saying goodbye
reinventing myself
You know that feeling when you become painfully aware that you no longer belong in the world you have allowed to be created? When I say the world you have “allowed” to be created, I mean a world in which you at some point participated in. Even maybe at times enthusiastically and willingly.
In fact, maybe you actually were a prime actor, however passive, in picking those friends, working in that job, choosing those unhelpful habits, staying in that relationship or [insert your own answer here].
But you now feel like a stranger to it all.
What I had to realise was that however this life that I had allowed to be created up until this point of me arriving in Ghana came about, I couldn’t be overly hard on myself. The reasons for why my life looked the way it did were influenced by many things, not the least of these, a need at the time for comfort, security, predictability, and maintaining the status quo.
I was experiencing all sorts of awakenings and was seeing things for what they really were. And this was challenging because I was questioning everything. But for the first time I can remember in my adult life, I was truly listening to what my soul needed.
I had been in Ghana for about a week, returned home to my village and then was back in Accra. My world was shifting. As you would remember from an earlier post where I wrote about visiting my village, it was in this December period that I started regaining my identity.
My previous posts have also reflected upon how, during this time, I was experiencing all sorts of awakenings and was seeing things for what they really were. And this was challenging because I was questioning everything. But for the first time I can remember in my adult life, I was truly listening to what my soul needed. The more I listened, the more I was willing to create a new world.
I visited the Nubuke Foundation’s Accra location in December. The Nubuke Foundation is
a Ghanaian contemporary art and cultural institution … founded in 2006 … as a nexus for preserving, recording, and promoting contemporary arts and culture.
When I was there, the ‘Up To No Good’ exhibition was showing, a collection of paintings by Na Chainkua Reindorf. As I climbed the stairs to the gallery where the works were showing my eyes caught the painting of the fictional character Gedu which roughly translates to Rebirth.
Gedu is one of seven unique characters that Reindorf has imagined, and they live in Mawu Nyonu which is a “fictional secret society of Reindorf’s imagination that explores deviance and nonconformity through the art of masquerading.”
I found this whole concept to be very unique and creative and when I was thinking about the topic for this week’s newsletter, I saw the inclusion of Reindorf’s work to be very fitting. It was also very fitting that my eyes first set upon the Gedu artwork. I was drawn into the character through the striking and mysterious wonder she evoked. The accompanying text to the painting read:
Gedu is [a] quiet and reserved character and craves solitude. She needs this isolation in order to transform herself, through shedding old skin and emerging renewed. Her appearance can be unassuming, but she is extremely powerful with an ability to completely reinvent herself through reincarnation.
Her identifying colour is black and her costume is “organic and amorphous shapes, referencing shedding, melting, dripping, or peeling skin like a cocoon”.
Wow, I thought. This really gave language and expression to how I was feeling. I was saying goodbye to old skin. I was saying goodbye to the mask I had been wearing. And as much of a return to my true self this was, it was also a reinvention, a transformation and rebirth. Life changing in fact.
I imagine you may have also experienced a kind of rebirth at some point in your life. I feel as though it is something that we each go through many times, in both small and big ways throughout our lifetimes.
Sometimes it is the inevitable result of major shifts in our life, at other times, it may just be that we begin to awaken to new possibilities in our worlds. Whatever the catalyst, a goodbye, the shedding of old skin or the removal of a mask is an opportunity to learn for ourselves the true meaning of strength, power and healing.
I ask you …
Are you truly listening to what your soul needs? What does your soul need?
Big or small, are you being called to say goodbye to something? If yes, ask yourself what that something is.
Are you in a season of reinventing yourself? If yes, spend some time writing out/speaking aloud what you want the reinvented version of yourself to look like.
More on Na Chainkua Reindorf’s ‘Up To No Good’ exhibition
If you’re interested in seeing more of the characters part of Na Chainkua Reindorf’s ‘Up To No Good’ body of work, visit the link here.
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Very well written! Leaves me with do much to reflect on!