Terra Firma

from the Inside Out

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The Daily Tea Oracle

What forms your identity? 

Lately I have found myself in deep thought and reflection regarding my identity.  My identity as a woman, daughter, mother, lover, artist, human being,  friend, animal  - here I name a few aspects of my identity that have recently been rapidly transforming, but the list really could go on an on.   It has been one of those times when it seems that there is a large shift occurring...my Tectonic plates no longer in the same location that they had previously been anchored in.  

Not too long ago I sat in the old rocking chair in the portal of my casita very  early in the morning and watched as the first rays of the sun started to paint the landscape around me.  I thought about the recent passing of my father and how his feet had made their last footsteps in this world - the sound of his movements and life  living on in memories but no longer ringing from his body and form.  As I continued rocking back and forth I thought about my relationship with my son.  How my identity in so many ways and for so long had been tied to my relationship with him - to being his mother.  The nature of this relationship had also changed and as I continued rocking back and forth I thought about how I felt as if I had been forcibly divided into parts...severed.   In my rocking I turned to look at the man sitting quietly by my side as he had done every day over the last 2 months.  We had just started our life together when the foundation of my worlds shifted so intensely  and began my  personal earthquakes and aftershocks.  Honestly I never thought I would call someone husband.  I am partially a wild thing - a combination of wild, free, intense, wary of other human beings and curious by nature.  In my world this combination had not lent itself to the feeling of wanting to settle down and get married.  Yet, here I rocked, side by side with this man that I love and whom I knew I would be rocking next to for the rest of my life.  As beautiful as I knew this to be, I felt the tremors of those plates shifting yet again.

In all of that rocking and shifting my thoughts landed on painting.  I needed to paint.  As I moved the paint across the canvas in my head my thoughts landed on my relationship with the paint and  painting, on my identity and definition of being an artist.  I searched  deep down, all around,  inside and out and found terra firma - solid ground.  The plates were not shifting here - at least not in the same way.  The more I thought about it the more I realized that ever since I had been a small child, this was my terra firma, my solid ground.

This is where this blog begins.  The thoughts, words and images that have come after that particular moment have led me here...from the inside out.  I have a lot to say.