Aching To Find Her Voice

Aching to Find Her Voice

"Aching to Find Her Voice" - mixed media on cradled wood panel, 12" x 12" x 1".  Ready to hang.  Available here and at Artfinder.

Oh, the path of paintings!  So twisted and filled with surprises.  This piece began as a sweet and cheery sketch of a bonneted girl in a patch of flowers.  

As the layers thickened and the personality emerged, she became a burdened queen, worried and heavy-headed, sleep-deprived and soulful.  She whispers "it's ok, it's ok.  Ok to feel, ok to empathize, ok to be sad for a time."  She shines light on the need to honor feelings, whatever they might be, but also to know we are powerful, holding the tools to blaze a path to happiness in our own two hands.  And one of those tools is our voice.

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You have always been good,
like a fiddlehead fern, like a Rough-legged Hawk riding
a thermal.  Look up.  Let the sun ride your cheekbones, slide
along your jaw, and fill your mouth.

You are good.  Hear me.
Take this in like water dropped to a nomad, like a breath
to a cigarette quitter, like rain.
​You are good.
​
                from the poem MANIFESTO FOR THE GIRL
For Every Girl - New and Selected Poems by Kate Gray

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I so love the voice of this poet.

​Do you pick up on a theme threading through your days on occasion?  This week, conversations across many days were zinging with the theme of believing in your own goodness.  And then the universe plunked this little book by local poet Kate Gray into my lap, thanks to the reader-of-my-mind at Two Rivers Books, owner Christine.  I scanned the table of contents and dove right into this poem...and smiled.  Thanks, universe. :)

Wherever you are in this day, you are good.  You have always been good.