When time stood still during spring break of 2020, I didn’t know then that I would spend the next year at home with my kids as their virtual school facilitator. It was a constrained choice that I will never regret the privilege of being able to make for their well-being, but it took a toll on my mental health. I don’t know anyone who made it through that period unscathed.

The real connection we long for is the connection with ourselves; the connection with where we are here and now…When the connection with our own presence is broken everything just starts to feel empty.

***—Jeff Foster***

**The first day of school began remotely in our playroom on August 17, 2020.**

The school district kept extending the return to in-person learning and had a feeling it would be for the entire semester. Virtual learning resumed after the holidays on January 5, 2021, with in-person learning scheduled to resume on January 19.

2021

Winter

I turned 40 on February 9, and we had a catastrophic ice storm on Valentine's Day that kept us indoors for five full days. Even though we were used to being at home, the break from having to manage virtual school rekindled the desire to draw and document such a rare event. The Deep South has memorable snow days, but I couldn't recall ever seeing the roads socked out or being stuck indoors for five days.

In a city with an ongoing water crisis, I knew we couldn't escape a thaw without water woes. The district announced a partial return for some schools on March 1, but we remained virtual until one week after Spring Break.

We took our first post-covid trip to Bentonville, AR, with friends to see the North Forest Lights at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, for Spring Break.

I visited Crystal Bridges by myself and experienced a flood of emotions.

Art museums feel like a sanctuary. After an extended period of isolation, it almost felt like my first time walking into The Met as a teen. I recalled memorable museum visits and the past versions of myself. I felt like a failure. My self-worth was tied to productivity as a metric, and if given the chance to start fresh at that moment, I had no clue what I wanted. I knew I wanted change but was unable to articulate why or how.

I knew I was processing a lot of trauma in this moment and reeled over the trauma I overcame after losing my Mom to suicide when I was 21. It was the defining moment that formed me into the artist I am today and placed me on a journey that made me so resilient. I assumed the elasticity would help me through this, but in March of 2021, I felt trapped under a wet blanket. My identity went through some shape-shifting during motherhood, but this felt gargantuan. Was this a midlife crisis? Was it surviving a global pandemic? Both?

Signs of a Midlife Crisis in Women

Depression, reflection on deep questions or preoccupations with existential concerns, sleep problems, weight changes, feeling apathetic, numb, or generally ‘blah’ about things in life, sense of loss, desiring significant change, extreme feelings of overwhelm, emotional volatility, pervasive feelings of unfulfillment or emptiness, nostalgia for the past, feeling trapped in your life…..

Spring

I started filling pages in a watercolor sketchbook daily. Most of it was observing our neighborhood blossom. Painting in my sketchbook was purely to explore and collect inspiration. The past few years were primarily focused on portrait commissions to provide reliable income, and it was rewarding to not struggle financially as a career artist. I realized how much emphasis I put into marketing myself as a creative business owner. It was reassuring to trust my instinct to know that the operating mode no longer served me and that I was starting a new chapter.

Summer

The extended period of isolation made me grateful to return to normal activities with friends. We joined our community pool and felt a sense of ease this summer. It reminded me of my childhood, spending every day at the YMCA pool, and inspired me to create a series of watercolors.

Reconnection

In July, I signed the kids up for a week long art camp in Ocean Springs, MS. We coordinated plans with friends that week and I spent the time while they were in art camp to recharge and rest. I started to feel a desire to reconnect with past versions of myself, to symbolically retrace steps and reach out to say, “You’re going to be okay, and you are going to meet some incredible people who will change your life forever.” To heal.

This is where my journey as an artist began.

I transferred to William Carey College on the Coast a few weeks after my Mom passed. I could see the water every day on my way to class and began to find magic. I graduated with a BFA in 2004 one year before Hurricane Katrina made landfall and changed the entire landscape of this area of the MS Gulf Coast. It is surreal to have memories of a place that profoundly changed me no longer resemble itself.

A few days after we returned home, I registered for a Visual Journaling retreat in the South of France in the summer of 2022. I took a leap of faith and decided to get specific on how I would spend the next year defining my goals and envisioning the best possible outcomes for my career path.