I’m still here. I’m just more me.
A door creaks open. The soft pad of footsteps along dusty floorboards.
A ghost? A memory?
No. It’s just me, coming back to my blog after some time away.
I know I’ve been quiet. Somewhere between querying a book, rewriting it, and querying it again, starting work on two new books, writing more short stories and finding out one of them is getting published, undergoing huge transformation, and starting my own business, I didn’t have time to dedicate to this space.
That doesn’t mean nothing has been happening. Rather a lot has happened in fact.
But now I’ve found my footing in the new way of things, I’ve opened the door to this room and realised I still love so many of the things in it.
Let me open up some windows for us.
Becoming more me.
One of the things you might have noticed, if you pay attention to such things, is that across my platforms I have started using my full and proper first name, in place of the abbreviated and anglified Vicki.
It’s the name of my paternal grandmother, that I inherited from her.
My name is Vasiliki.
This name is very old. It comes from the ancient word vasilikos meaning royal or of a king and first appears in Mycenaean Greece.
In its feminine form it means ‘queenly’.
So why did I start using it now after so long keeping it hidden? It started with a drum making workshop.
Meet The Grandmother.
In December last year, I had the great privilege of doing a workshop with Laura from Wilderness Within to make my own medicine drum. Making your own drum is a journey, a meditation and a healing all in one. The journey to making the Grandmother for me involved connecting the red thread of my maternal line and to my grandmothers all the way back to Kerania.
She’s made of willow and kangaroo hide.
Her song is deep and wise. She shatters the darkness and calls in the truth. And making her meant reclaiming my own heritage and lineage - my deepest, truest self.
Connecting and bonding with the Grandmother birthed the realisation that I’d been using the name my parents chose to help Anglo-Saxon Aussies understand me. To help make me palatable to others who couldn’t handle the complexity of who I really am.
To truly step into my power, I had to claim my full self.
So, let me introduce myself. I am Vasiliki.
Thriving not just surviving
So yes, it’s been a huge year and a half. A time of big change and transformation. A time of discovery and magic.
And I’m more committed than ever to this beautiful journey of writing and storytelling.
I’ll keep you posted here about updates and news. I’m relaunching my newsletter The Writer’s Imaginaria and I’m looking forward to being able to share it all with you.