from Frida's diary
I’ve always considered it to be one of the bravest things, to truly embrace being yourself. The good, the bad, the pretty and the ugly- all of your experiences, heartaches, struggles and accomplishments.
OK, maybe not always. In the last few-several years, definitely.
A very real acknowledgement of this occurred when I was introduced to Frida Kahlo. I remember it was winter and I was taking Humanities for the Visual Artist at Columbia, a class I really looked forward to each week. My teacher was passionate and kooky, she endeared herself to me with her enthusiasm and openness.
One day, she popped in a video. It was a biography of the artist Frida Kahlo, a woman who’s iconic eyebrows I recognized (and unnerved me as a child). Yet I never knew much about her story. What happened throughout this first Frida experience, was that I was captivated. Moved. Because here was this woman-nature and chance maimed her, the man she loved cruelly betrayed her, her body betrayed her— yet she went on to continually find and create beauty from all of it.
She painted her fears, her betrayals, her joys, her questions and her heart. And I was so struck by it, because I couldn’t understand who would ever have the courage to paint such personal, painful things. For all the world to see, to feel. That it could be done in a way that was natural, that allowed the viewer to observe, as if they were being confided in. So grotesque to be a real witness to the wounds bore by this woman, but also clutch your chest with the resonance of this emotion. Intense color, filled with light in spite of its darkness.
also from the diary; post leg amputation
Here I developed true admiration for this uncanny display of authenticity. Never, I thought, never could I paint about my miscarriage or the affair that infiltrated the deep love that burned through my veins for Diego. But she did.
And how could she do it? I was baffled, awe-struck and inspired. A new appreciation for and understanding of transparency was unveiled to me. I thought for days about how beautiful I thought her bleeding heart was. I thought for days about all the years of my life that I felt a fierce determination to keep my bleeding heart contained, protected in an unpenetrable vault. But there was a woman who painted all of it….who owned all of it. It was hers.
This idea changed my life.
There wasn’t any drastic, outward change. However, my ideas about what is important and how we use our stories changed. The way I value an individual’s reality changed. Because if Frida had never painted her pain and her dreams, how would I have come to value such a unique form of transparency? What happens that forces each of us to realize that whether we embrace or understand or accept our stories or not, we do have a story- and that story can be used to reach someone else on some level, for good? It can benefit others in some way, if we let it. But it can never make such impacts if it is never told, if some parts of ourselves- even and especially the painful- are not revealed.
And ever since the acceptance of that idea, I’ve seen the world in a very different light. A more bearable, colorful one.
It was this reminder I was seeking those months ago when I delved into the published visual diary of Frida Kahlo for some inspiration. I had spent an uncharacteristic season prior feeling ungrounded in my own identity. I have always been a fairly self-assured person, but I went through some things that caused me to really question and distrust myself. I don’t know that I had ever not trusted at least myself before then.
Regardless of what I’ve been through, I needed to be reminded that my story is mine. I cannot let anyone else write it for me. Nor do I want to. It is up to me to dispel the muck I waded through all those days. Even if I did make mistakes, even if I didn’t understand myself, even I wanted so much more than what I have had thus far: it is mine. All of it. And anything that happens next or after, that is mine too. So what was it going to be?
It was time to take the brush back into my hand, and gripping it tightly, paint new colors on to the canvas of my life. I think I’ve begun to.
Dreamer's Crayon Box 