Polio & Me
MySelf
Living with a polio-affected leg has challenged me both physically and emotionally.
I was one of the lucky polio kids. The residual effects of polio that often include muscle weakness, difficulty walking, and living with the emotional trauma of polio as a child — just when I was learning to walk — were mild.
Wearing a brace for ten years never seemed to stop me. While simple everyday tasks such as walking, climbing stairs, or even standing for extended periods could be daunting, I managed to ride a bike, swim, dive off the high board and run around like any kid my age.
Resilience and determination became my guiding forces. Living with a polio-affected leg offered opportunities to cultivate empathy, gratitude for small victories, and a deep appreciation for the remarkable resilience of my body. I love to move it in a myriad of flowing waves whether in water or on my dance floor.
By high school, after a muscle transplant and an ankle fusion, the brace was gone. Even then, with a fused ankle and a weakened leg I charged forward in life: climbing to the top of Arapahoe Glacier, down the Black Canyon of the Gunnison River, over miles of rugged trails to breathtaking vistas in the back country of the Smokey and Rocky Mountains, Grand Tetons and Pinalenos of southeastern Arizona.
With the same driving force of perseverance and courage, I founded Cotton Clouds, Inc in 1979 when I couldn’t find all-cotton yarns for a line of handwoven children’ clothing I was then designing.
When I realized other weavers couldn’t find quality cotton yarns, I created www.cottonclouds.com, one of the largest sources of 100% cotton handweaving yarns , weaving and spinning kits. While this Myself guided my every step of being successful in retail for over 40 years, I never took the time to look deeper into who MySelf really is and what she has become.
I sold the business (to my protege) and retired. An eight-week course with Catherine Just on Self-Portraiture As Medicine has given me the opportunity to dive into questions of my courage, my strength, my grace, my persistence, my knowing, that I have been blind to for far too long!
I’ve developed an interesting technique of blending Self Portraiture with Conceptual Photography to ask the right questions and capture the right answers. In doing so, I capture the JOY of the moment’s energy.
I will share some of this technique in my next post and the insights discovered in my next post.
Wearing a heavy leg brace never slowed me down.
I learned perseverance, fostering an unwavering strength that empowered me to overcome so many obstacles and embrace life's challenges with a courage that is now so dominant in the images I am capturing.
All along, as this image above exemplifies, Joy has been my guiding light to this person I call MySelf!
Next: Images of Grace, Honor, Justice and Joy in Hand and how I did it.
I am passionate about using Self Portraiture As Medicine to go deep into my beliefs and release those which no longer serve me. My intent is to capture the energy of joy in the moment.
Fine Art Metal Prints
