The Garden After

“There is a garden that only grows after the ground has opened.

Through cracked earth, flowers insist on blooming — not despite the breaking, but because of it. What appears to be ruin is, on closer look, an invitation. What appears to be an ending is a beginning learning how to arrive.

We are taught to fear the breaking. But every softness we now offer to another human being was first taught to us by something in ourselves that cracked open and refused to close back the same way.

This is not a painting about damage.

It is a painting about what damage becomes when it is finally allowed to become something.

What in your life once felt like breaking that you now recognize as the beginning of who you are?”