Emerging from the Cocoon (Covered in Paint, Teeth Gritted)

Winter always tricks me into thinking I’ve disappeared.

Not dead — just buried under layers of waiting. Waiting for heat. Waiting for time. Waiting for my nervous system to stop buzzing long enough to remember I have hands, and those hands make things that matter.

For months I’ve been in a cocoon phase. Not the Instagram kind. Not the “soft healing journey” kind. The cramped, itchy, half-feral kind. The kind where the studio is a dining room table that still has crumbs on it. The kind where you only get thirty minutes every other day and you have to decide whether to make art or stare at the wall and recover from being alive.

And still — something has been shifting.

I’ve started painting again. Slowly. Awkwardly. Like stretching a limb that fell asleep years ago. Acrylic first, because oil asks for time and warmth and patience I don’t always have. Multiple tarot pieces moving at once because my brain doesn’t walk — it paces. The pentacles coming through first, grounded and stubborn, like they’re reminding me that growth is underground work.

Right now I’m working on the Ace of Pentacles — opportunity, money, new beginnings — which feels almost sarcastic and deeply necessary at the same time. A quiet promise sitting on a loud little canvas. My cat curled beside me like a small familiar, watching every brushstroke like it’s part ritual, part surveillance. Paint water on one side, coffee on the other, fur inevitably embedded somewhere in the texture.

High saturation pigments. Small surfaces. Loud little paintings that feel like they’re whispering secrets while screaming at the same time.

Not masterpieces. Not polished. Alive.

And honestly — the cocoon isn’t just about art.

I just had one of those explosive, soul-rattling arguments with my partner. The kind where your chest feels like it’s cracking open and you realize how tired you are of shrinking yourself to keep the peace. I’m fucking exhausted from being made to feel small. From folding my body and my voice and my needs into neat little shapes so someone else doesn’t feel comfortable.

It hit me hard — that same energy was seeping into my work. Painting smaller emotionally, not just physically. Holding back intensity. Editing my rage and my tenderness before they even hit the canvas.

No more.

The cocoon phase has teeth. It’s where you decide what parts of yourself are coming out alive and what parts get left behind as shed skin.

And here’s the truth: emerging isn’t graceful. It’s messy. It’s loud. It’s crying while you’re cleaning paintbrushes. It’s painting skulls and bodies that refuse to disappear. It’s brown bodies taking up sacred space. It’s softness that bites back. It’s refusing to apologize for existing in a world that constantly tells certain bodies they are not welcome, not beautiful, not powerful.

Every brushstroke right now feels like a small act of rebellion. Against silence. Against erasure. Against the voice that says “be smaller or be alone.”

I’m choosing to be louder instead.

Not fully out of the cocoon yet. Still damp-winged. Still learning how to exist in the open air again. But there’s movement. There’s color. There’s ritual in the act of showing up for thirty minutes and making something honest instead of something impressive.

If winter is about anything, it’s slow growth. Roots cracking stone where no one can see.

And I’m done pretending that growth is gentle. Sometimes it’s an argument that finally exposes a wound. Sometimes it’s anger that turns into paint. Sometimes it’s realizing your body — your loud, vulnerable, sacred body — deserves to take up the whole damn canvas.

The work is coming back.

So am I.