra.com

I was accepted into the online art gallery A Gallery, and also participated in a group show over the summer at the Creative Arts Group.

The summer show at the Creative Arts Group Gallery in Sierra Madre. This is how I want my work to be displayed, finished works alongside actual props and costumes.

I FINALLY finished editing an image I started in 2013.

A Poisoned Sleep Of Kissless Dreams © Sarah Allegra – model: Katie Johnson

I was able to attend another screening of The Last Unicorn, which was absolutely delightful!  I dressed up as Amalthea and made a taco purse (get your own here!), which I think was the secret behind me winning the nightly costume contest.  I was also able to introduce my dear friends and ex-neighbors Donna and John to the movie for the first time (though I’d already made them fans of Peter’s writing) and they were appropriately impressed.

Taco purse available on Etsy 🙂

At the screening as Amalthea (with purse) and back at home.

Sadly, shortly after this screening it became clear that Peter Beagle is not nearly as well as everyone had thought.  This is leading to a number of problems for him and his manager/publisher Conlan Press, which I’ll leave to them to discuss.  Regardless, it is sad to see him unwell and it makes the conversation I had with him at the screening last January all the more precious.

Speaking of illness, one of my favorite photographers, Ashley Lebedev, let us all know that she has struggled with a chronic illness for a long time.  It was beautiful to see people’s support and desire to help her gather funds for treatment.  I wish her a much better, healthier 2016 also!

The Weight of a Whistle Already Carved, @ Ashley Lebedev

I helped my husband (he helps me SO much with my shooting and projects, I more than owe him!) with a project that he’s been working on for a long time, which ended in his creating the dystopian, sci fi, 8-minute short film A Secret War.  You really should watch it!

My friend Jessi started an Etsy shop which has beautiful jewelry in it!  But it’s not simply pretty, much of it helps raise awareness about various invisible, chronic illnesses, such as ME.  As a spoonie herself, purchasing her jewelry is helping her support herself as well as getting something pretty 🙂

Jessi’s shop, The Hopeful Spoon

I discovered the wonder that is the film Unbroken, which is now one of my go-to stories to tell myself when I need some extra motivation to get through anything difficult.

Speaking of Peter S Beagle, Amazon released an exclusive Kindle offering of 13 of his most beloved titles for the first time in e-editions… and 6 of those titles were released with my images on their covers!  To say I was elated would be a huge understatement.  There may have been joyful tears when I first saw them in my browser window.  🙂

Go buy one of these titles! You’ll thank me when you discover how magical Peter’s writing is 🙂

And, as always, I put out a calendar with a year’s worth of beautiful images to brighten up your walls every day!  Red Bubble does an excellent job at making beautiful, high-quality items and its calendars don’t disappoint.  Feel free to grab your own; I can promise that you’ll love it!

Sarah Allegra 2016 Calendar

* * * * *

Since 2015 was so heavy with ME, migraines, frequent colds, injuries, deep ruts of depression and stress in ways I have seldom experienced it, an incredibly huge percentage of my physical energy was devoted to simply existing and not giving up.  It really underscored how precious my time and energy is and how I need to devote it to things that are worthwhile.  No, not just worthwhile, but things which I cannot live life without.  The things are dearest and most deeply important to me.

This has given me a lot to think about as I ponder how I’ll change my management of time and energy in 2016.  I will try and devote myself to not just ideas I like, but the ideas which I think are the best.  The most important.  I simply don’t have time to pursue anything less.  This is helping to bring my artistic goals into much sharper focus.  The dross will be burned away; the leftover gold burnished until it gleams.

I’m also making an effort to set aside more time for self-care activities, like short walks with Calantha or yoga when my body allows, meditation and reading for pleasure.  Few things enrich my life (both my actual and imaginary worlds) as much as reading does and I need to make sure I don’t let that slip away from me by being “too busy” for it.

But of course the most important things are the relationships I have with friends and loved ones.  Those will always be tended to, nurtured and cultivated as best as I can manage!  I am blessed to have many, wonderful friends in my life, online and off, who get me, support me and my art and are incredibly gracious about my health problem.  That’s something I should never forget to be grateful for or take for granted.

* * * * *

Now, as promised, here is my new DreamWorld image!

When I first met model and friend Travis Weinand, I was struck by how truly ethereal he looks.  Not simply in pictures or when in costume, he always looks like he stepped out of a comic book, collection of mythology or possibly Middle Earth.  With a quick stop-off for a dose of Viking and tattoos.  Anyway, I immediately wanted him to have wings.  I wasn’t sure how, but I knew he’d get them before we were done working together.

So at our next shoot, I asked him to sit in front of a dark backdrop and pose angelically.  He made looking strong, gentle, loving and bad-ass all at the same time look effortless.  Editing did take a while since I painted the wings myself and had to figure out exactly how I wanted these “wings made out of light” to look, but it was very worth the effort!

This character lives in DreamWorld, as you would probably guess, a centurion of sorts to DreamWorld’s Queen (whom you have not met yet, but hopefully you will soon).  He leads the Queen’s army, the Glorious Guard, but he’s more than just a devoted servant.  Part bodyguard, part lieutenant, part enforcer, part adviser, he is a dazzling embodiment of good.

The title of this image comes from one of my favorite poems of George Gordon Lord Byron, All For Love.  In it, Byron discusses love being the greatest glory one can receive, far greater than wreaths, trophies or other symbols of glory:

O Fame! if I e’er took delight in thy praises,
‘Twas less for the sake of thy high-sounding phrases,
Than to see the bright eyes of the dear one discover
She thought that I was not unworthy to love her.
 
There chiefly I sought thee, there only I found thee;
Her glance was the best of the rays that surround thee;
When it sparkled o’er aught that was bright in my story,
I knew it was love, and I felt it was glory.

That last line kept repeating and repeating through my head as I edited… thinking about the love he has for his Queen, those he protects and his glorious vestige, so I finally gave in and just used it as the title.

 

I Felt It Was Glory, model: Travis Weinand. © Sarah Allegra

 

I Felt It Was Glory, detail. Model: Travis Weinand. © Sarah Allegra

 

I Felt It Was Glory, detail. Model: Travis Weinand. © Sarah Allegra

That’s it!  Everyone have a happy and meaningful 2016!  🙂

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Operation: Get Well Soon

Something you’ll know about me if you follow me anywhere or have read any other blog entries is my deep, abiding love for Peter S. Beagle and all of his creations.  Yes, he is best known for his beloved masterpiece The Last Unicorn (the same story that was made into an animated film and you probably saw as a child, not grasping its full, profound meaning).  The Last Unicorn deserves every bit of praise it gets and more.  It’s the most incredible story, full of wonder and love and great sorrow… and joy, despite, or because of, the sorrow.  What many people don’t know is that Peter is an exceptionally prolific writer, having written more books and short stories than I can count (A Fine and Private Place is a very close second favorite to The Last Unicorn).  And every single one is just as brilliant of a masterpiece as The Last Unicorn.

In The Lilac Wood, © Sarah Allegra, a self portrait

I actually don’t remember a time when I didn’t know the story of The Last Unicorn.  As in the book, “there has never been a time without unicorns,” so there was never a time for me without The Last Unicorn.  It came out the year before I was born and I grew up knowing it.  My brother and I both loved it, and to this day can still quote nearly the entire thing by heart.  We would make a game out of it, seeing how long we could volley the script back and forth.  As I got a little older, I started reading the book, and each time I did, I discovered new levels, new depths, new nuances that I hadn’t been old enough to understand before.  It’s a common misconception that Unicorn is a children’s story, simply because the movie made from it was animated. There’s nothing wrong with children reading or seeing the movie, but it is a story for grown-ups.  You can’t fully appreciate the skillful, deft writing, the terrible tragedy, the glorious splendor, the tear-inducing sacrifice, the depth of the characters until you’ve experienced more of life yourself.

And Other Secrets, © Sarah Allegra, model: Anna Wood

It doesn’t surprise me now that I look back and remember that the very first self portrait I ever took, far before I was a “photographer” or a “self portrait artist” was inspired by the book.  The character of the unicorn, magically transformed unwillingly into a human girl for much of the book, taken from immortality into a body she feels dying all around her, resonated so deeply with me.  I probably don’t have to draw you a very detailed map of how it relates to my experience of living in a shitty body possessed by ME.  And yet the unicorn gains something which sets her apart from all the other unicorns in the world by her ordeal.  She learns regret.  She learns to love.  She is made more full for all her suffering.  It’s a hope I cling to for myself, sometimes harder than others, but one I return to again and again.

The Importance Of Mortality, © Sarah Allegra, a self portrait

About two and a half years ago, Peter magically discovered some of my work which had been inspired by his writing (both The Last Unicorn and other stories) and his business manager, Connor Cochran, reached out to me.  There is still much under wraps and it will all be revealed in time, but we began working together, which was more than a dream come true for me.  Bless him, Peter is the antithesis of the saying “never meet your heroes.”  Meeting Peter only me love him and his writing more.  There truly are few more kind, generous and relentlessly creative people on earth.  And he is this generous with everyone.  At The Last Unicorn Screening Tour (which I HIGHLY recommend you attend!!) he will stay until EVERY SINGLE PERSON who would like to meet him, hug him, have him sign their book or take a photo with him is seen.  Despite the often very long lines, he doesn’t make you feel rushed, he takes his time and lets you say whatever you need to say.  In the moment you’re with him, you are the only person in the entire world and you have his full attention.  This does mean the screenings often end in the wee hours of night, and I don’t know how they all do it, those hours would kill me, but it’s just who Peter is.

Salt Wine – © Sarah Allegra, model: Peter Onorati

A little while after I had signed my contract with Conlan Press, Peter’s publishing house run by Connor, I gathered up my nerve and asked Connor if I could borrow Peter and photograph him as DreamWorld‘s King when they were in town for the next screening.  To my joy, Connor gave me the go-ahead.  This led to a nightmarish few weeks when I frantically created Peter’s incredibly elaborate costume made almost entirely out of paper (fully documented here) but the results were worth every tearful, over-tired night I had getting ready for it.  No one could be DreamWorld‘s King better than Peter.

Beloved Of The Crown – Peter as the King, with Dedeker Winston and Katie Johnson as his maids.

Aerie – © Sarah Allegra, Peter as the DreamWorld King.

Why am I telling you all this?  Just to illustrate what an incredibly special and remarkable person Peter truly is, and how wonderful Connor and everyone at Conlan are.  They put their all into every single screening.  They are genuinely all wonderful people, and Peter is everything you would hope he would be and more.  I’ve been fortunate enough to have attended two of them; the first time was the same day that I photographed Peter so I had no energy for dressing up myself for the show, but the second time I went as Amalthea, as seen below (which won the costume contest that night, probably because of my handmade Have A Taco Purse, which I can make for you too!).  Seeing the movie in a theater never fails to bring tears to my eyes.]

At the screening as Amalthea (with purse) and back at home.

Taco purse! And butterfly ring!

Which, in my rambling, round-about way, leads to the main thrust of this post.  The tour had planned on traveling to multiple countries in Europe this year, and while the movie will still be shown and everyone will still have a fabulous time, Peter will be unable to attend due to a non-threatening health issue.  Peter is ok, there’s nothing to worry about, but still… even non-threatening health issues suck.  Peter hopes to be back on the road soon, but I thought that it might cheer him up if we all rallied and showed him some love.  What do you say?  For our beloved author who writes the stories which make us weep simultaneously from sorrow and joy?  He has given SO MUCH to the world, let’s try and give even a fraction of it back to him!

To Be So Full, © Sarah Allegra, model: Dedeker Winston

What do I mean by that?  Well, feel free to leave a comment here on the blog.  I’ll send them on to Connor who can forward them to Peter.  Feel free to leave kind words of encouragement on his Facebook page or send him an email at contact@conlanpress.com.  I’m sure he will really appreciate everyone’s show of support!

Sleight Of Hand © Sarah Allegra, featuring my neighbor John Harnagel

And let’s face it; we owe him.  For decades of wonder, joy and poignant insight.  For holding up mirrors full of fantasy which still reflect ourselves back and help us make new discoveries.  For every brilliant word typed, every tear shed and every heart which grew in size because of his writing.  For showing us what heroes are for.  For bringing us unicorns.

Get well soon, Peter.  We all love you 🙂

Now Has Come The Time For Silence – © Sarah Allegra, a self portrait

See all my Peter S. Beagle-inspired images here and buy fun things with these images on them here!

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Medieval Octopi

As so often happens with DreamWorld, the inspiration for this set of images came close to a year ago.

The Pink Mother series © Sarah Allegra, model: Dedeker Winston

Last summer, I had recently watched some of the BBC’s episodes of Life, their truly excellent series on all kinds of wildlife.  I was watching it while I edited other images (I rarely watch TV without doing a second activity, unless we’re talking about shows like True Detective, Breaking Bad, Boardwalk Empire, Rectify, etc, which all demand my full attention) but my editing suddenly halted when this segment came on.

I remember backing it up and watching the whole piece again, mesmerized, deeply touched and saddened by such complete, beautiful devotion from any creature to another.  As I watched it a third time, I knew a photo was going to come out of it somehow… it was resonating too deeply with me for anything else to happen.

Now, as to how the medieval elements worked themselves in… I can only give you guesses since I’m not really sure how my brain made the jump myself.  I know that part of it had to do with wanting to give her eight “tentacles” of some kind (which made its way into her hair) and wanting to give her a pouch to carry her eggs in.  For some reason, I thought of a kirtle, a medieval garment which lasted for several centuries.  The kind I was picturing were from, I believe, earlier on in the medieval period and looked more like what we might think of as over-dresses or fancy aprons.

A red kirtle from a modern pattern by Burda.

Researching medieval garments inevitably led to medieval hair… images like these set my brain whirling.

From http://sites.tufts.edu/putajewelonit/2011/09/21/glossary-of-english-hairstyles-headdress/

You can see how the braided and wrapped hair, along with beautiful headdresses leaked into my character.

As usual, I wasn’t sure how I was going to do this when I started into it.

I had a longish, dark brown wig which I’d bought very cheaply quite a while ago.  When it arrived, I realized why it had been so cheap; it was already snarled and tangled before I’d even taken it out of the package.  I halfheartedly attempted to work the same wide-tooth comb I use for my own often snarled and tangly hair and quickly realized it was a futile endeavor.  I tossed the wig into the back of the closet and mostly forgot about it.

When this project came up, I remembered it though.  Even though it poofed up like a drying poodle as I combed it, that would work in this case, since I’d be wrapping it up and looping it around.  I spent most of one afternoon just combing it out – not detangling it, mind you; there was never any hope of this wig being tangle-free.  My best hope was to get it to the point where I could separate it into eight segments.  It took all the strength in my arms and they were very unhappy with me for the next few days, but I managed to do it.

The Pink Mother © Sarah Allegra – behind the scenes

In the meantime, I had discovered arm knitting, which I found I could do without a) using much brain power, b) quickly c) without using much muscle power and d) it had very pretty and interesting results.  The resulting squares and shapes I made from the looping yarn had such a beautiful, organic look, almost like a coral reef or some other under-sea plant/creature, that it felt completely at home with an aquatic-inspired creature.

After the combing session, I put the wig away for a day or two.  I brought it out again after my arms had regained a little strength.  Of course this also meant that it had had a couple days left completely on its own without any outside help to start tangling again, so I spent a little time re-combing it to get it back to a manageable state.  I quickly arm-knit a band of yarn which would form the circlet of my headdress and made sure it would fit.

The Pink Mother © Sarah Allegra – behind the scenes

Then I divided it into eight more-or-less equal segments and put a hair band around each one to help keep them from getting into too much trouble.

The Pink Mother © Sarah Allegra – behind the scenes

I put the circlet of yarn back on top of the hair and began crisscrossing the yarn (which was a beautiful, slightly metallic variegated blend of soft pinks, blues,  lavenders and silvers) over the different segments, using liberal help from my glue gun to keep everything in check.  Each segment was attached back up to the main part of the circlet after its crisscrossing was done.

The Pink Mother © Sarah Allegra – behind the scenes

The two front, face-framing sections of hair were left for last.  I added some looping pieces of yarn between the other segments to make it more headdress-like.  The front segments got crisscrossed with their own lengths of yarn and were then attached to the very back of the circlet, forming two large loops on either side of the face, with hair tentacles hanging underneath them.

The Pink Mother © Sarah Allegra – behind the scenes

Then was the fun part: beads!  I raided my bead stash, with an eye toward pieces from a very elaborate headdress I’d made which had recently died, spilling beads all over the floor.  I knew there were some really cool pieces which I’d used for it, so I repurposed them again in this piece.  I didn’t want it to be overwhelmingly be-jeweled and sparkly, just enough bling to make the character look a bit important; perhaps some kind of royalty.

The Pink Mother © Sarah Allegra – behind the scenes

The Pink Mother © Sarah Allegra – behind the scenes

Moving on to her dress, I had a high-necked, sleeveless, pink chiffon dress from Ebay which I’d gotten for little more than a song.  Pink isn’t a color I’m usually drawn to that much, but since the original octopus was pink, my character was going to be pink too.  I kind of eyeballed the general shape of a kirtle from ivory tulle; a lot was going to happen to it and since it was so light and transparent, it didn’t need to be perfectly symmetrical.

I free-styled a yoke for the kirtle with more arm knitting and added some cap sleeves (which are only visible in some of the images unfortunately).  One thing I was finding with the arm knitting was that is is EXTREMELY forgiving.  Arm you within an atom bomb’s range of what you were going for?  Then it will probably work!

To unify the costume and also enhance the organic, oceanic feel, I arm knitted a piece for the bottom of the kirtle, basically a large triangle, and two smaller, upside-down triangles for either side of the egg pouch.  I left several yarn strings loose from the pouch triangles which would be used to tie the kirtle behind the back of the dress, just like a regular apron.

The Pink Mother © Sarah Allegra – behind the scenes

The eggs were leftover from a shoot I did with Paul Telfer as the Sleeper’s Sentinel.  I’d had to buy a dozen of the super-large plastic eggs so I had PLENTY to use for other shoots!  I kept these fairly simple since there would be a lot going on visually in the images; I started with spray-painting a base coat of a semi-metallic light gold color and added flecks of bronze-black to make them look more like real eggs.  Repeat until they look right.  I knew I’d only need five or six eggs, since that was as many as would fit in the pouch I’d made so I didn’t waste any time painting extra eggs.

The Pink Mother © Sarah Allegra – behind the scenes

I did do one thing to just one egg though…  I found a nail and a hammer and while the egg was still in two pieces, I hammered a hole through from the inside out.  Some sharp knives, pliers and more hammering later, I’d created what looked like a fracture in the egg from a chick inside starting to hatch.  Eggs = done!

I’d had my faithful model Dedeker Winston in mind for this character the whole time.  I usually cast characters in the same way I create them, just by what “feels right.”  I had not consciously remembered it, but it turned out there was a really wonderful real-world reason to have Dedeker play the octopus-mother caring for her eggs.  Dedeker has been an egg donor many times to couples who are unable to have children on their own.  In fact, one family has two children, both from Dedeker’s eggs, and they just requested a third!  It’s very unusual for a family to have so many children from the same donor, but I think it’s really lovely that all of their children will be linked in this extra way.  And clearly Dedeker produces really fantastic babies!  🙂  Once I remembered that, it felt truly serendipitous that we were shooting this character together.

I knew that my wig was several shades darker than Dedeker’s hair and I had a couple thoughts on how to deal with it.  I knew she had a dark brown wig of her own which we could layer under mine, or we could totally cover all of her hair with a wig cap.  In the end though, she simply twirled her hair into a low bun, I set the wig on top of her head and since there was so much going on with the hair, it looked completely natural and blended right in.  If you looked closely, you could see that some of the hairs on her forehead were a bit lighter than the rest of her head, but I matched them up in about 30 seconds in Photoshop.  Sometimes the simplest method is the best!

We set out on a morning last summer to capture these shots of the character I’ve dubbed the Pink Mother.  We got started early and the sun was already blazing; it promised to be a miserably hot day but at the moment it was still pleasant.  I started shooting Dedeker in a dryer, dustier, yellower scene and led her along a path which gradually got greener and lusher, mirroring the octopus’ journey to find the perfect environment for her eggs to be born into.  The color pallet moved from warm and vivid to cool and less saturated, especially in regards to the Pink Mother herself.  As she nears death, the paler she becomes until the last shot, where she is very white.

She sacrificed everything she had for her eggs.  She loved them, cared for them, caressed them.  She journeyed over countless miles to find a safe, green place for them to be born.  Though it cost her everything, she never hesitated.  And, it seems, her journey was worth it.  The cracks in the eggs prove her right.  They were brought forth from the deepest love there is, and that can only be the best start to these new beings.

So thank you to Dedeker for being my medieval octopus mother and letting me share your story about your own eggs!  And thank you for trusting my vision even if it seemed questionable at the time 😉  You were the perfect, purest-loving mother to those babies!

And now enjoy the full images, some detail shots and behind-the-scenes captures!

A Journey Into Strange Lands © Sarah Allegra

A Journey Into Strange Lands © Sarah Allegra – detail

A Journey Into Strange Lands © Sarah Allegra – detail

A Journey Into Strange Lands © Sarah Allegra – detail

 

The Air Of A Quest About Her © Sarah Allegra

The Air Of A Quest About Her © Sarah Allegra – detail

The Air Of A Quest About Her © Sarah Allegra – detail

 

Migration’s Imminent End © Sarah Allegra

Migration’s Imminent End © Sarah Allegra – detail

Migration’s Imminent End © Sarah Allegra – detail

 

Her Last Act Of Devotion © Sarah Allegra

Her Last Act Of Devotion © Sarah Allegra – detail

Her Last Act Of Devotion © Sarah Allegra – detail

Her Last Act Of Devotion © Sarah Allegra – detail

The Pink Mother © Sarah Allegra

The Pink Mother © Sarah Allegra

The Pink Mother © Sarah Allegra

The Pink Mother © Sarah Allegra

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Several Pints

But not of beer.  Beer would have been so much better.

Well.  I’ve been meaning to tell you guys for FOREVER about the adventure I had surrounding my sinus surgery.  It’s a little bit long of a story; I will try and keep it brief but there was just a lot that happened, so I can’t promise anything.

From mid-July through the end of October, I was getting colds, repeatedly.  I’d get a cold, get over it, have about 2-3 weeks of more or less “normal” (for me) time, then get another cold.  One of these colds lasted for 3 weeks, 1 turned into strep throat and another turned into an ear infection so exquisitely painful that I gave serious thought to gouging the ear out of my head.  After a string of doctor visits, I was eventually sent to an ENT; an ear/nose/throat specialist.  I loved him right away.

He immediately agreed that this was abnormal, took a glance inside my nostrils and since there was nothing obviously wrong inside sent me off for some allergy blood tests and a CT scan of my sinuses.  The office was shockingly quick at getting this all set up; I’ve come to learn they are an extremely efficient and well-oiled, patient-loving machine.

The allergy tests showed a mild allergy to Timothy grass and mold, neither of which surprised me and both were too mild to be to blame for my illnesses.  The CT scan however showed inflammation and serious congestion in my sinuses, particularly on the right side and more toward the back of my skull.  I hadn’t ever really given a lot of thought to just HOW MANY sinus cavities you have in your body, but it’s rather a lot, as this image shows:

A lovely image of all the sinus cavities from http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/treatment/paranasalsinus/Patient/page1

My ENT recommended a surgery where he would go in and clean all the cavities out (while I slept deep in anesthesia) because it clearly wasn’t going away on its own.  If I did nothing, the cycle of colds every 2-3 weeks would just continue, which was obviously not a livable option.  And it also happens that my doctor is not only an ENT specialist, but that he specializes in this exact type of surgery!  And Geoff has had this exact surgery twice!  I felt I was in very good hands with both of them taking care of me, so I agreed to have the surgery done.

Before

November 4th Geoff woke up very early and drove me to the surgery center.  While I’ve had my nerve-blocking injections countless times, this was the first true, actual surgery I was going to have.  They knock me out for a short time for the injections, but it’s just a sedation, not actual anesthesia.  I was a little nervous, but mostly just excited to have the stupid sickness cycle stop.  I woke up with a sore throat; they’d had a little trouble intubating me (I’m guessing because I’m so small) and a little nauseated, but they gave me some nice drugs which cleared the nausea right away.  My ENT had taken a swab of the gunk in my sinuses and sent it to the lab to do a culture on it and see if it was anything that needed further treatment.  So other than a slightly sore throat, it was all very routine.

After – very sleepy looking.  Get used to the “mustache bandage” look.  I don’t know why my gown looks like it’s going to fall off at any moment.

The next couple days are a bit of a pain-filled blur in my mind.  Thankfully, Geoff stayed home with me to get me through the worst of it.  Of course, ALL my sinuses were inflamed and unhappy and my throat was really starting to hurt.  I’d expected to feel like I had a bad cold afterward but this was a whole new level of sinus and throat pain which I’d never experienced.  Geoff was able to call my doctor and explain my incredibly sore throat (talking was not going to happen from me) and he immediately prescribed the most beautiful, soothing numbing gel to gargle with.  It was a little messy, and about the consistency of pudding which made it hard to actually gargle, but oh my GOD did it work.  It turned me from the strep-throat severity of pain where breathing feels like inhaling shattered glass into something mildly uncomfortable when it wore off.  More points for my doctor!

Over the weekend, I started feeling better and better and by Monday, 6 days after my surgery, I decided I could run a short errand to my nearby craft store, since I had a really spectacular coupon which was about to expire.  As I reached for my purse (in a position I’d been in multiple times since the surgery) I felt something warm and wet in my nose.  I grabbed a paper towel, not thinking much of it until I saw I’d dripped blood onto the kitchen floor.  And then it REALLY started pouring.

I managed to grab a large wad of paper towels and run into the bathroom.  I have never bled like this in my life.  It was like all the veins in my sinuses just gave up and let loose.  It seemed to be coming mostly from the right side of my nose and very far back; if I tipped my head up or even held it level, blood waterfalled down my throat.  In a mild panic and not knowing what else to do, since I didn’t want to be swallowing all that blood, I held the paper towels to my face, leaned forward and let it drip into the bathroom sink.  And fortunately, I had my cell phone in my pocket, so I called Geoff, who had just gotten to work.  I was stuck in the “fright” of the “fright or flight” response and couldn’t think of anything else to do.

We discussed if I needed an ambulance and I just didn’t know; I did notice that after the initial panic, as I tried to slow my breathing and calm myself, the bleeding slowed a little, which gave me some hope.  Geoff called the ENT’s office and came right home, but we both knew it would be about 45 minutes before he got there.  So Geoff called John, one of my wonderful neighbors, hoping he was home.  John wasn’t home but he was close by.  He dropped everything and came rushing home to check on me until Geoff got there.  I later found out that John had been about to get his car washed and was about to send his car through the machine where the initial cleaning is done and there were people lined up behind him.  The car wash people told him it wouldn’t take long to go through the machine and then he could just leave, but John made everyone move their cars so that he could leave right that instant.  That’s the kind of people my neighbors are.  They more than have my back.

Sleight Of Hand © Sarah Allegra, featuring my neighbor John, who will make every single damn car get moved if he needs to check on me quickly

John got home and at that point the bleeding had mostly stopped so we agreed an ambulance wasn’t needed but he sat on the bathroom floor with me and told me stories to calm and distract me until Geoff got home.  He was an angel.  (And just to be clear, my other neighbor, his wife Donna, would have been equally adept in his role.  John happened to be closest to home so he took up the task, but Donna certainly would have done the same if she’d been around.  After all, she helped me take care of the opossum littler I found!)

After I’d calmed down and the bleeding leveled off, I took a few photos of the sink to record it.  The photos look dramatic, but every person who actually saw the copious blood agrees they don’t do it justice at all; both Geoff and John said it looked like a bad Halloween party decoration.  But to give you an idea, here’s one of my cell phone captures.

This photo actually came from Geoff’s camera, not mine.  His takes much better photos than mine does.  It looks like a fair bit of blood, but trust me, it was much, MUCH worse in person.  Geoff was also a saint for cleaning up the whole bathroom by himself, which I felt bad about, but I was under strict orders to REST and lay down.

So Geoff and I went back to see my ENT.  He took a look around, determined that yes, I was bleeding rather a lot and decided to pack my nose.  Apparently, he’d used a gel-like packing while I was out for the actual surgery; it was similar in texture to Jello.  I couldn’t even tell that there was anything in my nose, it was so mild and comfortable.  The new packing however was NOT pillowy and Jello-like.  I can only describe it like having an entire tampon made of broken glass and cacti bits shoved up one nostril.  And that’s after they sprayed a numbing spray inside my nose.  My eye watered and watered on that side of my face but I did not cry.

The packing was so incredibly uncomfortable that I couldn’t even talk or all the glass shards and cacti quills jabbed at me from inside my nose.  I was to keep it in for two days to really stop the bleeding, then I could have it out.  I wasn’t exactly happy, but I was glad to have the bleeding stopped.

Bandaged up with packing up my nose, taped to my cheek

The rest of the day, I communicated with Geoff through gestures, grunts and writing things down.  At one point I laughed quietly to myself and wrote “this is like The Leftovers,” on my pad of paper and showed it to him.  I was not in the least bit comfortable, but I didn’t worry I was dying imminently anymore and I knew that I could get through two days of pain, high though it was.  My doctor made sure that I was well stocked on painkillers before I left, because that’s the considerate kind of guy he is 🙂

The next morning I woke up and realized I was swallowing… and again… and again… and then I jolted upright and rushed to the bathroom because the bleeding had begun again.  Since I was sleeping on my back, slightly elevated (like I was supposed to) and the bleeding was coming from so far back, all the blood was just pouring down my throat like a thick, gross waterfall.  I had no idea how long I’d been swallowing my own blood, but I was again alarmed that I was bleeding so much, even after the packing was in.  It was coming from so far back, it was even behind the packing; it was like it wanted to run down the right side of my nose, but since that was now packed, it was overflowing down the left side and down my throat.

This time when Geoff called the ENT’s office, they told us to just come in right then, so I did, pale, woozy, feeling awful, still in my PJs, since I didn’t dare take the time to get dressed, nor make any movements which might cause my nose to bleed more.  I sat in their lobby for a few minutes, while the bleeding had blessedly stopped momentarily, with a huge ball of paper towels clutched to my face and a plastic grocery bag in my other hand in case I started dripping.  I laid my head against Geoff’s shoulder, closed my eyes and tried to forgot the lobby full of people who were staring at me in alarm.

The nurses were trying to clear a room for me when I suddenly felt the surge start back up for no reason.  Geoff alerted the nurses.  One of them brought me a kidney bowl to hold under my chin for dripping, then they were able to usher me off into a room away from the frightened eyes of the other clients.

A kidney bowl just like this!  The curved shape makes for good under-face catching.

My ENT was in the middle of surgeries of his own, so I saw one of the other doctors, who was just as lovely and kind as everyone else had been.  All the available nurses hovered around, trying to find anything to do to make me more comfortable; one wet paper towels and dabbed my forehead, another brought me some ice water to sip between procedures from the doctor.  There was one nurse in particular who stayed right by my side the entire time, no matter how gross it got.  She would frequently hold my hand or pat my knee during difficult parts and she was completely sincere about it; she wanted me to feel better and was doing any little thing she could think of.  As truly, completely awful as I felt and as unpleasant of an experience as it all was, whenever I remember that nurse, I feel a surge of the warm love she radiated.

This doctor decided to remove the packing, since all it was doing was obstructing the view of where the blood was coming from, so he pulled it out… and my god, I don’t know  which was worse, going in or coming out.  Either way, it’s not something you want inside your nose.  Removing it started a fresh flow, much of which was freely flowing down my face into the bowl under my chin.

The doctor kept needing me to tip my head back so he could see what was happening inside, which meant the blood kept going down my throat and getting swallowed.  At one point I started to feel very nauseated (more so than I had all morning).  I murmured to Geoff that I thought I might throw up and then a moment later, I was barfing up blood into my kidney bowl.  Geoff held this bowl for me under my chin as I filled it, he and the nurse did some sort of quick shuffle with bowls and I filled a second one.  If you’re ever given the choice to throw up blood or not, I would strongly recommend you choose to NOT do it.  That was probably the grossest thing that’s ever happened to me, and the whole time, Geoff and my nurse stood right by me, holding bowls (she did have gloves, but it still had to be pretty unpleasant), smiling and patting encouragements and holding my increasingly icky hands.  They are saints.

Shortly after that, the doctor was able to temporarily stop the gushing and I heard him and Geoff discussing that I would need an emergency surgery that day so they could go in and stop the bleeding for real.  I was going to be transferred to a hospital where I’d wait for my ENT to finish his current surgeries, then he’d meet me at the hospital and work on me.  They were weighing the options on either Geoff driving me over or having an ambulance come and take me when I asked if I could get up and wash my hands at the sink in the room, since they’d gotten spattered with blood and whatnot.  I made it to the sink, slowly, and I washed my hands, carefully, and then…  I’ve fainted before, I recognized the rushing deafness and darkness and knew I was about to go out so I hurried to plant my back against the cabinets and tried to slide down to the floor before I lost consciousness, thinking I’d have a shorter fall from there.  Looking back, I can see it would have been better to just say, “Hey Geoff, I’m passing out,” but of course you’re not thinking very clearly at the moment.  Luckily he saw what was happening so he leaped across the small room, nimbly avoiding expensive machines and he grabbed me before I hit the floor.  From his quick action, I never quite lost consciousness, but I was pretty well a rag doll for a few minutes.

At that point, the doctor wisely decided I should travel to the hospital by ambulance.

That was a first for me; an ambulance ride.  The medics were all very nice and clearly knew what they were doing; they got me on a saline IV before we even made it to the hospital, which was only a couple miles away.  I did decide that I didn’t like laying down and facing backwards in a moving car though, it would have made me carsick if the ride lasted much longer.  Although I don’t think that I would have had anything else to try and throw up.

The hospital got me situated in a room pretty quickly, a nice one by hospital standards; it was private, I had my own bed, bathroom and TV and there was a curtain we could draw over the glass doors.  Since at that point I was stable, we just had to wait a while for my doctor to finish his other surgeries and come over to the hospital.  So for a while, everything was surreal and strangely calm.  We watched some TV.  I saw my first episode ever of Seinfeld.  The staff came, drew blood, determined I did not need a blood transfusion, and switched out my now-empty saline bag for another one.

In my bed at the hospital, still being a trooper.  If you look carefully you can see how pale my lips are compared to the rest of my face.

It was fairly late in the day when my ENT was able to get over to me, but he seemed as fresh and alert as if I’d been his first patient of the day.  He brought an assistant with him and they used one of the hospital’s anesthesiologists.  We spoke to the anesthesiologists for a little while before they took me into the surgery room and Geoff mentioned that they’d had trouble intubating me for the first surgery.  The anesthesiologists looked at me assessingly and said, “I don’t think I’ll have trouble,” which he did not.

For me, then it was being wheeled into different rooms and getting various IV injections; the first one made you really, really relaxed and the second made you sleep.  As a chronic insomniac, I wouldn’t mind that every night 🙂  As I was told later, once I was under, my doctor looked inside my nose and determined that one artery at the very back of my sinuses, where the two sides join together had simply burst for no good reason, and that was what was causing all the bleeding.  He cauterized the offending artery along with a few of its friends for good measure, filled up my right side thoroughly with the Jello packing and let me wake up.  I spent a little longer in the hospital, in a different room with Geoff.  The anesthesia had again made me a little queasy, but the nurse gave me an injection which made that stop.

Groggy and pale after the emergency surgery, but I could muster the will for a thumbs-up, goddammit

And then we finally went home, more than 12 hours since we’d left it.  Thankfully, our neighbors had come and let Calantha outside much earlier in the day and also fed her dinner.  She and the cats were happy to see me and concerned about all the medical smells on me.  I think I stumbled around for a little bit, while Geoff feed the cats, I found PJs to wear which hadn’t just been in a hospital, all the while Geoff kept telling me to lay down; I don’t actually remember very much of this part.  But I think I fell asleep fairly quickly.  As soon as I woke up the next morning, I checked myself anxiously; did I taste blood?  Was everything ok?  And for the first time in several days, I was ok.

Geoff stayed with me for a couple of days which ended up being really needed.  I was extremely weak (and extraordinarily pale, everyone kept telling me, even considering my baseline paleness) and almost any movement made me very, very dizzy and light-headed.  Geoff made me lay down as much as he could, but I’d have to get up periodically to use the bathroom, or for some other task he couldn’t do for me.  It was a procedure though.  First, sit up in bed instead of laying down, propped up on a pile of pillows.  Let the dizziness pass.  Swing legs over side of bed and wait.  Let the dizziness pass.  Slowly stand and immediately put your hand (and probably face) on the wall while you ride out the biggest wave of dizziness.  Once you’re a little more settled, you can probably walk the 10 feet to the bathroom.  Geoff hovered anxiously every time I got up just in case I started to go down again.

I went back to see my ENT two days later and my GOODNESS, did EVERY person in that office remember exactly who I was.  I made quite the impression on them.  (Even now, as soon as I walk in, there’s a chorus of greetings from the whole staff.)  Everyone was happy that the surgery had worked and I wasn’t bleeding at all any more.  So why did the artery burst in the first place?  No one has any idea.  It’s just a mystery.  My doctor talked about how every now and then, you’ll have a patient who bleeds later on the day of the surgery, or maybe the day after, but 6 days later is unheard of.  There I go again, baffling doctors with my weird body.  I felt so, so much better compared to how I’d felt at the beginning of the week, I didn’t even really care how weak I was, I was just glad to be not bleeding, not at a medical facility, at home and not nauseated.

One of the first days I was able to stand for long on my own. But look, I’m not at the doctor’s! I’m not at the hospital! I’m wearing 18 layers because I have no blood, yes, but I’m home and on the mend!

My doctor tells me I lost 2-3 pints of blood between the 2 days of bleeding, which is significant, especially for someone as small as I am.  And frankly, I’m still feeling the effects of it.  I learned that it takes 120 days for a blood cell to replace itself, so even though I’m taking iron supplements to help my body along, it’ll be the middle of February before all my blood is replaced.  It’s getting better, but there was a while where I could hardly do anything that involved walking for more than a few feet without getting dizzy and winded and having to sit down.  Even now, I still have to be careful.  For some reason it there’s any kind of incline I’m walking up, even a very gently sloping one, I feel like Sisyphus pushing his boulder up a hill.  I still have to take a break halfway through walking the one flight of stairs at my therapist’s office, and another breather when I get to the top.  It is getting better though, noticeably so, and my doctor assures me this is normal for the amount of blood I lost.

I also found out that the culture they’d sent in of the goo inside my sinuses had turned out to be harboring a staph infection, which the antibiotics I was on as a natural result of the surgery should get rid of also.  I ended up needing to go two rounds with the antibiotics to really clear it up but it seems to be gone now.  And I have not had a single cold since I had my surgery, which goes to prove that really was the cause of all my summer sicknesses.

Overall, this was definitely not a fun experience but there were some good things that came out of it.  I know what a caring and attentive ENT I have now, along with the entire staff.  I practiced really resting and allowing others to do things for me when I needed them to, which is hard for me to do.  I’d much rather just do it on my own even if it makes me pass out than bother anyone else.  I watched Winter’s Tale and had a lovely afternoon with my mom, who came to stay with me one of the days Geoff had to be at work.  I felt loved and cared for.  And then, of course, there’s this… my mom brought this “to cheer me up” because of who was on the cover:

Thanks, mom 🙂  And big thanks my neighbors, my ENT and all of his staff, the ambulance workers and everyone at the hospital, if any of them are reading this somehow.  My friends and family were very diligent about checking in with how I was feeling by text, which was perfect as that was about all the communicating I could do.

And of course big, HUGE thanks to Geoff for taking such excellent care of me!  He always does, but I always appreciate it!

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Christmas Eve Tidings

Just a quick entry from me as I enjoy my Christmas Eve with my family and loved ones.  I had a couple new features come out in the past few days, and I always try and post about them here as well as my other social media outlets.  It just seems like the polite thing to do when someone goes to the trouble of talking about my work!

Firstly, we have Slovak Art Magazine.  They ran a lovely feature on my work in their latest issue, #13.

There is some really outstanding artwork in the magazine, so it is well worth looking at on its own and not just to see my work 😉

Second, I’m really pleased to say that one of my images won a contest sponsored by Good Light! Magazine.  The theme was People and Water, so I thought one of my underwater images from my Glass Walls series with Katie would fit well.  Apparently they thought so too since they chose it as the winning image!

They wrote a feature about the image which was lovely and full of comments which make me want to blush, but I’m going to share it here anyway.

And as if that weren’t enough nice things they said, there’s also a short video where the judge talks about why he chose the winning images (and he has a lovely accent as well!)

I’ll just say that the title came first, then the image, not the other way around, but it’s easy to see how you could mistake it!

So no… this is not especially Christmasy, but I have not had a moment to put this together until just now!  And while I have thanked the magazines themselves, I think it’s important to promote it online as much as possible.  It’s just good photography manners.

With that all said, I hope all of you who are celebrating Christmas have an absolutely WONDERFUL one tomorrow!  Make sure you get to sleep early so Santa has time to leave you something nice.  And of course, the most important thing of all about Christmas… I hope it is filled with people and animals you love, that you’re able to express your love to them all and they say so to you as well.

Presents are lovely.  Feasts of good food are something we should be very thankful for.  But the heart of the holiday is sharing love with one another.  I hope you give and receive lots of it 🙂

Merry Christmas!!

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