Part 2
Because religion was more than squelched in Romania under its communist government at that time, I didn’t grow up knowing who God was, or what Jesus had done for me. As a family we would practice the Christian orthodox religion culturally, going to church for the special days, but I didn’t really know what it all meant, or why it was important. With no Godly rudder in my life, the boat started to sway in my teenage years. When I was 9 years old, after the communist regime fell and we were allowed out of the country, my parents immigrated to Canada to live in the rainforest province of British Columbia. In many ways this transition was more difficult for me than anything that came beforehand. I was an awkward, shy kid who didn’t know the culture, didn’t know the language, and it was painfully hard fitting in. Drawing Archie comics for kids or pictures of the Lion King was cool for a minute, but it didn’t help me make friends long term. Sometimes kids would only befriend me to get a little drawing, and afterwards they would leave me. It took years for me to find a solid group of girls - that I am still friends with today - but before those friends, shyness and all, I continued to pursue art throughout high school.
Art was a kind of universal language and the world I felt most comfortable in. I was hungry to learn as much as I could so I took an extra college level oil painting class at night in order to learn more than what was being offered. I even taught myself photography and how to develop black and white prints after school in the photo lab by pure experimentation. (Result: some photos were way too light and others way too dark, but a couple looked ok!). I was a total art nerd! Externally, my abilities to express myself through painting, drawing, sculpture, calligraphy, anything I could get my hands on really, was making leaps and bounds. Internally though, I increasingly struggled with confidence issues, and the desire for affirmation of self worth - that I know now should have come from God - and I started to look for it in the wrong crowds and in the wrong things. What started as an experimental thing to help me understand more about how I see the world and become more confident, instead became a hindrance, a fog, and a crutch that took away any last shred of confidence I had, including my confidence as an artist.
The boat was nearly wrecked by my early 20s. After abusing marijuana for about 6 years, sadly I had begun to believe that I couldn’t do art unless I was high. There I was with a history of great artistic accomplishments, and attending a selective and competitive prestigious art institute, and yet I was more depressed and lost than I had ever been. I didn’t know how to be myself anymore. My mental clarity was dulled, my emotions were numb, and my ability to focus was non-existent. I would think back on my early teenage years when I was excited about art, focused and creating every day, and remembered those as the glory days compared to where I was, barely making art, and just living in internal turmoil. I was depressed and full of regrets. I doubted my gifts and talents, and didn’t think I could do anything artistic nor would I have a future in it.
At the insistence of a friend I stopped using marijuana, and got my bearings enough to be able to finish my studies on a good note. What should have taken me 4 years to complete actually took 5 and a half, but at least I finished. As the fog was slowly lifting around me I recognized just how many things I had numbed and buried, and how the thing that I thought would make me stronger and more confident actually crippled me and left me weaker. It was a slow wake up call. A couple of years after I had finished school I met my future husband. He radiated confidence, creativity, and a joy for life. We fell in love and we were married a year later, and I moved with him to Los Angeles, California. Once again, I found myself a foreigner in a new land, but by the grace of God something different happened this time.