Judith Klemos

The after effects of the Self-Reveal Challenge are continued exploration into peeled back layers that is me.

I discovered that I really like sharing myself, much more than I ever have or ever thought I would. Sharing who you are is a gift to yourself. Keeping all that goodness to yourself is a crime…and know what else? Its suffocating!! Better yet, its keeping your hands tied.

So, here’s to never doing THAT again!! I’m an open book!

I’ve been thinking about ‘reveal’ from all perspectives for the past week. All aspects and sides of it. I even looked up it’s origin and that really took me deeper.

from re- ‘again’ (expressing reversal) + velum ‘veil’

Reversing the veil.

Wow. That is powerful.

Reversing the veil we put up to project a certain image out into the world. The veil of protection that cloaks what we feel is too personal or imperfect to share.

I call bullshit.

I spent nearly a decade walking with the terminally ill in hospice and from that honor I learned SO much.

One of the greatest reveals I ever witnessed was in hospice.

We had gotten a new admission on Friday and according to the nurse this was a patient that we were apt to have for awhile, so I waited until first thing Monday to see her. Upon arrival Monday morning, I found a woman anguished and in discomfort. I called into the office to get the nurse out as soon as possible, but it was going to be awhile.

The woman, let’s call her Nellie, had no possessions in her extended care facility room. No pictures, no belongings of her own. As a hospice Social Worker I travelled with everything I might need, including a CD player and reading materials. I put on specific music and began to read to her from the journal of dying, death and grief poems I’d written.

While the music played, I read poem after poem, pausing long enough after each to allow her Spirit to glean from the words that hung in the air. With each poem her face melted into its angelic form. The anguish that aged Nellie disappeared revealing what lay behind the weathering earthly worry and fear had painted upon her. The veil she’d worn for probably forty years or more. By the end of the last poem Nellie’s breathing had shallowed, her face was angelic and nothing about her was anguish. 

Not long after I finished the last poem she smiled broadly, sat straight up with arms outstretched in front of her and then folded her arms into a hug across her chest, she lay back down and took her last breath.

I cannot paint with words her beauty that had been hidden behind the veil she weaved with strife and suffering.

I suspect she was never so alive as when she put it down in that moment before she transitioned.

Reveal.

Reverse the veil, before its too late.

I love you.

~Jade

P.S. The picture is not Nellie, but all beautiful women need to have their picture shared!