Glow by Lady E

My son practicing gentle healing with his plushies by sleeping as much as he wants.  And can we take a moment to appreciate our shark, Maxie’s pose? It’s like he’s posing for GQ - Shark Edition. I didn’t pose him. I found him like this that’s why I took the photo.  Healing is not another deadline. We are so used to measuring progress that we try to measure healing, too. How many days has it been? Shouldn’t I feel better by now? Why am I still tired? Why can’t I do what I used to do? At some point, even healing becomes another task we think we are failing to complete on time. But perhaps healing was never meant to work that way. I have a habit of turning everything into a project. There is always something to finish, something to improve, something I should already be better at. Apparently, I do this with healing, too. I noticed it recently because I kept thinking about when I would be back to normal . When would I have my old energy again? When would I stop needing so ...

Lately, I’ve been painting. Not because I decided I needed to become more productive with my hobbies. Not because I set myself a challenge to complete a certain number of paintings. And certainly not because every painting needs to become something useful. I’ve simply been reaching for my watercolors more often. Somewhere along the way, I realized that painting has become a quiet record of how I’ve been feeling. I don’t always sit down knowing what I want to paint. Sometimes I don’t even know what I’m feeling. I just know that I want paper, water and a brush in my hand. And apparently, my emotions know what to do from there. Sometimes, I Just Want to Play One day, I painted strawberries. There wasn’t some grand artistic concept behind them. I put blobs of paint onto the paper and let the blobs decide what kind of strawberries they wanted to become. Some were plump. Some were wonky. Some looked like they had absolutely no intention of conforming to proper strawberry geometry. ...