"Woman on Earth"

20”x24” encaustic/ mixed media, 2023 May.

This piece is about self-compassion. (I loved my psychiatrist friend's first association: "we all have a right to grow in our own uterus".) For detail aficionados: one placental vessel channels Hungary, the other one connects with California. :) Lately I’ve been reading books and listening to many podcasts on dysfunctional family dynamics – I had some personal experience with pseudohostility in the past, but pseudomutuality was a new concept to me and (thankfully) quite foreign until a few years ago. This weekend, I dug myself into Richard Grannon’s book “A Cult of One” where he comes up with many useful exercises on how to gradually recover and grow after exposure to such trauma. I particularly liked his suggestions on reconnecting with nature: Mother Earth will always nurture you, regardless of how some fellow humans might treat you. This self-sacrifice feels like true, deep, unconditional love to me. I find great beauty in our symbiosis (I prefer to think of our relationship this way rather than us humans being merely parasites), and feel gratitude and desire to give back whatever I can and protect our planet in return for such precious love.

In modern human communities, all problems seem to precipitate into one central component: the ego. This is my all-time favorite TED talk and a basis for my life-philosophy by Robert Sapolsky - it serves as a very inspiring yet sober reminder of how self-importance is merely an illusion:

https://www.ted.com/talks/robert_sapolsky_the_uniqueness_of_humans?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare