A few years ago, darkness filled me from the inside out, after a series of life events that became too much. It tore me up and away from who I was, until I drifted like a fragile aspen leaf—empty and directionless—toward the ground to decay. I became a stranger in my own body and my own life, and I didn’t like the new me.

My once-safe world turned into a frightening storm, tearing everything loose and scattering it to places it didn’t belong. I was like a child left alone in a big city with no adult hand to hold. The faces were unfamiliar. The smiles were fake. The streets felt narrower. The buildings loomed higher. The map no longer made sense. Everything became blurry. The colors faded. Sounds seemed farther away, as if my ears were filled with water.

I couldn’t get out of bed in the morning. I isolated myself, too afraid to even go to the store for fear of running into someone. I was drained of energy, and even the things that once gave me the most joy gave me nothing. Only a deep abyss of darkness. I lost the music within me—and the art—and with that, I lost my confidence. What had once been an endless well had turned into a dried-up desert.

That thing inside me that constantly stirs and wants to be let out—needs to be let out—that thing so deeply rooted in me, that I need to breathe, became like a balloon with a pinprick, slowly deflating, left limp and shapeless on the ground.

“The Native Girl” is about rising again.
About finding the strength to stand in the dark, accepting the pain to find peace.
The courage to fight through, to pick up all the pieces and glue them back into a new version of oneself—not returning to who you were, but discovering a deeper, truer version of yourself, filled with so much more than before.

As I worked on the drawing, I realized that the Native Girl was me.
After the dust settled from the inner battle, I could lean into myself and feel more whole.