Freedom, update

Top half (sky part) of my freedom quilt, in progress. Lily Michaud

Here is a progress shot of the top half of my freedom quilt. During the time of the underground railroad flock of geese quilts (made with triangles like this) were used to help enslaved people get to freedom. The dark triangles pointed the way. I am using indigo and cyanotype. The darker, cyanotype triangles in the top half of the quilt are contact prints of herbs that can lend strength when it is necessary to flee danger. The herbs in flight are pushing away the clouds. From left to right:

Alstroemeria (use flower essence): For knowing you can get through anything with optimism and focus.

Thyme (herbal tea, tincture or essential oil): For preparing for battle, for facing life or death situations.

Agrimony (tea, tincture): for when you are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Helpful for legal and work situations.

Yarrow (tea, tincture, flower essence): Another warriors’ tool, first aid for bruises and deep cuts. Energetically this gives solid boundaries, healing trauma on the energetic level. It gives the strength to persevere.

Red Osier Dogwood (use bark, or stems, hold as a talisman): for when immediate help/change is needed. For protection when feeling “shattered”. This plant is sacred, use it with care and reverence.

Naturally, it will be queen size. The bottom will be filled with herbs for healing after moving on.

Freedom Quilt

I recently had the privilege of doing an artist’s residency at Sou’Wester Arts in coastal Washington. I am grateful for my time at Sou-wester. The space was relaxing and close to beautiful coastal nature walks. The community and space were friendly, supportive, and creative. Here are pictures of my process, as well as information about the project.

A closeup of a Queen Anne's Lace cyanotype on fabric.

This project is a gratitude piece, honoring all the people who help those in need. It is a comfort to know of all of you who help, whether your actions are obvious or secret, big or small. It will also be a teaching quilt, to help those on the journey to freedom learn about their plant allies.

Working in the sun, cyanotypes chemicals may be applied to cloth, and are sensitive to UV light only. The exposures are long. Depending on the light conditions, my images were exposed 3 to 12 minutes.  The Sou'wester lodge is in the background.

These cloth prints are for a freedom quilt. The quilt is based on the traditional flock of geese pattern. During the Underground Railroad one way people could help was to hang quilts that gave coded information. In this style of quilt, the darker triangles would indicate which direction to travel to get to safety. Can you imagine the only thing that you could do to help save someone being to hand sew a quilt?

Herbs from top to bottom: Uva ursi, cedar, and pearly everlasting.

There continue to be laws, and legal practices, in place that make it illegal to support human rights in the US. It is still a world where many who wish to help must do so covertly and fear the repercussions. This is particularly a problem in the world of family law. The UN is advocating for an end to Hague Convention that prevent women and children from fleeing family violence. Current practices almost always send women who flee their country, due to violence towards themselves or their children, home to be tried as kidnappers. This is often done regardless of extensive evidence of abuse.

Here is where I stayed. My family roots include Irish travelers and I often fantasize about living on the road. But, how can you do that and have a garden? It's a tough call. :)

Plant medicine has been historically used to that impart strength needed to flee a dangerous, manipulative situation. Many herbs support recovery and continuing on to a more fulfilling and joyful life. This quilt in progress is made of cyanotype prints and indigo-dyed fabric.

Playing with triangles, here are some prints in geese formation. From left to right: Ladies thumb, blackberry, red clover, rose, hawthorn, yarrow, queen anne's lace.

Working with herbs I look at their physical, psychological, spiritual, and even magical effects. My goal is to help people find the strength to get to safety, to live a life that feels like thriving (whatever that means to the individual), and to have the strength, inspiration, and tenacity to make the world a better place. Here is more about my work with herbs, it is my day job and calling.

Here are some quilt blocks that are coming together. From top to bottom the images show the sillouettes of cinquefoil, bleeding heart, and hawthorn. The lighter fabric is dyed with indigo.

Wedding Quilt Update

This quilt is about gun and rape culture. The night sky part of the quilt is now quilted with text. I have quilted on statements, terms, and nouns that perpetuate rape and gun culture. It starts with “Lilith wanted what?” and ends with statements about the unchecked power of judges. Here is a still-thready glimpse:

Close up of Wedding Quilt (in progress), 2024. 

I still have lots of embroidery to do on the moon—it’s a whole new world, as I am not an “embroiderer” yet. The moon is at the center of the piece. She has a gun to her temple. I want the moon to look beautiful. I think of this piece as about how we treat the moon or the divine feminine. Can we remember the sanctity of the moon?

Wedding Quilt

It is challenging to work on the quilt. I put on pearl after pearl on the squishy, velvet blanket. Each one built around a piece of how the community perpetuates trauma: blaming, silencing, looking the other way, dissociating, thinking it is okay, saying so.

The little pearls ask, can you cuddle under the a drape of violence? Can you hold the moon? Can you rebuild with us? Will you say “I do” to comforting the comforter? Will you say, “I will”? I will (3) turn pain into pearls. I will chin up, keep my grit to show the trusseau. The whites I bring, blackened with gun threats, rape, and gaslighting.

Will you honor the labor it took to turn a brutal landscape into a warm drape for sleeping? Moon lit night. Are you a revolutionary, do you see with your heart? Are you willing to treat a woman with grace and gratitude in a world that would rather blame victims than push to remove power from abusers? If you are, have you been hurt too?

Let’s spoon under the moon. Let’s make love in the shadow, forgetting all but our new mysterical, nurturing tangle. I will braid your hair with mine, weave my legs into yours. In the night, in the night.

6: Plant Medicine

I am working on a piece about 6/my third eye. The biggest gift focusing on this energy center has given is the ability to communicate with plants and other natural medicines. To prepare for this piece I am working on a number of other projects about plant medicine and the body. The drawings above are preparation for a multi-layer woodblock print about True Solomon’s Seal (Polygonatum spp.) and Smilacena Racemosa*, aka False Solomon’s Seal. Learning about the body has been a lifelong passion. I have been focusing on the spine lately. The tendency in Western medicine is to focus on healing gross ailments. What about dynamic wellness? We listen to and nourish our bodies before they are suffering in an extreme way. When we realize there is no limit to wellness, how does that change us?

True Solomon’s Seal is beneficial for adjusting ligament tension on joints connecting larger bones, like those in the spine. Smilacena is used for adjusting ligament tension on small bone joints, like in hands and feet. I use them whenever I have a joint injury or back trouble. True Solomon’s Seal must in part be responsible for ascending out of scoliosis.

Both of these herbs are magical and transformative. They should not taken without awareness that your life could radically realign or transform. Your bones are fundamental. They are the structure of the journey your body takes through life. We hold our posture and, often, aches and pains, as fixed and immutable. They can be released, but our walk through life will change.

The doctrine of signatures suggests the shape of the plant reveals possible application. True and False Solomon’s seal have a graceful slope to them. I think of it not as a droop or stoop, but rather as a flowing dancer’s extension. The metaphysical properties of these plants include being seen by kindred spirits (true) and finding your true name (false). They can share so much more. They are only for those with the faith to transition gracefully into a more authentic way of living. This does not imply greater vulnerability. There is protection for authenticity in their quiet shade.

The larger, 6 piece I am working on will share some of my plant connections, and more resources that my third eye brings. Not all of it is pleasant, as most of life is pain. The medicines of our earth bring ease that transcends survival medicine…they hold the intelligence to help us thrive, on every level of life. Listen to them. Honor Mother Earth.

*Do not wildcraft these plants. Smilacena is rare. Use flower essences or purchase fresh root (best for these) from ethical farmers. First do no harm.

Tales of the City

I am sewing pearls for my wedding quilt. It’s the quilt I will drag along behind me like a child, and cuddle under in a future marriage. Half comfort, a testimony to my resilience and gift of healing. Half horror story. At its inception was a call for more transformation and self-awareness.

I had wanted to make a drawing of my face as the moon and all the pearls I had made out of bad experiences. The drawing that came through was not just the moon and pearls. It was the way we treat the moon in this world. It is the way we treat the divine feminine.

Moon Face with Gun sketch, c 2022

Why, as a culture are we so permissive of violence towards the feminine and vulnerable? How can we allow the murder and rape of women, children, & trans women, over and over again? How can we be filled with so much hatred towards the feminine? It’s not just men, it’s women too. It is such deep hatred. Our religious stories are filled with anger and resentment towards women. The law suppresses emotions in an attempt to see clearly, but emotions are part of a feminine and vulnerable reality. They are part of all of us. To censure and oppress emotion is the death of humanity. Let us not confuse removing passion with removing compassion.

The summer I was 16 I stayed with my grandmother in Chicago. I was doing all the ‘things’ I really wanted to be doing with my life. I was taking advanced ballet classes everyday and a pre-calculus correspondence course. I was on my way to graduating high school a year early to escape a difficult home. I wanted to still graduate on the advanced math track, so I was doing the math over the Summer. I wanted to be a doctor, and a dancer. That summer I went most places by myself. I am adventurous and independent. I walked to the beach all the time. I took the bus to class and the L around town.

Towards the end of the Summer I was assaulted by 4-5 guys. I was surrounded, and could only see four of them. They had a gun. Guns do a lot of damage that does not involve mass shootings, or even without any shooting, they immediately deliver the threat of death. They are an extremely powerful tool for getting what you want. These guys didn’t want to kill me, they just wanted their version of reality. They wanted to rage rape me. With the gun, they got what they wanted.

As I make this weighted quilt, I think of miracles I have experienced, and it keeps me going.

That summer I had been watching Tales of the City. It was airing weekly on PBS. I would wait all week for the next episode, and I didn’t get to see them all. My grandfather pretty much dominated the television but he had a health problem that made him sleep a lot. I would sneak a channel change, sitting on the floor in front of the TV. He often would wake up and growl and change it back to his program. It felt like a cartoon of a mouse running out to get some cheese with the big, mean, light-sleeping cat close by. I got to watch enough of the show to fall in love. Anna Madrigal, is one of my favorite television mothers. She is a landlady and provides a home and care for her grown child and others. Her child, Mona, thinks her father had abandoned her, but really she is right there nurturing her as her understanding landlord. I loved seeing Mona and DeDe. I loved that there was a place where everyone could just be themselves, dating men or women, or either, and being true to themselves. Seeing that show before this traumatic event was a minor miracle. It made me feel like I don’t need to be this or that, or ‘come out’. I don’t need to fit into a category, I can just be myself. The story is full of drama. But, it lacks the pain of conforming when you aren’t normal, or hating oneself because you fear your truth. My favorite thing is to hold space for and observe people coming into their authenticity.

Today I went with my daughter to a contact improvisation dance class. It was my first time, hers too! I don’t think young me would have been able to hack it, not even 35 year old me. She said she thought ‘it was kind of fun’—a win, for sure, from a 12 year old. It had been a hard day with lots of stress from a physics midterm (as I prepare to enter a doctorate program in Chinese medicine at NUNM) and plenty of other big emotional things pending. The class brought me back to my heart, and the joy I experience dancing. It felt so good to work through mental bondage that me and my daughter felt doing something so new with an entirely new group and group dynamic. It was nice to roll around with her. It felt great to get out of my physics filled head! I remembered what it was like in high school to want to be a dancer and a doctor, to have a dream. It felt so calm, clear, and light compared to how I have been feeling about my life the last several years.

My ex has been stalking me again. I have had two break-ins that seemed like him. The people who are close to me and know the situation are worried he will kill me, or us. The way our justice system errs on the side of caution protects and serves abusers rather than the vulnerable. When I worked as an RN in hospitals we used evidence-based practices. Rather than waiting for each the individual’s symptoms to become painfully obvious and risk death, we observed for warning signs that statistically portended dangerous outcomes and invested in early intervention. Where is evidence-based law? False reports of child abuse, rape, and domestic violence are grossly overestimated. By ignoring crimes that happen in the privacy of the home for lack “evidence” we are actually ignoring the larger evidence that these accusations are 90-98% true (source). This leaves victims without legal protection and open to repeated assaults, sexual crimes, and death. Mass shooters often have a history of violence against women. Let’s have the legal system start looking at the glaringly obvious evidence: national and global statistics about the treatment of women and children. Let’s have them become accountable for their own internalized misogyny and/or failure to change laws, systems, and legal practice that injure the heart of our culture.

Baby Blanket

A friend of mine told me how grateful she was she had never been raped or sexually abused. She knew this was rare. Then she told me how, an ex-boyfriend called up his dealer and offered her up in exchange for drugs. She had no idea this conversation had happened. The dealer came over and tried to assault her (as promised). She ran for her life, and luckily, escaped.

About 90% of the women I know have experienced sexual trauma. Having this be a story that you have to be grateful for is not good enough. To have had a boyfriend who was willing to pimp you out for drugs but you were able to fend off the rapist? No, it makes me cry that this is “a lucky life”, I long for an era when10% of us narrowly escape a violation, and the rest of have lives of body sovereignty. Burn the patriarchy.

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As I sew a quilt about the treatment of the feminine principle, I use memories of miracles to stay in the belief that someday things may improve. My first miracle:

When I was six I lost my baby blanket. It was my special blanket. It was cool in the Summer and warm in the Winter. It was comforting. I called it my nike, because it matched my nightgown which I couldn’t pronounce in my early days. I spent a month looking for my missing blanket. I looked everywhere in the house. I even looked at my friends’ houses, even though it never went outside. I was so sad!

At that time I had to meditate six minutes a day, one minute for each year I had been alive. It was pretty boring. At the end of my meditation I prayed to all the goddesses I could think of—I figured they would be more sympathetic than the gods. I prayed to Ganesha too—he is pretty adorable with that elephant head. I asked for my blanket back. I had been sitting on my bed and I laid down to rest. I reached my hand under the blanket, and felt my blanket!

Now I believe in prayer. Looking back it is my nike, or victory blanket. I decided to be very careful about what I prayed for because it really works. I have had many other prayers answered. I have been praying and praying and praying for things to improve in my family for years now. Please goddesses and Lord Ganesha, show us your grace.

UN Decries “Parental Alienation”

Work in Progress: Wedding Quilt, Lily Michaud, a queen-sized problem. 2023-

I have been working on pearls for my wedding quilt. Little puffy padded satin pearls.

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This quilt is about gun violence, which does not have to lead to death to be devastating. I always refer to this project as “The Wedding Quilt”. but i also want to call it the miracle quilt. I can’t work on it without reminding myself of all the miracles I have experienced. Otherwise, I just want to curl up in the sorrow of this queen size problem project, puddle-in and eventually evaporate or seep back into Mother Earth.

This week’s miracle:

The United Nations published a report on Custody, violence against women and violence against children. This report suggests that now, judges should consider the behavior of the father before automatically returning the child. If the father has been abusive, it should be considered. Heretofore, the Hague Convention sent mothers, who are fleeing their homeland to save their lives and their children, home as kidnappers, only for the children to be abused and sometimes murdered by the father.

I’m going to focus on how positive this is, instead of all the pain and torture that the world has green-lighted in the past. Thank you to the UN for finally passing this. My friend’s family was a case study for this UN investigation. Her family endured an extra 10 years of abuse, while the UN decided whether women and children deserve to be entirely second to the will of men.