Working with these women.

While filming and interviewing the daughters, mothers, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers who participated in my project, I was struck every time by the amazing compassion and grace we all have, inherently, and how much self-discovery comes out of just openly talking about our experiences of being a daughter and mother.

Now, as I edit the voices of the mothers, clipping out interesting bits of ideas to broadcast into the room with the portraits, I am amazed, again. We are so wise!! Every single person - even the one whose son was so busy and intent on distracting her that I got only 2 audible phrases out of the interview - had something of deep wisdom to say. The importance of this project has always been to give voice to mothers, and hence support, as we find our community in a sharing space: the embrace of other mothers. But increasingly I see its broader cultural importance as a means to become a more free-thinking, conscious society. And by "us" I don't mean Canadians or even North Americans. I mean people everywhere. When we open our hearts to the joy of our own significance in the world, we open the vast realm of possibility for what we will acheive in our lives. We stop criticizing ourselves, and hoping desperately that no harm comes to our children, and instead we live in the courageous knowledge that our children carry on our own joy and inspiration to create for themselves the beautiful world we are leaving them.

"I'm who I am, and it took me a long time, but I like me." -- one of the hundreds of voice-clips from the installation.