Last spring I tried my hand at the art of pysanky (a.k.a. Ukrainian eggs) and have found it to be a fun and unusual hobby. Pysanky are full of symbolism - there's the symbolism of the egg itself, symbolism in the design, and also symbolism in the colors. This egg, my own design, is a representation of the contrast between how most people see pregnancy and birth (full of joy, something beautiful) and how I now see it after suffering multiple losses and infertility.The egg: birth, new life, fertility
The design: Calendula (orange) - grief, despair, sorrow
Nightshade (purple) - deception, danger, death
Weeping willow (green) - mourning
Forget-me-not (blue) - remembrance
The dominant colors:
Orange - endurance, strength, ambition
Green - hopefulness
Black - darkest time before dawn, death, fear
White - the color of birth, light, and rejoicing is notably absent
So ... leave a comment - tell me a little about yourself if you haven't been here before. How has your perspective on life, birth, and death been changed by your experiences? I'll put your name in a hat and my impartial four-year-old will draw one. The winner will get a pysanky designed and made just for you!
14 comments:
wow, so beautiful. i too have dealt with multiple losses, and infertility. my first pregnancy ended in miscarriage. my daughter was lost to infant leukemia, and the c-section i had to have her, left me infertile. i have been here in the past, but not in a while.
My perspective on all three have changed. Life is so out of our control. Death is so final. And birth, something I thought would bring me utter joy, was the most traumatic experience of my life.
i think you have an amazing talent. thank you so much for sharing this with us.
That is really stunning- you have a gift!
After 2 miscarriages, I finally gave birth to my daughter only to be thrown into the chaos of post-partum depression. I've found that throughout my life, death and life have been closely intertwined. They colour each other. In dark there is light.
Those eggs are beautiful!
My first pregnancy I gave birth to a daughter who lived for 14 hours. After seeing her beautiful face and watching her slip away to heaven, a part of me died with her. My perpective on life has completely changed. I realize now that people are just people, working a job and living life just like me. Maybe that guy who scheduled your appointment lost two children in a row, or that woman who just took your blood lost 5 children before having her only healthy living child. You just don't know. I don't look at people and see what I used to see, everything has changed.
I've tried my hand at making the Ukranian eggs, and let me just say that you have some incredible talent there!
I think the thing that I find most challenging about my IF road (beyond the grief of losing two babies) has been the loss of that innocence. I used to think that getting pregnant and having a baby would be easy. My mom(s) both did it too easily, as did one of my sisters. Losing the certainty that a positive pee-stick will result in a pink squirming miracle has been the hardest thing I think I have ever had to deal with.
What beautiful egg! And I love how everything has a meaning.
As for change in prespective - granted I haven't really suffered a loss (had two chemicals but they were vey early), so maybe if I did my prespective would be different, but as it took me quite a long time to conceive and I really don't know if I will be pregnant again, I am determined to enjoy this pregnancy (and I am..). I am not going to worry about what might go wrong (though reading in this community I do know things can happen).
The eggs are beautiful--how long does it take to make each one?
Life philosophy is simply that you need to do whatever you need to do to get through whatever is in front of you as long as you are not doing anything that harms yourself or another person and that it doesn't create more work for you later on.
Oh wow, I am so incredibly impressed. I have actually research making these but never got further than that.
My 8 pregnancy losses have made me appreciate all the little moments with my children even more than I already did. That is one good thing that came from our struggles with secondary infertility. However, one thing I truly miss is the naive belief that pregnancy will happen and, when it does, that a baby is always the result. That naivety was totally and irrevocably stripped from me by my losses.
OMG! These are gorgeous! I think you have a great talent for this!! Keep it up!
Infertility has most definitely changed how I look at so much. I always thought it'd be SO EASY to become pregnant and have that surprise positive. Things became technical and all that was like a dream. While I haven't had a miscarriage, I know many many women and couples that have and my heart breaks for all of them, and their angel babies. Infertility is wretchedly difficult and then to go through a miscarriage / death is just horrible to the heart, mind and soul. But it does make me see, that when you want something so bad, you have to find a way to get through the ugly and keep going. There's a lesson on how resilient we can be, even though we've seen and been through the worst.
Wow, that is absolutely beautiful to begin with, but to read about the meaning behind things makes it even more amazing. What a great creative outlet!
I am a fellow "classmate" of the show and tell and have never been here before. We have been TTC for 3 1/2 years and lost our first and only baby the week before Christmas. I think infertility makes you really question everything in your life, what you want, what is important to you, etc. However, losing the baby that we had waited so long for, loved so much...that was a whole different ballgame. Personally, it has brought me closer to my faith, but dh is angry and questioning why things happened this way. I think it definitely has given us some more hope and made us realize how much love we share together and will share with our future children and our angel, Mya.
Wow, the eggs are beautiful!
Unlike you and many of the commenters here, I have not suffered any miscarriage or loss. My biggest failure is the the failure to conceive a baby. Never got a BFP, ever. The question of "what's the hell is wrong with me" haunts me all the time. We have been struggling with IF for the last 6 years.
IF is a bitch! We're moving on to IVF in February.
What a beautiful creation.
Those are beautiful! How long does it take you to paint them?
I now see life as oh-so-precious. I cherish every day.
Wow. Cool eggs-- what a skillful designer and craftsman (er, craftsperson, I mean) you are!
I think my perspective on life, death, etc. has been changed by our infertility, in that the promise of life does not always equal the delivery of life. You can't reliably say that you're "expecting", because what, precisely, are you expecting? In my case, it's more accurately "hoping" than "expecting". Hope implies that I know what can happen and that in spite of that, I want a good outcome. Expecting just seems almost arrogant in comparison, like I feel entitled to something, that it's guaranteed. And we all know that this isn't always true.
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