Tattoo #8 transform & start anew

Bringing this little section to a close with my final tattoo which I just got freshly done yesterday, so the levels of pain are still fresh in my memory and I kid you not when I say this is by far the most painful tattoo I have sat to. Firstly it was the longest time I have had to sit on a chair letting someone work on my back (A good 5.5-6 hours), the second was it was down my spine, third it was in colour.

The decision to get this tattoo done was claiming my body back, to have something new on my body that no one had intimately discovered or seen, making me feel somewhat mysterious again so maybe slightly impulsive but I did also find Lena, my tattoo artist whilst searching for botanical tattoos and I just knew I had to have a tattoo designed by her.

I love peonies, they are gorgeous flowers and they also had a slightly Chinese sentiment to them because peonies 牡丹花 are the National Flower of China. So it was a connection to my Chinese roots. The decision to include a snake was in part because I was born in the Year of the Snake, the year of the earth snake if we are being very specific but given we were heading to my 36th birthday in the year of the snake this would be seen as an early birthday present to me (I got it exactly a month before my birthday).

Snakes whilst considered evil in certain religions or stories (Temptation), I consider them a symbol of transformation because they shed their skin and start anew. They remind us of our ability to always keep moving forward and that we can start over as many times as we need to. Starting anew, changing isn’t necessary something to be scared of but to embrace. Furthermore the way this snake has been designed for me feels very cosmic in nature, a creature of a different universe meandering through the “real” peonies of this universe - it feels like a connection of two worlds and duality.

I don’t know if I will get any more tattoos after this...I feel for the time being I have hit my limit, both in terms of pain level but also this was in essence my body’s masterpiece and it has come home.

So far now I say goodbye to this little tattoo journey. Thank you for reminding me about me ❤️.