the carry
This photo recently appeared in my social media memories. Next year will mark a decade since I first dared step in front of a professional photographer and their lens. It is an action that has a value to me I can barely describe. “I see you,” I will often respond to a social media post that holds big emotions. I could not write those words if I had not caught sight of myself somewhere along the way, and that has a literal root in tangible image.
Tattoos mark time, or so I believe. This photo offers a peak at what flamenco gave me, in its many subtle physical shifts. “Dance like you can hold a teacup on your chest,” challenged more than one teacher. Chest high. Pecho arriba on my collarbones. Pride in self (just as you are). Under the script now lands a dragon. I am still getting used to its presence. It says many things, but the loudest and simplest is that returning to the little girl who got sidetracked on the road to her purpose, continues to require fierce sight and fiery breath. And talons.
“I’ve spent so much of my life softening who I am; I can no longer be reduced.” The photographer embedded these words alongside my image and rattled me a little in the process. The shoot was focused on alopecia areata, the autoimmune disease that takes my hair every day by preventing follicles from doing their job. But the words reflect so much more. They are of that little girl, whose parents were (simply) unable to create the space she needed. Simply, because they had no space of their own by which to forge my map. I softened a little more in hopes that they would see me. And then a little more . . .
It was only in my 52nd year - the one that marks me as I type - that grace landed. If you have read my words to date you will know that I have been working hard to reshape a life. I could add a descriptor but it really is that simple. And now grace whispers like a landing dragon that it’s just all ok. Everything I had hoped to shed is still here but I am carrying it. There is such relief in that realization, that grace. Softening does not reduce me. Sometimes it’s beautiful. Sometimes it wants to speak. But the dragon is there not to scare people in the grocery store. Rather, it - she - is the reminder I need in saying, “God damn it woman, you’ve got this. Bring it (all) on home.”
Photo credit: Mike Hebdon