TEDx Wilmington Women Preparation


Refine thy rapture. —Aleister Crowley


The preparation for this talk feels guided and orchestrated beyond my control. Each day in my community, I meet wisdom-keepers sharing succinct and relevant gems from their life learning. My process is partly to compile this collective research on themes related to time, ritual, cycles and creation. I started to ask those near me to reflect one-word responses to these four themes, resulting in an anthropological survey to stimulate the universal connections in the foundation of my talk.

“The woman on the stage is weaving wonder, not witchcraft. But her skills are potent as any sorcery.” In Chris Anderson’s TED Talks guidebook, I found immediate connection to this element of magic and power in the journey of spreading a message worth sharing. An initial doubt around sharing this language in potential to lose credibility was shed. It is in fact important to address this authentic, common though visceral experience. What if we acknowledge our connectedness, these small wonders that reassure us each we are on our path?

The opportunity to communicate widely, with such support and encouragement is daunting, but also feels natural in my life trajectory. 5 years ago, my story appeared in a collective journal bound by Levi’s jeans and TED India, exhibited at TED Global 2011 in Edinburgh. It is a time of sharing.

Curiosity, originality, universality, and joy are underlying this preparation. In the collecting, distilling and editing of information, it is also a synthesis of wisdom into symbolic and image form. I hope to create a mandala on stage while speaking, which would be revealed at the end of the talk.

Celebrating Onam, the Kerala harvest festival, I recognize the need to find an inner center and calm while riding the wave of abundance in my life.

With gratitude,

Krupa Jhaveri, BFA, MPS, TIEATC
International Art Therapist & Art Director
Trauma-Informed Expressive Arts Therapy Consultant
TEDxWilmington Women Speaker on Art as Ritual & Resilience (October 27, 2016)

Preservation

Life, middle, flow, evolution, adaptation, water, Vishnu (pervading presence sustaining and maintaining the universe) and Lakshmi (goddess of wealth).


Scraps of the passage of messages over years, in notes, cards, letters and the stamps tracing their travels around the world. Language blurring between English and Gujarati, gossip, secrets, information and even a little floorplan of one of our many homes we continuously defined and erased, then drew again in a new place. This is a collection of sacred handwritten artifacts from times before the plague of technological distractions.


I journeyed through time and space with my mother, and redefined spirituality for myself during an epic pilgrimage through the beaches and temples of south India (after my grandmother passed away). Here I am handed the paintbrush of an everyday goddess named Parvati, to try my hand at traditional kolam on the floor of the ancient Meenakshi temple in Madurai!