She, I, learned to fear our wild ways

I'll tell the story of this painting with a poem I wrote, the same words also incorporated into the work itself.

I ache for the story I am yet to tell, a story of a young girl with bountiful joy bursting from her chest, and a head full of many dreams, for her imagination could spin endless imagery.

The sharp pounce, pain undulating and pulsing from my breastbone, derives its dagger-like feel from the shameful acts of a man I cannot fully, completely, recall.

How many little girls are there, ones like I was, who suffer such an ache without a word of it communicated, the shame turned inward due to silence?

About the Love Letters to Mother Earth collection

What moves us toward protection and care if not love? In honoring and loving my natural self, my soul, I learn how to safeguard my tenderness and the magic that is mine to wield. And this love guides me toward the people and spaces where I feel free and valued as my true self.

My hope is that in honoring and loving wild lands, tender artists, our authentic selves, this mysterious and beautiful universe, and this magical and messy planet of ours, we will learn to safeguard what is precious and sacred in each other and this world. Standing under a canopy of towering trees is humbling, freeing, incomparably special. It’s precious. So are you and so am I and so is each river and forest and so is this planet.