Sophia Cleansed Print

My drawing here is called "Sophia Cleansed".

This is the selection from my illustrated book, The Liberation of Sophia, called "Cleansed".

It took a few years for me to finally feel like I was free from my years of service to the church. On the one hand I appreciate so much from that time. On the other hand there were things I needed to be cleansed from.

Many of you know what I mean.

Here's a selection from "Cleansed":

After I escaped I felt like I could shower forever.
I mean, in one way I felt clean like I'd shaken off the dirt. In another way I felt filthy with stuff I couldn't somehow shake.
It was the residue of all my years of slavery and my necessary collusion with it. I forgive myself. I did it in order to survive.
What's been done to me and what I've done to myself. I forgive.
What I've been given and what I've received. I forgive.
It hasn't all been good. It's all been... questionable.
But here I feel the glue of all that residue gathered over the years sticking to my body, my bones, my soul.
I've been caught in a rain storm. I've fallen to the ground. I will let it all soak in.
My many years of servitude,
my years of compromise,
my years of confusion,
my years of captivity,
my years of fear.
May they all drain out of me and into the ground to bury themselves.
I've never felt this clean, this pure, this complete. I'll remember this rainy night‚ my truest baptism.