February 28, 2015 by Rebecca Tillett

I was born into autumn and spent the first fifteen years of my life there. I spent the subsequent 16 in winter but I have now entered a Spring in my life. It’s the first time I can say confidently that I’m happy without subtext. I never realized before now, how powerful that is. Even more powerful is the knowledge that I acquired this happiness through my own doing; I, alone, took the ridiculously painful and challenging steps to get here, not even really knowing where I was going. I only knew I was hungering for something I’d never before tasted and I let my faith in the promises of the unfamiliar guide me. I put all conviction in nothing more than possibility and life rewarded me accordingly. I feel unbelievably lucky and brave for the bold moves I’ve recently made in my life and while I know I’m not guaranteed a summer or even a terribly long Spring, I now know that I have the strength necessary to seek them out before so easily acquiescing to a seemingly never-ending and brutal winter.

River of Spirituality / February 11, 2015 by Rebecca Tillett

I was sixteen and my father had put a bullet in his head, in the dead of night, in the home that he and I shared with my mother, equally melancholy but impenetrable, like petrified wood. My river would diminish to almost nothing at this point, slowly trickling through the ragged terrain threatening to surrender to the ceaseless drought before ebbing and vanishing entirely. And it did, although the gash my river had carved in the land remained quietly and patiently, for the water to return and the seeds of the surrounding vegetation slept knowingly, of the wisdom and spirituality I would eventually begin to perceive in my life. For years, torrential rains would eventually quench my land’s thirst for water and a trickle would turn into a stream, and the stream would again gain enough water and momentum to be my guiding river once again, and yet, it was a beautiful piece of my landscape I often took for granted. I knew it was there, but I stopped sitting on the banks, peering into the simulated glass at the river rocks sleeping softly and inconspicuously below.

Suicide is War / October 6, 2014 by Rebecca Tillett

Suicide is war. And perhaps not with a foreign or nameless enemy but with oneself. It’s an internal struggle of incomparable breadth. You lose enough battles and you lose the war. Bloodshed abounds. My father was at war with himself for years, if not decades and ultimately, he lost but it was something he could not heave himself out of or walk peacefully away from, waving a white flag. He was slated to fight until the day he died. That was his fate and he handled it as gracefully as he knew how. I have never blamed him for leaving. As quickly as I learned he had died I had forgiven him. Leaving early and on his terms was a non-negotiable clause in the fine print of his life. Somewhere, deep down in the pit of my gut I had always known it.

How do I interpret life’s challenges? / October 6, 2014 by Rebecca Tillett

My father felt a pull away from this anguishing life to the battlefield and conclusively to someplace better and with trustfully less heartache. This goal became his duty and obligation and it was the only way he knew how to move forward. And I have suffered heavily, myself, as a result of this but I no longer hear the Why Me? record skipping in the back of my mind because on December 17th, 1998 I gained something valuable that many people never do: Boundless gratitude for my much deeper capacity for joy. It would only take nearly half my lifetime without him to realize it.

How do I discover and apply my gifts? / September 29, 2014 by Rebecca Tillett

I see beauty in ugly places and ugly in beautiful places. I see the abstract artful formations that a random assortment of words on a page can make and I can feel those words. I see light in dark and history in skin. I see the good and tenderness in people and I’m sensitive to the dishonest, black-hearted and manipulative (and do what I can to maintain a life without them). And I try so hard to depict these things that I see through the lens of a camera and through writing and yet I realize as humans, we all see things a little differently than anyone else, and through our own lens. That’s the incredible thing about art; whatever I create, it changes depending on the particular observer. I think that if I’m truly lucky enough to count these as gifts I can say without flinching that they’re all rooted in consciousness, in emotion and passion and an absolute awareness that we’re all delicate feeling beings.

To whom should I listen? / September 22, 2014 by Rebecca Tillett

WSMR is also home to Trinity Site, the location of the world’s first atomic explosion on July 16, 1945 - more specifically happening near the north end of the historic Jornada del Muerto which in English means “route of the dead man” which is quite appropriate, don’t you think? And what does it say about me that there’s something about that fact that I strongly relate to or identify with? I am a child of the nuclear age and I came to be at the heart of it all. I wear a pin on my camera strap with an image of an atom bomb explosion that says “Homesick” beneath it. I find myself somewhere in that morbid absurdity of the land I came up in.

Ever-Changing / September 8, 2014 by Rebecca Tillett

" I am a woman, an American, an Australian, an introvert, an animal advocate, passionate soul, a loyal friend, a giver, a writer, a wife, an ex-wife, a girlfriend, a dweller, a small-towner-living-in-a-big-city, a fish out of water, an artist, an ex-self-mutilator, an empathy-filled spirit for all suffering beings, a photographer, a granddaughter, a gardener, a creator, a destroyer, an observer, a seeker, a lover, a grudge-holder, a forgiver, a re-inventor, a decorator, a reader, an appreciator of all beautiful things, a regretter, a graphic designer, a survivor, an ever-evolving human being. I am resilient. I am called to identify with countless labels and descriptors. I am called to try my hand at numerous undertakings."

That Very Redemption / August 25, 2014 by Rebecca Tillett

"Maybe the primary and most rational reasons we’ve found such contentment in each other is because, once finally emancipated from past strife and having gained the necessary perspective, we needed that very redemption to do so."