JANUARY 2025: rainbow mermaids
I am in reflection mode, procrastinating the marketing of my book and wanting to integrate how big this year has been. Now I am welcoming the days becoming warmer, let’s look back to when I found it to be too hot.
The long days in January were filled with rainbows, water and heat. Gifting birthdays, becoming mermaids and blossoming the sun.
BIRTHDAY
We celebrated our daughter's 4th birthday, by giving her 4 homemade stars leading up to the day. Four stars, not a rating but a glowing reverence for the years she turns more and more into herself. We chose stars, because her middle name means guided by the stars.
Knowing she would receive presents, we decided to balance the receiving by working in dyeing silks as gifts for her party. Each day we explored dyeing a different colour with safe food from home, less about being colourfast, more about the process of soaking waste into new life. We used old expired spirulina, discarded onion skins, cut up red cabbages and more. In the theme of her choice ‘Sparkly Rainbow Multiverse’, I am learning to embrace her bright expressions.
How do you bring reverence to birthday gifting?
MERMAID
In classic kid style, my daughter didn’t want to wear the rainbow silk outfit I made her for her party, but the glitzy synthetic mermaid tail she received as a gift. I could only laugh. She was over the moon to be a mermaid and she sparkled with joy.
It was interesting this summer to see my son and my daughter’s different relationships with water in the way they warmed to it or recoiled. My son eased in pools and begged for the rain as if it was his second skin. My daughter preferred salty splashes on the ocean shore, water in small doses or from a distance. But when she did her swim immersion, learning how her body could swim, she found herself gliding. She went further and began diving under, finding pride beneath the challenge. It was not long before she asked for her dolls to be turned into mermaids. Fold a square silk in half, and roll the triangle around the legs, tie a knot and voila! And don’t forget shell cell phones. They can’t help but mimic us on our devices.
What is your relationship to water?
SUN
Our spring seeds continued to grow well into plants. It was exciting to check each day whether a new coloured flower had appeared. More rainbows. And where in its journey it was at - bud, blossom, seed. It often felt like a reflection of how I felt - sunflowers facing the bright sun, a bud not yet ready to unfurl, or dried petals drooping.
Together, we often found the shape of the plants in our body and acted it out. Moving with the landscape as an extension of ourselves. Seeking water or shade, respite in the bustle of blooming activity in summer, bending us sometimes into what we are not. Only to find what we were trying to be and what we really were.
What shape does summer bring out in you?
STORY
I Suggest - “Frog Finds A Place” by Sally Morgan, Ezekiel Kwaymullina and Dub Leffler
A story that we acted out with toys, role played with our bodies and read the book - followed the themes perfectly - rainbows, cool swims, starry nights, and finding your place.
What is your January story?
Thanks for this reflection of a busy summer month.
With gratitude,
Clio