by Debra Hillard
Remembering Myself-A Journey Through the Threads of Time has been percolating for decades, long before my pen ever hit the page. What I could not know at the outset, was the depth and breadth of what would eventually reveal itself to be shared, not until it finally happened. That event changed the course of my life forever and my once nearly smothered embers, are now ablaze.
This is not a story in the usual sense. Though I write about my life, this is not a memoire or a linear recounting of events as they occurred. These are excerpts from a life that has woven in and out of time, usually with some degree of awareness that I was not living solely in what appeared to be my present. I am referring to the fact that my experience of living these last seven decades has taken me deep into other lifetimes, other realities, and back again to the physical reality of the 21st century. My experience continues to be one of operating in multiple dimensions at once, aware of parallel realities and timelines. My story, as with my experience of living, weaves through them as if they were all occurring simultaneously.
As a child I knew that I was here for a specific purpose. I knew who I was before I ever had the words to speak. It has taken decades for me to shed the identity I adapted to survive and to step into the truth of who I have always known myself to be. If you asked me as a child who I was, I automatically said “I’m an artist.” Those were the only words I had to assign to a vision far beyond my comprehension. They were words I could hide behind, an identity others could accept.
Along the way, there were forks in the road, decisions that shaped the “what” of my life. The who was my constant, but I was indoctrinated into a belief system that made it almost impossible for me to live that to the fullest. For most of my life, I felt compelled to contort myself into someone others would find acceptable.
Had I shared my reality with anyone, my fear was that I would be cast out as crazy. My only hope of survival was in being something greater than I was expected to be, but not truly myself.
It was only in the process of revisiting my life that the pieces began to fall into place. The pain and heartbreak made sense in a way that they could not while I was in the thick of it all. Every twist and turn along the way, each choice I made when presented with a fork in the road, and multitudes of images and poetic musings, began to paint a masterpiece of a life guided by Spirit. Though maturity was required to grasp the immensity of the shift I share at the conclusion of the book, the journey itself has been my true masterpiece thus far. As an artist, I have always said that my life would be my greatest work of art and this has proven to be the case.
This is a book I had to write. Just like I made the choice to live it all, sharing it is now part of that process. It is in honor of all of us who make the impossible choice to do our soul’s work, no matter the cost. My hope is that something within the pages of this book ignites the smoldering flame within you that has been waiting to be fanned.
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