The Art of Rising
From the beginning, life asked me to be stronger than most children ever need to be.
My mother dreamed of being an artist. She painted whenever she could, even while struggling with addiction and trying to hold a job. She loved deeply, but love couldn’t stop the weight she carried. When addiction finally took her life, I was only six years old. That was the moment death introduced itself—and it would visit many times again over the years.
At two years old, I was taken in by my grandparents, who saw that my mother could not care for me. There, in the safety of their home, I learned tenderness, and spent hours in museums and out in nature with them—surrounded by light, color, and stories. Seeds of art were quietly planted.
But life was still not simple. Between the ages of four and eight, I lived with my father and stepmother, where home often felt like a battlefield. When my stepmother left, my father fell into a deep depression. Once again, my grandparents stepped in—this time for good.
I loved my father. But a custody battle forced me to do something no child should ever have to do: choose. I stood before a judge and had to speak the truth—my grandparents could give me the stability my father could not. That decision taught me the first great lesson of survival:
Sometimes love means choosing what keeps you alive.
At age twelve, illness crept in. Crohn’s disease—a silent storm—began to tear through my body. I deteriorated so quickly that my intestines almost ruptured. Emergency surgery saved my life, but I woke up to an unexpected reality: I now had an ileostomy. No one had the time to tell me before the surgery. I was a child—and suddenly, I had a body that made me feel like an outcast. After being an incredibly active child, this new fragility was foreign to me.
I nearly died that year. Afterward, I spent months in the hospital—too weak to walk, in a wheelchair, bedsores so severe my tailbone broke the surface of myskin. There were multiple surgeries—one I woke up in the middle of. Eighth and ninth grade were spent learning from home or a hospital bed. But I pushed through it all. I taught myself subjects when no tutor was available. I graduated on time—with high marks.
The message I carried into my teen years was this:
“My body may have limits—but my spirit does not.”
College took seven years due to countless medical setbacks, but I graduated—with honors. I worked in retail for twenty years—exhausted but determined—because health insurance was survival. Still, every single day I dreamt of being an artist. My energy was low. Time was scarce. But the dream never left.
Art was the constant—the thread that survived every fracture.
As a quiet, reserved child—later diagnosed as autistic—I often struggled to speak the feelings that lived inside me. Words didn’t always come. But art did.
Art became my voice when life and trauma made words too heavy. It became my way to exist when illness confined my body. It became a bridge between my inner world and the outside one—a way to say, I am here. I feel deeply. I have something to give.
This year, my illnesses intensified and I lost my job—the very thing that was meant to keep me stable. But in losing it, I found something else: the chance to finally chase the life I was meant to live. I was also diagnosed with autism, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, POTS, and MCAS—pieces that helped explain so much of my past. The puzzle finally had edges.
But this isn’t the end. It is the turning point.
This is the moment the hero chooses the path forward.
Now, as I fight my way back to health—both for myself and for my son—I am stepping fully into my calling. Not simply as an artist, but as someone who creates for a reason:
I create art to help people see inside themselves.
I know what it is to feel voiceless. To feel different. To feel trapped in a body that doesn’t work. To feel left behind by life. And I know what saves us:
Expression.
Connection.
Courage.
Creation.
My art has a purpose:
to help others find the feelings they cannot speak—to give shape to the parts of ourselves that stay buried for too long. I believe that when we express our truth, we step closer to our most authentic selves. When we see someone else express theirs, we feel less alone. And when we are brave enough to go inward—we begin our own hero’s journey.
My work is for anyone who is still searching for their voice. For those healing from pain. For those whose stories are stuck somewhere between the heart and the throat. For the ones who haven’t yet learned to say: This is who I truly am.
Because I believe, with everything in me:
Art has the power to heal.
It saved my life.
So now—I create to help others save their own.
This isn't just my story.
It’s an invitation.
To feel.
To express.
To rise.
To become the hero of your own journey.