This blog began as a way to share my desire to see the world in new ways, to explore what it would mean to intentionally look, meditate, and encounter life moment by moment … with curiosity. I started posting my photographs with a reflective title phrase. I soon added the occasional haiku, short poem, or quote that spoke to me in my exploration.

Later, I gradually shared my mixed-media mandalas. My interest in mandalas began when I added the experience of ovarian cancer to my life journey in June, 2014. I was searching for “spiritual impressions” that began in questions about faith, hope, and love – the wholeness always within me. Could these questions be investigated through creating art, on purpose, without judgment?

And in the place of now, I find myself beginning to shed my shell. I put up the shell to allow time to process the unknowable experience of the original cancer diagnosis and, ultimately, the recurrence diagnosed in August, 2016. I plan to write about my growing and changing understanding of faith and fear – hope and despair – light and darkness – and the love and grace that surrounds each of us at every moment that we stop to acknowledge it.

Peace and love to each who chose to enter this portal with me.

Art Journal entry from December 8, 2014