Returning to My Life, My Body, and My Art

I have been quiet for a while.

For the past few months, maybe longer if I am being honest, I have been in a season that felt less like blooming and more like thawing. Like some part of me had finally reached a place safe enough to soften, and instead of immediately becoming productive, inspired, fit, radiant, and wildly successful, my body did the far more inconvenient thing: it exhaled and demanded rest.

At first, I judged myself for that.

I thought I should be making more art. Posting more. Selling more. Becoming more. Proving that I had used the hard years wisely and emerged from them as some polished, healed, Pinterest-board version of a woman.

Saying Good-Bye To My First Art Studio. It was a bittersweet experience. I’ll miss this unique space in Hamilton.

But healing has not looked like that for me. Healing has looked a lot quieter.

It has looked like building a peaceful home. Walking my dog. Returning to yoga. Making meals. Sitting with uncertainty. Letting my nervous system realize that life is no longer an emergency.

And yes, sometimes it has looked like not painting for months while thinking about painting every single day.

That part is hard to admit.

Creating Art Is My Calling

Because art is not just something I do. Art is one of the clearest ways I return to myself. When I am not making it, I do not feel like I am simply taking a break. I feel like I am abandoning a part of myself.

But I am trying to be more mindful of how I am transitioning into this new chapter of life.

Maybe I did not stop making art because I stopped caring. Maybe I paused because I was exhausted. Maybe I had spent so long surviving, managing, holding, adapting, and pushing through that once I finally had space, my whole being needed time to come back online.

Maybe emotionally thawing out is what happens when the body finally feels safe enough to feel.

A Year Ago, I Was Carrying Too Much

A year ago, my life looked very different.

I was living in a shared space, trying to find small pockets of independence while surrounded by stress I could not control. I had places to go and work to do, but my inner world felt crowded. There were family challenges, recovery work, emotional exhaustion, and a constant sense that I was trying to build a life while standing in the middle of someone else’s storm.

I had a studio space outside the home for a while, and I can see now how much I needed it. It gave me privacy. A door I could open with my own key. A place where I could feel like myself, even temporarily.

My art studio at The Cotton Factory in Hamilton, Ontario

At the time, I thought I wanted more external structure. An office. A studio. More professionalism. More proof that I was becoming someone.

But underneath all of that, I think what I really wanted was peace.

I wanted space.

I wanted safety.

I wanted to stop shrinking inside dynamics that made me feel small, reactive, or responsible for things that were never mine to carry.

I also wanted to recognize myself again.

Not just physically, although that was part of it. I wanted to recognize my energy. My confidence. My creativity. My humour. My spark. I wanted to feel like the woman I remembered being, or maybe the woman I had not yet fully become.

Looking back, I can see how much shame I was carrying. Shame around needing help. Shame around my mental health. Shame around recovery. Shame around finances. Shame around aging. Shame around not being able to “heal” my way out of everything through sheer willpower and green smoothies.

But I understand something now that I did not understand then:

There was never anything wrong with me.

I was not failing. I was overwhelmed.

I was not broken. I was surviving.

I was not weak. I was carrying too much for too long.

What I No Longer Want to Tolerate

One of the clearest things I know now is that I do not want to live inside chaos anymore.

I do not want addiction, emotional instability, disrespect, fear, or constant crisis to be the atmosphere of my home. I do not want to confuse closeness with obligation. I do not want to keep relationships alive by abandoning myself inside them.

I am learning that love does not require me to shrink.

I am learning that loyalty does not mean staying available for harm.

I am learning that peace is not boring. Peace is evidence of a loving life. It is evidence that I have chosen differently, built something softer, and i is evidence that I am no longer living completely inside survival mode.

The Part I Played

There was a time when I performed smaller versions of myself so other people could feel more comfortable around me. I let myself seem less intelligent, less ambitious, less powerful, less serious, less capable. I think a lot of women learn to do this without even realizing it. We become easy to digest. We become funny before we become honest. We become agreeable before we become free.

I do not want to do that anymore. I want to let myself be seen as the intelligent, driven, creative, resilient woman I actually am. Not in a fake, inflated, girlboss way. Just honestly.

I know what I bring to the table. I know what I have survived. I know what I can create. I know there is something powerful in me, and I do not need to keep pretending there is not.

The Life I Have Now

Today, my life is quieter.

I live in a home that feels peaceful. I have a dog I adore. I have a partner who makes me feel safe and loved. I have a yoga practice that helps me return to my body. I have work that gives me stability. I have friendships that feel rooted, even when life gets busy, and we do not see each other as often as I wish.

For once, stability does not feel like a punishment. It feels like standing on solid ground.

Standing in my new home in my new city, with the only certainty being that I felt I was exactly where I needed to be. Feb 14, 2026

And yet, there are still unfinished parts of me.

My relationship with my body is still complicated. My social life still needs more warmth and effort. My creativity is still asking for my attention. The question of motherhood sits somewhere in the background, heavy and deeply unfair in the way it seems to come with a louder clock for women than it does for men.

There is still grief in me. There is still fear. There is still a part of me that worries I have taken too many wrong turns to build the life I once imagined.

But then I look around and remember: This life once felt impossible.

A peaceful home once felt impossible.

A loving relationship once felt impossible.

Sobriety, stability, softness, space, a studio in my own home - all of this once felt impossible.

So maybe I am not behind.

Maybe I am standing inside answered prayers and still learning how to receive them.

My Art Is Asking Me to Come Back

The most uncomfortable unfinished part of my life is my identity as an artist.

I think about art constantly. I think about the paintings I want to make, the symbols I want to explore, the stories I want to tell, the bodies I want to honour, the emotions I want to give shape to.

But thinking about art is not the same as making it, obviously.

There is a specific ache that comes from avoiding the thing you know you are meant to do. It can be dramatic, but for me it’s like a consistent nudge or itch. It follows you into the kitchen. It sits beside you while you scroll. It waits for you in the basement studio. It whispers, gently but persistently: Come back.

Not when the house is perfect.

Not when your body is perfect.

Not when your schedule is perfect.

Not when your mental health is perfect.

Not when you feel impressive enough to begin again.

Now.

“Come back now.”" —> That is the part I am listening to.

What My Art Wants To Say

My art has always been connected to embodiment, feminism, beauty, grief, power, and the emotional lives of women. I paint because I am interested in what lives beneath the surface. The body as memory. The body as symbol. The body as archive. The body as home. The body as battlefield. The body as something we are constantly taught to judge, decorate, shrink, manage, desire, fear, and reclaim.

Maybe this season of my life is not separate from my art at all.

Maybe the emotional thawing, the return to my body, and the refusal to abandon myself is the work.

Maybe the paintings waiting for me are not asking me to become someone else before I make them. Maybe they are asking me to bring exactly this woman: tired, honest, healing, funny, uncertain, alive - into the studio.

It makes sense to me because what woman do you know, really, who is living without any pain or journey to come back to themselves in one way or another?

What I Want More Of

I want more creative time when I am actually making art, not just thinking about it.

I want more walks. More sunshine. More time outside. More meals made with care. More yoga. More laughter. More plans with people I love. More beauty in ordinary days.

I want more presence.

I want to feel engaged with my own life again.

Not through chaos. Not through constant reinvention. Not through needing everything to be dramatic in order to feel meaningful.

I want a quieter kind of passion.

The kind that comes from participating in the life I already have.

The kind that comes from putting paint on canvas before I feel ready.

The kind that comes from lighting a candle, walking downstairs, and beginning.

What I Want Less Of

I want less fear about the future.

Less doom-scrolling. Less comparison. Less turning my life into a courtroom where every unfinished thing becomes evidence that I am failing.

I want less shame disguised as self-improvement.

I want to care for myself without punishing myself into becoming better.

I want less pressure to be constantly beautiful, successful, productive, interesting, available, optimized, healed, and easy to understand.

I want less noise.

A quieter mind.

A softer relationship with myself.

A life that feels less like something I have to defend or perfect, and more like something I am allowed to simply live.

A Note to the Woman I Was

If I could speak to the version of me from a year ago, I would tell her this:

You do not have to perform for anyone.

You do not have to become smaller, softer, funnier, quieter, or more digestible to be loved.

You are allowed to choose yourself without turning it into a court case.

You are allowed to let people misunderstand you.

You are allowed to stop proving.

You are allowed to rest.

You are allowed to make art before you feel ready.

There was never anything wrong with you.

You were trying so hard to be loved in places that could not always meet you honestly.

And you survived.

More than that, you kept your softness.

You kept your creativity.

You kept your ability to reflect, to rebuild, to laugh, to love, to tell the truth, and to begin again.

That is not small.

That is everything.

Coming Back

So, this is me reconnecting with myself and my collectors.

With the people who have followed my work, bought my paintings, read my words, opened my emails, encouraged me, and stayed close even when I went quiet.

I am still here, I am just thawing out from a few emotional chapters.

I am returning to my body, my studio, my voice, and my art.

I do not know exactly what this next chapter will look like yet, but I know it has to begin with the work. Not the marketing. Not the perfect plan. Not the polished version of my life.

The work.

The paintings.

The honest return.

Because when I am not making art, I can feel the distance between myself and the life I am meant to be living.

And when I do make art, even imperfectly, even slowly, even after a long pause, something in me remembers:

I am here.

I am healing.

I am becoming.

And I am allowed to begin again.