BIWP: Too Stubborn for my Own Good

Photo by LJ Cohen

[I blog for Black Ink, White Paper. This is my contribution this month.]

Shortly after I married my husband (strange phrase–he’s my husband because I married him, right?), we were strolling along the harbor area in Annapolis, MD, when we ducked into a shop and he bought me a beautiful Zuni fetish.

It was a bronze coyote, (the one on the photo, alongside the badger), and it began a collection that I continue to this day. I don’t have any particular personal connection to Native American culture, but the little carvings fascinate me. They are small, so they were easy to collect while in the early days of our marriage when we had to move several times. They were relatively affordable, since my husband was a medical resident and we were living primarily on my earnings. And they spoke to me. Each one has a distinct personality.

After a while, I began to recognize similarities among certain carvings and discovered there were carving families and that each animal represented certain personality characteristics.

One of the things I love about the symbolism of the fetishes, is that the personality traits are both positive and negative and that there’s no value judgement placed on it. A great example of this is the badger, who symbolizes both persistence (a positive trait) and stubbornness (a negative trait.)

(Continue reading "Too Stubborn for my Own Good" on the Black Ink White Paper Blog, and join me there with a wonderful group of writers.)