I don’t hate survivors. I hate that that's become the story we tell about breast cancer. October is almost here. This will be my fourth Breast Cancer Awareness Month since I was diagnosed, and every year I find myself a little more uncomfortable with the word awareness. Because what, exactly, are we aware of? Soon there will be pink ribbons and walks and football players wearing pink socks. There will be reminders about mammograms and early detection, photographs of women

I was thirteen when someone noticed. The summer before I started eighth grade, my family went on vacation. We were staying with family friends we hadn’t seen in a couple of years, and the wife’s reaction when she saw me was immediate. She asked my mother about my weight. My mother made light of it, calling it a “phase.” Her friend kept paying attention and noticed I wasn’t eating. She noticed my bathing suit sagging from my body when all of us kids went swimming that firs

My Dear Friend, Before I ever picked up a paintbrush, it was pens. I was obsessed with pens. In third grade, I had a pen pal at a neighboring school. We wrote to each other all year, back and forth, pages crossing between buildings like small, shy bridges. At the end of the year, we finally met. I remember standing there, holding all those words we had already shared, now suddenly attached to a real person. It felt like something in my imagination had taken shape. It wa

Hello my friend, Last week it hit me that this is my routine now. The band around my wrist and the question I can answer before they finish asking it. "What’s your name and birthday? How is your appetite ? Have you had a fever, cough or mouth sores ?..”Different nurse but the rhythm is the same. It comes out like a rap verse I already know, the kind people lean in for when someone hits every word from Eminem's "Lose Yourself" at Karaoke without missing a beat. I posted a ph

Dear Friend, This retreat began long before anyone packed a bag or boarded a flight. It started with a friendship. With art. With conversations about what it means to show up for each other in a real way. Over time, those conversations turned outward. What would it look like to create a space where other creative women could experience that same kind of connection? For a year and a half we planned it. Not just the schedule, but the feeling of the room. The kind of hon

My Dear Friend, Well, it’s a new year. It still feels strange to say 2026 out loud. I went down a YouTube rabbit hole recently trying to remember what year "Back to the Future" traveled to. October 2015. They jumped from 1985 to 2015. Flying cars, Hoverboards and video glasses. We are eleven years past the year that once felt impossibly futuristic. That made me laugh. Time feels different when your life is measured in scans and infusions. It’s been a couple of months s

My Dear Friend, All my life I’ve been told I’m different. Growing up, adults said I was "unique", other kids used the word, "different" or "odd". It was meant as a compliment from some but not always, and it didn’t feel like one. To me, it meant separation, that I didn’t quite belong where everyone else did. Sometimes, it wasn’t said kindly, it came with condescending eyes and tilted heads. "What are you?” As if a mixed race girl was some kind of anomaly in California?!

My Dearest Friend, This year marks ten years since I picked up a paintbrush and unknowingly started building a life out of color, chaos, and connection. Ten. Years. Picking up that brush—with zero expectations—sparked what would become the most surprising, wild, painful, magical, exhausting, and sacred thing I’ve ever done. Ten years of making art. Ten years of building a business that would go on to generate a million in print sales. Ten years of surviving a body tha