At last, we’ve stepped into October, a month that always carries its own kind of magic. The air sharpens, leaves loosen their grip, and shadows stretch earlier across the day. It is a season of thresholds — of endings that prepare the way for beginnings. The harvest wanes, the light thins, and the veil between worlds — seen and unseen, self and shadow — grows whisper-thin.
And, of course, it is the season of the mask.
They hang in shop windows and drift across sidewalks, painted and feathered, waiting for one night of disguise. Yet long after Halloween passes, I find myself thinking of the masks we carry every day — not costumes, but the faces we slip into when the world demands them.
In the old ways, masks were more than playthings. They were tools of transformation — worn not to deceive, but to invite the sacred or the hidden to speak through us. Beneath the flicker of firelight, villagers once became spirits, animals, ancestors. The mask was a bridge between who we are and what we might become. Perhaps that is why October stirs something ancient in us — a longing to shed, to shift, to step for a moment beyond ourselves.
The artist’s mask was my choice. It was never forced upon me, but rather something I reached for willingly, almost instinctively. A way of seeing that I inherited from my father — not in hardship, but in wonder. This mask feels like second skin, a lens I use to shape colour into canvas and stories into pages. Over time, that same mask has carried me from painter to author. They are not separate personas, but layers of the same expression, growing and branching from the same root.
The work mask is different. It is steady, unglamorous, and deeply grounding. Cleaning houses isn’t an identity I boast of, but it is one I respect. In a world where artists can become lost in ego and illusion, cleaning humbles me. It reminds me that dignity lives in doing what must be done, that no task is beneath me. This mask does not take me away from creativity — it anchors me to the realness where art is born.
And then there is the mask I never chose: the healer’s mask. The one I was born holding. It has been my armour in the darkest nights, the mask I slip on when life becomes unbearable. It isn’t adorned or beautiful, but it is unyielding. It whispers survival. It carries the quiet promise that pain passes, storms break, and even shattered things can mend.
These masks — chosen, inherited, and born of necessity — have shaped me. They do not simply conceal; they protect, they reveal, and they teach.
Perhaps October reminds us that masks are not only for hiding — sometimes they are for becoming.
And so, this season, I walk forward as artist and author, worker and healer. Not divided, not disguised, but whole.