Little dolls find new homes

tomorrow we are going home to London [I exaggerate, we’re visiting, but it still feels like going home!] and so i find myself doing grounding things today, just by kind of automation in a way. It is one of these times when I feel glad that myself knows what to do, and does it, without a big jostling match. It is rare, but good when it happens.
I haven’t been running for ages.. for various reasons, the dips and crannies of living I suppose.

Anyway I ran to the beach this morning, had a swim and ran back, picking up a box of apricots on the way back. I enjoyed that. I need to touch the earth and breath air and space and move and put one foot in front of the other. I did it. It’s grounding. Now I am quickly writing this, a visual mark, to myself. I am in a rush, which helps me actually do things because it quietens the critics a wee bit. Also, I guess, knowing that we are going home lifts my spirits a bit and gives me a bit of soul energy to do this.
so I started off with ‘I need to make my heart’ … and I am making it.
Here it is so far.. it has two sides and I am not sure yet, how I will display it, showing both or one.. we shall see… I am not even sure where it is heading exactly.. but the tassles coming from it, and the stick structure, i like, so far.


Going back to my scapegoat doll, which is hard to explain and still isn’t ‘finished’ as such, the process is turning out to be quite illuminating for me.. I might have to finish this post later.. 

Somehow, I would like to attach the little folk being made, to the heart.
See how it was:



But that was a while ago… the heart has changed.. and two of the little people have followed new life paths and been given away by the heart.
This is what I want to write about. This is the process that feels like the gold in the cracked vessel,  for me at the moment.
Firstly, here is this little dolly

  

On the front is ‘Mama Rosi’ [oops slight little spelling mistake… but ], and on the back ‘Gabriel’.

She made herself, it turns out,  to be given to Rosi, Gabriel’s ‘maestra’ from his ‘Asilo’ where he went for the first 3 years of being in Italy. He finished at the end of June. He called her Mamma Rosi and adored her and she was such a special part of his life [and of mine in a way] because she just cushioned our landing a bit, and took Gabriel under her wing and just had a mindset and outlook that just bridged the chasm between our home in London and this new very different place and culture. I wanted to thank her, in the way that I know best and that is most authentic to me, and I wanted to teach Gabriel about endings and about gratitude and the importance of special people.

So that dolly was for Rosi with love and it gave me a huge amount of joy to give it to her. I feel strongly that giving my art away, art that I love, is also, for me, a kind of vulnerability, and so its good. I guess that’s why this process has been important for me, as part of my scapegoat. To give and receive are two things I find equally difficult and yet something I yearn for because it is connection. Its a big topic! We also wrote a letter thanking Rosi. [I’m trying to work out how to download it from instagram because we forgot to take a photo but Rosi put part of it on instagram!]

I as inspired by both what my cousin and what he has achieved in his life so far, and also by his wife who  totally inspired me on many levels. I wished I had had more time and foresight to pick her brain more on parenting things, as I just related so much to the little bits i witnessed and heard about her parenting [and family] approach.
here is her dolly!

  



and now for my next little dolly. We had some family visit us from America, my cousin G who I havent seen since school I think, so that is a loooooong time! and i met his amazing wife and their little boy who is just a bit younger than Gabriel, and he’s the youngest of 4, so they are a big family like we are, my brothers, sister and myself.



I feel a tenderness to this little dolly. She feels as if she is breaking out of her shell, trying to be tough and grownup but she’s still little, not tiny, but little. I put her with my Guardian. The Guardian and her seemed to click immediately. Here they are!
  

so that is the state of the dolls….
oh, this is what the family used to look like… just to remind me!:



and i dont know what else to say!
I need to try harder to connect more and write more and not hide.