What Does It Mean To Embrace?
What does it mean to embrace? During a workshop called Evolution, I was given the task to create a series of images around this term. My first thought was, "Funny, since I'm the one who lost the person whom I would normally embrace." Yes, it was a little bitter. But also . . . true. I spent a lot of time hugging (embracing) my husband. The number of times we stood in the kitchen we built, with our arms wrapped around each other, and me deeply inhaling his neck, can't even be counted. It happened that often. It was my happy place. Obviously, I would have to reimagine what it means to embrace.
Before my husband died, I always had a positive perception of the concept of death, especially as it relates to the Tarot. Not all deaths are a devastating loss like my husband; some create space for change. And every death leads to the growth of something else. I might be a little obsessed with growth, so this felt like a natural thing to accept.
During my long drive home from this workshop, my mind wandered back to my husband and how I've spent this past year and some learning to accept death. Not only his death, but the death of my hopes and dreams, the death of who I was, and the death of the life I had. I could have let it drown me. I could have let it steal me away from everything else that matters to me. But I chose to embrace this new life I must live.
So, I embraced these deaths which meant that I also must embrace change. I'm becoming someone new, integrating the parts of the old me, but making way for me to spread my wings, and become something more than I imagined. And not everything is decided by me, many things are out of my hands. Embracing Fate doesn't mean that I don't have choices, it means adjusting. Fate decided I had to go on without my best friend, but I get to decide how I do that. I've learned that I am not all sweetness and light. At times I am bitter and angry. I have sharp edges and am less willing to just be nice. Yet, another thing I embrace is this darkness. Sometimes that darkness holds me. It protects my peace.
What happens when I stop resisting? When I stop fighting the challenges and learn to embrace them? I'm learning as I go.
What have you embraced that you didn't think you could?
Series: Embrace
Four conceptual self-portraits created for the Evolution Workshop.
