Website relaunch

This website has been sitting inactive and password protected for many years. Friends and family have noted the loss of the old website, which housed my print portfolio from my early 20’s. Some old friends have even commented that they can’t find me since I am also rarely active on social media and can be hard to reach through texts. What maybe is not clear to others is that I want to connect and share, but I have some fear of doing so as well. This tendency to hide from people may have started as a reasonable survival response to conditions of growing up and the pattern got reignited and deepened during a particularly difficult adult relationship. As someone with deep values around love and justice it has been particularly hard to examine how my negative sense of self leads to internalize forms of oppression where I dominate myself and push away others. I’ve been in a period of recovery the last few years and I am trying to cultivate a more loving and consenting relationships with myself. I began to prioritize balance of solitude and community over romantic partnerships. I also quit my job and made a commitment to seek a healthier work arrangement. I am experiencing renewed emotional and creative energy as a result of making these changes. I recognize that I am a tremendously loving, sensitive, creative and wild person. I am learning to hold this back less through a combination of reflection and behavior change on my part and more discernment around environmental factors and appropriate boundaries. As I prioritize caring for and loving myself I am also practicing attending to and transforming the fear that inhibits me so I can maintain and build healthier relationships. Recently, as I facing a conflict with a person in my life, I asked myself “what would be the most loving outcome?” and this was such a moving concept to me. I felt both proud of how far I’d come to be able to frame it in this way and also sad that we don’t all grow up within such a loving framework for relating to ourselves and others. I still feel fearful each time I share something or assert a need, but my spirit churns a lot more wildy and I do enjoy letting it out more. I look forward to using this website as a space to share more of my creative work, practice and community projects.

With love,
Ariel

Recent reading:

All About Love by Bell Hooks
Be Not Afraid of Love by Mimi Zhu
Be a Revolution Ijeoma Oluo
Rimonim Aurora Levins Morales