Winter

home is where the hearth

home is where i am with my beloved family, be that in a van travelling, or in a rented house in the 'burbs. we always set up a hearth. the fire is the heart that warms us, feeds us and connects us. we welcome our loved family and friends to share our hearth, our wealth and our warmth. material things do not matter to us, but they enrich our home.

my soul craves

a place for stillness

growth

an open heart

gracious gratitude

my soul craves love

Distortion

As a woman there's no getting away from society's distorted obsession with the perfect body, the perfect face, the ideal weight, the 'look'. My daughter is on the precipice of adolescence and is trying to figure out how to 'be' in the world, perfect just as she is in this moment.

So many barricades ahead of her including her own friends, boys (& men), the media machine and Lady Gaga!

My daughter is thoughtful and curious and already has a strong sense of self and belief in who she is. But when she comes home from school asking me if she's ugly it breaks my heart.

For now I will be the mirror that reflects her beauty. The beauty I can see both inside and out until she can see it for herself without distortion, without the veil of self-hatred and ridicule. As I watch her in front of her bedroom mirror she looks at her profile from this side and that, frowning. Finally she grins at her reflection and at me watching her. Head cocked to one side she winks at herself and says ' hey there gorgeous'.

teacup in a storm

the word of the week, if you want a word, is STORM. this picture above these words is called TEACUPS IN A STORM. The picture is the result of a meditation on motherhood, why we weather the storm of life in isolated pockets, not quite able to help others, to busy bailing out our own teacup. An expansion of the idea of A STORM IN A TEACUP, which is a idiom meaning someone is exaggerating a problem, or making a small thing out to be much bigger than reality. I found myself thinking if families were in teacups in a storm on the sea, then the teacup would seem small and insignificant, but so fragile. By bringing the storm outside of the teacup we see that all the different families are weathering the same storm, would this storm be easier to weather in a larger vessel containing everyone? or have we rejected the idea of community (in the tribal sense) in favour of small family groups living separately?

It is true, for me, that much art and creative writing is born from sorrow, fear, oppression and the darker emotions, why is it that in happiness we forget to write in our diary, or make art or stories.
As a mother, in my teacup, I find that I am the captian. If i forget the directions, or fail to meet the mark, I have to bail out the teacup. I see other captians in their teacups doing the same; all we can do is nod, smile and keep bailing.
In TEACUPS IN A STORM you see some crowded teacups, some solo, to represent the various numbers that make up a family unit. I have left them faceless because the anonymity of isolation and the pretense that we are coping. Some of the teacup families are happy despite the storm, others are very unhappy.
It is created from sorrow, but the process of meditating the idea then expressing the idea as a picture has made the sorrow of motherhood less and the acceptance easier. We must embrace our circumstances and make the best we can with what we have, resentment is a wasted emotion: LET IT FLOW, AND LET IT GO.[way of the peaceful warrior, teachings for living in the Here and Now].