There is a question people don’t ask me, but I can feel it lingering when I look at my art.

“Why does a woman who’s lived through so much darkness paint with so much light?”

Because if you knew that nights, I’ve crawled through… If you knew the hours spent praying with a numb soul and a trembling spirit… If you knew the seasons when I couldn’t see anything worth waking up for… Yuo’d understand why I chase the light the way thirsty people chase water. I wasn’t born painting light. Light became something I had to earn-something I had to fight for.

There were years when my home felt heavy.

Years when the phone ringing meant bad news. Years when my children’s pain carved holes in me I didn’t know how to fill. Years the person I loved either didn’t choose me-or didn’t know how to.

There were nights I didn’t recognize the woman in my mirror. Nights when it felt like thw whole world turned to shadow and something inside me quietly agreed. That kind of darkness changes you.

It rearranges your bones. It quiets your laugh. It bends your posture. It makes you forget that softness is allowed to live in you. But then somewhere between prayers I didn’t know how to pray and tears I didn’t know how to stop- light found me again.

Not the loud kind.

Not the fireworks kind.

The smallest glimmer.

A sliver of warmth in my chest during a moment I can’t explain. A softening in my heart when I looked at my children sleeping. A quiet whisper of “You are not done yet.”

A sudden knowing that God had not dropped me, not once. And because I didn’t know how to speak that light yet… I painted it. Gold became my hope. Lavender became my softness returning. Sage became my breath I didn’t know I was holding. People tell me my art feels gentle, sacred, tender. They say it feel like a place to exhale. But here’s the secret:

I don’t paint light because my life is perfect.

I paint light because my soul remembers what it feels like to go without it.

Light is not decoration on me.

Light is survival.

Light is reclamation.

Light is the evidence that shadows do not get the final say in my story. Some of us learn how to shine because n one ever taught us how to stay afloat in the dark. Some of us paint bloom colors because we grew up in emotional concrete.

Some of us become walking lanterns because we never want another woman to feel lost the way we did.

So yes_ I paint light.

Loudly.

Boldly.

Tenderly.

Unapologetically.

Because the girl I used to be needed it. The woman I am now honors it. And the woman I’m becoming reflects it.

Still Becoming- the poetry collection where light keeps slipping in, even through the cracks I thought were too jagged to heal

Many of the pieces I create — paintings, words, and journals — are born from this same choice to keep reaching for light.