Feminism taught us that when we share what is most shameful and private, we learn that it is most universal and shared. The commonalty of female experience allows us to challenge old lies and create space for truth.

The Dance of Deception
Harriet Lerner, Ph.D.

I am proud of the body of work I’ve created over the past 34 years of my life. I look back and am amazed at the risks I’ve taken and the bravery I’ve shown in just being me, in just speaking my secrets out loud. Its like I shake them off me in pieces of light and color, in words that twirl with clear meaning, with a voice clear as a bell, that grew from small to loud. I know the truth of my heart’s pain, love and joy. I know the bliss of my body and the wide open breadth of my imagination. I have a direct conduit between the creative start and the concrete finish. I don’t know of a block that I couldn’t get past. And knowing that I’ve handled so much so soon in my life, I am pretty sure there isn’t much I can’t handle. I dropped the feeling of being less, embracing that I am more. And I’m getting better, faster, easier in my work.

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Lots of discussions lately on the nature of love. A lot of people in my world seem to be re-evaluating their relationships. The perspectives range from divorce to deep love, but the question that everyone is teetering on is commitment. Who to commit to and why. Who to trust and how much. When to let things be and when to seek change. When to give more slack and when to draw a line.

I used to give my trust too easily. My buddy Ajamu says that innocent glow has dimmed. Yah, I would say my gullibility has definitely dropped several notches. My shiny heart has a bit of tarnish on it, and definitely more dents.

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I am getting a second tatoo.

The second tattoo has special meaning - morpho butterfly - butterflies have been a running theme of the good things in my life, the blue morpho butterfly in particular, representing unending metamorphosis, the cycles of growth, and the freedom of “getting your wings”. The arrow is a nod to Vladimir Kush’s Time’s Arrow - the idea that time goes on, except mine is pointing down. The flame - because I burn brightly, with passion, integrity. creativity and love. It also has three flames - things in my life usually happen in threes; the meeting of light and dark to build a holistic life that is greater than the sum of adversity and triumph, pain and joy. It also represents the three stages of change - caterpillar, pupa and emergent butterfly.

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The absurd man says yes and his efforts will henceforth be unceasing. If there is a personal fate, there is no higher destiny, or at least there is, but one which he concludes is inevitable and despicable.
- Albert Camus

Albert Camus wrote an essay on the absurd hero Sisyphus. Yes, Sisyphus of the ever rolling rock, the endless, eternal toil. Camus declared Sisyphus the proliterian of the gods, endlessly rebellious and utterly powerless.

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