Resurrection

This Easter, I found myself ascending out of the artist Andy Goldsworthy’s installation “The Oak Room” and stepping into the light.

Five years ago, I went down into that same space believing my life was over. I would have never guessed I’d come full circle and find myself resurrected here all of these years later on Easter Day.

I’ve always thought that art is a form of healing. Some art touches us so deeply it changes us on a cellular level and we are never the same after seeing it.

I will never forget the first time I read Man’s Search for Meaning. It shifted me into the humanitarian I would become. I remember seeing Notre-Dame Cathedral for the first time and being overwhelmed with the beauty of spirit. And I remember seeing my first The Two Fridas. It ignited in me a desire to understand my own duality and heartbreak.

But there was one piece that would create such a powerful shift in me spiritually and psychologically that it nursed me through my Pause.

In the summer of 2021, I stumbled upon The Oak Room in the South of France. Tucked away in a magnificent vineyard, it is a womb-like underground wooden structure made from oak branches and trunks.

You descend into the earth—into a dark, cold space.

There is a sliver of light where, if you stand, you are lit up gold.

When I descended the stairs for the first time, I was so lost.

I had hit midlife and was questioning everything. My hormones were shifting. I felt like my career was over—that I had somehow aged out. Looking at the magnificent installations on the land, I felt my legacy would never be important. That I would die without being known or seen or doing something extraordinary.

There is a photo of me ascending that day. Even then, I was thinking that one day I would get out of the darkness I was living in. I just couldn’t figure out who I wanted to be in the second half of life.

Over the next four years, I came out of it. But for me, it took a conscious crossover to midlife. I had to go underground—to my shadow, to the grief, to the questions I didn’t want to ask.

So when I returned this Easter and climbed those same stairs, something had shifted.

Nothing about the structure had changed.

But I had.

What once felt like a grave now felt like a passage.

I didn’t escape midlife.

I moved through it.

And on the other side, I wasn’t fixed—

I was truer.

Resurrection isn’t so much about dying, but being reborn.

I was reborn into a woman who still believes in the power of beauty and love, but in a more grounded way.

I saw my shadow and the shadow of others. My naivety died when people I loved hurt me deeply.

But I decided to come out the other side not bitter, but being reborn to the love I have for myself and the world.

Listen to this week’s episode on Spotify and Apple Podcast!