Journey to the past

Last weekend I did something very special. I was dressed up with traditional clothes from my village where I grew up. They wore those kind of clothes like 50 years ago and now I wore them too for the very first time. It felt pretty weird to wear them. First I felt resistance, I had the feeling that I don’t have the right to wear them. I was not born where I grew up. Secondly I was afraid that I looked stupid or little bit dumn. Maybe I was afraid that I looked ugly in them. Still I ignored my anxieties and wore them. My feeling to understand my family’s culture by dressing up like them was bigger than my anxieties.
So here I am, wearing the traditional clothes.When I wore them I felt a little bit strange,but I didn’t feel dumn or ugly. I felt actually really happy. I even liked wearing the clothes. It felt like I understood why my grandmother didn’t want to wear it everyday (the clothes are very heavy). I felt the weight of the dresses and understood why these clothes were nice in the winter (they were very warm). I also understood that it took a lot of effort wearing them (dressing up took more than an hour). All these aspects gave me the feeling that I understood them even more. It make me feel special, it even gave me a good feeling that I had the privilege to wear them. My mother saw me in these clothes too and she really liked it. I even looked good in it! 🙂 I was proud of wearing the traditional clothes of my family’s history, guess I felt even more closer with my family’s history than before.

I wore these clothes for the project ”Adopted” I blogged about before. It is a project about adoptees, biological parents and adoption parents. The artist and photographer of this project is Ton Sondag and he is adopted too. He is planning to make a book, exposition and website for everyone who is related to adoption. Tthe picture that will be used for his project is on his website: http://www.tonsondag.com/
Please take a look if you are interested!