And Here I Thought I Was Done

Good Morning -

Another seemingly simple Virgen, another raffia border. Despite appearances, though, this one has layers.

First is the layer of the photo - one of a series I recently got from my mom. The photos come with a story, some questions, and hard emotions all around. For me, the emotions included incredulity, sadness, anger, frustration, and then finally, more sadness.

My relations with my family are much like a native dance one of my professors described once in which participants move in a line with two steps forward, then one step back. I believe it was a dance from South Africa and the symbolism was a way to express moving forward without forgetting the past so that the moving forward was clean and didn't leave any dangling threads of bad feelings that could come back later and hurt the community. Yes.

Over the photo is some red material that I'm inclined to call organza, but may very well be something entirely different. It comes from a bag of free bath products I got in a hotel once and I always thought that if I had enough of those bags and knew how to sew, I could make a lovely dress out of it. I don't, though, on both counts, so chose to use it here instead to symbolise all the feelings that come with the color red - love, pain, anger, life (a la blood).

In the name of the steps forward, I've been communicating with some of my family with whom I haven't had regular contact for a few years, including one of my sisters. This occurs mainly through her blog which I've referenced in my own a few times. Yesterday, her entry was about the baby shower she attended for our youngest sister, who is due sometime next month. It was an innocent enough posting (what could be more innocent than a mother-to-be?), but caused the barrage of red-tinted feelings to wash over me. This youngest sister and I don't talk much so these were the first shots I've ever seen of her with child. She looks happy.

In the name of the steps back, I had myself a good cry while my partner rubbed my back and then brushed my hair (which is quite a feat on her part since my hair is long and curly and totally different that her short and straight hair). I realized that I still had some of those dangly-thread feelings of hurt, betrayal, and rejection that I needed to go back and feel in order to be able to move forward cleanly.

My goal, my wish, my intention is to be able to continue to move forward with my family with an open and honest heart. Some good co-pays got me the understanding that I can only make myself do anything, so my open heart has to come free from any expectations I may have about how they interact with me.

Choreographer of this dance forward and back is, of course, the Virgen, who sits over all this layered feeling, offering her steady strength, love, compassion, wisdom, and nurturing. To be sure, it's not an easy dance and there are often times when I question whether I'll ever move forward at all, but I have - we all have - and that's enough to keep me dancing.