When I was rudely made homeless, I found myself not only selling things at flea markets, but buying things at flea markets. Among my treasures were the one dollar barbie dolls laying forlorn, naked, and abandoned in a pile at every street market. Every one I rescued I would promise a hot bath, clean clothes, and an honorable, spiritual job.
I related to those Barbies as each one on the pile reminded me of other throw-away women. They reminded me of how our society devalues women. It reminded me of how fragile our lives are that one minute you can be in a nice house and the next minute, you can be evicted from your own life.
The forlorn, naked and abandoned Barbies comforted me, in a twisted way, as a metaphor for my own ‘throw away’ status, at the hands of a family member who turned me to the streets quickly, mercilessly, with a suitcase of clothes left over from a mountain trip and all the possessions to my name kept behind his newly keyed-locks.
Anyone who has experienced homelessness first hand, or even near homelessness, or such betrayal at the hands of kin, has experienced trauma. So I’m sure it was the reason I would wander the flea markets feeling kinship to the abandoned Barbies in a stack. Looking at them would make me feel grateful for the clothes on my back.
During the long four months of sofa surfing and searching for an entrance back into a life – any life, I remember wanting more than anything, some privacy — so I could go bathe the barbies and make them new clothes. I wanted to restore their dignity as I needed so badly for my own to be restored. I needed to restore their faith in humanity, in family, in goodness, and in happy-ever-after endings.
It’s been three and a half years, but I finally have a sewing room. And the first thing I did was not mend the many torn hems and gowns hanging in the closet, waiting to be tended. I did not sew new bibs and veils, as are badly needed. No, for my heart and my soul, I rescued my first two barbies. I bathed them, I issued them new clothes, I gave them a robust crop to harvest, and now, they are weed-nuns. Healing themselves as they heal others.
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In my journey, I learned that you can’t buy Barbie spiritual clothing and you can’t buy miniature pot plants. So what do you think? Does that harvest look like weed to you?
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Beguine undies.
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Beguine Barbies?
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If we launch a spiritual doll-clothes line, every priest, monk and rabbi will have a kola in his hands. Every high priestess and every high nun (no pun intended) will have a kola in her hands. If we do that, we can’t call them Barbies. They will have to be ‘the 12-inch Metaphors’.
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