This was the journal my mother took with her to Greece the September before she died. I made it and another one for myself so we would have some small books to document our travels. She was already very sick by then and so she only wrote in it a few times. I wasn't startled as I might have been that the last date she recorded nearly matched today's date. I took it as a sign. It is my discovery so I can attach my own meaning to it. My mother has stayed connected to me even though she is no longer here breathing the air, growing old, she faces no complications and so she has time to encourage me as she always did. I am struggling as I always do and now with the additional weight and confusion of peri-menopause which seems like a dragon I must fight with all the time that breathes fire onto my anxiety level and sparks it ablaze driving me deeper into the woods. I choose to take these small discoveries as moments of salvation where my mother reaches out and taps me on the shoulder and encourages me to move ahead and because I am a dutiful daughter, I do. I try to think of one thing at a time in order to get out of the forest of my mind that I so often get lost in.
The little photo I was looking for will be used in a piece I am making for a show in my hometown at a gallery that my mother was involved with for years. The piece is about who we are based on where we came from. I grew up in a northern town beneath a beautiful mountain with a sparkly blue glacier and everyday it watched me. If I can make the piece and get it off on time I think I will be making some progress in knowing the way out of the darkness I often find myself in.
