I performed my Metissage- Crazy Women. Neil had found a Birch branch to tie the braid to. I tied the branch to my bench easel and sat before it in the circle. As I held each coloured strand, I read out loud my writing about each woman. Then braided each strand into a Metissage. A matriarchal chord. At the end, I was met with stunned silence. Hard to read the reactions. Did I share too much? Was I too truthful? Should I have held back? Did I read the situation wrong. Overestimate their ability to hold it when I put it out there.Vicki said "Continue your healing journey. you know this is big right? You know what Aboriginal people say about dreams." "Go to the mountain. Look for the Meta view. Yes this is part of your metissage but there are other running alongside them too. Yes there's mental health and what you do." Afterward, I am exhausted but I feel cleansed, like I have been exorcised of my demons. Where is this religious iconography and language coming from? I do not believe in God and I do not practice Christianity. Yet when I look at the effigy I have created in my presentation, I can not deny it looks like the cross that Christ died upon. Did this image reach out through the genes of my ancestors, jumble my neurones and fire the idea into my hands? Interesting thought. One exorcises demons. My demons. The demons that have haunted me for so long. They have defined my story because I have never spoken of them, except to a therapist, my husband and very close friend. I wanted to share their stories because their stories are my stories. I am the Hummingbird seeking survival, sustenance and home. As were they. Their stories were considered unimportant and mundane. Not exciting. Not man-made. I had looked on them in judgement. Why didn't they go to school, get a job, why did they have so many children, why didn't they travel, see the world? Why did they stay in that one place, dominated by men. I don't know the answer. I don't know if they yearned for it even.Or if they were happy and satisfied with their lot, with what God had given them. Oops there I go again.. What made me different? What made me yearn for all those things? School, learning, profession, choice about children, travel, new experiences, different cultures, freedom. Why am I different? Am I different? When I listen to the women in my class, I am not so different. In fact I am at times a milder version of women traveling off to distant lands and immersing themselves in the culture, people, work there. All that alone. How I admire and envy that. That is freedom. That is emancipation. As I write this I think about my first trip alone which happened this year. I finished a visit to see my family, just after Christmas and New Year. Then I went to Paris. It was scary and amazing and life affirming. As I sat in L'Orangerie looking at the Monet paintings I had poured over as a teenage art student. At a time when life was at it's heaviest, I had escaped into schoolwork and art. Devoted hours to the work. Stayed late after school to avoid the bullies at the school gate, the absence of my mother and the oppressive responsibility of taking care of my brother and father. Art was there for me. Monet, Manet, Pissaro, Renoir, Lautrec. They were there. in their beauty and attention to detail. In their humour and bemused observation. They were there and I was there with them
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Helen Kennett-BaconOriginally from South Yorkshire in England, I've lived with my husband Neil in Kitsilano, Vancouver for 10 years. We are fur-parents to our French bulldog Dave, I am a Registered Psychiatric Nurse specialising in ADHD. Archives
August 2016
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