It’s usually well intentioned and it usually doesn’t bother me. In fact, I often like to talk about it, especially with friends. It’s an opportunity for us all to give the thoughts that run on auto-pilot in the back of our minds a chance to come to the surface. An opportunity to feel seen, but also another opportunity to maybe finally figure out how we actually feel.

The more I am asked, the more prominent and pressing of a question it becomes in my life.

Back when I was married, I got the question a lot less. I was younger, but I think part of it was this idea that if we had wanted to we would have already and if we hadn’t been able to, it’s probably too touchy of a subject to bring up in casual conversation at dinner.

Now that I’m divorced, I’m still finding it a touchy subject, but for another reason entirely.

Talking about whether or not someone (especially a woman) wants to have kids is at once one of the most personal, vulnerable topics you could discuss while simultaneously one of the biggest decisions of our lives.

And that’s just the thing, it’s not just about you. When another woman asks you if you want to have kids, they’re also opening up the door to talk about their own experiences and feelings about having kids.

One such time I was recently asked whether I want to have kids was by a stranger at my brother’s baby’s gender reveal party.

She asked me and I told her I wasn’t sure. I told her I kind of felt like that time and opportunity had already passed for me (a bullshit excuse, because hey I’m 34 not 70.) She shared that it was her opinion that anyone who says they don’t know whether they want to have kids, just actually doesn’t want kids.

But, I don’t think it’s that simple. As women, we’ve been conditioned our entire lives to believe that getting married and having children is the pinnacle of our existence. It may be the 21st Century, but it doesn’t matter. It’s a belief woven into the fibers of our heteronormative culture.

I grew up in this culture and I married into this type of dynamic. Whether or not I wanted to have children was not even a choice in my mind, not a thought that entered my consciousness. It wasn’t a matter of if, it was when.

I lived with the presumption that I would have children with my husband and that I would probably start having them in my late twenties. We married when I was 23, so safe to say maybe a few years childless in wedded bliss and then off to the races.

Only matrimony wasn’t so blissful and I quickly began to feel that I already had a child at home, an adult man one.

I spent days, weeks, months, and years building up walls of resentment and bitterness brick by brick. Thankfully, I also spent years in therapy and I could see it growing, festering inside of me like an illness. Until it was one. It was a full-blown illness. It caused me to spiral, it caused my hair to fall out, my stomach to tie up in knots, my sleep to suffer and it caused me to not eat, losing my sense of self, my connection to joy and even, at times, my integrity.

That’s where the fear fermented.

The Best of Times, The Worst of Times

I used to think that parenting brought out the worst in a lot of people. I still kind of think that it does. But, as I grow older, I can also see how it can bring out the best. I see women my age building entire worlds of whimsy and magic for their children. I see them showing up to be a positive example for their children. I see them pursuing their dreams and chasing after their convictions because they want their daughters to see a woman who can do anything. I see women who aren’t afraid to act silly and goofy to make their kids laugh. I see women who aren’t afraid to upset and disappoint others simply because they need to prioritize their child’s needs.

It’s inspiring to see the women around me, the women I’ve grown up with, grow into this version of themselves.

On the other hand, sometimes I don’t always recognize the person I used to know in them.

Sometimes, I wish I saw them taken care of a fraction as much as I see them take care of the people around them. Sometimes, I wish they would share their struggles and their feelings with me more, even though I’m not another mom who can relate to them. Sometimes, I wish they would give themselves permission to be more selfish, take up more space and do the fucking art project!! Even if it’s pointless and turns into nothing! Or even, especially then.

I’m afraid of becoming a mother. There, I said it.

You can ask me if I want to have kids all day until the cows come home. But kids have never been the issue.

I love kids. I love to spend time with them. I love to play with them. I love to bear witness to their imaginations and creativity. I love how freely they give their affection and how easily they trust. I love how open they are with their emotions and how amazing it feels to be the one that helps them to feel better, to feel safe.

The real reason why I don’t know if I want to have kids is because I don’t know if I would like being a mom all of the time. Actually, I’m pretty confident that I wouldn’t like being a mom all of the time. Can some moms out there tell me if it’s normal to not like being a mom all of the time?! Sincerely, asking for a friend. (The friend is me.)

The sad truth of it is, our society is not built to support mothers.

We don’t support a mother’s time, a mother’s autonomy, a mother’s energy, a mother’s physical wellbeing, and we sure as hell don’t support a mother’s mental health.

We could all list example after example from celebrity pop culture, to current events, to our own communities and the people we know in our real lives. We aren’t lacking in examples or evidence. And that’s just the thing, it doesn’t matter how much evidence we have because the majority of people simply don’t seem to care.

Signing-up to be a mother is like signing-up to be a martyr.

Take the current circumstances of raising a child and just pour some extra salt on the wound by taking away our bodily autonomy. Even our own bodies don’t belong to us anymore.

We ask women to give and give and give and then we ask them to figure out how to fill their own cups too.

How could I not be afraid to say yes to that?

It’s a Simple ‘Yes or No?’ Question

What once was a given, revealed itself as a choice. I could either move forward and have kids (with my ex-husband), being fully aware of the unhealthy and toxic home life I would be willingly allowing a child to enter into or I could choose to spare them, to spare myself.

Trust me when I say, I saw the writing on the wall but I also gave it my all. Years were spent begging, pleading and praying that this wouldn’t be the course of my marriage. Doing everything I could to try, to put in the work.

But, all I was left with was rage and when the rage would fizzle out, I’d find myself again, alone in the woods working to heal.

At a certain point, healing myself again became the only goal.

Thank God, Thank God that it did.

I’m the person I am now, today, because I chose myself. Because I let go of my entire adult life up until that point and I started over again. Because I fought like hell for this version of me to exist, and not only exist, but to thrive.

During the dissolution of my marriage and the process of my subsequent divorce, I became (90%) resolved that I didn’t want to have kids. Of course, I didn’t. I had just gotten my life back. How could I give it up again? Give myself up again?

That’s how I saw it, anyway. And in that time, I needed to see it that way. It helped me to survive and to get through.

Life Gives You What You Need

There was one overarching, major thing I had to come to terms with when I left Christianity for good.

I had to become okay with not knowing what I believed about everything, all of the time.

The same thing happened when I left my marriage. I had to be okay with not knowing whether I would ever be married again or have the opportunity to have kids again.

The unknowing was terrifying at first, but what started as a dark cave eventually became its own guiding light.

When I started dating again, whoever I met had to be okay with or without having children. I wanted our relationship, first and foremost, to be about how we loved each other and showed up for one another as partners. I wanted a solid foundation of a relationship and best friend and to know how we communicated with one another, worked with one another and acted as a team.

If this relationship with the person that I loved evolved into a partnership where we could imagine bringing a child into it, then that could potentially be the next chapter, but it wasn’t why I was writing the entire book.

For me, this felt like the only way I could move forward. It has required openness, trust, understanding, compassion, and a willingness to allow changes to unfold naturally.

Last fall, my partner, Ted, and I adopted our dog, Dusty. There have been plenty of challenges in rescuing an 8-month-old, anxious, and traumatized puppy. In the face of those challenges, we haven’t always shown up as our best selves 100% of the time, but we have overcome a lot as a little family of three.

I have seen the ways Ted and I have supported one another to be loving dog-parents to Dusty and it’s given me an immense amount of joy to watch her become more comfortable, less fearful, and develop her own spunky personality.

That brings us to another wedding. But, not my own. This year I officiated the wedding of my younger brother.

You see, a couple of years ago he met a woman. An incredibly brave, inspiring woman. A mother.

Nick married Jillyan, who has two little kiddos. They’re 8 and 6-years-old. Getting to meet her two kids and getting to know them, to have them call me Auntie… it’s been one of the most humbling gifts of my life. I didn’t know how much my soul needed that gift. I had no idea how it would soften me.

And this past week, I met Baby Oslo, my new nephew!!!

He’s only a few days old and already holds so much love and power.

But, something unexpected came up before I met him.

I was afraid to meet him and I couldn’t figure why. I couldn’t pin down that I was even anxious until I confronted myself about it. The fear in that moment wasn’t entirely rational. I mean, you can’t really give a bad first impression to a one-day-old baby. They’ll never remember.

I wasn’t afraid of meeting Oslo in that moment. I was afraid/am afraid of meeting Oslo over and over again. How will I meet him? Will I be the person that I want to be or will I lose myself again?

I realized on the day I met him and spent time playing with my niece and nephews, that everything was absolutely perfect in those moments. There was nothing in them that I would ever want to change.

I spend every single day of my life noticing things.

I notice how I want to change the color of the walls in my apartment. I notice how I want to move art on the walls from this room to that. I notice how I made more money last month than this one. I notice how I didn’t go to the gym again this week. I notice how my meal could have been healthier. I notice how my friend responded differently to me this time versus other times. I notice how a customer picked up my art and set it down. I notice all of these things and I keep an internal tally, a never-ending list of things I could improve, things I could do better.

But you know what I can’t improve on? Cheesy as it sounds, I can’t improve on a moment spent being present and giving my undivided attention to those in my life that I love, like my nephews and niece, my dog, my partner, my friends, my parents, grandparents, my neighbors. And do you know what it took me to realize that? Children.

Children are amazing. They carry with them the most profound and fundamental truths of life and all you have to do is be present with them to learn them.

So this is what I will say to the next person who asks me if I want to have kids?

I don’t know! I still don’t know!!!

Here’s what I can tell you, though.

I don’t think there’s anything weird or wrong with not knowing. It’s completely normal and actually incredibly common to not know!

It gives me comfort to know that this is a decision I haven’t taken lightly because I know if the day comes where I do decide that I want to have kids, it’s not a choice I will be making blindly.

One things for goddamn certain. I’m never making another decision in my life based on fear, again.

I am lucky, I have one of those ensuite bathrooms attached to my room. The Arctic Monkeys are screaming, “I Bet You Look Good On The Dance Floor," and my dad is screaming for me to turn it down. I rarely clean and my shower is growing mildew, but the smell is overpowered by the purple dye I just used to color the underside of my hair. Ripped out pages of magazines and hand-cut collages are pasted to every square inch of my walls. I am flexible (duh, I’m a teen. sigh.) so I whip my foot up to the sink’s counter and I paint my toes a bright shade of blue.

In the process, I knock over the tiny bottle, which contains a surprising amount of nail polish for such a little guy.

Suddenly, the once pristine white door and (not-as-pristine) white tiled floors of my bathroom are covered in splatters of blue streaks. My parents are going to FREAK, I worry to myself. So what does my under-developed teenage-dirtbag brain decide to do? Well of course, I’m going to take this mess and make it beautiful by painting over it.

Not once did I stop to think we could just sand down the nail polish and paint the door over again with white paint, covering up the mistake so that it would appear like it never happened at all. No, I covered up my mistake with an even bigger eye sore.

I guess what’s an eye sore and what is a masterpiece is in the eye of the beholder. In the moment, I had a blast painting a mural on my door and to my parents’ credit, they were super sweet about the whole thing and told me they loved it. (Beautiful parenting moment in the books 4ever.)

It only took a year before I absolutely hated that mural I painted on my bathroom door. In an angsty fit, one night unable to sleep, I painted over it with something moody and depressing. (TBH, even uglier.)

But something powerful was happening in those impulses. I was doing something I had always done, something that has always been second-nature to me.

I viewed everything in my world as an opportunity to create art and to build a world that made me feel more and more like myself, or the self I was becoming.

As a teen, I loved to personalize everything I could. Maybe she’s born with it, maybe it was all the BeDazzler ads I consumed as a ‘90s kid. Whatever it was, all I knew was that I had the SICKEST Walmart cruiser bicycle because I had covered it in glitter, puff-paint and acrylic.

Flash-forward to my college years.

I’m living in a dorm with sterile white walls. You know the kind. I can’t paint on my walls, but I can paint illustrations on my windows with washable markers and cover my door with doodles on peel-off chalkboard stickers.

During the summer of 2012, I take my first trip to NYC with a group of other art students.

I had been begging my parents to take us to NYC for as long as I can remember. Instead, I found myself signing up for this “Christian mission trip” (long-story, I just wanted to go to NYC) with a bunch of other college kids I had never met before and in a city so big I can’t even wrap my head around it. I was anxious and scared at first, but I was surprised with myself and proud of how quickly that feeling eased and was replaced by excitement and exhilaration. The city inspired me and breathed life into me, in a way that was better than I had ever dreamed. It made me feel like I could become whoever I wanted to be, and just by being there, I was already becoming her.

I spent my childhood in well-manicured suburbs, so spending the summer walking around and exploring such an expansive, multi-cultural city, I was delighted to find that artwork lived on every surface and in every space.

Over the course of this month in NYC, the other students and I worked on an exhibition and painted some large panels that were going to be installed as a mural at a local elementary school. We didn’t get to design the mural ourselves and we didn’t have to coordinate any of the other logistics, but it was a valuable experience that left an imprint on me, nonetheless.

From the age of 11, I grew up in Kohler.

Yeah, that one. Known for their toilets and golf courses. It’s an exclusive, little village with a population of about 2,000. Despite it being small-town Wisconsin, Kohler has an impressive emphasis on design and a renowned art residency program. They have also collaborated with some of the top artists and designers, known around the world.

Kohler is one of the most unique places I have ever been, to this day. You can walk through the entire village in an hour and stumble upon incredible sculptures all along the way, but thinking about painting a mural on your own garage door or painting your house a fun color? Forget about it. You’ll be fined to the heavens.

Sheboygan is Kohler’s neighbor on the lakefront, or rather The Malibu of the Midwest.

A “city” of about 50,000 residents, I think it shaped me into the person and artist that I am more than anything and to this day, I love it. You might be surprised to learn that Sheboygan is also home to some of the world’s most incredible art museums.

The John Michael Kohler Art Center is a free contemporary art museum with rotating exhibitions put together by some of the most interesting and talented curators you will ever come across.

The Art Preserve was established in 2021 as a satellite museum of the JMKAC to house their ever-growing collection of artist-built environments. This is a genre of art-making that transforms spaces, such as homes, parks, structures, or gardens, by an artist to express their inner worlds into their outer worlds.

I cannot talk bout my story to becoming a professional artist and muralist without mentioning JMKAC as a hugely influential part of my story.

I am, at this very moment of writing, actually being brought to tears because it’s such an important and meaningful place to me. I also got married there (and now I’m divorced), but I digress. This is still one of my favorite places on this earth and the work they are doing has impacted so many people in such significant ways. They do so much for the community, they even have a pre-K school!

ANYWAYS, the following summer after my trip to NYC, I learned that the JMKAC was commissioning artists from around the country to fly to Sheboygan and paint murals around the city. They called it “The Sheboygan Project.”

It was so fun to see so many murals being painted around town, virtually all at once. I remember stopping my car on the side of the road to go up to the artists painting and introduce myself, just to tell them I was so excited about what they were working on and to learn about their process.

I reached out to the museum and they got me in touch with one of the artists to help them, as a volunteer. It was only after I helped this artist, Gaia Street Art, that I realized I had stumbled upon their work in NYC. Such a full-circle moment!

I can’t say that I contributed too much to their mural. I only helped for a few hours. But they were very gracious to allow me to get my hands on the walls and contribute to their artwork. The experience solidified a desire in me to become a muralist, myself.

I’m having such a blast looking back at how all of these pieces of my story worked together to bring me where I am today.

In the next portion of my story, I’ll share what happened post grad and the steps I took to land my first mural! I will also work on a future article which can give advice to any aspiring muralists out there.

Please leave a comment if you have any questions you’d like for me to answer!

xoxo,

Christina

By that point, after years of successfully gaslighting myself, I thought I was making it up.

I didn’t grow up in the stone ages, but being queer never felt like a possibility I could entertain. Growing up, I didn’t know a single queer woman. Although many a teen speculated our two science teachers were long-term partners. Ironically, they had to pass through a closet every day that connected each others’ classrooms.

Homophobia existed around me, like the air that I breathed. It was everywhere, every single day, from home, to school, to the internet, to conversations with friends, to the media, and of course, to the big one, church.

I started questioning my sexuality in my adulthood,

at a point where I’d already been married a number of years. I remember feeling so guilty for wanting to figure it out for myself and I couldn’t understand why I felt like I needed to.

Being married to a man and in a monogamous relationship, it was not like I anticipated any opportunities for me to explore my sexuality in the real world.

Looking back, I can see now, the thread that carries throughout my whole life.

There were always opportunities for me to face this truth about myself, but I always shut down the second I smelled even a whiff of queer thoughts.

If I were going to relate it back to Freud’s analogy of the Iceberg of the Conscious vs. Unconscious mind, we are talking at least a few hundred feet underwater, under lock and key.

Before I had the excuse of being married, I had long since cultivated the debilitating shame one finds only from formative years spent in the Evangelical church.

Homophobia wasn’t just expressed through jokes or passively judgmental attitudes. In the churches I grew up in, Homophobia was worn proudly on t-shirts and discussed in length during youth group sermons.

In college, I participated in a very active campus ministry. Cru, (originally, “Campus Crusade for Christ”) was organized as a hierarchal system of volunteer students, who, under threat of a few adult faculty, were manipulated to stay in-line. AKA if you drink, do drugs, or have premarital sex, students are pressured to self-initiate shaming rituals or otherwise, face excommunication from one’s community.

In the churches I was exposed to as a teen and young adult, any hint of sexual exploration, whether in a straight or queer relationship (or even just with yourself), was grounds for upsetting the one and almighty Daddy in the Sky.

Lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent months and years of social distancing,

was one of the most challenging experiences I have ever had (as I’m sure it was for many others), while also being one of the most growing and transformational.

Lockdown gave me permission to finally separate myself from the church, once and for all. For years, I had been wrestling with my belief-systems and had been feeling an overwhelming amount of cognitive-dissonance between my own values and those represented by the largely Trump-voting (or Trump-apologist) congregation where I had found myself. That’s a whole separate story for another day. I would love to share more about my decision to leave the church and what that looked like for me. It was a process of deconstruction that took many years.

With distance, came mental clarity and a sense of personal resolution I had been struggling to achieve during my deconstruction process prior. Every time I found myself back in a pew, listening to a church sermon, I began to question myself and my own inner compass again. Now, I finally had the quiet and contemplation to discover what I truly believed and what felt good, made sense to me, and aligned with my values.

I have always had many queer friends.

In high school and during my time in college ministries and the church, most of those friends were also closeted and I didn’t find out they were queer until years later.

Queer people attract to each other like moths to a flame.

It is one of my favorite parts about being queer.

You don’t have to accept it about yourself, before you’re accepted into a community you didn’t even realize you were a part of.

Ultimately, it was through growing in friendship and community with diverse, vibrant, creative, abundantly liberated and loving people, that I was able to finally peel back the layers of my own self and unlock that fortress, existing deep beneath the water, to feel safe enough to bring my true self to the surface.

I wish I could say that everything was hunky-dory when I first began coming out to people,

but unfortunately there were a few very close people in my life who were not so loving and accepting of this part of me.

Something surprised me, though. Even when I faced unkind reactions from loved-ones, my resolution did not waver and I did not question myself. I didn’t regret my decision to come out. Instead, I felt more and more free. Being honest with myself meant being honest with others, even if they didn’t like it.

I became okay with upsetting people. I no longer had to fit in a box others defined for me. I wasn’t going to live my life people-pleasing my way out of the true fullness of myself. And any approval from others that I lost, I was rewarded with tenfold by a community built on genuine love without coercion.

We define queerness through sexual attraction or gender identity, and while that is the most direct definition, it does not encompass what being queer really means.

Despite all of the painful paths it has caused me to travel, and all of the ways it has made much of my life more confusing and complicated when it otherwise could have been more simple,

I am endlessly grateful to be queer.

I wouldn’t want to change, even if I could.

I have learned so much more about what it means to be human, what it means to know yourself deeply and accept yourself fully, what it means to experience joy, and what it means to be in community, through loving myself as a queer person.

I’m writing this with anyone in mind who is on their own journey. I send you love, hope, encouragement, and hugs. You are strong and beautiful, my sweet friend.

xoxo.

Christina

I’m 10 years old and I’m sitting at my Dell desktop to type my monthly family report. It’s not a report exactly. It’s actually meant to be more of a newspaper, of sorts, and I am its (self-appointed) founder, editor, journalist and creative director. I write about the daily-goings-on in our home and backyard. I write about the squirrel in our tree that carried around a giant slice of pizza all on its own. (Complete with field-reporting and in-action, digital photography.) I gossip about my own brother, knowing I will eventually give it to him, expecting he will read it. I keep my parents in-the-know about the upcoming *NSYNC Celebrity tour, hoping they will take the hint and buy tickets. And I, of course, include adorable photos of our kittens, Freddie and Prince.

At no point do I question the necessity of this endeavor. There is no priority to-do list or productivity schedule. I’m not worried about whether anyone else will find this information important or particularly note-worthy. In fact, I delight in its mundanity, without even realizing it is mundane.

I send exactly four copies to the printer queue, one for each family member. I am at the edge of my seat next to the printer to feel the warmth of each piece of paper as it comes out. With precision, I staple the pages together and appreciate my own accomplishments.

I place the newspapers on my desk in a pile, evidence of a hard day’s work. I make my way over to our basement. It’s unfinished, so it still has bare concrete floors. I lace up my rollerblades, put Christina Aguilera’s ‘Stripped’ into my sticker-covered, top-loading CD player/boombox, and turn on my rotating LED rainbow-colored Disco Ball Light. The wheels of my blades glide over our smooth basement floors as I spin around the steel support-beams and sing along to ‘Fighter,’ feeling invincible.

All is right in the world.

Fast-forward 20 plus years.

I find myself scrolling through a digital screen, the size of my palm. It talks to me. Little humans the size of my index finger. Except, I don’t know if they’re human. They might not even be real people. But, they tell me I can optimize my life, I can optimize myself, I can even optimize my hunger.

“Become more like a robot.” They don’t actually say that, but that’s what they mean. If I desire to eat as little food as possible, I give myself as few mental challenges as I can manage, and I spend up-to only 1% of my day utilizing my cognitive functioning, maybe then I will actually feel fulfillment and happiness. JK. Maybe then, I won’t feel anything, at all. That’s the real goal.

Numb. That’s what we’ve settled for. With over 300,000 years of Homo sapiens’ experiences under our belt, we’ve given up on real self-actualization and settled for nothingness. It’s easier than discomfort and not-knowing, am I right?

If I’m being 100% honest with you all,

I have to admit that I just asked Chat to give me a list of 10 tips for self-optimization. I thought I was going to be able to come back here with a satirical spin and a reaction to each of the robot’s suggestions. We would all have a good laugh and I could feel a little bit better about taking water away from a tree, because at least I served my point.

The truth is, I found myself actually being sucked into its vision. The tips Chat generated were not far off from advice I might give to a close friend if they were struggling with romanticizing their daily life and finding balance in routine. I was 2 seconds away from taking notes. (Not really, but perhaps if I’d taken another edible I could have been more casually swayed.)

But, you and I both know that my point isn’t moot. Our opposition to AI shouldn’t come from whether or not it could actually be interesting, helpful or practical to our daily lives. Our opposition to generative AI should come from our own innate self-preservation and humanity.

Because what is more human than not having all the answers?

What is more human than stumbling over your words and speaking ineloquently about the most esoteric of concepts?

What is more human than struggling with routine, yet desperately needing it, and always having to answer the question of, ‘what are we going to eat for dinner?’

What is more human than yearning to be known, even (or especially) through the goings-on of daily life, the little observations and the things that are a “waste of time.” - Pointing and laughing at a squirrel attempting to steal away some impossibly large (in comparison) piece of pizza.

We all know that modern life can be earth-shattering and heartbreakingly difficult.

It’s uncomfortable. It gives us anxiety, makes our chests tight and our breathing shallow. It makes it hard to sleep. Some nights we toss and turn, awake and worried.

It can sound incredibly appealing to lessen the noise, take away some of our mental strain, decision fatigue and endless exhaustion. We know that AI is not the answer, but that doesn’t stop them from trying to convince us that it can be.

We are so tired of fighting, but we find ourselves in another fight. This time, it’s a fight for our own humanity. Our curiosity. Our creativity. Our passion. Our intellect. Our love.

Do it for your inner child.

She would have to wanted to see you grow up to take delight in the mundane, in the every day spinning around and around, beauty of ordinary things.

In the winter of 2021, I bought a house with my ex-husband. This house was a fixer-upper, for sure, but I was down-bad with the drug of rose-colored glasses.

You see, this house had a lot of potential and not only that, it was just a few hundred feet away from a private beachfront on Lake Michigan, surrounded by pine trees and sand dunes.

Considering our budget was under $250k*, it felt unbelievable.

*Note:The price would have been a red-flag for the areas we were looking at in Milwaukee, but this house was in a small-town an hour north of the city and pretty at-par with similar comps in the area.

My in-home art studio was magical - a four-seasons room with sliding glass doors that opened up to an attached deck, where I could sit on my rocking chair, sip coffee and watch the deer go by.

I had so many dreams for this house. I had dreams of starting a family, going to the beach every single day, having friends over for bonfires, cooking delicious meals and hosting dinner parties.

Of course, I had endless ideas for the interiors. My Pinterest board was my obsession.

The road to get this house was not sunshine and rainbows.

Read more

Life is full of twists and turns, ups and downs, light and dark, births and deaths.

Just because the darkness exists, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t celebrate the light or that the light isn’t worth being celebrated. In fact, all the more reason to celebrate.

Take time to bask in the warmth of the light in your life this week.

In moments of stillness, imagine the sky is opening up to you and you are fully receiving the blessings and goodness that are your birthright.

When you entered into this physical reality, what is it that you entered in hoping to experience?

For me, it is a beautiful sunny day at the beach. I’m floating in the clear, fresh water of Lake Michigan. I have a belly full of good snacks and drinks. I have loved ones with me. I have my dog, Dusty. I have a good book to read. I am laughing and smiling and the birds are chirping.

I know this moment is fleeting — it’s impermanent and that makes me sad. I want the water to be clean and fresh forever. I don’t want anyone I love to leave me or suffer or die. I don’t want the cold, dark days to come. I want the warmth and the sun to stay. But I know all of these things are outside of my control.

I must accept that so that I don’t continue to suffer in anticipation.

Just because the moments are impermanent doesn’t mean I need to grieve them ahead of time, as if I am preparing myself for the loss.

Sit in the stillness of this moment and rejoice in it for what it is.

The more you soak up its joy and receive all of its heavenly goodness, the stronger it lives inside of you to draw on in all of the moments to come.

There is darkness and suffering in this world, of course, we can acknowledge that. But it is not your job to cast out the darkness.

It is your job to cultivate your own light.

Card pulls:

Receive
(Cosmic Comfort Affirmation Deck by Yumi Sakugawa)

Two of Pentacles
(Woodland Wardens Oracle Deck by Jessica Roux)

I didn’t think so much about about what, or rather who, I was leaving behind when I moved away from Milwaukee, my home for the previous ten years. 2020 was an isolating year, for reasons I need not explain, and I had almost forgotten what life was like before.

But the truth, and what felt even more lonely, was there was no “before” I wished to return to anymore.

2020 was like going into a chrysalis against my will and the process of coming out was (and still is) long and arduous.

Everything I had been holding on to — physically, emotionally, psychologically — would be laid bare over the next few years and there was no point in trying to hold it together anymore.

You see, before the pandemic, I had been already going through a multi-year process of deconstructing my faith. Evangelical Christianity had gotten its manipulative death grip in me as an impressionable and vulnerable teenager and it was like prying the tiniest, most painful splinters out from beneath your fingernails to undo the spiritual psychosis.

Therapy was what really changed my life and changed me for the better. I have been “putting in the work,” as they say, with my therapist for the past several years and it’s been so worth it in every way.

Religion was how I coped before therapy. I wasn’t raised super religious. I chose it. It kept the demons away — and I didn’t just think that figuratively.

What I learned later on, through therapy and deconstructing, was that it brought me new demons. They were more clever, more inconspicuously disguised.

The hardest part of leaving “the church,” in the broad sense of the word, was leaving my community and feeling like I had lost a part of what gave me a sense of identity. Everything else felt so unknown and I doubted who I was without it.

It was through discovering a new kind of community, a more creative community, that the wool was pulled from my eyes and I began to see things more clearly. I became less afraid, less anxious in the world. I saw humanity as more loving, open, and joyful.

I have been a part of so many communities in my lifetime. I live for community, in so many ways. I know, deep down, that my greatest desire since I was a child has been to find a sense of belonging and feeling of being known, even at my own detriment (AKA joining a cult.)

I have been a part of homeschooling communities, small town communities, artist communities, extracurricular communities, fandom communities, church communities, college ministry communities, neighborhood communities, small business owner communities… the list goes on. It took me until I started leading our Artist’s Way workshop series to learn the most important lesson of all: to learn what creative community actually is.

Creative community doesn’t just mean we’re all artists of some sort or another who come together to talk about art and share our experiences in the art world.

You don’t have to think you’re an artist to be a part of a creative community.

You simply have to approach community, relationships and friendships, CREATIVELY.

What does it look like, you ask? GREAT question!

Creative community looks like shared vulnerability.

It looks like curiosity.

It looks like openness and non-judgment.

It looks like radical kindness.

It looks like belly-aching laughter.

It looks like peace and acceptance.

It looks like creative-problem solving and out-of-the-box ideas.

It looks like not being afraid to pursue that new thing or wild project.

It looks like coming together to achieve collective goals.

It looks like earnest intention and showing up, even when you don’t feel like it, even when it’s easier to be alone, even when it’s inconvenient...

It looks like empathy, understanding and authenticity.

It looks like giving each other the full gift of your presence without distraction.

It looks like going analog.

It looks like being silly and goofy — weirdos are welcome here.

It looks like meeting yourself fully, maybe for the first time ever, and in the rawness of that, trusting others to meet you and see you too.

When I first rad the Artist’s Way in 2021, I read it by myself.

I had no idea I would turn it into a workshop series or that it would become some of the most fulfilling creative work I’ve ever done, to date. I didn’t know it would fill a spiritually-shaped hole I had been missing since I left religion.

I didn’t even realize, at first, that it had even made a profound impact on me… that is, until my entire life started to change.

I left the evangelical church for good.

I came out as queer (to myself too.)

I allowed myself to finally release friendships and relationships that needed to be let go.

I developed a stronger sense of self and self-worth.

I got divorced.

I moved.

I made new friends.

I opened my art studio (a dream I had since sophomore year of college.)

I began a new, grounded and peaceful, relationship.

I made so much art and I explored where my curiosity led me.

It’s impossible to reduce all of that down to one book, but I can’t deny it made a big impact.

When I opened my art studio I wanted to teach people about art, yes, but more than that I wanted to help people get out of their own way in the creative process and release themselves from the fear and judgment that prevent so many of us from making the art we’re supposed to make, showing up as the people we’re supposed to be, and living the creative lives we’re supposed to live.

I also saw that, like me, so many people were seeking community and third spaces that went beyond the superficial and actually had an ongoing effect in our lives, helping us to become more connected to each other and ourselves.

I’ve learned so much through the honor of facilitating creative community.

This year will be my third year teaching my Artist’s Way series. I call it that because we go through the book together, but it is honestly so much more than that.

We also have deep, rich, beautiful discussion. We enjoy each other’s company and hold one another accountable to staying the course. We do an art project or creative exercise every chapter that corresponds with the reading AND there are ongoing opportunities (even after the series) to invest in one another’s lives, build long-lasting friendships, and have some creative fun…

Because nothing is better than getting to reconnect with your inner child/inner artist self as an adult.

If I can make one wish for you in 2026, it’s that you get to meet your teenage self again and, this time, actually like them.

Registration for my 2026 Artist’s Way workshop series will go live TONIGHT at 8 PM CST.

To learn more about the series, visit my website at Persika Design Co.com - The Artist's Way Workshop

I was falling in love, and that is a wonderful feeling, of course, but those who have lost love or had love betray them, know that it can also be very scary.

In a moment when I somehow managed to let my guard down, I shared with him my fear.

You see, not that long ago my marriage to my ex-husband and partner of 11-years ended. You can heal all that shit intellectually, but you can’t control how it lives in your body. You just have to let it come up, feel it and release it. It’s the only way I’ve found to move through it. Grief and healing our grief doesn’t happen all at once, it happens in stages, almost like waves.

You go on living your life, and as you do, things happen and you react, but sometimes how you react feels outside of your rational control. We might call them triggers. Whatever it is, it activates whatever your body and subconscious are holding onto, even in their deepest reservoirs. Sometimes (often) we had no idea they were even still there.

On this night, I told Ted I was afraid because I knew there was no promise of “forever” anymore. “Forever” felt like the promise of naivety and it was something I was sure I wouldn’t ever be able to get back, even if I wanted to.

Eleven years.

Eleven years that started I was nineteen years old.

Eleven years that started with me still believing, as a God-fearing Christian, that Jesus himself had orchestrated our marriage and I felt that in my delusional bones from the day we started dating.

Now, I’m 33 and I guess I could still believe that some sort of universal force could have fated our marriage for some cosmic lesson in our personal evolutions, but that would also have to mean that the Universe or God or Love or whatever you wanted to call it had planned for me to end up in a controlling, emotionally abusive, and neglectful marriage and to believe for so long that it was just how love is.

So maybe, yes maybe, it was all a part of some divine plan but maybe I just willed it to be so through the sheer wanting for it to work out and maybe our childhood trauma really just does repeat itself until we consciously break the cycle.

We can’t predict the future.

We can’t play God.

We can’t control the outcomes.

All we can do is surrender to what the present moment is actually asking of us RIGHT NOW.

Later that evening, Ted took two stems from a bouquet of flowers I had given him and he placed them in a little bud vase on an altar in his home (now our home) and he told me it could be our offering, an offering of impermanence.

He shared with me some of his beliefs, rooted in Buddhism, about impermanence. It is the reality of all things. Everything that exists all around us in the natural world is impermanent.

Things come and things go.

We come and we go.

It might be painful but that doesn’t make it wrong.

It is so human to want the things we love to be forever and to experience heartache when we are faced with endings.

The solution here is not to fight or attempt to change these feelings. — Our humanity relies on us moving through them, experiencing them and hopefully, learning and growing from them.

My fear, that night, was that I would fall in love with Ted and that I would one day have to say goodbye to him.

But the truth is that even if we stay together, in love and at each other’s sides until the day that one of us dies, I will still have to say goodbye to him one day.

Pain is the price we pay for love.

Transience gives context to our humanity.

I am so happy that two and a half years and counting on, Ted and I are still at each other’s sides, building a home together, raising a little puppy together, bringing each other warmth, support and comfort every day.

But one thing I couldn’t have predicted or prepared for when my marriage ended was it was only the first in a sequence of letting go and accepting the impermanence of many more relationships in my life — ones who I called and they called me “chosen family.”

I lost friends first over losing my religion.

Then there was another wave of loss when I came out as queer.

When I chose to divorce my ex-husband, there were many loved ones and friends who were not interested in my story or how I was feeling or in understanding all that I had endured. Many of them had no clue while it was happening, and after I left, they didn’t care to know. So I lost them too.

I lost close friends through a normal sort of drifting apart, as we entered different phases of life or moved away from one another.

But I also lost friends who were happy to be close to me when I was at my lowest, but when things turned around for me, they acted as if they resented me or as if they wanted me to do or be someone else.

I lost friends for speaking up about my needs and for sharing my feelings while simply just asking to be heard and for them to care. And I learned that they didn’t. So I lost them too.

I lost friends because it was easier for them to go silent and dark than for them to reach out.

I have sat with the grief of these losses. I have mourned and I am not too ashamed to admit I have lost hours wondering and trying to figure out “why.” What went wrong?

I have allowed the rejection to corrode away at my self-esteem and sense of self-worth, and I have tried and tried and tried to be better.

“Maybe if I’m the perfect friend they won’t leave me and I won’t lose them too.”

This is the reality of what loss after loss, hurt after hurt, really does to a person.

And it’s normal. It is so normal. I am not weird for feeling this way and if you have shared similar experiences and struggles, you are not alone.

In fact, I had intimate conversations of these losses with some of these friends to whom I was once close, and they shared that they too had experienced similar things.

And yet, our friendships still ended in the way they did.

We could throw our hands up, admit defeat, claim brokenness as our identity, say it’s the fault of fate and we are cursed to experience heartbreak after heartbreak. We could believe that we are singular in our misfortune.

But ultimately, that only causes more suffering.

OR, we could accept impermanence as the natural way of things.

Lately, I find myself noticing things about myself, about my life, ways that I’ve changed and have been shaped and molded by the people whom I’ve been close with, the people whom I’ve loved. It could be a phrase I find myself saying, remembering so-and-so who used to say it and I must have adopted it at some point along the way. I decorate my home with trinkets and pieces of decor I know so-and-so would love too. I laugh at jokes I know so-and-so would find funny. I look in the mirror and the way I did my hair today reminds me of so-and-so.

It seems these sorts of “coincidences” become even more noticeable when the person is no longer in our lives.

I take a piece of everyone I’ve ever loved with me, and whether they want to admit or not, they have a piece of me with them.

Our lives may move in such a way that through a series of unexpected consequences and events, we find ourselves in a place where we have to choose between honoring ourselves, keeping ourselves safe and holding on tight to the people in our lives, even the ones we thought would be there forever.

Because, suddenly, they can’t be anymore.

Attempting to erase them from our lives, from our history, to make them invisible, only serves to erase a part of ourselves. — the person we have become, shaped, formed and molded like a beautifully imperfect piece of art by everyone we’ve ever allowed ourselves to love and be loved by.

Forever may not be something we can always promise. The natural way of things may one day ask us to part in order that we can continue to grow and flourish and blossom into the person we are always becoming. A person who is, hopefully, able to trust themselves wholeheartedly.

It is painful to experience the sorrow of losing friends and family —people we loved, who we believed loved us.

It is a pain I still wrestle with.

Sometimes I can feel it, stored in my body like a tight ball.

It comes to the surface in waves.

I allow myself to feel it.

And when I notice something that reminds me of a love I once held dear, I thank myself and the universe for allowing me to experience that love and especially for allowing me to remain open and not become closed off when I had to let it go.

I honor the way that love shaped me and made me the person I am today, a person whom I love and cherish and continuously am excited to get to know…

I take a deep, big breath and I move forward.

with gratitude,

Christina