Age

Age is a paradox.⁠
- As we gain [years, experience, loves and relationships], we also lose [strength, opportunities, respect, people we love].⁠
- As we learn, we simultaneously understand how much we do not know.⁠
- Age allows us to grow in autonomy, yet culminates in the day another must dress us and carry us where we do not want to go.⁠

Aging is a difficult process most of us would rather avoid, despite hoping we endure long enough to experience it.⁠ ⁠ And yet. Age is something rich and sacred; it is one step closer to immortality. It connects us to our forebears, our past, and our future. If we keep our ears open, ready to listen and allow change and flexibility of mind (even as our joints stiffen), our wisdom will shine even as our hair begins to. We already know that love is the answer, and we begin to choose it more and more.⁠

I painted a woman who was never a mother, yet who welcomes those who need her nurturing presence. She has compassion for those whose bodies have felt ancient since they should have been young and strong. She grieves for those who never entered the realm of the aged before passing away. She feels anger on behalf of those who have been told their lives are of lesser value: the elderly, the disabled, the children, the abused, the stranger in a strange land. She takes the sum of her experience, her suffering, and most of all her love, finding the hope to write a better way forward.⁠

And she no longer cares what people think.⁠

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