I feel a bit vulnerable putting this on my blog but with everything going on in the world, I feel compelled to share this and to hopefully inspire hope, faith and love rather than criticism. However, if criticism and skepticism come my way I am ready for it regardless.
What I am about to share, has been with me for about 16 years. The exact moment that the Marian Apparition appeared I am uncertain. What I am certain of, when I compiled this collage originally, it was void of this. Sometime along this span of time she appeared, so subtly and has been watching over my daughter and I for some time now.
To start, here is a little backstory / history on this. In 1997, I had just turned 26. That August I was on my way to study in Paris, France as an MBA student at a private American college that had a pilot campus there. I am just going to touch on a couple of key points here to explain my motivation behind why I constructed the collage the way I did. During my year as a student in Paris, my girlfriends and I embarked on a few journeys to Sicily on our school breaks. One of our colleagues’ parents owned a pensione in Taormina so we decided to check it out and fell in love with the place entirely. What a magical island! Further, the architecture was incredibly nostalgic for me for some reason but also laced with a deep melancholy and sadness for the hostility, war and violence that Sicilians have faced over the centuries.
The following summer of 98, I decided I no longer wanted to stay in Paris. I completed a 6 week program through Rutgers University’s pilot campus in Paris for my TEFL certification, found another graduate MBA program that I could transfer to in Rome, Italy through St. John’s University of New York and so decided to move to Rome, teach English and finish graduate school. It just so happened that one of my long-time childhood school friends was getting her doctorate in theology at the Angelicum University in the Vatican.
My friends’ roommates were gone till the beginning of October so she said I could house up with her until I could find a place to live. Rome, a city I had always been overwhelmed by, turned out to feel like one large village once I got situated there. A wonderful, warm, inviting and spiritual place it was. This was during the Kosovo crisis, so there were so many refugees seeking haven at this time in Rome. To witness this strife touched me deeply and filled me with such horror and sadness. Simultaneous, I was going through a spiritual awakening whilst there. I was baptized Methodist growing up but never went to church. My Swiss Italian Grandfather was raised Catholic but we were not due to the fact that my Grandmother never liked or trusted the Catholic church. As a young girl, all my close friends were Catholic and I was always jealous and had ‘FOMO’ when they got to leave school to go to catechism classes. So now that I was living in Rome, living in the cradle of Catholicism, I let myself go fall into it so to speak. All of a sudden I was going to mass and praying the Rosary. I had the blessed opportunity to see Pope John Paull II at his getaway retreat at Castel Gondolfo one Sunday with only about 50 other people. Incredible spiritual things were happening all around me. My childhood girlfriend was so relaxed and happy about everything. There was no darkness or negativity about it, only love. Further, we would always have so much fun! Our daily cocktail hour, at 5, was something we looked forward to. We would go for fabulous meals and I was introduced to some very prominent and influential leaders within the Catholic world. When her roommates returned is when I was introduced, for the first time to Medjugorje. I do not want to go into too much detail here, to protect the anonymity of the persons I met, at this moment. However, Medjugorje blew me away! I had no idea!
I had to return to the States, quite unexpectedly the end of that September 1998, due to the fact that my grandmother suddenly passed. Reluctantly I did not want to leave my new life in Rome but my finances were nill and my family needed me.
I am originally from California but went to the University of Oregon. After graduating from the U of O in 1994, I moved to Portland before moving to Paris in 1997. Now that I was coming back to the States, I thought it would be best to move back to Portland where my good friends were and that already had a job for me waiting tables in a Spanish wine bar. Looking back on all of this, I have had a hard life, but I wouldn’t change anything because it has all led me to this moment and it led me to my daughter who now is 18. You do the math. Yes, my daughter was born that September 1999. When I moved back to Portland, 3 months later I found myself pregnant with her and the father, the man I was seeing during those brief few months, said he would have nothing to do with us. Now, I needed Catholicism more than ever, as a cradle of comfort, faith, strength and the higher love I needed this. I reached out to my friend in Rome and she referred me to the Holy Rosary Chuch where I started my RCIA classes and that Spring of 99 converted to Catholicism. I had two jobs that I worked every day until I moved to Bend, Oregon. My parents were there and I did not want to raise my child alone. That September 1, I moved to Bend. My daughter was born 24 days later.
When I moved back to the states after my year abroad, I brought back a few fashion magazines. I am an avid fashion lover, as you can probably tell from my blog and my online boutique that I have. One day I was at a thrift shop and found a cool old vintage frame. I bought it and felt inspired to make a collage of my journey up to that moment of being a single mother and the spiritual transformation I experienced in Rome. I took those old magazines and found a black and white photo editorial of some old buildings in Sicily. I also found an old poem I wrote when I was living in Paris, a baby picture of me, a picture of myself sitting on our balcony in our apartment in Rome, an illustration of what our building living in Rome looked like and the focal point of the collage was, of course, our beloved Mother, Mary Mother of Christ and humanity. It was a replica card of a Rennaissance Botticelli painting my friend had given me, for she was always sending me beautiful things to fill me with the hope and faith.
The Poem written in Paris in 1998:
“These are crazy times, chaotic, these are lonely times, sadness, these are beautiful happy times, euphoric these are, beautiful times, spiritual discovery. The yearning for establishment has finally awakened within me and yet I take the long route there. I sit in this apartment in Rome trying to make these abstract dreams my reality.”
Mind you, when I created this collage, the Marian apparition was not yet there. I do not know when when she appeared, or when I became conscious of her presence. I want to say it was during my darkest hours of life 2007-2011 that she came through. I don’t want to go into these details yet about my life so let’s speed forward to now and what is prompting me to write this and share this with the world.
As stated in the opening sentences of this blog entry, I perceive and empathize daily with the pain we suffer through and the pain we continuously inflict upon others, as individuals, as governments, as employers, as nations. I have found myself in an incredible amount of stress, anxiety and mental pain lately due to a recent salary cut in my current profession that provides the majority of my income that I depend on. Not only has this affected me but my own attitude left unchecked affects my loved ones and friends as well. I have found it so trying to remain positive and feel love yet this has helped me so much. This is a beautiful gift and message from Her and a daily conscious reminder to me to believe, have faith, God loves us and have strength, to help us get through these falliable woes of life. I must state for the record that I have not practiced Catholicism for years but remain devoted to God, spirtiuality and the Higher Good. I felt it very important to finally share this with you, now years later. HAVE FAITH, FAITH HAS YOUR BACK! I welcome your comments and thank you for reading! I will be writing more on this in future blog pieces.
Below you will see the series of photos I took of my collage. I find it so incredible that the focal point of this is the Virgin Mary and then couple this with her apparition. I look at in awe daily, still filled with feelings of incredulity here and there but it is impossible to deny and this, to me, is a miracle.
Hail Mary, full of grace.
Our Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou among women,
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb,
Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our death.
Amen.
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