The Emotional Spine of EXIT369

There are moments in life when the body becomes the scripture.

Not a book written by someone else. Not a doctrine handed down. Not a rule carved into stone.

A living scripture.

A record written in bone, blood, breath, scar tissue, tears, and resurrection.

This is the emotional spine of EXIT369.

This is the story of how sobriety, art, suffering, prayer, and a broken spine became one long conversation with God.

EXIT369 was born before I understood what it was. The Honed Crone came later. Pacific Spirit Fine Art came later. The names arrived as markers along a path I was already walking.

The number 369 came to me early in sobriety. I was learning about energy, mathematics, symbolism, and the mysteries that sit beneath ordinary life. I discovered Nikola Tesla’s famous fascination with the numbers 3, 6, and 9. I became curious. I started noticing patterns. I started noticing synchronicities.

I have always been spiritually inclined.

Before I understood religion, I understood communion.

Before I understood theology, I understood art.

Before I knew what I was doing, I was reaching toward something beyond myself.

As a child, I lived inside a vast inner world. I was deeply observant, deeply sensitive, and deeply connected to things that I could not explain. I often wondered if there was something wrong with me because I felt too much, saw too much, noticed too much.

Eventually, I learned that sensitivity was not a curse.

It was a nervous system trying to survive in a world that often did not know what to do with sensitivity.

I was told who I was before I knew how to discover myself.

I was labelled quiet. Shy. Too much. Too little. Wrong.

I learned to shrink.

I learned to observe.

I learned to stay still.

I learned that speaking could be dangerous because every word could be examined, twisted, criticized, or used against me.

So I went inward.

And inside that inward place, I found art.

The first thing I could do was hold a pencil.

I drew.

I created.

I expressed what I could not say.

Art became my language before I had the words.

It was my sanctuary.

It was where I could meet God without knowing that was what I was doing.

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The Exit Appeared in the Darkness

By the time I entered sobriety on September 6, 2006, I was exhausted.

I had spent years trying to numb myself. Alcohol became a way to quiet the volume of being alive. It lowered the intensity. It softened the edges.

I was not drinking because I did not care.

I was drinking because I cared too much.

I was overwhelmed by the contradictions of the world around me. I could see things that did not make sense. I could feel dishonesty, manipulation, and disconnection. I felt like I was walking through a world upside down, trying to convince myself that everything was normal.

My nervous system was screaming.

Eventually, I reached the point where I was done.

I had a moment where I was holding a knife and contemplating ending my life. And then this tiny little creature entered the moment.

My cat.

This little being who needed me.

His food dish was empty.

And somehow, in that moment, that tiny responsibility became the thread that pulled me back.

I put the knife down.

I fed my cat.

Then I sat on the edge of my mattress and cried.

And I prayed.

I said:

“God, what am I going to do now?”

And what came back to me was not a booming voice from the sky.

It was quiet.

It was simple.

It was an invitation.

You have done a lot while drinking.

Why don’t you see what you can do without it?

But there was one condition.

Keep painting.

That was the deal.

Keep painting.

And I agreed.

Something shifted.

The obsession to drink disappeared.

I looked around my home at the paintings I had created, and I realized there was something alive there.

Something worth following.

Something worth protecting.

That was the beginning of the walk.

Sometimes quickly.

Sometimes slowly.

Mine has been both.

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The Body Keeps the Score

I spent years learning to reconnect with my body.

I ran.

I stretched.

I hiked.

I climbed mountains.

I danced.

I moved.

I was trying to come home.

In early sobriety, I discovered The Artist’s Way and began listening more deeply to the creative voice inside me.

I started feeling called toward dance.

Not just movement.

Connection.

Partner dance.

Ballroom.

Latin.

The feminine expression of the body.

The spinning.

The flowing.

The trust.

The surrender.

The ability to be held safely while moving through space.

At first, I resisted.

Who was I to do that?

Me?

Dance?

But the calling kept returning.

So I followed it.

And I found a beautiful little home at a dance school in White Rock. I learned to move. I learned to trust. I learned to inhabit my body.

I learned that the body is not something to escape.

The body is wisdom.

The body is memory.

The body is constantly communicating.

Then one day, while painting in my parents’ garage, my legs went numb.

I was 29 years old.

The investigation revealed something terrifying.

My spine was unstable. My vertebrae had shifted dramatically. Without intervention, I could have lost the ability to walk.

I needed surgery.

My spine needed to be fused.

Four screws.

A fake disc.

A complete reconstruction.

And I remember thinking:

God, really?

I have just gotten sober.

I have just started dancing.

I have finally started coming alive.

And now this?

I did not know how to be angry at God because God was the one I loved.

So I kept walking.

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The Walker and the Wink

The surgery was one of the hardest experiences of my life.

When I woke up, the pain was beyond anything I could explain.

It felt like fire.

Like electricity.

Like my entire body had been turned inside out.

They got me standing quickly because the body has to move. Healing requires participation.

I remember needing to bite down on something because the pain was overwhelming, and the nurse’s shoulder happened to be there. It was not intentional. It was just a human reaction to unbearable pain.

She was kind.

She understood.

Then came the walker.

The thing I would use to take my first steps again.

And on that walker was a number.

639.

I had carried the mystery of 3, 6, and 9 with me for years. I had watched them appear in my life in different combinations, like little reminders to stay awake, stay curious, stay open.

Nobody knew what those numbers meant to me. Nobody knew the conversation God and I had been having for years.

But I knew.

I looked down and I felt that quiet presence again.

Lean on me.

I am right here.

I am walking with you.

That moment became one of the deepest confirmations of my life.

Not because numbers magically fixed anything.

But because it reminded me I was not alone.

A perfectly imperfect wink at just the right time.

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Sitting Still Long Enough to Create

The irony was not lost on me.

God had to break my spine to make me sit still.

I built my first website while recovering in bed.

I learned computer work.

I photographed my paintings.

I created my first online presence.

I built.

The pain became a doorway.

The limitation became a beginning.

That year changed everything.

I started taking my art seriously.

I began exhibiting.

I created self-portraits.

I explored my relationship with my body.

The body I once tried to escape became the body I was learning to honour.

Years later, during a ten-day Vipassana meditation retreat, I returned inward again.

I travelled directly into the place in my body where my surgery had happened.

Into the muscles.

Into the fear.

Into the memory.

And I spoke to that part of myself.

Thank you.

Thank you for holding me.

You can let go now.

And slowly, fibre by fibre, my body softened.

The pain released.

My back relaxed.

It was one of the most profound experiences of my life.

The body was listening.

The body had always been listening.

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Art Is the Communion

Everything is art.

Living is art.

Cooking is art.

Caring for your home is art.

Planting flowers is art.

Taking care of your body is art.

Dressing yourself is art.

Walking beside the ocean is art.

Listening to music that gives you goosebumps is art.

Art is not only something hanging on a wall.

Art is a relationship with life.

My church has always been the earth.

The ocean.

The trees.

The mountains.

The studio.

The canvas.

The quiet place where I can listen.

That is where I meet God.

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The Long Road to EXIT369

EXIT369 is not one thing.

It is an exit.

A doorway.

A hallway.

A pathway.

A reminder that there is always another choice while you are alive.

It is the journey of leaving the places that destroy you.

The addictions.

The illusions.

The relationships that disconnect you from yourself.

The voices that try to stand between you and your own knowing.

The Honed Crone emerged later, during a time when I was leaving a life that no longer fit.

A time when I was asking:

What do I do with everything I have survived?

What do I build now?

And the answer came:

Tell the story.

Make the art.

Leave breadcrumbs for someone else walking through the forest.

That is what Pacific Spirit Fine Art became.

A record of the journey.

A map of becoming.

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The Spine Holds the Story

I have screws in my spine.

But I also have a story in my spine.

A story of survival.

A story of surrender.

A story of rebuilding.

I went on to ride hundreds of kilometres in the Ride to Conquer Cancer.

I learned to lift weights.

I learned I could deadlift.

I learned that the body I once rejected was powerful.

The same body that carried my pain carried my healing.

The same body that broke carried me forward.

As I approach twenty years sober on September 6, 2026, I look back and see the thread running through everything.

Sobriety.

Art.

The body.

Prayer.

Faith.

The willingness to keep going.

The willingness to ask:

What can I learn today?

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The work continues.

The paintings continue.

The story continues.

The journey continues.

I am moving toward a body of work exploring divine union: masculine and feminine, spirit and matter, heaven and earth.

Not fantasy.

Not escape.

Embodiment.

Boots on the ground.

Hands in the soil.

A human being walking with God.

This is not about being perfect.

It is about becoming honest.

Open.

Willing.

It is about remembering.

Remembering who you are beneath everything you were told.

Remembering that there is always an exit.

Remembering that even the smallest flame can be protected.

Even the smallest seed of faith can grow.

As scripture says:

“Be still, and know that I am God.”

— Psalm 46:10

And as the ancient wisdom keepers have taught across generations: the path is walked one step at a time. The medicine is not only in the destination. The medicine is in the relationship with the journey.

EXIT369 is my journey.

My art is my prayer.

My body is my teacher.

My life is my offering.

And the walk continues.

exit369 . com