This is such a mish-mash of symbology. I really enjoy the balance in it, but I think there might be just too much going on. To explain it a bit, it’s a re-working of the maid/mother/crone. The chinese character is for ‘rat’, the year J. and A. were born in. The babies and the cancer symbol in the ‘mother’ portion are of course J. and A. specifically. And the yin/yang symbol is very much how I see J. and A, a study in opposites with everything in common.

Below is the tattoo without the symbols to the left and right.. cleaner, simpler, but I’m not sure it’s right or what I want.

Thoughts?

As I was getting the tattoo, I was thinking about what it meant to me. The butterfly is almost trite, isn’t it? The coming of age, caterpillar out of it’s cocoon, rebirth, etc etc. And yes, it’s all that to me, also, but this is a harder edge. A not-so-nice version, that’s sharp and can be painful to exist around.

I give thanks to one of the girls at work for saying she wanted a tattoo of a tribal butterfly, and hope she doesn’t hurt me for ganking her idea and morphing it into my own.