Blog

Since I returned home from Aotearoa on May 13, I’ve been busy, enjoying the mercifully cool summer here in Port Townsend. After seven weeks away, it was great to see Dan, to spend time with our friends, to enjoy a lively summer of concerts.

I also wrote a 20,000-word essay on my tattoo journey so far, which I will continue to work on, try to get published.

The journey has been more profound, more healing than I ever could have imagined! The intense somatic experience of having the puhoro sewn into my skin, the intense somatic experience of having Rangi and Phil’s hands all over the most intimate parts of my body, rewrote the story of abuse in my body. Replaced it with a new story of kindness and compassion, a new story of intimate touch focused on my healing from childhood sexual abuse.

I love having this ink in my skin, on my body, which I am reclaiming for myself. I see myself, and my body, in a very different way.

Mark Dwyer, the videographer in Taranaki who volunteered to film my journey and help tell my story, was understandably a bit intimidated by the large editing project for making a documentary. So I found a local videographer and film maker, Gabe Van Lelyveld, here in Port Townsend (whaleheartproductions.com). Like Mark, he was moved by my story and wants to help tell it in a documentary. We’ve been working together all summer on a shooting script.

I also wrote another, more difficult, piece, wrote my way to a new devastating truth. Grief for my lost childhood, my lost life, is not linear. And this summer, I dealt with another wave.

I’m getting ready to head back to Aotearoa to have the moko completed by Rangi and Phil, leaving home on September 19. Rangi has had surgery on his dominant right hand, is still recovering. Phil will be on school holiday. Mark is ready to continue filming, will meet me at the airport in New Plymouth at 9 AM on 21 September.

The weather in New Plymouth that day is predicted to be heavy rain and high winds.

As before, I am going with my naked body and an open heart. Without any concrete expectations.

But I’m looking forward to having the spirals put on my butt, to having the Maori creation story, the takarangi—that symbol of the light of wisdom, the light of knowledge, the light of transcendence and new beginnings—inked into the skin of my butt cheeks.

As before, I’ll be blogging here as the journey continues.