Putting it in words
Telling stories is a passion of mine.
I write in Finnish, Swedish and English.
The story for Wolva was created to inspire their visuals and to be part of their brand concept work. A story about a feral woman connecting with the woods.
In 2022 I wrote about creative force and primal instinct for Moxworld.
Alkulähde
Kirjoittanut Tanja Is
(Wolva brand concept )
Riisun vaatteeni tienvarteen.
Astelen puolipolkua metsään. Kuulen puron solisevan hiljaisena kauempana, tunnen vereni virtaavan yhtä lailla. Se valuu reittäni pitkin. Kuvittelen vereni ja puron olevan samasta lähteestä. Tunnen itseni vapaaksi ja voimakkaaksi.
Metsän kiemurtelevia polkuja astuessani mieleni hiljenee. Humisevat puut kuiskaavat astumaan peremmälle, syvemmälle metsään. Henkäys menneisyydestä puhaltaa hiuksiini. Maassa, lahonneet sammaloituneet puut tarjoavat suojaa metsän pienimmille. Täällä ei näe kuin sulkemalla silmänsä ja avaamalla mielensä. Täällä olemme kaikki yhtä, tasavertaisia, vailla aikaa tai paikkaa.
Metsänaukella, tuolla alkuvoiman suolla kohtaan nuo hauraat kasvit. Nuo taianomaiset kasvit kätkevät sisälleen salaisuuksia. Maan emonen on ne minulle kuiskannut. Ne parantavat ja vahvistavat, ne kantavat eteenpäin ja kertovat tulevasta- jos niille avautuu. Nuo ihmeet ovat meitä varten, ketkä uskaltavat katsoa ja kohdata luonnon, maan josta olemme luotu.
Anteeksi pyydellen ja luontomme peittäen, varjossa mutta silti vahvoina. Näin me olemme eläneet liian kauan, metsäkukat ja naiset; suurten puiden varjossa, kätkien alkuvoimamme muiden katseilta.
On creative force and primal instinct
By Tanja Is.
Creative, artist, mother.
What are we trying to achieve here?
This is the question I keep going back to.
I joined Moxworld in 2020 just as it was taking its very first baby steps and I had only recently given birth to my second son. I was looking for a way to make a living that suited my lifestyle, didn’t compromise my values and allowed flexibility with my time. I’m a creative, an artist, a mother. It doesn’t matter the order of these titles, to me they are one and the same.
Fertility is a creative force whether you are making babies or art. Being a mother means taking care of others, putting others’ needs first, nurturing the shit out of everything. For me, this is my truest self; connecting to nature and living life to the fullest. My family comes first. But…I need to make a living too and here lies my dilemma. Most jobs require you to put family second. Most jobs need you to work to their timings, tend to their needs. You need to adjust. Your kids need to adjust. Your family needs to adjust. Women have felt pressure and the constant pull between family and career ever since we were liberated to work for wages. I am not the only one feeling stressed.
We are living in a man-made, man-designed world. Nature is being destroyed as cities grow and tech has replaced a huge portion of jobs that were originally done by human hands. I’m not saying all tech is bad - the progression and development of tech has saved many lives and created a more connected world – but something valuable has been lost.
Balance.
The pressure and constant pull we women feel has meant we’ve somewhat lost our truest selves and purposed. Our primal nature. Just like nature has been replaced by cities, our creative force has been a hindrance, something we’ve pushed away. It’s slowing us down, or to be more exact, it’s slowing our career progression down. A woman’s creative force is seen as ‘difficult’ in this man-made world. If a woman shows emotion in the office, she’s ’probably hormonal’. A breastfeeding woman has to substitute her lunchbreak to pump milk for her baby. We’re seen as over-emotional and sensitive. Women are forced to detach and hide their feelings and natural, physiological functions because they’re inconvenient and unproductive in the workforce. We need to re-attach to our bodies and to our minds. We need to listen to our ‘selves’.
Our fertile creative force can be expressed in many ways, such as creating a business that respects and honours all life. Like Moxworld does. We need to work to restore the balance in order to heal ourselves and to heal our planet. So when I go back to my original question of ‘what are we trying to achieve here?’ for me the answer is simple: we are restoring balance by combining creativity with life-loving tech. We are making our creative selves and our planet, fertile again. I get to be the mother I’m meant to be: able to look after myself, my children, my family and our planet, so all lives can thrive. A life-loving journey means owning our true creative force and primal instinct, then connecting it with nature to respect its place in our lives. It’s ensuring our modern processes have past wisdom and learning at their core. We combine new tech with the knowledge inherited from our ancestors.
Nature is full of wonders. It has the ability to heal itself, something we see every day all over the world. It’s not magic, it’s nature being nature. But some of her wounds created by humans are simply too big for her to heal alone. And that’s where we need to help. What if, for example, the pandemic was planet earth’s menstrual period, a cleanse that was re-setting the way for a renewed, fertile time to come?
In the ancient teachings of Ayurveda there is an expression ”What you see, you become”. Seeing, hearing and feeling unsettling things on a daily basis makes us confused and unwell. In cities, we don’t see, hear or feel nature. Our lack of care for our planet is very much reflected in the way we ignore messages from our own bodies. We pop a pill when we have a headache. We take birth control for acne. There are pills that we can take to stay awake for longer so we can keep working. But our bodies are nature and can’t be fooled forever. Eventually we need to stop and listen.
We are all connected; healing is collective and planetary. By taking responsibility for our planet, it’s a process akin to growing up. We go from being small children who may unknowingly break something, oblivious to the damage we do, to being teens who know-it-all with a confidence and ignorance that again blinds us to the damage we are causing. As adults, we continue to create damage, knowing the consequences but feeling helpless to change. This has to stop. We know and can see the situation we are left with and if, when given the right education and resources, we humans have the power to heal ourselves, we also have the power to heal our planet.
We have the answers.
When I go back to 2020 when I first heard of Moxworld, it took me a while to understand what we were about and where we were heading. But at the very core of everything we do is the intention to be ‘life-loving’. I was sold. As I immersed myself in our projects and researched our potential partners, I realised that yes, all the answers really are there! All the tools, all the knowledge, it’s there! Solutions to fix the majority of our world’s problems exist, but we haven’t known where to look. Moxworld is like the beacon that lights the way for businesses and people to find and connect their skills and resources to collaboratively heal our world’s wounds. No more feeling helpless or left in the dark. There is so much life-loving tech waiting for its time in the sun, and by partnering with the right businesses, their combined power becomes an even greater force for good.
I once heard a person ask “why do people have babies?” and the answer was, “because there is too much love between two people that they need to share it with another. It’s the sharing of an abundance of love”. This answer resonates so deeply with me and I feel like it translates to the reason why Moxworld was conceived: there is too much love for the planet within us and we need to share it with the rest of the world.