Take a moment to close your eyes and conjure that feeling that comes over you when the first day of Autumn weather settles in. It brings clarity that feels like something out of a fairytale. Your body shivers in the cool breeze. Your sun kissed freckles can find comfort in the warmth of a fireplace as you sip your cinnamon latte.  This new season gives you a cozy spot to rest and rediscover yourself through your own eyes. There is a certain magic about Autumn, embrace it and create a home within your heart for such magic to grow. You choose where to pull your power from. Within is the perfect place to start your journey while the leaves change around you, leading the way.

Our souls radiate color. When we genuinely fuse all of our colors together we create the most beautiful connector of all. Love. In honor of Pride Month, I created a piece to capture the ever changing meaning of love along our journey. We will age, we will grow, and we will discover new parts of ourselves. Being queer is a beautiful identity far beyond sexuality and gender. How we choose to express the idea of love through the lens we identify with makes life more fulfilling for ourselves and those around us. Live, build community, support each other's journeys. Spread love,  kindness, and acceptance so that we can help more people come to a deeper understanding of love and how it exists in infinite forms.

This piece is a reminder that there are people who love and embrace you for exactly who you are. You belong in this world and deserve to spread your light in a way that feels meaningful to you. We are here to lift each other up. To learn how to live a deeper, more meaningful life by embracing nuances in the ways of life that those around us live. These details and differences make life colorful. As an ally or a part of the queer community, you are already able to see that beauty where others might never be able to. Having the ability to express yourself authentically is a gift from the Universe. Most people will never find the courage to live that fully. You make everything around you beautiful just by being you. Keep showing the world who you are, unapologetically.

The incandescent woman is full of strong emotions. Feeling like she’s melting as the world around her turns, she knows her power and the beauty of these strong emotions. She knows that it takes a strong vessel to hold and handle emotions in this capacity. To allow herself to feel everything in a world where everything hurts. 

Still,  she lets it in. Allows it to fill her with rage, anger, despair, inequality, unfairness, loss, fear, joy, love, excitement, depression, anxiety, confusion, hope. Creating her own light from the passion behind each emotion, she lights her own way through the dark. Each day she chooses to continue giving life her all. She gives every bit of creativity and energy she has, even when she is tired. She is such a force that she cannot help but to captivate others. She unknowingly provides guidance for those around her in dark times simply by existing. 

She makes others feel brave, and empowers them to feel with the same depth. She inspires them to believe that they too can be vulnerable. That they too, can allow themselves to feel the full depth of human emotion and navigate whatever darkness and fire each may bring. She is incandescent.

Called by the sun, comforted by the moon and stars, grounded in Earth, and guided by the seasons. She feels the cyclical nature of the physical world and relishes in the energies rooted to its core. To the very soul of mother nature. A slumbering hum intertwined with each element that interacts with her body. Earth, Water, Fire, Air. 

She feels deeply, and lives gently. She burns bright with a wild flare when something feels aligned with her truest nature. She feels a little like magic, because she embodies the connectedness that sews together the souls of Earth's creatures and breathing botanicals. She hears the willows weeping, the flora fawning over their neighbors vibrant colors. She feels the heat off the crest of ocean waves illuminated by the crystals of the sun. Dances with the salt of the sea and awakens to the scent of pine and snow in the winter. Her sensitivity to the world around her is not an easy gift to carry. It is a magic she held onto while others lost their sense along the way. 

Her energy flows through nature and nature flows through her in never ending waves. Breaking only to take a new breath and find her footing if she is shaken. She has a strong sense of home within as nature guides her outward journey. She finds beauty in places others cannot see. Places others do not take time to notice. She gives herself to the world in a way that few are able to, with a sacred feminine promise of flowing where the wild soul of the earth calls her.

This piece was inspired by a poem written by my beautiful sister. A poem about the internal conflict of holding back in fear of failing or making a mistake. Fear of what others might think of your choices. Feeling confined to a path that was decided for you. Feeling unable to express yourself the way you long to. Constantly curious about how it could be if you let all of those ideas, thoughts, and emotions out and let yourself grow into who you are meant to be. 

This woman represents what it would be like to just let go. To simply let the wild thoughts and wildflowers in your mind spill out. To be unashamed of making mistakes. In fact, a reminder to make as many mistakes as you possibly can. To forgive yourself if decisions or risks do not work out. To embrace the lessons that came with those decisions. That's what mistakes are for. The lessons they bring become part of your character while you grow into what is meant for you. 

To truly live is to make mistakes. To truly live is to listen to every whisper that calls to your soul. They call for a reason, and if you don’t,  you will always wonder. You have the power. You get to choose. You create yourself.

Rosemary symbolizes happiness, loyalty and remembrance. 

This piece is partially meant to be in honor of all of the forbidden loves that never had the chance to blossom and become what they were meant to be due to societies unaccepting nature. Whether it was a step in your journey or a love meant to last through a longer season of your life. You always deserved to explore these feelings with freedom 

Trying to suppress feelings between any two people is as unnatural as suffocating the blooms that bring so much beauty to this world. As unnatural as destroying forests and contaminating oceans. If we are shaming, guilting, or asking others to hide the affection and feelings they feel towards another or themselves, we are preventing yet another natural beauty this world has to offer. 

Love is often a complicated concept for people in any form, and the shallow minded are afraid to “complicate” the meaning further. Afraid to expand their limited vision of how much it could mean. Let these people live in fear, and love how and who you were born to love. 

Just in doing so, you inspire others to support all healthy forms of love with the same amount of respect as what feels familiar and comfortable to them.  If we accept others' autonomy to define and share what loving another person means to them, our world will fill with more color than we could ever imagine. 

Love how you were born to love.

The tree of life is a place of beauty in New Orleans. Many visit this spot for a bit of magic. 

The wise branches gnarled by hundreds of years of growth. Each branch, guided by the sun, radiates a message of how messy life can get. The roads wind and we often find ourselves at many crossroads along the way. If we look to nature in the moments we feel lost, she often offers the remedy we seek. The stillness we find in her beauty assures us that no matter the path we choose, there will be a beautiful story to unfold in the journey that follows. Of course, there will be different reasons to smile and fill us with passion depending on the path we take, but connectedness to who you are and the people you love will keep you steady.

Your life will be full of meaning no matter the course you choose. The twists and turns will only determine the whirling colors that quickly turn to memories and create a life worth living.

These men are free to express who they are and relish in the beauty they feel drawn to. The breath in between the stars silently infuses their souls with courage. To embrace their desires and live fiercely in a world where not everyone understands their beauty. They glow with a radiance gifted by a ray of sun fighting through a thunderous storm. With the dichotomy of the deep violet night and the orange sky aflame, burning for them, they are a breathtaking beacon of luminescence.