“Migration, loss of home, not good enough, abandonment, survival – these are huge patterns within the women of my lineage,” says Anastasia Koutalianos about 43 and me, which she’ll be performing as part of the upcoming Fringe Festival.

“They weren’t supported to be anything out of the home,” she adds. “My maternal grandmother married and was widowed a decade later; she had to flee Izmir, survive war, leave home.”

43 and me is a highly personal performance for Koutalianos. It was born out of the period leading up to her mother’s sudden passing, the resulting grief and loss and her intent on honouring her mother’s wish that she write about her ancestral heritage.

“The show is improvised, and so I don’t know what the boundary is just yet, and how much to share,” she admits. “There is a lot of stretching, vulnerability. And I don’t have all the answers. In the end, it’s a personal story…. This project has unearthed unresolved intergenerational trauma, especially around abandonment, loss of fathers, self-limiting beliefs.”

She credits her diverse experiences with giving her skills that led her here. These experiences include being a food and cookbook writer, radio show founder and host, career mentor, board member, healer and energy work practitioner and communications and project management consultant. She can now add the title of “performer” to her accomplishments.

Whether writing, her healing work, project management or her volunteer and board work, the breadth of her experiences has built her skillset and led her to this place, each one building on the next.

“It was like one thing leading to another. Healing, with undoing in my life, by my mid-30s I had gone on my first meditation retreat, and I fell in love with silence,” she says. “I think there was always a battle within me: the healing, imaginative, sensitive creative child, and the analytical ‘do it, and do it well’ project management side. We champion getting things done in this culture, but not always the intuitive, creative, soulful side.”

With 43 and me, Koutalianos says she has the chance to reflect on this journey which has finally offered her a sense of clarity and direction.

“I have a changing mindset; I am 44 now and really stepping into my power,” she says. “Some people have a very clear trajectory for their career and life; I feel like I was always on a meandering road.”

Healing through silent solace, connection and creativity

In March of this year, Koutalanios successfully applied for a Canada Council for the Arts grant. With this funding, she plans a three-book memoir entitled The Mirrors of Me. The two works, 43 and me and The Mirrors of Me are related to her journey through her mother’s passing and the story of their ancestral heritage and intergenerational trauma. 43 and me also serves as a fundraiser for her family memoir project.

“The Mirrors of Me project gave me a sense of purpose. I was busy researching, traveling, meeting people and through it, dealing with grief, which is good; it was all about my mom,” she says.

The project is leading her across Canada, Greece and Turkey, to Australia and back to the United States where, ideally, she will take a boat to New York where her grandmother landed in 1947. Through it, she plans to continue connecting with relatives, travelling, researching in archives and libraries and reliving her ancestors’ experiences and challenges. The process has been both cathartic and moving.

And, like her family before her, she has experienced the feeling of losing home.

“I never felt at home within myself – that hyphenated identity as a Greek Canadian which leads to that. I am more Greek here, but not Greek enough in Greece,” she says.

Overall, Koutalanios is both hopeful and realistic, hoping her works enable her to hold space for people and discover themselves, as challenging as that can often be.

43 and me will be performed on various dates between September 5 to 15 at the Waterfront Theatre as part of Fringe Festival.

For more information, please visit: www.vancouverfringe.com/events/43-and-me