From Polluted Shores to Personal Healing
A little over a year ago, I flew to Texas to join a small group of women that I meet with every year for a mastermind weekend. If you’ve ever been to the Galveston area, you already know the waters and sand don’t look like a perfect postcard from Destin or St. Lucia, but on this particular trip everything looked murkier than usual. Tiny black particles littered the shores, leftovers from an oil spill in the Gulf. It was a sad sight, seeing the environmental damage right there in front of me.
Walking along that beach, feeling saddened and repulsed by all the grime, something inside me started shifting. I started to see my own life mirrored on the ugly remnants strewn along the shore. I started seeing something unexpectedly beautiful about those black particles. They were more than just pollution. In a way, the gulf was telling a story of what had happened to her. Like she had her own voice.
As my kids like to say, “it hit different” because, just like those recurring oil spills, I've had my fair share of tragedies and messes in my life. From growing up in a physically violent and emotionally abusive home to mistakes and challenges in adulthood, my life has had its own spills. These experiences have left their mark on the shores of my consciousness, manifesting as triggers, anxiety, bouts of depression, and all the other fun stuff that comes with complex PTSD.
Can you relate?
This made me think deeper about finding beauty and gratitude in this ongoing healing process in my life. Inspired by that dirty walk on the beach, I decided to bring that mess and beauty into my art process. This summer, I grabbed some paints and a hose and headed to my backyard. I wanted to capture the complex emotions—the mingling of grief and gratitude—on canvas.
The painting I ended up with does show those harsh, ugly spots. But if you look a bit longer, you’ll see the beauty that exists alongside the pain. It’s a picture of living in the tension between suffering and the growth and beauty that can emerge from it.
In my life, I’ve learned (SLOWLY) that it’s never been about just getting through the tough stuff—it’s about making something meaningful out of it. Living in color means embracing both the shadows and the sunlight, holding on to the good stuff without ignoring the bad.
We don’t just survive; we create beauty wherever we are and express ourselves fully without overshadowing others. It's not about arriving at a destination where all is well, but about continually finding our way through the complex waters of life, recognizing the beauty even in the ugly black shards—the challenges and scars that each of us carries.
Tell me, what do you see?
