The Navel of the Dream

'The Navel of the Dream' describes a state of groundlessness. In these images I excavate a lineage of mothers and daughters navigating grief, loss and aging.

In his book “The Interpretation of Dreams”, Freud writes that, "There is often a passage in even the most thoroughly interpreted dream which has to be left obscure … This is the dream's navel, the spot where it reaches down into the unknown”. If a dream is a road to knowledge of the unconscious, then the ‘navel of the dream’ is that which lies beyond our grasp, and the experiences that we have yet to make sense of in our lives.  

As a writer and photographer I too am interested in a language of symbols and in decoding the ways that my unconscious asserts itself in my work. ‘The navel’ in this project is my subconscious wrestling with change. These images are the result of my confrontations with fracture, regrowth, and emergence. They represent my search for a new mythology. 

In her book, “Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times”, Katherine May defines ‘wintering’ as, “the active acceptance of sadness. It is the practice of allowing ourselves to feel it as a need. It is the courage to stare down the worst parts of our experience and to commit to healing them the best we can”. My own personal winter began with being abruptly severed from the enchantment and protections of childhood. This rupture forced me to renegotiate notions of belonging, identity and a shifting family landscape. 

Loss is a groundless space; a worldview that is no longer stable; and a person, place, or time that you can’t get back to. Loss is standing on a fault line as the mantle of the earth renegotiates its position to the center of the earth, and to your feet beneath you. Loss is trying to orient oneself to a space that no longer obeys the laws of physics. Loss is the inability to return, and these images are my attempt to reckon with this rupture.