Yesterday the springlike weather started to arrive and I couldn’t resist the urge to make a new wreath to place on my front door to welcome the new year. It looks so bare without the Christmas wreath. The next big holiday is Valentine’s Day, so of I opted for a pink bow and red flowers but I wanted to feature a Bluebird as a touchstone for good luck and positive thinking. The bluebird is considered sacred and special around the globe. The Bluebird is considered a sign of spring and a symbol of happiness and love. They were considered special by Native Americans because their color matched the color of the sky. The Pima and the Cherokees tell a story of the bluebird achieving her beautiful blue color when she bathed four times in a sacred lake and sang a special song.
Associated with love, contentment, and hope, the bluebird is the subject of many poems, stories, and songs including the 1934 classic Bluebird of Happiness.
Today my attention was drawn to an article in the metro section of the Washington Post by Sally Quinn talking about the Blue Bra Revolution. Within a few short weeks, wearing a blue bra has come to symbolize solidarity with oppressed women, after a young woman was stripped down to her blue bra after being beaten and stomped on during a demonstration in Egypt. Says Quinn, “The blue bra, for me, has become almost a talisman or amulet. It keeps away bad feelings. It makes me feel lucky and protected in the way that wearing certain numbers or carrying charms does for ballplayers or religious symbols does for soldiers headed into battle.”
Blue is the color of the fifth Chakra, one of seven power points in the human body thought by eastern spiritual believers to circulate life force energy known as prana. Each chakra is aligned with a position in the body center, close to the spine, and the blue chakra is centered at the throat and is associated with communication and expressing feelings through speech. As a writer who repeatedly finds my life calling in the field of communication, it is one of my favorite chakras and when I start getting sick I always feel it in my throat first. The color blue has thus come to be associated with inspiration, devotion, infinity, spirituality and peace. No wonder Sally Quinn finds wearing a blue bra soothing.
I find it appropriate that blue has now also come to symbolize solidarity and the freedom of expression for all women around the world. The freedom of expression is one of my many positive affirmations for 2012. May we continue to live it.
Nadja Maril, Writer & Author 