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Yesterday (the 20th) was my birthday (even though I was born in a different timezone, which gives me two birthdays).
Pierre, my brother-in-law, is here for one more week. My husband, Anthony, took this week off from work so we could spend it together.

My type of celebration

For my birthday, I wanted to be close to the ocean and in nature so we drove to Vancouver to have a long nice walk along the Sea Wall. If you are not familiar with Vancouver, the Sea Wall is a road where bikes/rollers/pedestrians can be. It is around Stanley Park and the total loop is about 8.5 km. We did not do it all because it was started to be late for lunch (the girls are out of school at 2:55 pm, and it’s about an hour drive from the city to home) but we walked a good 6km.

You might already know that my favourite food is Japanese cuisine in general. After fighting and arguing, my husband and I settled down on having lunch at Gojiro Ramen, in downtown Vancouver (a full article is coming to my other website, Nova’s Kitchen).
I have been craving tsukemen for a while now. Tsukemen are the same chewy noodles as used for ramen. However, the broth is on the side and you dip them in it. I ordered the tori karaage tsukemen, so it came with fried chicken. Everything was so tasty! It satisfied my craving. Now, I need to find a recipe for the broth so I can make it at home.

Once home, I baked myself my favourite brownies. I am VERY picky when it comes to brownies, so now that I have found a recipe I love, I just use this one and made some variations now and then.

My husband made is cocktails, so delicious! And to close the day, we watched Birds Of Prey. I really love this movie…

Understand me better

This is something that I deeply believe is one of my life mission in this incarnation: figuring out who I am at my core. Not just the surface.
I have a weird passion for personality types… Even though these are general character traits, there is always something I can grab to understand myself better. In the MBTI (aka Myers Briggs Type Indicator), I am an INFJ-T. It stands for Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling and Judging; the T stands for Turbulent). It is said to be the rarest personality trait but I come across so many other INFJ women, it’s a little creepy 😉

I love this Youtube channel above and this specific video could help you understand me a little better.

Some videos are harder to create and even harder to share than others. For me, this is one of them. Sharing about me, about bits and pieces of my stories as a bi-racial woman of colour is not something I talk about easily or often. But with what’s currently going on in the World, I felt awful not to address it at all. Because… sometimes, silence is compliance, right?

Here’s the video:

I have been working on this for quite a long time. It took more than a month from the moment I knew I had to do something to the moment I completed the page. Yup… I had to make my voice heart. Even just for me, because crying every day helps, but not for long.

If you follow me on Instagram, you might remember me posting a sketch of the drawing at the beginning of June. Then, it took me two weeks to actually stop avoiding going further in the project and paint it… Because when your heart is aching so bad, it does not matter if you know what you need to do. It just seems impossible. And I accept that today: the need for time to process emotions and thoughts.

I am bi-racial and am myself in a bi-racial marriage. I am a woman of colour and my husband is White, which resulted in a funny blend when it comes to our daughters’ skin tones (I have shared pictures of them in the video). All my life, I have been told stuff that left me without a sense of belonging, without that deep knowledge of being enough. Too white, too black, not enough of anything. This leaves scars and wounds I am now tending as an almost 35 years old.
Before you speak, always wonder “could this hurtful?” because words can destroy more than a punch in the guts…

I won’t lie: I am a little (lot) nervous to share this new video with you. This is nothing like I have shared in the past so I hope you will still enjoy these 4+ minutes with me 🙂 If I have learned something in my decade of blogging, it is that what I fear the most is what is needed to be shared. So here we go!

2019 has been a really tough year for my mental health. Because I have been struggling and I am seeing the same shit around me, I believe it is an important subject and that I need to be honest with myself, and therefore with you. I am learning that it’s okay not to be okay. That I need to pull the different layers I have been accumulating for decades in order to finally be my self. Unapologetically.

Don’t lose who you are

Fighting depression while fighting other health challenges has been tough. However, I know it could be worst. Knowing does not always help though, does it? It is like saying to your child “eat all the food on your plate, there are millions of starving children in Africa” you know: it is true, but it does no good in the issue. Did you know that as a teen and a young adult, I wanted to become a psychoanalyst? The human psyche is a maze I have always wanted to dismantle and understand better. Mine included. This is why I keep a written journal. I have been since I was around 7 years old. Yes, there is sometimes a huge gap between my entries. I learn to let go of this guilt and to continue anyway. Self-portraiture, but also getting my hands moving and creating something (whatever it is) is one of my way of getting out of my own way. Putting this video together challenged me like no other so far; this is something I am truly passionate about and I hope you will take something out of it. Maybe you will consider seeing a therapist or at least talking to someone. I struggle with self-harm and with eating disorders; admitting this is a huge step forward for me. But I know this is not all that defines me, and that’s essential for me to remember that in order to move on properly. I am not my circumstances.

About this Nixie, Elizabeth (alias Biz)

As I was planning the making of this video, I stepped into my ArtCave. I decided to dedicate a Nixie to it. I smudged and prayed, I asked my Guides to let a Nixie come to life. It was not easy to commit to it because I noticed I tend to fly from confrontation. Yes, even personal internal confrontations (silly!). But there is some power and some magic that can happen when you just open yourself to whatever you need to create…
PS: If you want, I can share the creation of Biz, the Nixie you see me create in this video, in a separate video.

Sometimes, you just need to jot it all down without any specific order, just so it’s less in your brain. Here goes (#sorrynotsorry).

1. I can’t wait to start working part-time instead of full-time. It was a compromise I have to take: either this or quit my current job completely
2. Tuesday was not an official day off. But my entire arm is hurting like hell and I just couldn’t risk for it to get even worse. So I was home instead. And today (Thursday) is another intense pain day: I called my doc office for an appointment but nothing before October! Luckily I can consult with a doctor at my husband’s office this afternoon.
3. I feel very (very) lonely. I do have my Soul Sisters but they are far away geographically. I need a covent nearby but why would people want to be my friend?
4. I am working on a shop update while fighting a fierce combat with my inner demons. “Nobody cares about your artwork, don’t you know this by now” is what I hear. Pretty loudly.
5. I envy artists who are killing it and making a living from their work. But I’m gonna work my ass off each time I’m off from the day job. I believe in what I create. I just hope somebody else does, too.
6. I feel lucky that my boss regularly gives me food to come home with instead of putting it the trash because the expiration date is today. I actually love the food we make.
7. I’m fucking angry at my body. And at my kind too, by the way. For feeding me lies. For not being strong enough to be “normal”.
8. It’s my birthday tomorrow and I’m always excited about it. I finally learned to ask for what I need. I love offering gifts, and to be honest I also love receiving them. (If you feel inclined, I have a tip jar where I use the money towards art supplies).
9. I am loving the changing relationships with my daughters. We laugh, we cry, we sing and dance. But the most important is that I know they trust me for the deep shit too and it means the world to me.
10. I love it when my Brother-in-law is here for his annual visit. He’s the only one who came every.single.fucking.year since our immigration to Canada.

I recently joined a Facebook group created by the talented Tina Walker called “The Fuckin’ Badassery Art Journalers“.
As you might know by now, my Soul Whisper this year is Unapologetic. And if there is something you should get about myself is that I am not afraid of swear words. Because they help release some pressure. Because, I have to admit, sometimes I just want to get it out and they help.
When I was a senior in high school, my best friend and I had this saying “fuck them all”. It sums up our last two years of high school pretty well… but that’s for an other story 😉

Art Journal flip-through:

The journal in images: