Originally read April 18, 2025
I started working on my piece hanging on the wall in July last year. At the time I was seeking a way to channel the intense and overwhelming grief that I was witnessing daily through the screen of my phone. I felt the pain of mothers wailing over their sons’ bodies, of grandfathers cradling the lifeless bodies of their granddaughters, of children starving, of men frantically reaching for their friends through the depths of collapsing mines, of swaths of forests burning and animals clinging to what little life they had left. I felt the grief in our complicity for the more than $17.9 billion TAXPAYER dollars in military funding just in the last 18 months to aid in committing genocide, to murder hundreds of thousands of elders, parents, children, men, women, infants with the equivalent of five Hiroshima bombs in one of the worlds most densely populated areas as well as the astronomical climate impact that goes along with it. I felt the grief of knowing that those dollars could have housed, fed, educated, and healed millions. Its a collective grief the depths of which could never be described in words. Then on December 17th my unbreakable mother died unexpectedly. The collective grief that was always lingering in my heart suddenly turned very personal.
The only way I felt capable of channeling my heartbreak, the ache that I felt so deeply with people across the globe, as well as the hole in my heart that felt like would never heal, longing for my mother’s presence, was through my work. With every cut of my scissors and every stitch of thread I wove my pain and grief and regret and collective heartbreak into the work.
What matters? When I think about what matters I think about the people of Sudan, the DRC, Palestine, all the people across the globe who have been bombed assaulted murdered starved, for the people fighting for liberation from extraction exploitation imperialism and genocide, for the land that is engulfed in flames, the ocean that is acidifying, the mass extinction of thousands of species we will never see again. I think about my family, friends, neighbors, my community, my garden, my dogs.
What matters? What matters to me is building community, is taking care of my family. What matters is laughing and finding joy, creativity, planting flowers and trees, baking for my family and friends, growing food to share, helping my neighbors.
What matters to me is raising children who recognize injustice, inequity, the sickness of moral apathy, who are empathetic and kind, who laugh and cry freely and spread joy wherever they go.
What matters to me is trying to birth a new world, one that resists mindless consumerism, one that rejects conformity and values every being on the planet for the unique and perfect creation they are, which includes not only humans and creatures but also the mountains, the rivers, and the wind.
What matters to me is connection: what matters to me is what matters to you and us and everyone and everything on this perfect planet. What matters is that amongst all the pain and grief and suffering we still experience joy and love and awe, that we rest and we resist and that we persevere in making this perfect place a better world for everyone.