As a person who lives mostly in my head, I value analysis and precise language as modes of expression. I started attending SoulCollage® workshops almost two years ago, to help me connect more directly with my emotions-and express them. SoulCollage® did fulfill these goals and more. I now see an evolution in how the process connects with me personally, in the way I arrange images on a card, and in the depth and breadth of the themes I'm addressing in the cards I make. Now I am all the more excited to see what else I can discover about myself and my past, present and future life.

To create a meaningful card, we let the images call to us, to be chosen and to be combined with certain other images. Then they communicate in depth to us, as we try to express in words the ideas and feelings they evoke from less--conscious layers of our experience. In the past, I tried to express my feelings in words, to understand them through logic. Working in the visual medium drills down into my core, taps into my intuition. So does the "I Am One Who..." process. I speak as I imagine the collaged image would if it were alive. Letting "the card" introduce itself to me in this way, and perhaps respond to a specific question, translates my intuition into words, into a language I can understand. It has taken a while for me to feel comfortable with this method and to trust it to help me bring long-submerged ideas and experiences to the surface, where I can deal with them.

I began to see how my cards and I have changed across these two years when my workshop leader, SoulCollage® Facilitator Katherine Ziegler, challenged us with a suggestion from its creator Seena Frost: to examine all our cards across time and notice any recurring motifs or themes.

My first cards tended to use what I, at first glance, judged as pretty images. This card, for instance, shows eggs and fresh produce from my back yard. I now see it relates to a deeper theme of self-sufficiency, security and control over the quality of my food supply. All my life this has been important for me; I have not always felt able to trust others.

FOOD

The layer of myself that this card represents said:

I Am One Who can stand tall and be grounded in the earth. I am fruitful. I am sustenance and nourishment.... You have the depth of the roots and the productivity of the fruit. You can sustain yourself and others. Take nourishment from within and without.

At the time, I asked a question about career transition. The card answered,

To everything there is a season. You will harvest your crop from your current position and move on to the fallow period of development of your new venture. The abundance of your harvest will sustain you as you launch your next steps.

After a while I began to sense that there were larger or deeper issues I was avoiding, and I was a little afraid of what those might be.

I was both nervous and excited when, after about a year of workshops and making cards at home, elements of my past life and deeper emotional content began to assert themselves in the cards. It was almost as if they broke through, to interrupt and present another perspective. These were the issues I needed to acknowledge and grapple with. This happened after about 20 to 30 cards, which made me thankful and grateful I had stuck with it.

The first card that broke through showed a small girl in a big man's white shirt, peeking out from behind a paper mask with cut-out eyes and a zestful-looking woman in a wild, form-fitting paisley and leopard-print dress. The I Am One Who says it all:

I am a little girl dressing up in Dad's shirt. I am pretending to be a grown man in the work world, and I hide my little girl face from the public. I have an urgent need for the freedom and influence of the grown-up man, owning my power.

Flash forward: I am all dressed up to go out and attract the attention that I crave from a mate. I wear golden fur and jewels like a queen. Designs accentuate my selling points. Look at me! I am a woman with fertile hips, shapely and healthy. I am a worthy mate.

But truly, this too is a mask, diverting attention from who I really am. I hide behind my seeming openness, to show everything and nothing at the same time.

During the same week, I composed another card that I call Conflicted & Confused.

CONFLICTED AND CONFUSED

Interestingly, it has a similar brown-and-gold color scheme to my woman in the wild cat-patterned dress. It says of itself:

I am the many faces of the conflicted woman. I am divided and stuck. I run from task to task and my mind flits from thought to thought with no resolution, never getting anywhere. Digging myself into an ever-deepening rut. The tension builds until it explodes out into an anguished scream. I can't bear it any longer!

Underneath is the sad, vulnerable woman, curled up, pondering what she perceives as her lack of options, her poor decisions and her inability to mine her strengths, forge her resolve and jump out of the ruts to move forward.

She tries to comfort herself with her inner strength and empathy. She is stripped to the core, to her wounded, fragile self. She hopes her gentle self-caring will promote healing, growth, and change-or at least momentary respite.

This card's advice to me was,

Return to base elements-the foundations. Pull back into who you truly are. Center yourself. Deflect the externals, pare away the distractions that create confusion. Quiet the inner voices, so you can identify your true voice and pursue your true mission.

Over time, I created several more cards that turned out to be encouraging me to speak this inner truth to the world.

The woman on the first of these cards hides discreetly behind a pink veil, pink lipstick, and red body paint, but the important message she is compelled to deliver is represented by the jewels at her throat chakra. A reading of this card urged me to come forth:

I Am One Who has placed a veil between myself and the world. I am painted, I have gems to speak and share, I am mysterious.

To my question of how to spend a short period of leisure time, the image responded,

Dig deep to determine your message. Decide what to share. The jewel of your essence is transparent. Stop pretending you're hiding.

Around this same time, I found myself making another card, showing a serene, well-dressed woman who had been staying secret and private behind sunglasses, but then chose to raise the barrier, gazing straight at the viewer to deliver a message. I let this image speak for herself without asking her any questions. She had a lot to say!

I am strong and self-assured. I care for myself and know how to relax deeply, letting the sun soak into my being. I exude an essence of being valued yet self-contained. I raise my sunglasses to see you clearly and to connect-gaze to gaze and soul to soul. For you, I will interrupt my meditative reverie.

You cannot rely on anyone to take care of you. It is your self-care that signals to others that you are worthy of note. I know you believe appearance does not, should not matter. This is self-delusion. Being noticed or singled out brings you discomfort. But to find and be found, you too need to come out from behind your anonymity.

"You hide your talent and your light. I know why: you fear being lost again, swallowed up and dissolved into nothing-ness. You wonder if you can maintain your core values while relating to others. But you've proven you can be self-contained, and now you'd like to try something else. My little flower, come out, it is your hour, you may own it or not... Sing, rejoice, emerge!"

Other cards too addressed my hesitation by assuring me that my authentic self was strong enough to assert itself. One was Venus, who spoke to me without waiting to be asked:

I am sophisticated beauty and youth. I am arising from a glass shell that has enclosed me like a cocoon, in the salty, life-giving medium of the ocean. Conditions are right and I have transformed, emerging into my next phase-prepared, ready to go, confident, even saucy. Up, up and out is the only way I can go.

I am untroubled by the thunderstorm behind me. My emergence and this storm are cataclysmic events. I am renewed in purpose. My time has come.

In midsummer, I created a card that gave me the final piece of information I needed to persuade me to take action. In it, a weeping, anxious woman looks out from a slit in a brick wall---that she herself is holding up in front of her face! At first I saw her as hiding her raw feelings from others, trying to protect herself from feeling them, and wondering if she could make it out in the world. Recently, I saw that her isolation itself was causing her anguish-over the positive things, the companionship she was missing.

I never cease to be amazed at how the SoulCollage® process has evolved for me. I have begun to find a way to express the ideas and feelings that were so elusive. This voice, tentative at first, now comes more easily and is much stronger.