My Mennonite heritage shapes my identity, how I understand my body. The Mennonite women who were born and gave birth before me give me my inheritance, give me my hands and feet. I stitch myself into their story and pilgrim forward.

 

I draw from quilt patterns, my family’s iconography and our women’s historical art form, though I paint without thread. Pencil shapes the body-lines, and I am sewn and drawn together by their work.

 

This patchwork of experiences and legacies honors what is powerful, divine, and tangible. I am sometimes not sure of my body, not sure it fits; I use it in different ways. What is a Mennonite female body? But still I celebrate the earthy women who knead flour into dough, who wipe away children’s tears, who prick their fingers on needles.