Peanuts & Bologna Studios

This is but my second charcoal piece in six years, and I cannot help but feel that some part of me has been waiting all this while to return to it.

There are griefs which do not remain politely within the heart. They make themselves known upon the body. I have watched my hair fall beneath the weight of prolonged sorrow, and I have known an excruciating kind of pain that seemed, at times, determined to unmake me.

Motherhood, too, transformed me so completely that I was left searching for the woman I had once been, only to discover that she was never meant to be found exactly as she was.

I was meant to become.

And so, slowly, painfully, beautifully, I have.

Through every wound, every mistake, every quiet reckoning, I have learned to meet myself with greater honesty. I know who I am now. I know what wounds me. I know what love is, and what it is not. I know the path upon which my spirit is most at peace, and I have learned to recognize the moment I begin to wander from it.

So I take this tender heart of mine and hold it close.

I take this soul, weathered but still luminous, and cherish it with grace.

I have become a lover of my own light.

I know.
I see.
I feel.
I grieve.

I am kindness.
I am passion.
I am poetic.
I am every mournful melody that has ever stirred something ancient within me, every beautiful piece of music I have carried in my bones, and every work of art my hands have summoned from darkness.

I am no longer afraid of knowing myself.

And whatever grief may yet come to knock upon my door, I shall meet it as I am now:

with my heart in my own keeping.

I am going to be okay
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