The blog went quiet almost a year ago.

Words felt too heavy to lift. My mind struggled with simple thoughts. Hypervigilance had worn my brain down to raw nerve endings. Even gentle intellectual effort felt like scraping metal against bone.

I stopped writing because I had to.

But I didn’t stop creating.

The Tree That Saved Me

Winter came. Both literal and metaphorical.

My hands found a paintbrush. The Tree of Life emerged on canvas like a fever dream. Twisted branches. Impossible colors bursting against storm clouds.

I painted it during the hardest season of my life.

My brain was stuck in survival mode. Constantly scanning for threats that existed only in my imagination. Burnout had settled into my bones like winter frost. Every day felt like moving through thick fog.

The frontal cortex—that rational, analytical part of my mind—was exhausted. Years of overuse. My work demands too much from this tired machinery.

But something magical happened when I picked up that brush.

Painting wasn’t thinking. It was feeling. The opposite of intellectual gymnastics that had drained me dry.

Work demanded logic and analysis. Painting asked only for presence. My job required constant decision-making and problem-solving. Art invited me to simply respond to what my hands and eyes were telling me.

The tree grew wild and unplanned. I pained a lot! Every single day.

Nearly 40 paintings since that first tree. Each one found its way onto the walls of my house.

This was a challenge at first. Where do you put 40 paintings? But it worked. My home became a gallery of my own healing. Every room tells part of the story. Kitchen walls hold morning light captured in brushstrokes. Hallways display mountain ranges that taught me patience. The bedroom houses quiet forest scenes that whisper of peace.

The frantic energy of the Tree of Life gradually gave way to something more grounded. More intentional.

As my mind healed, so did my art.

I fell in love with these mountains the way you fall in love with a person. Gradually, then completely. Their quiet dignity spoke to something in me that had grown weary of noise and urgency. They reminded me that strength doesn’t always roar. Sometimes it simply endures.

I went there looking for peace. The same peace I was trying to capture on canvas.

Where the tree had been explosive and chaotic, the mountains taught me restraint. Where bright circus colors had once demanded attention, subtle earth tones now whispered their stories.

I didn’t know this when I first picked up that brush. I just knew that something in me needed to move color across white space. Needed to watch impossible trees grow from my fingertips. Needed to feel the satisfying resistance of bristles against canvas.

Now, nearly a year later, I’m ready to write again.

Sometimes you have to let your hands remember what your mind has forgotten. That creation is its own form of prayer. That beauty is its own form of medicine. That stepping away from the noise doesn’t mean stepping away from meaning.

It means stepping toward it.

Welcome back to the conversation. I’ve missed you. But I’m glad I took the time to remember who I am when I’m not trying to be anyone at all.