Winter Solstice

The Studio

The year of 2020 is finally coming to a close. The days are short, cold and dark. Today is the solstice, the day with the least daylight. The tipping point. From here on we are waxing, not waning anymore. Another cycle begins. 

For me, the mark of the winter solstice and the oncoming new year has traditional been a time of reflection and hope. I think that’s true for many. This year feels a little different though. Hope has been redefined. I still have hope, but I see it much differently. I am starting to see hope less as an end to despair and more as limitless undefined possibilities with no real end, just constant reevaluation of what is ahead. Believing things can be different. Reflection, well quite sincerely, I believe I have had enough this year!  Reflection. Giving ourselves time to look back or look inward. Not that we can change history, but that we can change our current mental status by understanding ourselves in our pasts. Right? Why else would we reflect. 

I’ve known for a long time that there are big gaps in my family history. Huge parts of my story that are just missing or unexplained. I know most people have these history gaps for a variety of reasons. For instance, being adopted would be a huge one. Mine revolves around suicide. Because my grandmother died by suicide she was essentially taken out of the entwining of stories that makes up my family web. It really became as if she never existed. The family continued building on the stories without acknowledging my grandmother. Until it couldn’t be ignored any more. Which wasn’t that long ago. 

Now there is just this hole and no one has the stories to weave her back in. All the stories that we could have kept alive about her are gone. I find myself on this particular year, on this particular reflective time, trying to figure it out. Or at the very least come to some peace with the emptiness. I have noticed that I don’t feel whole without having my grandmother as part of my story. I want to hold her memory close even though I only have these visions of what she could have been. I guess I have to live with that uncertainty. I have to hope that going forward she will be part of my life.

I don’t make pictures that are literal. I do make pictures about my truth no matter how undefined and fickle this may be. This uneasiness, this gapping hole in my story has led me to search for a small opening, a light. A key to understanding and repair. I know it’s there. I just need to keep at it. I need to trust. Keep weaving the cloth with the bits of myself that I have. The safety net.