Sandra Tena
Stories (80)
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The Naked Canvas
I’ve been feeling inspired to write about my experiences as a body art model over the last few years, which is something I feel really allows me to shine completely and I feel has let me break emotional and physical boundaries. On the first day I modelled, I was really aware of walking out of my comfort zone as I strode along the catwalk at the end of the show, and it was an experience I had never in my whole life had believed I could ever be allowed to feel. That first night, nearly three years ago, it was my birthday – January 12th, 2019. I will be turning 40 soon, as the year changes and the weeks start to roll, and I can say with full conviction that having had the opportunity to model for artist Robyn Jean on that first occasion, being painted as the Celtic Goddess Arianrhod, the Lady of the Silver Wheel, was one of the most healing as well as fascinating experiences of my life.
By Sandra Tena4 years ago in Viva
Statue as I am
I’d left Torreon only days after it happened. I’ve tried to forget and move on; I’ve tried to assure myself that it was only my imagination playing tricks on me, but the memories are too real, and those images which I saw with my own eyes play again and again in my mind. The stories still circulate today, popping up online or on TV, as if they’re intent to follow me all across the continent. I’ve moved to Monterrey, Mexico City, Vancouver, L. A., New York. Nowhere is far or big enough to hide after my season in the production of Don Juan Tenorio in Torreon. The role I’d landed was Brígida, Doña Inés’ maid, shared with another which I preferred: a graveyard statue that turns into a ghost and kills Don Juan along with the other statues during the legendary climactic scene. That is, I preferred it most until opening night. I’ve managed better roles as I move from city to city, but the shadow keeps following me because of my relation to Javier. I have recurring nightmares because of the news I read every week. I fear that it’ll soon be my turn, because she’s ticking us off one by one.
By Sandra Tena4 years ago in Fiction
Frozen Flower
Frozen. Like my heart, he says. He’s ridiculous. Like he knows my heart. Why would I trust him? He’s a man, unworthy of trust, like all other men. He’s said that he appreciates me plenty, but I’m just the girl who works for him in the bookshop, that’s all. He’s a prying bastard, anyway. The other day he just picked up my affirmations notebook and started reading, like it was nothing. I just had to pull it away from his hands; none of his business, I said.
By Sandra Tena4 years ago in Fiction
How to make your own wedding cake and eat it too
Start early, say at twelve, with Chris O’Donnell sword-fighting on the screen and your heart beating as you think, So this is a man. This is when you start making the design of your wedding cake, made up of the first illusion of love and everything that it implies. You think about the layers, the flavour, the filling, the icing, and the decorations. Five layers seem too tall and ominous, and three is for a girl’s quinceañera, the big 15th birthday ball that every Mexican girl dreams of. You can always go for five on an expanded array, like your aunt Cora’s, but you already have this image of three roses climbing up over the layers of the cake, so you go for a respectable four layers and add a sparkle of sugar pearls. Not too many, otherwise it would look tacky and people would ooh at you and whisper how distasteful you are behind your back. Maybe thirty-three, one for each one of the traits you wish for in your future husband. Vanilla is the reasonable flavour, because it’s white and neutral; the filling: strawberries and cream, to add a touch of red inside and tartness to the sweet.
By Sandra Tena4 years ago in Fiction
Nearly 60 years of being the best in Time and Space
I have often thought how funny it is to be a newcomer in a classic-fandom world; how dipping your toes in an already mature fictional series can be incredibly exhilarating and daunting at the same time, and I have a particular sympathy for those individuals who choose to explore the contents of stories that have been going on for longer than they might have noticed. I have been exploring Star Trek in such a way with my husband at the moment (mainly previously knowing I liked The Next Generation and was partial to Data and Geordi La Forge, and of course being a fan of Spock and Sulu even before really watching the original series, perhaps because being a fan of them just seeped into our consciousness when we humans begin liking anything Sci-Fi or Fantasy).
By Sandra Tena4 years ago in Geeks
Shake that fear off!
Over the past year and a half there have been multiple conversations about fear I have been involved in, both in real life and online, and both with close friends and complete strangers alike. I find it very interesting that everyone I know, all over the world, have such extremely different fears and in differing levels of magnitude, too. I’ve always assumed that it just has to do with the way people grow up or what has influenced them into liking or disliking something, as well as with personal traumas, obviously. Over ten years ago I was training to become a mental health researcher, actually heading a handful of projects in a Mental Health clinic while training to become a counsellor. I collected a few diplomas in some essential areas and explored depression and addiction, as well NLP as a possible healing technique. Even though I did not continue down that path, moving instead to England and pursuing the path of the arts, as you might see from my profile, I have also used all my training to aid people with emotional and psychological afflictions, so I have also always been open about my own experiences with Mental Health and also about how I have managed the climb to my professional goals. Given that I am a self-employed actress, model and writer in the UK (a.k.a. Plague Island) during a pandemic, it certainly hasn’t been easy for me to feel as successful as by rights I feel I should be, and there has been much fear about my future in my chosen career, but one thing I can say with certainty is that I was in the right path before the pandemic hit, therefore I should hopefully still get to my goals if I continue on it.
By Sandra Tena4 years ago in Motivation
The Vast Ending
I don’t know how it happened, but one night, before the Sun came out, or maybe it was midday, I found myself walking along a series of ceaseless Borgesian forking paths. I have not been able to come out from there since. The walls that flank the paths are three times my height; I can’t see to one side or another, just to the front and the back; the pink and violet skies above my head give away an ever-setting Sun. Night will never come, and I need to sleep.
By Sandra Tena4 years ago in Fiction
An Immigrant's Journey Through the Pandemic
A lot of people recently have been incredibly surprised to learn that my lockdown-related stress has had to do with my visa situation, and indeed have been incredibly surprised to learn that my residential safety in the UK was not instantly sorted the moment I married my husband Stephen. The fact is that the visa conditions for non-EU residents have been terrible since Theresa May established the current requirements in July 2012, often described as gargantuan and found to break human rights by the UN a few years ago, their defining quality being that they were intended to create a hostile environment for anyone looking to immigrate into the UK. All of this has been properly reported as such, and I think a lot more people in the UK are blissfully ignorant of said actions delivered by their own government to immigrants (whilst others openly celebrate them and fully included them in their reason to vote Brexit, but more on that later).
By Sandra Tena5 years ago in Humans
What it means to be a woman
What it means to be a woman, even though it varies from country to country and from generation to generation, has the same basis for all of us. Every single one of us, that I personally know, have been told at one time or another that we are not enough of a woman. Some of us have even been told so as recently as today, the international celebration of womanhood!
By Sandra Tena5 years ago in Viva
Top 20 Books of 2020
Back in 2013 I gave myself the challenge of reading one book a week, which I greatly enjoyed and was able to repeat in 2014, but then life got in the way. I moved from London to Glastonbury, got married, and set up a theatre company with my husband Stephen Cole, His & Hers Theatre Company; for years we have been incredibly busy with performances and modelling, amongst other things, but then everything changed, like it did for most people in the performing industries, with the pandemic. Although we have carried on performing and modelling online, and in person during the months when it was possible, I was also able to read a whopping 54 books, most of which had been on my to-read list for ages, some of which came in as gifts, some of them even written by fellow writer friends.
By Sandra Tena5 years ago in Motivation
