The Safety of Objects - The Artist's Way

Week one of The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron talks about items that bring us a sense of safety.  When I first read about that, I kind of thought, "What do you mean?"  I think in this life we have so many THINGS in our lives that we touch or see regularly that we don't really - I don't really think about it.

It only took me a couple of minutes to think of one object that I would say gave me a sense that all was right with the world and ironically, it is the one item I don't have readily available to me anymore.

My object is a tiny pewter Piglet pin (Piglet of Classic Winnie the Pooh stories) that I bought with Roby's mom and sister the day we picked up his ashes.  We had stopped at a little store for goodness only knows what and I saw these tiny little pins and bought one for each of us as a talisman.  Hard to explain now, but it made sense then.

I wore my pin every day for about 3 years - even one of the students I used to interpret with remembers it.  I touched it any time I was feeling stressed or anxious.  Just a tiny pin that represented Roby's spirit - it felt to me as if that pin had him in it.  When I touched it, I felt grounded.  

One day, years after I started wearing it, I got into my car after a job and when my hand went to my collar to touch it, as was my habit, it was gone!  I panicked.  Literally freaked.  I looked everywhere, I went back to the job and looked and asked others to keep an eye out for my pin.  I wept when I realized it was probably gone.  I mean, this thing is TINY and the back of the pin was a tie tack - they get loose eventually.  Finally, a couple of days later, I was getting into my car and found it tucked between my car seat and the emergency break.  I was ecstatic and decided to put the pin on a ribbon hanging from my rear view mirror.  Not the same as wearing it daily, but I didn't want to lose it because of the loose tie tack (um, replace the back...).

When the car was totalled in an accident, I had to pull all my stuff out of the car and I put it in a box that I have lost track of...but I still think about that pin.  And miss it.  Sometimes, my hand will stray to my collar to touch it.  It isn't there, but I think that is where I carry Roby's energy still.

So, there you have it.  My safety object. I know I have it here somewhere, and now I am motivated to try to find it.