Independence After Everything: Creating Beyond Expectation

A reflection on survival, grief, and the freedom to create art that doesn’t ask for permission.

These images were taken during my last 4th of July with my dad, in Washington, D.C. We visited museums, drank too-sweet cocktails, and watched fireworks together for the first—and last—time. I’m sharing them not to perform my grief, but to honor the joy we did have. This memory is part of what shaped “Ghosts in the Afterlife.”  It reminds me that I’ve survived—and I’m still creating.

The Fourth of July usually brings fireworks. This year, it brought silence. Not the celebratory kind—but the type that presses in from all sides.

No sales.
No messages.
No one reaching out except spam and bots.

And yet, in all that static, something inside me got louder.

I’ve survived cancer. I’ve lost friends, community, and my father. I’ve endured the weight of PTSD, the constraints of OCD, and the relentless flare of fibromyalgia. I’ve rebuilt a life and a practice after being gutted by betrayal and illness—and through all of it, I’ve created.

This Independence Day didn’t spark a celebration, but it did spark a shift.

I’m claiming independence from the expectations tied to being an “artist.”
From the shoulds. From the algorithms. From the noise.

That decision is reflected in the last piece I created for the Holding Pattern series.

It’s called "Ghosts in the Afterlife."
I created it after my father was aquamated.

This piece isn’t performative. It’s not decorative. It’s a quiet, aching farewell. A surrender. A witness.

It marks a closing and a beginning:
The end of a series that held my breath for years. The start of making work that doesn’t beg for permission to exist.

"Ghosts in the Afterlife" is abstract, but not empty. It carries the full weight of remembering him, not as a figure to grieve, but as someone I loved while he was still alive. Someone I forgave in real time. Someone whose memory now lives unfiltered, uncensored, and free.

I made this piece not for mass appeal but for resonance.
It’s for someone who understands what it means to live through loss with your whole body.
It’s for someone who knows the kind of grief that rewires your lungs and reshapes your days.

If that’s you, this piece might already be yours in spirit.
View “Ghosts in the Afterlife” – the final piece in the Holding Pattern series.