On Choosing You
The Journey of Returning Home
The choice to be yourself starts off small. You notice it more when you're younger. As you grow, your choices start to seem less like your own and more like other people's. Depending on your body type and skin color, those choices can feel like they are evaporating.
That’s when choosing yourself shifts from a daily task into a commitment to feel alive in your choices.
This happens in what you wear, for instance. Who you choose to be near you. What you intake into your body—people, food, and especially social media. These choices were never meant to feel like a heavy burden or a decision that causes you to segregate from your tribe or the rest of the world.
These choices are the steps you take in expressing what is inside you—allowing it to be represented in the world and allowing it to take up space.
The Caretaker of the Art
When you show up for your art, you become the caretaker of that art, however it shows up in the world. This caretaking is something we are all hungry for. It’s why we reach for it in whoever imprinted on us when we were young—the one who says "yes" to our dreams and desires, the gatekeeper to our dreams.
Once you "grow up," it doesn't mean your inner child goes away. On the contrary, your inner child becomes your new friend on the road. Always there, always having your back, always steering you toward the direction where your heart lives in its truest form.
Integration Through Expression
The part of you that shows up to care for your art and your life is the part that is integrating. It’s the part that didn’t have the words growing up because everyone else seemed to cover the moment with their own. That part integrates the more you take care of your art and the inner child that lives inside it.
I commend you for taking that journey. For wearing the art on this website and letting it be an entryway for your inner child to meet you on a daily basis. To feel expressed in the colors and the fun shapes that seem to go everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
That integration continues the more you choose to take care of your inner one—the one who plays in the shapes and wants to make their own.
So start with a sweater. While you wear it, feel inspired to draw your own doodles. Let the art fuel you and offer you protection so that you can create your own sacred spot between the pages.
Dreams
“Art is home. Not just for the Artist, but a sharing of one sense of home to the other”
Be Yourself. That's been what 36 has given me: Countless opportunities to be myself, hold it, play with it, and reflect on it. I highly recommend it!
Especially for the brave people out there who don't feel fed by the outside world. Where you feel still hungry for something else. For those people, I dream more of yourself for you.
No matter how it comes out. Whether it comes out crooked, straight, wiggly, big, small, tiny, gigantic, colorful, black, or white—have fun with it.
As I step into 37 today, my birthday wish is to hear about your dreams, and in what ways this year you’ve given yourself an opportunity to touch them. No matter how big or small you may think it is.
For me, my dream is allowing my Inner Child more space to dance this year, and in all the years going forward. She, He, They have been exploring freedom for the last 36 years. Having a taste of it in many different coats. People. Places.
My taste of it right now is the most delicious: Playing with colors, exploring the depths of lines that come out of my hands. Daring to explore a dream where this freedom supports me financially more. The kind of finances where the income that comes in is invested in this tiny world that I’m taking care of. My Family, My Land, My Animals, My Friends.
I’ve had 36 years to explore what it was to live like other people. It was fun; I got to explore different ways of being. And like anything and everything, being myself tastes the best.
The art and insights into my life going on into this year are going to be me expressing that. Giving this little humble world that has birthed life some more space in the world. Not for the attention, fame, or millions. But because this world, I’m proud of. I want to show it off, share it.
And, something inside me is saying that what I’ve uncovered over these years is also someone else's home. Art is home. Not just for the Artist, but a sharing of one sense of home to the other.
May the art birthed and shared here, and on my website, be a portal for many homes here. No matter where you are on your journey of becoming more of yourself.
I love you. Happy Birthday.
P.S. Share in the comments your pockets of dreams. ---