When a goal isn’t rooted in your deeper truth—when it isn’t aligned with what genuinely matters to you—it becomes exhausting to sustain. Over time, motivation erodes because you’re pushing against yourself rather than moving with yourself.

I want to be appreciated and loved for who I am, not the color of my hair. For my heart, not my highlights. We live in a culture that relentlessly pressures women to invest in the outside at the expense of the inside—and then calls that empowerment. The unspoken message is that to be beautiful, a woman must hide her age and resist time. I’m no longer willing to live by those rules.

For the past two years, much of my artwork has been sitting quietly in my basement—not because it didn’t matter, but because my life was in transition. As I began creating Rooted Wisdom, a nature-based empowerment journey for women, it became clear that this new work was asking for my full attention and devotion. Releasing this art is both joyful and tender, a practice of letting go so there is space to receive what’s next…

Ordinary miracles don’t announce themselves. They don’t demand attention. They exist in the background of our lives: breath moving in and out, green things growing without instruction, light shifting across a room, the steady rhythm of simply being alive. When we aren’t paying attention, we miss them—not because they aren’t there, but because we are elsewhere.

Last week I spent five days in the Pacific Northwest, nestled on the edge of the ocean with only the wind, the water, and the quiet company of towering evergreens. It was a retreat I gifted myself—a sacred pause away from everyday responsibilities, roles, and routines.In that stillness, something familiar and deeply important rose back to the surface…

One day, after a particularly sharp word that left her trembling, she ran to her favorite hiding place beneath an old oak tree. There, surrounded by fallen leaves and the hum of life, she closed her eyes and listened.

In the quiet, she heard it—the still, small voice within:
“You are beautiful, exactly as you are.”