There was a time when I didn't know the difference between my face and a mask. It was back before I discovered who I was and that I was all right being myself and no one else. It was back when I thought I had to fit in, to be what my family and society said I should be, to hide who I really was for fear my true self would be a threat to my comfort and security. Oh my. Those were times when I used all my energy trying to contain the demons within myself, demons that struggled to be free, demons I now know were my allies not foes, especially the Demon of Authenticity.

In the early 1980s I saw a woman perform dressed all in black wearing an elegantly carved wooden mask. Her name was Laurie Margot Ross and I soon learned that she had studied corporeal mime in California, Germany and Indonesia. This type of mime is an abstract form of movement favored by performers who want to distill the human story into its elemental purity. When Laurie came into my life I had just entered my 40s and was exploring self transformation through art. The week after seeing her perform, I became Laurie's student. In a matter of months we began performing together, usually at progressive art venues around Detroit. We worked together for two years. Our final performance was part of a three-person show we mounted at a local art gallery in September 1985. I remember insisting that the performance end with me removing my mask. At that time I thought I had moved beyond masks, that I had finally become my true Self.

The mask pictured here hangs on my bedroom wall as a reminder of another transformative time in my life, the time when I came into my Woman Self. It was about much more than simply embracing feminist ideology; it was about letting go of the religious belief system into which I had been born and becoming comfortable with unanswerable questions regarding the meaning of life. This mask was of my own face. I had originally created it using plaster strips that I'd wetted and placed over a wax-covered plaster cast of my face. During this time of discovering my Woman Self, I repainted it using colors and symbols that reflected the exuberant joy and oneness with the earth that I was feeling in every cell of my body.

The longer I live, the more comfortable I am with the masks I wear. For now I know that we always wear a mask of one kind or another, and that it does not mean we're inauthentic. Each mask simply reflects the part of ourselves we are growing into at that time. So what mask do I wear today? The photographer's mask? Perhaps. But I won't know for certain until I totally assimilate it. I never recognize a mask until it fits like a second skin.