It’s a myth that time is a healer. More of a revealer, I’d say. Like a sculptor. It works daily. Sometimes minute by minute. To show what’s inside — what we’re really made of. And when I can think of it that way, it’s all manageable, even exciting, but sometimes though, that heavy tick of the chisel… 

My mother often worried that she wasn’t brave. I suppose it’s easier to see it in someone else. (An artist always has to stand back to get the full picture.) When I’d worry, or be afraid of something, she didn’t negate it. Didn’t even say don’t. I’d relay the situation and tell her that I was scared. “That’s just good common sense,” she’d say. We’d laugh out loud, dulling the swing of the chisel. 

It was Georgia O’Keeffe who said, “I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life — and I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing that I wanted to do.”

There was a push for a while for everyone to be fearless. I never bought in. Of course we’re going to be afraid. We’re going to be scared and we’re going to be happy. We’re going to feel it all. And it will shape us into something beautiful. And then with the words that my grandma passed on to my mother, who passed them on to me, I will say to myself and the world, “Isn’t that something!!!!”