I built May altars for Mother Mary with crepe paper and plastic flowers.

I wrote stories with magic little beings who I was warned by the nuns not to write about in case I would be confused as having my mother’s affliction.

I rode my bike for hours, back and forth and around our small Globeville to feel Spirit’s breath on my face. 

I would swim every summer day at the park pool to feel the silk flow over my body. 

I gathered rocks and stone, sparkly slips of mica, chips of rose quartz from my father’s graveled parking lot that served as my front yard.

 I watched the fire of Sun and the glow of Moon and burned to imagine being with them.

Today, I paint. 

It is my intention to bring beauty into the world. For that is how we heal. To recognize and honor beauty, even in the hard spaces and places in which we exist.

I am a ritualist. 

Each painting I enter as a portal. I hold the elements dear. Fire is touched to the canvas as a blessing.

Water from Magdalen’s cave sprinkles life upon it.

My breath transfers my being, becoming one with the flat.

And Earth from where I live and from the Poland of my ancestors becomes a part of the field on which I ask to be led into intention.

I open the directions and welcome those helping ancestors from past, present, and future, and from above and below and within to walk with me. 

And I paint. 

This is how I heal myself, and the world.

My preferred pronouns: she/her