“What are you grateful for in your artistic journey?”
Last week, in my morning pages group writing prompt stopped me in my tracks:
“What are you grateful for in your artistic journey?”
I am always grateful for the paths that my art has lead me down. I am grateful that pursuing a creative career has really taught me how much everything we do in our lives is art. Sometimes gratitude hasn’t come easy when so much of my life has been spent feeling “too much” or “not enough.” But as I sat with it, I realized my art is the heartbeat of my gratitude.
Creating art and becoming the artist I am was the catalyst for learning how to love myself as a whole, complicated, deeply feeling person. It cracked me open and invited me to scoop out all the parts I once thought were rotten, gross, or unlovable and to see that they weren’t ugly at all. They were just mine.
For most of my life, I thought I was ugly. I thought I was fat. I thought I was unlovable because I was “difficult.”
As an adult, I learned that I’m autistic and have ADHD and that so many of the things I believed were “wrong” with me were just how my brain works.
For years, I’d berate myself internally:
“You’re so lazy. You’re such a mess. Why can’t you just get off the couch and do something?”
It took me a long time to understand that what I was experiencing was executive dysfunction not failure. For most of my life, I thought everyone else felt the same way and was just better at dealing with it. But as I started to share my story, I realized how different my internal world is and that realization was mind-blowing.
My art has always given me permission to explore those hidden rooms inside myself.
It taught me how to be inside my body instead of hovering outside it, criticizing every inch. It gave me the courage to have conversations I never thought I could have about sex, about intimacy, about identity, about the parts of us we’re told to hide.
Art was the door that led me to study to become a sex and intimacy coach.
It made me brave enough to live and love openly in my kinky lifestyle.
It made me bare naked in every sense of the word and proud of it.
But it hasn’t all been easy.
Painting women’s bodies especially naked ones comes with a lot of noise.
At shows and pop-ups, I’ve had people yell in my face, tell me my art was inappropriate, or that I should be ashamed for “letting children see that.” I’ve been told my work was “too much.” Too raw. Too sexual. Too visible. Too fat.
But those moments have taught me how to stand firm in my message:
Bodies are just bodies.
They are worthy, sacred, messy, sensual, strong, and beautifully normal.
My art is a visual statement of that truth.
And through all the hard feedback, I’ve learned to examine how I talk about women’s bodies including my own to my community, to strangers, to my children. My art keeps reminding me that our bodies are not dirty. Our sexuality is not shameful. And love in all its forms is meant to be celebrated.
And honestly, I am so fucking grateful for this.
P.S. If you are interested in the group where we meet morning to journal and share wins every week day. You can check out Her Messy Bun here
XOXO,
Tiffany