Some of this is more prose poetry / journaling of sorts than anything else. This post is about the colors in this mandala.

Brown: not murky brown that looks like mud dug up from the ocean floor, not the deep brown that almost looks black, like rotting wood, not tan, a muted but often welcome form of brown. 

This Brown is … 

the color of dirt / soil / earth. I don’t know why we always think of the earth as GREEN, since BROWN is the actual color of the EARTH. We pick it up in our hands and say, “I’m sifting through the earth.” 

It’s warm. But also, stable. Solid. It is the ground. It holds the space for the other colors on the page. It is what everything sits upon, is planted in. As a color in the mandala, it is an anchor. Brown doesn’t mind being in the background. That’s where it feels the most comfortable. It’s not an accent color. It’s what you lay everything down upon and around. The soil, the Brown, asks you to stand on it; it supports you. 

And of course, this color of brown is the color of milk chocolate. A very rich, slightly dark milk chocolate. Smooth, delicious, confident. Inviting, but not in an erotic way. It invites you to rest. 

Pink. There are so many shades of pink. I used to detest pink because it held so many connotations for me. For instance, there’s bubble gum pink, which is exactly the shade of Bazooka Bubble Gum. That was my favorite bubble gum as a child, so I have mixed memories. There’s the deliciousness of it, and the great bubbles it made, and the little comic wrapped around it. But then, there were all those trips to the dentist, with all those cavities that needed to be filled. They didn’t use Novocain for children in those days for something as simple as a cavity, so that was awful pain from which I could not escape. And yea, I’m sure the Bazooka Gum wasn’t the only culprit, but as I got older, I began to understand that grinding sugar into my teeth probably wasn’t the best idea. Ultimately, I have mixed feelings about Bubble Gum pink. 

Also, the color represents the idea that girls are so delicate and have been thought of as little figures of glass as in the Glass Menagerie, or like Nora in Ibsen’s classic play, the Doll House. That had a lasting impression on me and I have fought the imagery ever since. We are not fragile dolls. 

I understand that the feminine energy can be thought of as gauzy and flowing and lacy and strands of cotton candy where threads have unraveled, spun sugar stretched out over a distance.

But I also think of feminine energy as nurturing, and protective and compassionate and loving and steadfast and possessing a strength that is not physical, but emotionally powerful. 

However, when I was younger, probably into my twenties, I didn’t know what feminine energy was. I knew what women were. I had ideas about that. 

I didn’t want to be lumped with the idea that women were creatures so delicate (or stupid or irrelevant or minor or insignificant, or whatever the world had thought about women for millennia) that they had to be cared for like children. I knew the truth. I knew that women were strong and resilient and kept the world turning. They were mothers and grandmothers and nurses and teachers and secretaries – for the most part – the people who keep everyone else’s lives running like clockwork. Women were the people who were capable of almost anything; the wind beneath the wings of society. Women were worthy and relevant and necessary. They were multi-taskers and competent and were coming into their own (I grew up in the 60s and 70s). Jane Fonda and Gloria Steinem and my Aunt Vicki and my gramma and many women in my life were my heroes. 

I didn’t hate men. I loved my dad and my grandpa and my uncles and all the men I knew, so I wasn’t a militant feminist. But I have always been an activist and have always had a deep sense of doing what’s right, a deep sense of morality that had nothing to do with religion, but everything to do with a sense of moral equity. 

So yea, when it comes to certain shades of pink, I have some issues. 

That being said, I’ve softened when it comes to pink over the past few years. Yes, pun intended. I’ve always loved hot pink, but that’s a different conversation. 

I started to look at the softer pink hues as they sit upon the shoulders of some people. Sure, people like to find things that match their complexions or their hair, or work well with another color in a pattern. But as I’ve quietly noticed, some shades of pink remind me of a baby, innocence, subtlety, but not understatement. Pale pink has become one of my favorite pink hues. When a person wears pale pink, it speaks to a humbleness, a vulnerability that imbues them at that moment. Everyone has different parts of their personalities that usually spark them to wear a particular color scheme on a particular day. When they wear pale or soft pinks, it is as if they are laying themselves bare to the world. The insides of the mouth, the insides of the palms, the underbelly of things. At that moment, they are saying to the world, I am bare. I am raw. I am sharing a part of myself today that allows you to really see me, because I trust the world today. I trust that you will not harm me in any way, you will allow me to stay open. 

MANDALA: When the lighter pinks are used in this mandala, they provide a background for other colors. Pale pink is there to provide a brighter palette or background in which to showcase other colors. The pink allows the others to shine. The pink holds space for the bolder, spicier, effervescent color personalities. But the pink is not shy, well, maybe a little. The pink allows; the pink invites the eye to see it, naked as it sits, and then willingly, selflessly, allows the eye to wander to the other colors, hues, and shades.