I hit a milestone this month. 4 decades, to be exact. I’ve been telling people for months about how excited I was for this birthday – and I meant it. And it turned out to be the best damn birthday I’ve ever had. Most years I spend my birthday feeling very blah, full of feelings and moodiness. I think, in hindsight, it’s because most years my birthday has felt like an afterthought because it falls on the 3rd and, inevitably, coincides with everyone else’s holiday weekend plans for 4th of July. (Or, in my family, long holiday weekends meant my parents trying to knock out house projects, so my birthday…

Like pretty much any neighborhood in Ohio, we have lots of squirrels. They, for the most part, keep to themselves, but sometimes they steal food from our garden. It’s fine, really, because we plant a LOT of food and rather than get annoyed by nature nature-ing, I consider it the cost of living on this planet alongside our furry feral friends. When I moved my desk setup in the home office to face the back window, I knew it would likely inspire me to do some drawings. I assumed I’d see butterflies on flowers, or maybe some unique birds that happened to be migrating through the area. Perhaps I’d come…

Well, I did it. I bought myself a large sketchbook – larger than I’ve ever attempted – and put pencil to paper to try to draw something bigger and with more of a full “scene” to it. And, well, it’s huge. It felt overly intimidating at first, but once I got into it it got easier. This mouse is about 10″ tall, in all, which feels ginormous. And then, because I figured what’s the worst that could happen, I took watercolor to the paper. Granted, this is mixed media paper, so it’s not exactly great for watercolors. But I also didn’t totally care because this is all experimentation, anyway, and…

I ventured north with a friend to the Kingwood Center Gardens to see their early spring blooms and orchids in the greenhouses on Monday, which was lovely. Snowdrops, some early daffodils, hellebores, and a few other early bloomers were all putting on a show, their colors bright against the dull brown of the earth. Cardinals were flitting to and fro, stunning sapphire peacocks roamed the yard, and ducks swam in the small pond while small children fed quarters into the corn dispenser to haphazardly throw at them. 70 degrees and sunny. Spring, if not here officially, is nearby. We both packed our sketchbooks in case we wanted to sit and…

I want the rain to wash away the dirt and grime of my soul the way it washes the leaf in my garden. I want to stand and sway in the rain, letting the earth cleanse me of all that weighs me down, letting each drip drip drop fall away from me and puddle at my feet. Let my broken and dead branches be pruned in the wind, allowing the weight of those things I have held onto for too long be finally set down so that I might grow and bloom in new ways. I want to raise my arms to that gray stormy sky and be free. Free…

I can’t remember a time when I haven’t suffered from some form of depression and anxiety. I’ve always felt everything intensely. My highs are really high, and my lows are dangerously low. I love and give of myself intensely. I feel everything so intensely that sometimes my husband jokes that I have no feelings when we watch a sad movie and I’m not crying, because I’ve spent years trying to not be intense. Elementary school was rough. Middle school was even worse. High school is when the self-harm thoughts began. That stone wall I built into my personality was my attempt to cope and protect myself from the world. I’ve…