Ink and Healing: Rediscovering My Creative Spark Along the West Coast

Here is one of the inspiration tattoos I hope to get as I travel the West Coast and find my way back to myself.

For the last six years, I’ve been learning what it means to rebuild a life after it’s been broken open. I’ve walked through the losses of my mother, my father and Steve—three pillars of my world gone far too close together. I’ve faced heart failure and the long, uneven climb through therapy that taught me how to stay, how to breathe, and how to piece myself back together with gentleness instead of shame.

Grief reshaped every corner of my life, and for a long time, it took away even the things that once gave me joy. I couldn’t pick up my camera the way I used to; it felt like grief had drained the color from that part of my world. But this journey is about reclaiming all of that—about letting photography become part of my healing again. Each tattoo on this trip is a step toward rediscovering the creative spark I lost.

This next chapter—this trip through Alaska, down the Pacific coast to Seattle, Portland and San Francisco—isn’t just travel. It’s a pilgrimage. It’s me letting the world carve meaning back into the places that were hollowed out. It’s a journey of reclaiming my story, one city and one breath at a time.

And along the way, I want to mark the moments that change me. Ink as memory. Ink as healing. Ink as a promise.

One of the pieces I hope to get is a bold black wristband—simple, grounding—starting the delineation of my forearm work. Rising from that band, three redwoods of different heights: guardians, storytellers, reminders that even towering things begin as something small. Maybe a camera behind them, with a lens shaped like the moon, tying together the night skies I’ve chased and the way photography kept me alive when grief tried to silence me.

Each tattoo on this trip will become a chapter of its own. A living memoir. A testament that even after years of loss and the terror of almost dying, I’m still here. Still growing. Still willing to become someone new.

If you’re an artist in Alaska, Seattle, Portland or San Francisco, and this story speaks to you—if the idea of helping someone mark a return to themselves stirs something in your chest—I’d be honored to connect.

This journey is about healing, rediscovery and art that becomes part of the soul. Maybe you’ll help write the next line.

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