Twin Selves 2015

I was recently asked by Nan Masland, the Public Art Project Coordinator for the Bernalillo County Cultural Services Department,  to be involved in a project which joined woman artists with female juvenile youth offenders between the ages of 14 and 18.  We were given a blank panel and asked to create an image on half the panel, then give it over to a teen to complete, under the supervision of another artist. We were asked to respond to the following question,  “What advice would you give your teenage self?"

My advice to my teenage was self was this: everything is going to be alright. As a girl, and as a younger woman, I worried all the time.  I carried anxiety around with me like a treasured friend, afraid that if I didn't worry, then something bad would happen.  But the bad things that ended up happening were not the things that were on my radar, or they were so subtle and insidious that I had no knowledge of them until they were full blown:  relationships within my family, eroding, like acid, over the years-- or they came out of nowhere: being with my daughter in her little VW Jetta on a lonely highway in Southeastern New Mexico when we hit and killed a wild Javelina going 80 mph. 

So now, at the age of 64 I've learned to let go of  much of the worry.  I meditate, I don't eat sugar, I exercise, I try and act on things in my life as promptly as I can. I try to love the people in my life cleanly and honestly and I work hard at believing in myself.  But more than anything else, I  look back over the years and realize that my life unfolded the way it needed to, almost in spite of myself, and that everything has been, and will be, alright.