The Mindful Migraine

June is Migraine Awareness Month, the anniversary of my chronic migraine pain, my birth-month, pride-month, AND (as my blog-bestie Dayle pointed out) the start of Hurricane Season.

Today is a super short post to celebrate “Burple Day” in Australia. It’s a relatively new initiative by Migraine Australia which encourages you to wear BURgundy-and-purPLE to show that you support those of us with migraines.

I was telling my youngest daughter about it, and mentioned that in the past I had done a ‘meet the Burples‘ post and another about the power of purple (here), but this year I wanted to do something different. After brain-storming some quick kiddy craft ideas (pun totally intended) we remembered that there was some old polymer clay in the craft cupboard and decided to make a celebratory brain.

Surprise, surprise, there was 3 different versions of pink and 3 more of purple. After some heated debates about what color pink was the most brainy, we got to work.

I kept thinking about a previous post I wrote over a year ago about ‘brains in jars‘ and imagining Igor from the movie “Young Frankenstein” (1975) limping around my kitchen… but eventually our happy little party-hatted, beflowered brain was finished. Into the oven it went, and then, with the help of my eldest daughter, it was time to channel a bit of my old “we are all influencers” Insta-energy and do a quick, lighthearted photoshoot:

After I put away my playtime, I started to think about the color ‘burgundy’ and how you would describe it to someone. “Darker than red, but browner than purple”? Maybe just – red wine – would be a good starting place since the color’s name comes from the color of wine produced in the Burgundy region of France.

[Which of course got my brain doing its domino-thinking-thing, and made me rattle off all the other food-colors I could remember; orange-oranges and olive-olives… but also mint, apricot, lime, salmon, merlot, plum and bubblegum…]

According to a Pinterest search of ‘Pantone Burgundy’, the color specialists have several shades of burgundy with evocative names such as ‘red riding hood’, ‘cherry coke’, ‘dark ruby’, ‘red inferno’, ‘vintage wine’, ‘raspberry fudge’ and ‘aubergine charm’.

TheColorsMeaning.com describes burgundy as “a dark brownish-red with a tinge of purple”, but then confuses me slightly by noting that burgundy and maroon are similar but different; “Burgundy has a purple tinge, while maroon is more brownish.” (Which highlights that this is a slippery color with a lot of hue-nuance). Interestingly, the site suggests that to make burgundy paint you mix 2-parts red with 1-part navy blue (which sounds about right – curious if any painters out there agree), but also notes that the color was originally made from natural red pigments, darkened with black.

When I did a quick search to see if medieval Europe had the color burgundy, the answer seems to be no – it’s a name that came later. One website (here) had a variety of color names that were more common back then, and from what I can piece together, the color we call ‘burgundy’ would have been closer to ‘murrey’ (made from mulberry juice), or else: mezereon, sanguin, dark puce, purpure… or puke.

OK then.

Words that come up when you google the color seemingly combine the attributes you would normally associate with red and purple: prestige, wealth, elegance, power, ambition, passion, romance, royalty, opulence, extravagance, luxury, love, mystery and sophistication… and potentially the shade of vomit after a red-wine bender if you want to be medieval about it.

I returned to Pinterest and picked a handful of ‘burgundy’ pictures that came up on the landing page to give you an idea of how pretty and diverse it’s interpretation can be (it suddenly makes my outfit above look more pinky-purple than burple):

[Image sources: Pinterest / lingerie / BORDEAUX / vfnnmn / Color Board / naura]

Now, when I think of how I might describe the color burgundy to someone, new terms such as ‘dark cherry’, ‘gothic rose’ or ‘dry blood’ also come to mind.

Happy #BurpleDay to everyone observing Migraine Awareness Month, and Happy B’day to everyone else, because there’s nothing wilder than celebrating a birthday in a hurricane!

Take care taking care, Linda xox