There are some nights when sleep doesnβt come easy β when anger, grief, and frustration toss and turn alongside you. An invisible weight. During one of those nights, Pledge to emerged.
Grew in a family shadowed by alcoholism β two sisters, generations deep. A year before creating this piece, one of their lives ended in a haze of alcohol and pills.
Grief has a way of pulling us into choices we might not otherwise make. It blurs what you once knew clearly. In mourning her β and the childhood we lost together β I made choices that deepened old wounds. Opened my heart to someone battling the same demons I thought I had outgrown, missing the warning signs I once knew by heart.
Years of vigilance crumbled under the weight of loss.
That night, lying awake and furious β at the life I came from, at the life I found myself tangled in β the vision for Pledge To appeared. I got up, went downstairs to my studio, and painted through the storm. The process was intuitive, messy and raw.
Pledge To became more than a reflection on alcoholism.
It became a symbol of every habit, every substance, every escape we reach for when we cannot bear to feel.
The quiet invitation woven into the piece:
Be brave enough to put down the avoidance β and feel.
Hope this piece offers a crack of light:
A way to see addiction not just as a personal battle, but a collective one.
A reminder of how trauma echoes across generations.
How childhood wounds write adult patterns.
And how healing demands radical courage β especially in a society that teaches us the opposite.
Growth begins when we choose to feel.
When we allow ourselves to move through the past, live fully in the present, and reshape the future.
Without it, we stay stuck β unable to truly touch joy, excitement, hope.
Without it, our roots remain tangled in a past we were always meant to grow beyond.
