You Can Learn A Lot Of Things From The Flowers

 Tattoo by Dora at Earthship Studios,Waterbury, CT  November 2020 (Phase 2 COVID) 

Dora is the first female tattoo artist to ever tattoo me and has been for the last 7 years (eeeeek!). I consider her my friend and she, Heather (FEM SHOP, Check it out!) and the shop have been a big sense of support and have always been generous with their space and time. 

Pre-pandemic I asked Dora to do lower belly tattoo. Now this is complicated. I had surgery about 10 years ago that left the lower part of my stomach with no feeling. The nerve endings never reattached and since then it has been unnoticeable expect for when I would randomly get hurt on that part of my body and not even realize. My belly is not flat, or thin or perfect by any means, it has scars and burn marks and has been put through years of hell trying to force it to be different. I now not only accept my belly, I love it. It has become a part of my body that I am truly grateful for and want to always be grateful for. 

So I sent Dora some pictures of wildflowers (I LOVE wildflowers), crystals and feathers to create a lower belly piece. Wildflowers have always been a big part of my life, growing up near farms and close to wilderness meant I would see them often and never understood why people would buy each other flowers when you could plant wildflowers. They grow everywhere, they take over and turn even the most desolate field into a thing of beauty. The feather was specifically an Osprey feather. Osprey are a bird of prey native to the Hudson Valley and the Hudson River. I grew up right near the river, would see it daily and learned a lot about its ecosystem. As a kid I got to see Osprey at a raptor center, I was the only student who got to see them, as part of a school project. I remember being told they were endangered and this particular pair was sick from toxins in the river but has been rehabilitated enough to mate. It was such a beautiful and heartbreaking experience at a young age and stuck with me.

Wildflowers and Osprey are still here. We may pollute their earth, we may misunderstand them, pick them, hunt them, degrade them, but they're still here. I am reminded that I am still here and if you're reading this you are too. Regardless of what has happened, is currently happening and will happen I am still here. So I asked Dora to add "Still Here" as a reminder to myself and my stomach that we made it, we're still here and not only are we still here, not only did we survive, we thrived, we continue to thrive and in case it wasn't clear, I am that field of wildflowers, creeping in and creating artwork in the most unlikely of places.