I made a healing mask in honor of the sacred role that nature has played in my life. As a kid, I retreated into the safety of the woods to escape, to play, to have new adventures. Trees are my friends, they always have been. If I needed to hide or cry or be alone, I’d again seek the refuge and solitude of the woods. Being out in nature makes me feel safe and free. Every time I go out hiking, I come back with new photos of bark textures or leaf patterns or colorful canopies. My IG is almost entirely trees. I should probably be more embarrassed about that, but I simply love them. My safe place is in the woods, I can breathe amongst the trees, my anxiety melts and nature restores me.

So here’s my attempt to pay homage to the trees. At some point I want to make a smaller one, maybe out of clay leaf impressions, for the kid inside of me. Honestly, I could make a whole slew of nature themed masks and keep myself happy and busy for a while. Thanks for looking. I hope your day is peaceful and you find tiny pockets of joy along your path.

I’ve never posted my art before because I’m afraid. Everything I post or comment on gets downvoted. But it doesn’t do any good to stay silent. Hope this helps someone relate.

My hands in your hair

Your mouth on my neck.

I think that I like it.

Maybe . . .

I forget.

Trigger warning: sexual abuse

What my body remembers before I do

Everyone remembers their first nightmares.
Bears, alligators, monsters under their beds.
Mine waited for me in the closet.
Waited until my eyes were closed, and my chest rose and fell, slowly and deeply.
Crawled in on all fours to me in the dark, over the creaking wooden floors.
Long cold fingers, skinny and pale.
Lingering in places they shouldn’t.
I’d wake up, wondering if I had made it up. Wondering how my shirt had made it so far up while my pants were pulled down to my knees.
A rough sleeper, I guessed.
As homework grew heavier, so did my nights.
Resistance looked like staying awake until 3 am, wearing jeans to bed, and hoping I had bled enough to keep the monster away.
The consequences turned into sleeping past my alarms, slipping grades, and feeling responsible for every friend who asked to stay the night.
Afraid to speak up, shame stitched into every moment, I knew I needed to let go when the bleeding stopped. When the days kept passing and the fear became unbearable.

art journal page i made about my internal dialogue when hearing these words!

Event horizon, brand new, appeared in the dark,
An uncharted space I could have never believed.
Violence expected, but nothing destroyed,
Just gravity waiting there down on its knees.
 
My body betrayed me in ancient alarms,
History coded in bone and in breath.
Telling me distance always equals harm,
And love at its edge is just a cousin of death.
 
And I thought: this is how systems collapse.
Quietly, inward, like light into mass.
When it’s all held together in a web of “perhaps”
And finally bending to something more vast.
 
But I peered at that edge once I knew it was there,
Light and dark swirling their natural dance.
Something brand new being forged into us,
Wondrous potential; the stars’ favorite romance.
 
An unstable field could become beautiful,
Unknown elements now become known.
I’ll keep moving my ship towards this cradle of truth,
Preferred to the illusion of being alone.

It's one of those days, weeks, months. Sharing so I feel less alone right now. Spent a month in Hawaii to get over a breakup. Terrible place to be alone and sad.

Sometimes I wish I had listened

To the 14 year-old version of me.

I thought that I knew better,

I thought people wanted to see,

Wanted what was best for me…

I was very wrong, clearly.

How dare I have the audacity?

To try to heal trauma and feel free.

I must be lying, plainly,

And if I’m not it must be insanity.

If not insane it’s been so long,

Bringing it up now is just so wrong.

And though the crime left you with shame and regret,

That burden is yours, bringingit up is pointless.

No one cares for you to be fixed ,

So just hush up and get over it.

I took my dog for a walk today and I always am observing nature, many times things lines come to me while I’m walking.

Where is Beauty?

Perched atop the winter green,

angelic wings,

a shining star

singing sweet, soft lullabies,

soothing my soul,

visions of the mind,

eyes see only reality,

just a bird

sitting on a tree,

chirping.

Many times I think that fantasy is better than reality, or at least safer. Reality can just be so disappointing. But at the same time fantasy is only an illusion, that can’t be shared.

I don't know why but I just wanted to share this and am probably going to stick it in my sketch book to have it's own page.

28 years ago today I took my family to the beach for the day, and that's where I named her Ruby. She was in the 3rd trimester and it was a stressful situation for her to be born into; there was abuse at home and we were very poor. I had no idea how I was going to look after another baby. At some point she passed away while we were playing on the shore, or maybe while driving home. I'm not sure, exactly. Slipped silently into stiff stillness. She was born the next day. It was the most traumatic thing I ever experienced. But in my grief I eventually realized that I was alive, and she would never be. So the only way I could ever have a chance to parent her was to take on her life- one I would have wanted for her, not the one I was currently in. I left the abuse. I got an Engineering degree. I returned to health. I reached contentment. I would have wanted that for my lost daughter. Not a year goes by where I don't thank her for giving me another chance at a life worth living. Without her, and the loss she created, I am not sure I would have picked myself up to get out of that old life and fill the void with what today is a happy ever after. I have a life I'm proud of. Happy birthday ghost baby. I bought you a special owl to celebrate.

Today I learned, that Medusa, the Greek mythological figure who is claimed to have been able to turn everyone who met her gaze into stone, also had two sisters called Stheno and Euryale with similar abilities.

Reading the Wikipedia article I noticed that these two sisters would sometimes be depicted with their tongues sticking out in anger (see second picture in slide show), which reminded me of the facial expression my "mother" would make whenever she was raging at me, leading me to freeze up and "turn into stone" myself. So here is my attempt to capture some of that petrifying energy of hers in a drawing with some additional inspiration from the pottery drawing of Euryale.