Making Peace With Pink

Creativity is a healing element built into the human psyche. That statement is a corner stone of my personal belief system. And it is built on my own past experiences.

From a very young age, I hated the color pink. There were lots of reasons for that and they multiplied as I grew up, got married, had four children, initiated a divorce, and spent seven years getting two Bachelor degrees, one in History and the other in English.

Guess we have to go back to those earlier beginnings. I have a younger sister. She is thirteen months younger than I am, but very different and is her own individual self. From early on, I was a bit of a tom-boy. As I’ve said before, my Father made me his fishing buddy when I was eight. That definitely strengthened those tom-boy elements. I was a risk-taker and a dare was always a definite challenge that I most often at least attempted.

And then there was Christmas. My Mother often treated my younger sister and I as if we were twins. We got the same gifts. One big difference. She got the blue and I got the pink. That was the beginning of my dislike for the color. And it only grew over the years. I am now 75 years old, and it wasn’t until recently that I finally realized that Mom might have been trying to curb all those tom-boy elements within my personality. Quietly without any direct words.

I did ask her a few times why I always got the pink. Mom wasn’t good at confrontation, so the only answer I received was something about what seemed right to her at the time. It didn’t help. I was the only one in the family with soft brown hair. The others took after my Mom with much darker, black hair. To my sense of things, it only seemed that the pink would look far better on my younger sibling. And my eyes change with the color of my clothing, from blue to a surprising green. The pink just didn’t work for me.

That lesson helped with my own children. Instead of fighting their tendencies, I tried my best to encourage their particular interests. My son had quite a gift for drawing, so when he asked if he could paint a mountain lion on his bedroom wall, I said yes. And was highly pleased and impressed when some time later, he showed me the full sized wild cat leaping from his ceiling toward his bed. It was awesome.

My middle daughter, unbeknownst to me, had written some poetry. At the time, I was out of college and had received a few awards for my own attempts in that arena. She had brought a poem to me to read. It was a hard one, aimed at me and her deep dislike of my person. But, instead of dealing with the essence of her angst, I very carefully showed her how to improve the piece and strengthen it with a few word changes. My choice to honor her request, rather than react to the subject matter only seemed to anger her all the more. Sometimes you win, other times, you don’t.

But, my degree in History had deepened my dislike for the color pink. It had somehow come to represent the deeply flawed definition of all that was female. A definition that was aimed, {I thought), at keeping “Her” in a lesser position, always needing a male to validate her existence. Always needing “His” approval, guidance, and control. I had been in college during the first Women’s Movement and it was a deeply embedded aspect of my own awareness.

Now, I’m just an old woman who spends her time creating designs to color. In doing so, I have purchased a wide variety of pens and markers, and each of the sets I have bought contains a wide variety of different hues, including pink. And, to be honest, I have actively chosen to avoid that part of the color spectrum until now.

These designs often speak to me, telling me their particular preference for a color scheme and pink has never been mentioned. I usually sit with a design for a bit of time before I begin. But, this design simply said, “It’s time to do the pink.” I was shocked, to say the least. And hesitated for a few days before beginning. But all I got for my hesitation was simply the word Pink. And that got me to thinking about my own history and my deeply abiding angst toward the color.

I could no longer, as a colorist, hold my very deliberate angst against a completely innocent member of the color spectrum. So, I began and simply let my own abiding sense of hue take the lead. And was grateful and pleased at the outcome. I actually like the results. Actually find myself grinning and even laughing at my own antics. Pink is back in its proper place and I am glad that she is.

Elizabeth Crawford 8/14/21

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