It may not always be seen, but it's there.

First off, a quick note that if you’re a paid member here you’re the reason that I’m going to be giving $1,000 to Project Night Night (a wonderful organization that helps unhoused children) and I adore you.

(And if you’re a free subscriber I love you just as much and your emotional support keeps me going. Thank you!)

So this last week I’ve still been working on my weird art project to explore the anxiety I’ve been feeling and I feel bad that I’m giving you these weird, dark images but I also know that so many of you deal with the same thing so maybe it’s okay. And it’s allowing me to sort of make friends with the darkness, if that makes sense?

This week’s drawing is odd because it started with a tiny doodle of a house in the country and seemed headed in a sweet sort of direction…

Until the woods loomed up around it. Part protection. Part threat.

But the woods looked so odd and I couldn't make them work.

I tried adding so many different patterns to them and I spent nights experimenting over and over, spending a ridiculous amount of time adding more and more textures and patterns but the more I added, the more I didn’t like it. And so instead of trying to fix it anymore I just drew a darker pattern over it. I drew over the trees that I’d drawn and redrawn and it sort of killed me to just cover up what I’d worked on so hard, but in the end, it became what I’d seen in my mind’s eye: The feeling of both safety and claustrophobia…of comfort and loneliness…the animalistic urge to stay cloistered away, hiding during my anxiety periods while also knowing that I was creating tall walls that kept the sunlight away.

When I look at the final drawing I know that most people can’t see all the work and struggle hidden behind the darkness, but I know it’s there. It may be hidden but I learned from it. Sometimes what looks like darkness is more complicated.

These woods are dark and deep. Stay close to me, my friend.

The light always comes.

Love, Jenny