In 1992 I was 25 years old. By then I had quit college and followed my dream to work in music. I had no support from my family and had done it anyway. I had also eloped with an Australian man ten years my senior. I had miscarried a baby. I had worked my way up the ladder into a position of some importance in the industry. I had a perfect, vintage Spanish apartment that was built in the 1930's.

And then, the 1992 Los Angeles Riots.

There is no good way to explain how this altered my life's path other than to equate it to a small yet very intense glimpse into the dark soul of what I imagined a war zone may be like. It was time to wake up, to go. To find my next dream and let go of this one that I had worked so hard for. After much deliberation we decided to move to Australia and give up the apartment, the music business, the life that we had known.

I thought about how I could mark the end of this in some substantial way. I decided to permanently mark myself with a tattoo. Not just any design would do. Nothing that had hung on a parlor wall before - something that was all my own...something that would never lose it's importance to me...never regret. And then it came to me in the sky, as it always had, the moon. The same moon I would sneak out of bed to sleep under when I was little. The moon that still makes me secretly thrilled when it gleams through my window and sets my rumpled white sheets aglow.

The search began for the perfect image but it eluded me - too cute, too masculine, too simple. I would have to create it myself. Many attempts were made but my artistic abilities have never included any kind of portraiture talent. And then, as I was sketching at my desk and getting increasingly frustrated I spied a picture with just the right angle to the profile, got out the tracing paper and came up with the design you see above. There are few people in my life who know that I used my own face to get this very permanent, final image. Probably because it always embarrassed me a little (narcissitic much?).

But as the years have passed I am more comfortable with the idea. It seems to honor a very different me. I look back and am very proud of that girl who had the courage to make all of those very brave and scary decisions. It has been getting me juiced up for what I hope will continue to be a courageous journey. One I can look back on in fourteen more years and make me swell with pride all over again.


Check out the self portrait challenge site for this month. The theme is one of my favorites so far. It is Self Portrait As A ... (join us and fill in the blank why don't you?)