When Kama La Mackerel, a 32-year-old Montreal-based performer, poet, multi-disciplinary artist, and community organizer, came out to her parents, she struggled to get accepted by them. But, in a fortunate turn of events, her mother not only accepted her, but also gifted her a saree.
She shared her experience with a Facebook post, which said,
“Thank you mom, for gifting me your own favourite sari, and for insisting that i wear it to my best friend’s wedding. my relationship to my family, just like my relationship to femininity, has always been a fraught one, my family having been the first site of punishment that i experienced for transgressing gender norms. these two relationships are tied in a knot that I’ve had to unravel, one alongside each other, over the years:
Embroidered in these six yards of silk are the thirty years it took me to find who i am and slowly become who i was meant to be;
Hidden in the deep blue of this sari are three decades of navigating rejection and acceptance, punishment and compassion, rage and forgiveness;
Threaded in this fabric is a lifetime of silence and dejection, the weaving of the unspoken over my skin, the (un)wrapping of shame around my body;
Embedded in this garment are the feet of a young child walking in pain, the hands of a suicidal teenager holding the pieces of a broken heart, the lungs of an insecure adult still learning how to breathe a steady rhythm…
But wrapped around my body is also the gift of peace & acceptance: an offering of love, a request for forgiveness, the recognition of souls beaming truth in the sunlight, and the possibility of re-imagining, re-creating and re-enchanting ourselves, each other and our relationships.
[IG: @kama_la_mackerel] (sic)“
We’re not crying, you’re crying!
