for release from the corporate wraith that drained my life of color and denied my soul its name. The change came as a shadow in the night, silent, severing my bonds while I still cried as a penitent. It called itself cancer and brought an answer to my prayer that was swift and sure: it exchanged my loathing of today for terror of tomorrow. But the grace, the fierce grace of my salvation, lay within the terror - - only terror could make me welcome the blade slicing away my once proud breasts, make me embrace as a lover the fire of chemotherapy that burned away the penitent. Now, I live my name- - teller of illuminated tales, singer of silent songs: Victoria's Arias.
I am the subject of change. Change is at once my Guide and my Journey, showing me who I am as it removes all I am not. Change that I resist destroys me, that which I accept purifies me. It has shown me what I am not: hair, breasts, youth, blossomed woman - - all these I've lost on this path. They were the past; I am forever now. Everything I have yet to be is within me, fully present in the moment. My art is the means of my changing; I need only create with color, fiber, texture, and all within my grasp in order to make myself more clearly present. By reducing old, worn textiles and anything else I can find to small pieces, as cancer reduced me, and creating from them a new garment, so I recreate myself stitch-by-stitch. Through my art, I am the change of my prayer.
I will celebrate 8 years survivorship on March 15, 2010.
Greensboro, NC
