Blind to Bounds

I Am Back

Hello folks,
I am back, after a hiatus of few years. A lot has happened in these years. I lost my young and handsome Pulmonologist husband Dr. Syed Fasihuddin, to COVID, as he was himself treating COVID patients. That felt like someone had hit my head with an iron rod. I lost all interest in my profession, my home, my interests like silk painting, blogging, etc. All I did was wrote about 40 farewell letters to him on social media. Grieving in lockdown, all alone was not easy. Friends and followers on social media became my community and support, as they read my blogs.
When I wasnt blogging I would go and sit for hours on the Lake Ontario beach and watch waves hit the shore. There was not much reason then to get up and look forward to the next day. Killing time by the beach, in solitude, was the way I thought rest of my life will drag.
And then one day I noticed a green pebble shining on the beach, I picked it up. It looked like someone had lost a chunky emerald from their ring. Then I found another green and another. And then a white, a brown and a blue. What were these? As if some power was mysteriously sending me distractions to divert my attention from my grief.
One day, I decided to google and check what were all these pebbles? Lo and behold, I discovered beach/sea glass.
I read more about it. And more. And discovered there was a community of about 100,000 people( mostly women) across the globe, who beachcombed to collect sea glass. Each seaglass was unique, with a unique origin and a unique journey, being churned in the waves for years, decades and some even centuries, before they landed on the beach in their current form. Intrigued by their story, I wondered if they could be used to tell stories on canvas too. And thus, YourStonyTeller by Ilmana was born. Rest is history.

I got immersed in the artworks, which eventually help me traverse through my grief to a great extent. Although the truth is that the loss can never be overcome, but you learn to co exist with it, and continue to live as well. As I learnt from seaglass:
Life goes on,
Love endures,
Gratitude is worry’s cure.
Some of the earliest, simplest artworks using sea glass and pebbles are shared below.