First Hankie Progress

Here I am sitting in Mimo's (my great grandma) wicker rocker, next to her lamp, embroidered pillow and china cabinet in the corner. As the only grandchild, I have been lucky to inherit treasured antiques that I enjoy. My grandmother loved these pieces of furniture. My mother went the modern design route of the early sixties, linear, simple shapes. I love the old pieces. I don't collect much, it's the connection I have with these pieces that I value.

Here is my first hankie. I'm still working on it. As you can see, my stitching is very simple, I would never finish one word if I were doing beautiful script. So far it says, "My left ovary, thank you for keeping me alive. For holding my deepest most ..." I'll catch you up as I go along. The night before my doctor visit, I also had a scare about my husband, which I could feel in my pelvic center. It made me realize that fear is held here as well.

Some of my thinking about art is changing as I work on this project. I used to think of art mostly as an achievement and a commercial endeavor. I am opening to the healing potential of art on a personal level, rather than theoretical. This is a sweet place to be.

I welcome your comments on art and healing.

Great News!

I love this awesome mandala from Constance Hart of Conscious Colors. It's not easy to see, but there are many images of ancient goddesses, and the feminine energy is so right for finding out today that my ovary has returned to normal!! My doctor had not held that out as a strong possibility, and I had a pretty sleepless night last night. I was trying to be accepting, but I was pretty scared of losing my poor ovary.

Perhaps these things do just clear up naturally. But many things I think contributed to its return to good health. These are things I did over the past three months:

• Practiced an energy releasing qigong twice daily every day
• Asked for support from some dear women friends
  
• Received wonderful support from women friends and readers
• Began embroidering one of my gram's hankies
• Looked for meaning in what was going on in my ovary and I realized that mostly, my ovaries are the place where I hold my deepest grief and my deepest fear.
• Started listening again to a visualization / affirmation tape by Belleruth Naparstek, whom I highly recommend

I felt a very strong presence of the mother goddess when I was doing my qigong (which I do outside on our deck). I felt that her energy was moving through me, bringing life and love to every cell. I experienced her as well in the hummingbirds, bluebirds, ravens and finches that have been present during my morning session.

I am very grateful for this rejuvenation. I am still dealing with an autoimmune skin disorder that precipitated the whole investigation into the health of my ovaries. So I will continue to investigate the threads between healing, ovaries, grandmothers, stitching, inflammation in my hands and connections with other women. I'm looking forward to this journey which starts with my story but becomes universal very quickly.

A very big learning I've had, since I have never been strongly consistent with a meditation or movement practice, is that when you commit to a regular practice, be it prayer, journaling, qigong, yoga, or many others, it is important to do it NOW. Start when things are going okay. When you wait till you're in crisis, it's very hard to start a practice, and hard to receive comfort from it. I had been doing qigong once a day fairly regularly for over a year. What I found was that when I needed it to help me cope, it was enough of a habit to be comforting and something I looked forward to. Instead of having to force myself to do it, I was able to deepen into the practice and receive support from it.

May all women who are faced with health issues be graced with tender openings to allow support and healing to lighten their burden.

Stitching Underway

I thought for a few days about how to set up the hankies for stitching. First I looked for fabric to stitch the hankies to, that I would mount on stretchers when the embroidery / beading is done. I also thought about putting batting under the hankies to give more dimension.

I finally decided to simply stitch on the hankie with no backing because I want to maintain the dainty quality of the hankies. I also want to keep the option of displaying the pieces with the least framing possible. Perhaps they could be displayed on a table with no framing whatsoever.

Last night I started the embroidery. How comforting it felt to use one grandmother's floss on the other grandma's hankie. These bits of cloth and thread take me back to my Gram E's basement, with it's 8 foot by 12 foot cloth covered table. That's where my Gram taught me to iron and to lay out patterns. On the east wall of the basement were boxes holding treasures - old lace, fabrics, crazy quilt squares. As the only grandchild I have inherited many of those treasures.

As precious as those items are to me, sewing on these fabrics, the physicality of it, has brought me closer to my grandmothers than I have felt in the many years since their deaths. I am so grateful that I decided to use the hankies.

My dad's sisters gave me my Gram R's embroidery floss after she died. I had learned to embroider in Girl Scouts, and gave my gram one of my projects. I was one of 14 granddaughters, but must have been the only one who had shown an interest in needlework. I've been thinking of Gram R. She emigrated from Italy in her 20's, with a 5 year old son. She never learned to read or write, spoke with a thick accent, and was often hard to understand. For every birthday, she gave me a hankie that she'd crocheted around, using the embroidery floss. Now I wonder where she learned to crochet?

I'm sure many more questions will come to me as I continue to stitch and commune with these two women who so powerfully shaped my life. Thanks to all for your good wishes and sharing. Needlework in particular is a calming and healing endeavor, and although I've made art for several years, I've not experienced this level of peace.

Origins

I am a strong believer in the power of art to heal. Now I get to explore this theory.

I have been diagnosed with a complex lesion on my left ovary, which really shocked me. I have always thought of my right ovary as the temperamental one.

Two weeks from now I'm to have another ultrasound, which will tell my (new and wonderful) gynecologist whether I need to have a laparoscopic removal of my left ovary. If that is scheduled, they will immediately freeze and biopsy my ovary. If they find any cancerous cells, they will whisk me away to surgery to perform a staging operation. That means they take out the whole kit and caboodle. I will wake up a few pounds lighter with a big cut on my belly.

I'm just a bit frightened about this. I've known for two months now about the cyst, but until last Tuesday, didn't know the potential next steps.

I woke up in the middle of the night on Tuesday/Wednesday and all that emotion that I hadn't processed came to the fore. I thought of my collection of hankies from both my Grandmothers and dug them out of my dresser. I thought that they should be part of my healing process, and that perhaps I would embroider or bead on them.


I typed up a proposal and sent it to a few friends to witness for me. That way I knew I wouldn't just dismiss this as an unimportant idea. And I wanted some support. Having heard back from 4 of the 5 women to whom I sent my idea, I've decided to make this a public project. Two of the women expressed their strong connection to the grandmother connection, one having a positive experience and the other not. I am compelled to share my process so that it may inspire others to explore the gifts from their grandmothers (known and unknown).

My hope is that this project will help others learn about the healing power of art, and will also help them honor the wisdom of their grandmothers for many generations.

Next, I woke up Wednesday / Thursday early in the morning, really pissed off. I knew that there was no way that my anger could be channeled into slow stitching on hankies. I went down to the basement, taped together 6 sheets of 14" by 16" paper, taped it to the door, and armed with my crayons, let 'er rip! Six sheets of various size poster boards later, I had reached a place of calm clarity.

I probably will not share this, as it is full of rage at the experiences life has given me. There are many of us who have similar stories. But when my anger was released, I developed several statements to embroider on hankies. I created a powerpoint presentation that outlines the project, some of my questions about it, and the statements that I will pick from to embroider on the hankies. You can read it HERE.

I can think of no more fitting way to honor all of our grandmothers than to create this healing project using the hankies that were gifts from them or used by them.

One of my friends suggested that I also do some improvisational beading on the hankies, since words access logic, and the beading will access my emotions. I will be posting these hankies and my experiences as I go along. I welcome your comments and sharing of your experiences.