Salt of the Earth
At the art show this weekend, two of my creative cousins performed a piece called “Black Love is Revolutionary”, a dynamic visual art piece that explored partnership, love, honesty, friendship, confrontation, self-reflection, connectedness to the earth, amongst other themes. The closing of the piece was a dance of sorts. They each held the mirrors to their faces and peered deeply: the mother force, circling and then bowing to honor herself; the father force following closely behind with similar movement. They then handed the mirrors to the audience and invited each of us to take a look. As people held them up, Roni Nicole admonished us to push past the first glance and into a place of real, honest reflection.
After the piece closed, she invited us to share our experience in the mirror. I wrote this blog post to share with you all what I encountered.
The very first thing I saw was my nose.
The mirror was small, and all I could think about was how huge it looked. I instantly felt self-conscious and wondered if my nose looked as giant to everyone else in the room as it did to me. It took me a couple blinks and intentional re-direction to pull the mirror back far enough to see my whole face. As I looked again, I thought “Oh, maybe your nose isn’t that big? I mean, it is, but…… it’s proportional to the whole face, so it doesn’t stick out the way it used it. It looks fine.” There was a lot of negotiation going on in like 0.25 seconds.
The fact that I was fixated on my nose was word to my childhood. For real.
I was teased incessantly during most of 2nd and 3rd grade. People referred to me as ‘Big Nose’ like it was my name. But that was when I was 7 years old. Why was that coming back up now? At this art show, of all places. I mean, I’m 32, I have some of my stuff together – I thought I had evolved from the person that cared about being bullied as a child. So what in the [insert your favorite word here] was going on?
Roni Nicole and Cedric Umoja then told the story of their love. They played a Taylor McFerrin (loooooooooooooove him, btw) song called Postpartum with the lyrics: “I want to love you, but something’s in the way.” She asked: “what’s in the way of you loving yourself?”
And it hit me. Like a ton of red clay bricks.
The “something in the way” of me loving myself is the fact that, every time I hold up a mirror, my flaws are the first thing I see. I mean, I know I’m beautiful. I know I’m healed/healing. I know I’m a divine being merely having a physical experience. But somewhere along the way, I allowed external voices, judgments, stereotypes, expectations, and imperfections become my exterior. Which means that if that’s the first thing I see when I look, that’s the first thing I present to the world, too.
Thank God Roni Nicole gave specific instruction: whatever you find in the mirror, hold it gently; confront it gently. don’t judge it.
I needed permission to experience the fullness of seeing myself absent diagnosis and reckoning.
By the time the ritual was complete, I was ready to let go. I no longer felt an attachment to the first girl in the mirror – the one who was ready, willing, and eager to judge whatever she saw staring back.
The “salt” that was once protection from those mean girls in the 3rd grade no longer served this grown woman’s appetite. I could finally return it to the Earth.