Artist Statement

Many mornings I wake with a thunderous anxiety that I have to be in a body, again, for another day. I’ve been uncomfortable in my body for as long as I can remember. Slowly I have learned that I’m here in this body to share the story of my own strange, mythical, incomplete and ongoing recovery. The story is a soup of premonitions, episodes of total collapse and despair, crippling shame and self-rejection, communion with the sacred and an unrelenting desire to alchemize it all into beauty.

This narrative spans generations, gathering ancestors, wars, work, endless kitchens, beds, bathrooms, and babies – the drudgery and wonder of being human. It carries the terror of assault, the pit of adolescent shame, the infant left to cry, the ache of parenting, and the desperation to make everything right. In this story, addiction, abuse, and madness stalk me, yet beauty rises: the impossible magic of love, visits from Mary, the wild tenderness of motherhood, the exhaustion that grinds me down, and the unpredictable turns that fuel my resurrection.

And still the agony seems to seep into everything. It shows up in my children struggling to feel ok. It shows up everywhere around me, in every home, in every lost job, every sick kid, and every dying parent. How do we bear this weight? How do we wash the dishes again, prepare the food again, and be kind again? Where do we find grace? How do we traverse the epidemic of divisions and blend our humanity, wash away thousands of years of humans pitted against each other? I’m trying to begin again softly…rocking the baby, padding through the house, patient, present, available, and tender- ready to hold it - whatever wild ancient residue is always already clinging to the children.