Still Healing

A contemplative weekend. Stuck in the middle of something. Feeling both the cracking and the growing at the same time — not one then the other, but simultaneous, tangled, hard to tell apart.

Crackle paste laid down first, heavy across the bottom — earth that has been through something. Burnt umber and olive settling into the texture like memory. Then copper metallic spray paint, woven through the whole piece — not loud, not announcing itself, just catching the light from certain angles like hope that shows up when you're not looking for it. Pink arriving unexpectedly through the middle, soft but insistent. A few ghost figures in the upper left — things that happened, still there, just quieter now.

The cracking isn't damage. It's texture. It's the record of what's been survived. And the copper underneath makes sure you see that it's still glowing, even through all of it.

Still Healing is for the woman who has been asked, more than once, when she'll be "over it." Who knows by now that healing doesn't have a finish line. That you can be cracking and growing in the same afternoon. That the work of becoming whole again is not linear, not quick, and not anyone else's business.

The word still carries two meanings. Both are true.