I am Becoming Water

I made a mask!

I have a friend who is very experienced in making masks and using them to explore emotions and identities and we’re going to be running a workshop together in the spring (when hopefully we can all be face to face!) and we had our first exploratory session a few days ago.

It was a strange and illuminating experience.

I decided to explore what the menopause meant to me and what I was becoming as I come towards the end of the fertile part of my life.

I had some beautiful dried rose petals left over from confetti and I began by gluing them to the mask. What better symbol of femininity? The mask looked really pretty.

But I put it on and looked in the mirror and got a shock. It looked scary. The texture of the rose petals looked like wounded skin! I was shocked! What did this mean? We put down the glue and went for a walk.

We walked up the hill and along the paths, looking at the cow parsley, already in seed. We talked about rose petals. How they exist only for the sake of sexual attraction. How that attraction helps both the male and female part of the flower, but we only talk about roses as female. How the petals have little use beyond attraction — how they are constantly shed and remade.