‘a thing or fact that causes mental diversion’

self portrait by Miriam Amina, 2019

In Oakland California in 2019, I bumped into an old NYU friend and we spoke for a few minutes. We hadn't been in contact for more than 20 years.

She said:

Miriam, you are the reason I stayed with my major and pursued my degrees in the field of education. I will never forget, we were all sitting in the dining hall, and I was feeling insecure and ordinary among this group of writers, photographers, sculptors....I complained, everyone is so creative except for me. And it was you who stopped me in my tracks and said - 'teaching and educating others demands constant creativity, to pivot or find an alternative way to connect and share knowledge may be the most honorable form of art.’

Ah, my heart. Of course, I had forgotten this conversation. But this is my soul’s truth.

Her epiphany from decades ago, became a recycled epiphany for me... it rekindled the spark to bring my creative endeavors back out of the shadows. Somehow in my devotion to amplify the creativity and passions of others for so many years, I had let my own calling slip further and further away.

But it wasn't until I began to paint my first large piece in over a decade during a lunar eclipse a few months later, that I realized how much I had suppressed... memories returned, painful recollections of being relentlessly harassed by a past client. That mural so long ago had been the last time I held paint brushes. My fear felt palpable.

I’m grateful for the personal evolution that time allowed me. Inspiration now comes clearly from a source I can’t quite articulate. It is sometimes slow to unfold, then rushes in with an almost insistent conviction. It is far more confident than I am, so I am trying to move out of the way and let that medicine flow.

Endless thanks to my yoga instructor and fellow students for insisting that I continue this path…art as a tool for medicine and a path to enlightenment.