This letter has taken me more than two years to write, and while I'm not going to get into too many details, I do feel that this is a safe space to share my heart and journey. 

 

I realize that being an artist is at once a calling and an honor – reflecting back the experiences and emotions I am feeling is less of an echo chamber while you are in the room with me.

 

 

I have been feeling a lot over the past several years. This email is going to be personal, but I bet there is a lot of space for connection in my story, and maybe sharing will make the world a little less overwhelming for all of us.

 

I turned 40 this year. Turning 39 came with a baptism of tears and shedding and mourning (fully unexpectedly, BTW, I was overcome with awareness that an era of life I love deeply has ended). But 40? 40 came with dancing and feasting, long hugs, fresh tattoos, oysters, poetry, polaroids. What a contrast! 

 

That has been the dance of the past few years, actually. “A thing can be two things” is a phrase we repeat often over here. Sorrow and laughter, pleasure and heartbreak, protecting all I hold dear, falling in love, letting go, and holding close. 

 

So what's been happening?? Some of you know this, but I have been going through a very long and very painful divorce. It's been years now, and it has taken the deepest toll on my heart I could have imagined. The strength I've had to draw up around me often threatens to harden my exterior while I tried my best not to crumble from within (because good god, I am gooey and tender and often scared while being so-so brave, and just want love to surround everyone and everything I hold dear IS THAT SO MUCH TO ASK?) 

 

If you've been through something similar, you can relate to the both/and of this. 

 

I am sharing this from the scar — not the wound, but just barely. These things apparently take years (??) to heal from. You were with me in the painful thick of it, whether you knew it or not, and I am so grateful to be able to feel and share the light on this side of the process. 

 

All of this — the heartbreak, moving homes, moving again, caring for my children through transition after transition, protecting all our hearts when needed, watching us all settle in and grow faster than I ever expected — has taken deep, intentional work. And I do mean WORK. 

The inner journey might not be visible in a lot of ways, but you know where it is visible? The smiles on my kids faces as they run towards me, the way they want to sit at the counter and "spill tea" late into the night, the number of times we all scream sing our favorite songs in the car, the journals filled with marked progress, the full plates of food that are eaten (my ED friends will understand that), my ability to gladly receive love and support from those closest to me, the number of times I went dancing and sang my heart out at concerts, the way my house fills with light, the way quiet doesn't buzz in my ears like an alarm but instead feels like gentleness and a soft embrace, and, artistically, in the COLORS and forms I'm being drawn to…. 

 

I feel like you're going to see a lot of these themes in the paintings that have quite literally marked my healing. 

 

And I REALLY think you're going to see them in the body of work that is about to be born – larger work is coming. I can feel it. Prep your walls now. :)

 

I do not paint while I am dysregulated, sad, angry, or hurting deeply. Sometimes I use creativity as a tool to move into joy and pleasure, but more often, I am walking into the studio ready to have FUN and to feel light and free and alive. I think this shows. 

 

 

Quite literally, this is all I was capable of most days. 

 

That is shifting more and more every day. Now, the biggest blocker to my creative energy is carline, the tiring, beautiful honor of being a single mother to three very full-bodied kids, everything happening in our communities and sociopolitically (gestures around wildly at the world), and just the heaviness of needing this chapter to finally wrap uppppp so I can fully be free and energetically whole. 

 

But I'm there most days. 

 

And I'm here, in the studio, creating at a pace that feels healthy and honest. 

 

Thank you for being here too.

 

xox,

Emily