I was the Amazon
Becoming Whole — The Feminine Journey Through Painting
I was the Amazon.
Or at least, that’s who I believed myself to be.
Strong. Capable. Unshakeable.
The one who could survive anything.
The one who could fight—and win.
I was proud of that.
I had built an entire life around being strong enough.
Tough enough.
Resilient enough to move through anything that came my way.
People followed me.
But they didn’t like me.
And the truth was…
I didn’t like myself either.
I was holding everything together on the outside
and unraveling on the inside.
I didn’t understand how I could be this person in the world—
and feel so disconnected from myself at the same time.
And I had no language for it.
—
Until I found myself sitting in a lecture in Asheville,
hearing something I didn’t have words for yet.
She began describing different aspects of the feminine psyche.
And immediately, I recognized myself in the Amazon.
That part was easy.
But then she began to describe the Mother.
And something shifted.
Because I could feel that too.
The devotion.
The longing.
The tenderness.
The part of me that loved deeply,
that wanted to nurture and protect.
And suddenly, the question that had followed me for most of my life surfaced again:
How can I be both of these?
How can I be this strong… and this soft?
This fierce… and this devoted?
What is wrong with me?
—
And then came the answer I had never heard before:
Nothing.
There was nothing wrong with me.
I wasn’t broken.
I wasn’t too much.
I wasn’t inconsistent or confused.
I was… whole.
I just didn’t know how to see it yet.
—
That lecture was the beginning.
Not the full understanding.
Not even close.
But it was the first moment I allowed myself to consider
that everything I had been fighting inside myself
might actually belong.
I didn’t have the language for it yet.
But I had the feeling.
And eventually…
that feeling became paintings.
—
Over the past few months, I’ve been working on a series of paintings called Becoming Whole— exploring what it means to integrate these parts of ourselves, not as ideas, but as something lived.
This series is the result of that beginning.