I have put some rose thorns in my power bag .

I feel that my power has come form embracing my ‘thorns’, the difficult parts of myself, including HIV. Accepting HIV has allowed me to grow in directions I had not expected. We grow thorough our difficulties and challenges, we don’t grow through ease. We grow thorough embracing our thorns.

I have put Frida Khalo as a source of inspiration. As woman who suffered a lot through her life and also produced some amazing art. I mentioned as source of inspiration women like Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Bessie Smith. Women who went through great challenges, who were also Rebels By Default, because they used drugs, they were black, sometimes they were considered ‘crazy’ .  They challenged society. I feel affinity with those women. And their art, gives me strength and inspiration when I feel hopeless.

I have put two little cats  and a toy vibrator in my power bags, to symbolise love, joy, beauty and pleasure which also  give me power!

I have made a potion using the leaves of a fig tree, and olive tree and an almond tree, I have planted in my garden. I wanted to represent the process of rooting in this country, as someone who was not born here, and those trees are trees form my country of origin, Italy, the Mediterranean. And now they have roots here, like me, and those roots in the new country make me who I am. Also the process of cutting the leaves and putting them in mortar and work on them with a pestle. Made me think of witchcraft and witches , how women have worked with nature for centuries and been holders of wisdom and healing. I reclaim my sacred witch power.

Lastly Rigatone Thorn , my darg persona, was an experiment with masculinity, and how my male version did not have to speak up, or be louder to have power. I felt very quiet. I was wearing my Grandfather hat, and it also made me reconnect with the silence about war. My grandfather was in the first and second world wars, but never spoke about them. And I felt all the unspoken trauma, all the bottled up feelings, the loneliness and the silence,  that sometimes can go with masculinity and how toxic this silence can be.