A dear new friend of mine – talented writer, poet and dancer Michiru Adriene shared this sacred beautiful conscious art short film…by Alexandra Feldner – what a gift to recieve.
Connect with all aspects of yourself – Be a gift …..
This weekend – here and there – Aarhus, Ribe, Vester Vedsted, and in between…below what I captured – the rest is in my heart and mind together with my loved ones ❤
Beaches, ocean, forrest, lovely kids and animals, a lot of driving in Denmark, nice familytime, museums, countryside, delicious food, warm weather, interesting history, georgeous windows and doors, piercing time, vineyard, plants and flowers, heaven and earth, treasures found, clothline put up in the garden….and so much more…
My family background is build on very different cultures….on my mothers side, my grandmother was danish, my grandfather polish. On my fathers side, my grandmother was greenlandic and my grandfather half greenlandic and half norwegian…my children are a mix of me and have a swedish father, my brother has a child with a danish woman and children with a woman from Germany (they live in Berlin, Germany)…so where do we belong and which identity do we have?
From when I was 3 years old I grew up in Denmark, and in my younger days I felt the pressure from the danish society to sort out where I belonged……I never really felt I belonged in Denmark…perhaps it was that specific area where I lived, which wasn’t soo inclusive, perhaps my first 3 years in Greenland made its imprint / blueprint on my soul that this was the place I belonged…I dont know…grewing up made me even more confused..
This morning when I was following my girls to school, (so we could have a little extra chat and I could have some fresh air)…I thought to myself on the way back…that the combination of the places we live and the weatherconditions form our perception of other people and life in general in conscious or unconscious ways….
Our place, Greenland with a small population (56.000 inhabitants in whole Greenland) and a grand nature and ever changing weather form the way we sense, percieve and act in dailylife…I like that…We have a very modern society but nature and weather still controls our life…and not the other way around…it makes people flexible and spacious about some parts of dailylife…if you have a snowstorm, you know it doesnt help to complain that your flight is cancelled, you just wait untill it has passed (or know that you have to fly out a day earlier)…if it suddenly goes from silent weather to 35m/s wind, then we just stay inside and relax…or if its calm weather we take a day off and go in to the fiord with our boats…In the summer we stay up very late because of the midnight sun…the children play outside late evening, although they have schoolday the next day…its fine…we live with the light and weather…in the winter we are used to the darkness, or what you assume is darkness, we have all the northern light, stars, reflections from the snow…no light polution, it only feels dark dark in the early winter (october and november ) where we are waiting for the snow…
I wonder if any of you readers can relate to this…those of you living remotely places or nearby grand nature…?
As an interior architect, I also think that concrete, bricks, metal, hard materials and very processed environments form the mind of the people being raised and living there…and their way of percieving other “peoples lifes and exterior”…plus the fact being brought up in societies and schools with a lack of significant diversity creates ignorance and stereotypes…As a mixed human my upbringing taught me certain reactions towards discrimination and my desire to assimilate were costly and left me in my younger days confused, isolated and filled with shame and guilt. I grew up learning how to deflect jokes about seals, alchohol issues and being called snow chinese — or at least how to avoid to be seeming bothered by them, or avoid their jealousy.
Later I understood that if you doesnt fit in to the norm of society you will need to find a home inside of yourself, so you can manage the outer demands of fitting in to the boxes.
I don’t speak greenlandic, but feel and semi look greenlandic, Im considered greenlandic in Denmark by my features, in Greenland Im not considered greenlandic but danish…… My girls are from this society percieved as danes, because they are very blonde and blue eyed, if you ask them they consider themselves as greenlandic…actually some months ago one of the teachers of my eldest daughter asked her classmates which heritage they considered her from. And the majority said danish…a few said a mixture of danish and greenlandic, and then her teacher asked Anouk,my daguhter how she felt and considered herself, and she said purely greenlandic…thats interesting…my youngest daughter feel very offended by being considered danish…I AM GREENLANDIC she says with a strong voice…
Our heritage and peoples positive and negative biases influence our lifes, our lovelifes as being exotic or underdogs, our career lifes with less professional opportunities ecspecially if you have a greenlandic name in the danish society, and not so much on the raw and lived experience…and if you are in the middle of everything, between countries and cultures your type isnt represented in the media…which reinforce stereotypes even more…it has an impact on beauty ideals…like I have heard all kinds of opinions, positive and negative about my look…both in Greenland and Denmark, “you’re looking beautiful considered being greenlandic”, okay that told me more about the man who said those words than about me.
So who am I? The opinions, stereotypes, roles and the pressure doesnt anymore force me to reject my heritage in order to assimilate…and I do what I can, to remind my mixed children to be very proud of their culture blends and help them to embrace their different cultures, the obvious benefits of having several countries / homes and entries to cultures, and seeing it as a lifequality and feeling empowered by it…
I have a passion for very old houses and their history, which goes along so well with a swedish TV series from the Swedish Television called Its sitting in the walls / Det sitter i väggarna. The show has two host’ one is a building antiquarian and the other one is a historian. And
Homeowners write in with a video application where they ask curious question about their homes…and then 6 of them are chosen each season…and the show has been running for a lot of seasons. I really like the way they have made it, its a combination of detective work, history, building renovation of parts of the houses, the destiny of the former homeowners, and some about the timeperiods….its in swedish…
Mindfulness is to arrive in here and now….you have been running a lot, but have not arrived yet….words from the new documentary about the zen buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh
Which you probably already know…I look forward to watch it…
All that running, since my program and stay at Joshua Tree retreat in march, I have refused to run anymore…no more running, I have been busy more or less my whole life, except for some periods where my different spiritual and inner practices have been in focus….NOW Im taking my new “medicine”, and although I have been freaking out several times, feeling lost, no direction, because I decided not to move country and stay here where I am for the next period, I have kept listening to the my inner gut feeling, and NOW it seems less spaced out at least these days…..habits, ego, fear, soulwork is getting deeper and deeper until the veil at last is removed…so we are able to sense and experience reality clearly….
I think its time for some evening jazz…
is a womens knife and its purpose is for cutting fish, seal, whale and carving the skin afterwards. Most homes in Greenland have this knife or more like several pieces, because of their beauty, design and funcionality…
It has also become a very strong cultural symbol, which form is used for many different purposes…my “ulu” is similar to the last one, a Vest Greenland ulu….
Traditional babywearing “Amaut” a place where the child rest, old days babywearing, now a days we use slings or costumized babywearing jackets.
All over the world parents and mostly woman carry their babies and smaller children, the same in Greenland. The babycarrier is of course a huge part of the dailylife, but I think that the younger intellectual generation the last 10 years have started to sew and use “Amaut” again.
I have always kept my children close to my body in slings, arms, shoulders, hips…I never had an “Amaut”, but find them very beautiful…here is a little collection of Greenlandic anoraks and “amauts”, and some from Canada (the last colourful four).
My grandfather was a traditional tasselmaker, polish and has given me my middlename Szomlaiski, so this is a little tribute to him…..he has open the door and interest to several of the creative areas….I remember him showing me his old drawings of tassels, patterns for tapestry and a bunch of aqquarelles…it was so sweet of him when he heard I passed the needleeye to start my education at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, he gave his old set of aqquarellepaint as a little present…
The Creative Zone for Making Art
The Soul Within
We exist to help people understand themselves.
storytelling the world
My journey into dollmaking
eco-friendly and healthy living in Greenland!
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