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I saw a TikTok the other day about how as an artist or creative person, you're just kind of built to make things. If given the opportunity you will create stuff and how. The issues that artists have with creating are usually not about the creating itself. It's usually about their mental health, what's happening in their lives, things like that because the work that they need to put in--like they need to put effort into--are the other things because they're naturally going to make anyways if given the opportunity. And that really connected a lot of things I've been thinking about in art and mental health because those two journeys have been running parallel and intertwining my whole life.

And I remember, looking back, there were times when I felt really bad or ashamed that I had all of these different types of art happening all the time. Some of it was more crafty stuff some of it was more art stuff. I was doing digital portraits. I was doing traditional portraits.

I was painting animals. I was doing abstract watercolor. I was doing pen and ink drawing I was doing figure drawing and I just went through all these phases and they seemed so separate and when I looked around everyone seemed like they're Instagram accounts were really sleek and, like they had one or two things that they were doing and it looked really put together and cohesive.

But all of those periods of time for me reflected what was happening mental health-wise. And they kind of are a record of that. And I can look back and see how things were changing and I can also see how all of those individual periods or eras of my art journey so far have influenced and connected to what I'm making now. Little pieces from all of those things come together to create the art that I work on now and so I'm grateful for those and I'm really glad that I got out of my own way enough to create whatever I felt like creating then because it's really pushing

me or allowing me to have my own style or my own way of doing things and to be comfortable with that and all of that was paralleling what I was learning mental health-wise, learning about self-compassion, learning about self-acceptance, learning about listening to emotions, learning about boundaries, learning about what to act on and what not to act on, living with discomfort, all of those things. They're all connected and they're all important and if I just let myself be an artist and take care of all those other things, I feel so grateful and proud of the work that I make.

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