Once Upon a Mermaid

Once upon a time there was a toddler who flitted from activity to activity like a bird from flower to flower. 
Focus was something she rarely showed.
Until the day she saw The Little Mermaid movie.  She was captivated, mesmerized, watching it with almost unblinking eyes. The music and story were magic to her and she fell in love with Ariel and all things mermaid! She wanted to watch it over and over until she had every line (and every song!) committed to memory.

It was the beginning of her love of mermaids, but she took all that she saw very literally.  At 2 1/2 she assumed a mermaid had to have red hair because that is what she saw.  And when she started seeing other movies and other princesses she believed that to be a princess (and to be beautiful) you must have peach skin and yellow hair. 
What she was seeing was starting to define her idea of beauty... and that's when we stepped in!

We tripled the amount of books in the house with princesses, heroines and main characters of color. The Happily Ever After series on HBO became (and remains) a favorite for a fairy tale fix.

On a whim I painted a mermaid girl in her likeness. She was enchanted with the idea that SHE could be the mermaid, and that a  mermaid could look like her!

I continued to create more and more art in her likeness, and we watched her beliefs shift and expand.
The power of exposure.

Finding Motivation

I gather from many of the celiac forum discussions, and articles written, that there is a never-ending stream of people who don't find good health motivation enough to follow a gluten-free diet. Too many focus on what they believe they are missing instead of what they are gaining. They struggle with, or deny, the diagnosis of celiac and consider it a sentence.

Making a drastic lifestyle change like changing the way you eat, shop, socialize, and travel requires motivation. Sometimes it is found within sometimes it comes from an outside source. And, everyone has to find his or her own motivation.

I feel lucky to have multiple motivating sources... 2 come from within: having lived in constant pain and the memory of losing both my mother and grandmother at young ages to stomach cancer.  
The third, and outside source, is my moment to moment reminder in the form of a 3 year old, 39 lb bundle of explosive power who bursts into every day by 6am at full tilt - ready to play, run, jump, draw, paint, bake, read, dance and learn with inexhaustible energy, enthusiasm, and joy!

I need a tremendous pool of energy to keep up with her. I want to live as long and healthy a life as possible to be with her, enjoying every moment to the fullest. I love drawing her as much as she loves seeing the drawings. Two years ago I didn't have the strength or energy to do anything extra. It took everything I had to get through the day. Now, even with my very hectic schedule I find - and use - slices of time to create. It re-charges me and is my special gift to my daughter. And it has made me whole again.

So, from the outside people may only see what I give up or do without to be gluten-free but from where I stand all I can see is what I have gained – and it is infinite!

*My Little Mermaid, work in progress, ink on paper, copyright Erin Rogers Pickering

You can see my more of my work in my Etsy shop Erin Go Paint. Or check out my recent 100 Day Project on Instagram