The painting is a loving acknowledgment of my journey from attempted self-erasure toward accepting, embracing, and nurturing my magical nature. I am preceded by teachers, healers, and community builders. My great-great-great-grandma Ton Ton, was a medicine woman for her community. My grandma Jo, a teacher and mother of over twenty children and grandchildren, had a vision of her deceased mother, veiled in glowing brilliance. Women in my family share stories of premonitions, of being moved by the spirit, of heeding the warnings of their intuitions. 

Since I was small, I have cultivated faith in pain, knowing loss to be inevitable. Never believing that I deserve the love given to me. There is so much strength in receptivity, in being able to feel and understand. Like my mothers, I have done this for others. I am learning to feel and heal my own body and spirit. I am learning to build a home, an anchor within myself that acts as a compass and a shelter. There is a healing light inside, an unrelenting resilience, that burns even when I close my eyes to it. 

This painting is looking deep into my reflective eyes that shine light onto the parts I have hidden, ashamed of feeling so much. This painting is me and my mothers blending with the trees, rocks, beetles, and stars who have kept me company and made me feel welcome on the earth. It is the fire of fierce love in my gut running up through my heart to form a crown. It is me listening and translating unspeakably large feeling into color and line that come alive. This is an opportunity for me to express my vast unseen, unheard experiences. To create a bridge for them to move into something that can be more readily, tangibly, widely experienced.