Mothers, Myths, and Mascots

"If stories come to you, learn to care for them and give them away. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive." - Barry Lopez

I have always loved this quote by Barry Lopez, but never really understood the second half of it. Then my mother died, I lost my job, COVID hit, and I found myself free falling into questions that had plagued me all my life:

• Why is money valued more than the lives of people and the planet?

• Why do some have so much but care so little for others?

• Why do we teach children to fear failure, judge themselves and others, and believe that grades are the measure of success?

• What could I - an admittedly creative introvert (INJF) - do to give others hope?

By the time I found the way out of my funk, two long and lonely months had passed, but I had my answer. I also understood what Lopez meant. In order to find a way forward I needed a story that would inspire me and others to do heroic things - to think outside the box, fall in love with adventure, struggle with adversity, and work with others to create positive change. Think Joseph Campbell (The Hero with a Thousand Faces) re-imagined for the 21st century.

This story would have to be told in multiple ways - words, song, photos, video, sculpture, painting, audio, 3D immersive interaction - and on multiple platforms so that people could participate wherever they are. But most of all it would require an archetypal symbol that would embody the qualities we want to awaken and nurture in one another. Not an enlightened, perfect being passing judgment, but a flesh and blood creature struggling to come to terms with the contradictions of what it means to be human - a being whose wisdom and strength are born of empathy. In one word - an Avatar.

Enter the Dragon

The name I came up with for my story was Braided Lives. The image the name called to mind - braiding the individual threads of our lives together to create a strong and colorful whole - really appealed to me. But I still needed a central figure around which to build that community For inspiration I turned to old favorites - J.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, J.K. Rowling, Anne McCaffrey, George R.R. Martin, Mary Shelley, and Ursula K. LeGuin. I researched mythical beings - unicorns, fire wolves, chimeras, banshees, and winged horses - but none of them felt right. Then a chance encounter (assuming you believe in chance) with someone who creates 3D dragons gave me the inspiration I needed.

What if the Braided Lives mascot was a dragon? Not a ferocious, fire breathing dragon that wrecks havoc on everything it touches but a dragon that embodies creative passion, power, and compassion. A dragon that would be a force for good.

Meet Umamma

The name I chose for my dragon is Umamma - the Zulu word for "the mother." Umamma would be the mother of all dragons and the source of inspiration, insight, and empowerment for everyone whose life she touches. She is an avatar in every sense of the word - an incarnation of spirit in dragon form who knows what it's like to struggle in this world and will help us find and tell our stories.

The spirit of Umamma will be the thread that infuses and connects all parts of Braided Lives. As you can see from the images above, I have begun to create illustrations of how she might look and to put them shirts, hoodies, and even iphone covers we can wear and carry with us. But in the end, it will be her spirit - the spirit of love and compassion - that I hope will infuse all the work we do together on Braided Lives.

If you'd like to see what Umamma merch options, visit: https://braided-lives.myteespring.co/

Copyright 2020 by Jena Ball. All Rights Reserved.

Follow the Thread

"Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect." - Chief Seattle

My grandmother taught me about threads by teaching me to knit and crochet. She also attempted (emphasis on "attempted") to teach me sewing and the finer points of ladylike behavior, but was less successful with those. Sewing needles were too sharp for my fingers, and I've never been - and have no intention of becoming - a lady. Her approach to teaching me these skills did, however, teach me patience.

Before I could begin a project, she'd hand me a tangled mess of yarn that had been lurking in the back of one of her craft bins. My job was to undo the knots and wind the yarn into a nice, tight ball that could be gradually unrolled as the needles worked their magic.

I call the process of creating blankets, sweaters, scarves, and mittens magic because all those things are the result of using single threads of yarn and pointy sticks (some with hooks at the end) to create interconnected rows of knots. Magic. But I digress.

My grandmother would sit me down on the couch and put the yarn in my lap. "Follow the thread," she'd say. By this she meant start with one end of the yarn and follow it through the tangled twists, turns, loops and knots until I had one long, unbroken thread that could be wound into a smooth round ball.

Occasionally, when we were low on yarn or grandma was on one of her waste-not want-not crusades, she'd pull out a tub of outgrown, worn out sweaters, ski hats, and scarves reeking of mothballs, and have me unravel the thousands of carefully formed stitches into single threads, then wind them into tidy balls.

As I pondered how to share and explain my project with you, I began thinking about grandma and her threads. Like Chief Seattle, I began to see each of us as a single thread in the larger fabric of life. Your thread is singular and imbued with a unique path and purpose. But if you're like me, the thread of your life was knotted with complex challenges. The process of untangling the knots took many years and a lot of hard work. Though my thread is by no means completely clear of snarls, I now have a pretty clear understanding of who I am and what I want to accomplish in this life. I am eager to share my vision with you.

Which brings me to the project I've been promising to tell you about - Braided Lives.

Braided Lives is a multi-platform initiative designed to bring people from all walks of life together to tell their stories and collaborate on the creation of a more equitable and sustainable future. The concept was born in response to the isolation, stress, anger, and frustration that have resulted from the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing racial tensions.

It was clear to us that people are hungry for connection. They need places to meet to comfort, console, and encourage one another. They need tools that allow them to communicate and share ideas effectively. Places and tools that make it possible to braid the individual threads of their lives into powerful communities of change.

The logo above is meant to capture the heart of the Braided Lives vision. The hand at the center is making the ASL sign for love. Around the wrist is a colorful collection of friendship bracelets, symbolizing the diversity and strength of the members of our community. The water at the base represents the interconnected and interdependent sea of life we all swim in.

Braided Lives is designed to reach people where they are and will exist on three platforms: As a website, as 3D interactive rooms, and in the immersive, virtual world of Second Life. To learn more about each of these three platforms and Braided Lives' four areas of focus, visit: https://bit.ly/3hBMxLR

Please take a moment while you're there to sign up to stay in touch and connect with me on Facebook (JenaiaMorane) so I can add you to the Braided Lives Facebook group. We would really appreciate it if you could also share this post to your Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook feeds. Let's make magic happen!

Going Viral - Part II

"Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass. It's about learning how to dance in the rain." - Vivian Green

The numbers are staggering.

• 32 million dead since the beginning of the HIV/AIDS epidemic

• Approximately 37.9 million infected across the globe

• Infection rates that continue to climb in 50 countries including Russia, South Africa, and Kazakhstan.

• 37,832 newly diagnosed case of HIV in the United States in 2018, and the infection rate isn't falling.

But numbers aren't human. They're countable pieces of information that allow us to talk about something without having to feel - with so called objectively. This, I've come to realize, is how human beings keep from being overwhelmed by situations and events that seem beyond our control - that clamor for gut reactions and threaten to rip our hearts out. Caring - and by definition being concerned about the health, happiness, and well-being of those closest to us - is hard enough. How are we supposed to find the emotional bandwidth to care about people we don't know? Especially people whose beliefs and lifestyles are not ones we share?

I first started asking myself these questions back in 2008 when working as the creative lead on the National Library of Medicine's HIV/AIDS education project (Karuna) in the virtual world of Second Life. Today, as the COVID-19 pandemic rages on, I find myself asking them again. This time, however, there is no blaming or stigmatizing any one segment of the population. Oh, I know some are trying, but this virus doesn't discriminate. It's an equal opportunity infector, and I'm beginning to realize that's the point.

My questions today have to do with how to move forward. How do we help everyone heal? How can we make that healing universal and applicable not only to human beings but other living creatures and the planet as well? Because let's face it. We've been doing a pretty poor job of taking care of one another and Earth. We need new, more compassionate, and life-focused ways to move into the future.

Back in 2008, the answer to my questions was story. Human beings are storytellers. Narratives help us make sense of our world and others. They help us understand and dispel our fear of differences, take down walls, and find common ground.

I used story as the foundation for two projects in Second Life. The first was "The Uncle D Story Quest," an immersive 3D environment that allowed participants to walk into and explore the life of a man named Uncle D, a 40-something man living with HIV. There, they could visit his summer cottage (pictured above), hear his journals read aloud, play with his cat, and listen to his phone messages. In another part of the build, they could visit his office at the school where he taught and the medical clinic where he received his HIV treatments. At the clinic, they could examine his medical records, learn about the drugs available to treat HIV, and ask his doctor (a chat-bot) questions. Watch the video we made about the project here. In this way, participants learned to know and care about Uncle D as a person - to see him as more than a condition or a number.

The second project I created was the 3D AIDS Quilt (watch the video here). The tree in the middle contained a concert hall, an education center - where you could see a 3D version of the virus replicate itself (scary), and private meeting rooms for support groups. At the base of the tree was a garden

surrounded by the quilt itself. The quilt consisted of 60 rooms, each containing a 3D story about some aspect of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Some participants chose to tell the stories of individuals. Others, like the HIV/AIDS orphanage in Africa, told the stories of whole groups of people affected by the epidemic. Each was unique and deeply moving. We had dozens of musicians and presenters use the concert hall to give performances and raise money for various HIV/AIDS related groups.

But the bottom line - the thing that connected both projects to the larger mission of Karuna was story.

Applying Lessons from the Past

Fast forward to 2020. I believe that story is the solution to many of the pressing questions we are asking one another today. We must find ways to connect with and comfort one another; to say the names of those we've lost and preserve their lives in story. But commemoration is not enough. All around us people are stepping up to the plate in extraordinary ways - doctors, nurses, food banks, teachers, performers, delivery people, farmers, and grocery clerks. Their generosity, courage, and commitment to others are stories with lessons that need to be heard, celebrated, and integrated into our collective awareness.

But even those stories are not enough. We must find a new story to tell about humanity as well. We must re-imagine how we interact with one another, with other living creatures, and the planet. We must acknowledge that we are just a tiny part of an enormous interconnected and interdependent web of life. We must tell these stories as if our lives depended on them, because they do.

P.S. I have an idea about how we might begin to accomplish this. Stay tuned!