Dip Your Toes In The Water

 Tattoo's by Jess at Black Hatchet Tattoos in Wallingford, CT November 2020 (Roll back to Phase 2 COVID)

Put simply I have a long standing history of trauma surrounding my toes. They were broken on and off growing up and into adulthood. As a child they were broken through some traumatic event and then in adolescents they were broken through different sports even. As an adult, in all honesty, I am clumsy and have such fragile toes that I could stub a baby and just break it.

So the general idea of someone taking a needle to my toes had always been scary if not traumatic. And it's something I've always wanted to do. Maybe it's curiosity, maybe it's that I thing I have particularly adorable feet, maybe it's that I like seeing my skin covered like this or maybe (and most likely) it's that I hate shoes and adore being barefoot regardless of the situation. So I knew this was something I wanted and I knew I wanted Jess to do it. I trust Jess, I trust her with things that feel scary or hard or vulnerable, that's not something I can explain, it's just the truth for me. Plus Jess has done all my weird, oddly painful and symbol oriented tattoos and I enjoy her company and our time together. 

So Jess made these cute little tribal designs that we're all her own. The cool thing about any kind of line and shape drawings is that it encompasses universal symbols and archetypes. As an art therapists a lot of my work is based on mark making, the use of lines, dots, and 5 universal shapes (circles, square, triangle, equidistant cross and spiral). It was pretty cool to see many of those combinations come to life and not my toes look extra fun.

I'm someone who is always barefoot, around the house, at work in my office, outside, I love the feeling of the ground under my feet, grass, sand, tile, it's all just so much better than feeling confined to shoes. And now I have even more reason to avoid shoes at all costs.