Getting a tattoo was never in my cards. I had grown up hearing a never-ending stream of reasons, religious and secular, social advice and medical fact, as prudent rationale to avoid altering my body with anything near as permanent as a tattoo. Rebellious phases surged, ebbed, and passed without any thought of ink needed to define myself.  I admired them from a distance, in retrospect surprised by the willingness of those who wore their memories, passions, and love on their bodies, yet I never had words to explain my interest in them at the time. So unlike myself, tattoos often acted as bold proclamations of personal loss, an inventory of unrequited love, and an eclectic mixture of socially-awkward proclamations, whether an obsession with storybook characters or zeitgeist expressions – these bold, outward declarations were so foreign to me. I kept myself, emotions, passions, obsessions and lusts – all of it – hidden behind lock and key. Much easier to control what potential avenues I’d be attacked from if I looked like a blank slate, right?

While the global pandemic has made it cliché to talk about how the last few years served as a time for deep, personal introspection and change, I’m certainly not immune from this trend that a couple years of social isolation inspired. Recently, I’ve been working on finding the words to talk about my struggles with mental health, depression, and finding my way out of creative ruts. Opening what I had initially seen as a Pandora’s Box had become a surprisingly cathartic exercise, and over this last summer, I wrote about it in this journal, entitled “Collaborating with the Landscape: Finding Peace and Healing through Documenting the Landscape“. For me, “Resilient” had become a much-needed mental health photo project, allowing me to reconnect with the place I call home and to capture and shape some of my personal anxieties in the landscape. While those exercises have certainly helped, and continue to encourage my creative output, they’ve merely represented my toes dipping into the sea.

I’ve struggled for years with anxieties that merely resided in the shadows. Hidden whispers of worries on the wind, concerns that were dreamed into nightmare situations, and a somewhat regular, background panic that the other shoe was slipping off. For a long while, these mild irritants seemed controllable to a suitable degree. After all, I found myself between a rock and a hard place where generational expectations denied the existence of solutions to mental health challenges. Stiff upper lip, bootstraps, and plausible deniability (or outright lying), am I right? In the past few years, those shadows started inundating my world, blacking out any hope of illumination or navigation through it all. I spent much of my time fending off these imagined hypotheticals that ate away at the lion’s share of my sleeping hours. My self-doubt sent me stuttering as my mind regularly challenged me and my capabilities. My routine panic would start physically manifesting as stomach pains, a quickened pulse felt in my ears, and an ever-tightening chest pain that threatened to choke me. Coping skills developed over two decades of various anxieties started failing, leaving me to confront what could only be described as an abyss. 

Eventually, I caved. I hate using that term because it encourages a negative connotation towards dealing with mental illness, but it’s quite apt to describe the personal conflict I faced at seeking help desperately needed. Planning for a difficult conversation with my doctor, I was pleasantly surprised when help was offered so freely, a potential solution for years of struggling. What this solution provided was enough personal bandwidth to isolate issues, contain and resolve anxieties, build self-love, and, for what seemed the first time in years, to start to bring the world into focus again. I could see those that mattered the most to me without the fog of self doubt, could start seriously pursuing passions that had been kept out of reach for so long because of debilitating indifference, imposter syndrome, as well as mental and creative exhaustion. 

Focusing on what mattered most, I was finally able to take to heart a personal mantra I had carried with me for years. Pruned from a local Lutheran Church sign more than a decade ago, I’ve been known to pass on this nugget of wisdom to those around me as I failed for years to live by it myself:

Worry is the Misuse of Imagination

Attributed to Dan Zedra, an author unknown to me, this phrase resonates with all of my intentions: to remind myself that anxieties decapitate creative potential. Perhaps a nod to Frank Herbert as well, “Fear”, indeed, “is the mind killer.” If I could only overcome all of my needless anxieties, creativity might flow easier. But if merely chanting this phrase didn’t help, perhaps a greater intervention was needed.

So here I am: the rationale behind a tattoo. 

Featured prominently are two of my own photographs translated into line drawings, each representing something I hold dear in my heart. The foreground image of the diminutive, distant black spruce trees on the windswept Elliott Highway represents resilience in the face of overwhelming odds, a calm and quietude that’s not only respected but graceful and beautiful. Looming in the background is Denali’s profile image as seen from Mile 200 on the Parks Highway – how we see her from Fairbanks. She represents strength, resolve, a joyous awe of the world around us, and, perhaps most important, she represents home. Together, they remind me of my creative potential from two disparate and unexpected sources, encouraging me to always try new things. Apertures loom low above the mountain as artifices for the lazy winter sun, one that provides less than four hours of sunlight during the darkest parts of  our winter. This arrangement is directly inspired by my colleague Charles Mason’s multiple exposure shot on the Winter Solstice that shows the track of the sun on the shortest day. This reminds me to create even in the darkest of times (both literal and metaphorical) and are a gentle nod to the fact that I am a passionate and (perhaps a reminder that I am a) competent educator. It also seems fitting that I would have a photographic visual aid always on me. The apertures are arranged, from left to right, in constricting fashion, encouraging me to always work on putting the world around me (and those I love and cherish) into greater focus. Below it all is my personal mantra, encouraging me to use my finite creativity as effectively as possible and to, once again, focus on what truly matters. 

To top this all, I waited to get my tattoo from not only an artist that I deeply respect and am in constant awe of their work, but I also am lucky enough to have familial ties to her. Yokainani, a Las Vegas-based tattoo artist, just so happens to be my cousin and, after losing so many connections with family due to geographic isolation, I’ve greatly enjoyed connecting with her family, her mother and her sister. Perhaps this tattoo also serves as a reminder to build those familial connections, as I’ve surprisingly needed them much more over the last few years. I have to thank Nani for her willingness to deal with verbose and meandering emails from me as we planned this tattoo, and for her personal translation of my own work and idea into a stunning tattoo that I am constantly full of joy whenever I lay my eyes on it.

I’ve surprised myself with the comfort that having this tattoo gives me. In trying times, it recenters me. In dark times, it reminds me how freeing being creative is. It has also given pause to more than one individual as they consider the mantra in their own terms.  And, perhaps most important, it allows me to wear my heart on my sleeve and to declare what matters most to me to all those around me. I’m reminded by a quote from one of my favorite authors that might serve as a good summary of my thoughts on this – and perhaps by getting this tattoo, I’ve decided to unfold myself just a little:

Written on the body is a secret code only visible in certain lights: the accumulations of a lifetime gather there. In places the palimpsest is so heavily worked that the letters feel like braille. I like to keep my body rolled up away from prying eyes, never unfold too much, or tell the whole story.   – Jeanette Winterson