Choose Love. Fight for Love.

I woke up three times last night from dreams where I was making art that spoke my mind. Each time, I felt a bit frustrated—what I was creating hadn’t quite come together. Something was still undone. But then the next dream picked up where the last left off, as if something wiser than me was trying to get a message through.

It felt like a conversation I hadn’t started, but deeply needed to hear.

Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. The weekend was full of protest and powerful community energy. And by Sunday, I felt bone-tired—not just physically, but in that deep-down place where something inside you is trying to reorganize itself. To understand. To respond. To become something more.

I suspect my next piece of art will help sort that out.

I’m a doll-maker. A spirit doll-maker, to be precise. And that’s something I’ve hesitated to claim out loud, even though I’ve been making them for five years now.

But that’s changing.

Most of my life, I felt like I had to explain or defend who I was. I’d speak up, then shrink back. I’d fall in line. Try to be more palatable, more expected.

But in my mid-fifties, that shifted. That’s when I came back to my art.

Back to the quiet, insistent pull of making spirit dolls.

They’re never just dolls. They’re vessels. Each one holds the energy of whatever I’m working through—stitched, needled, knotted into form. They become keepers of truths too big or slippery for words. And yes, I believe they carry insight across time: past, present, and future. They speak.

The doll in the photo above is one of my first. I made her at the start of the pandemic, as a gift for a dear friend. The world felt like it was falling apart. We kept talking about how to stay in our hearts, how to choose love when everything felt broken.

So this little spirit showed up with a felted heart and a fierce, grounded stance.

Choose love. Fight for love.

She’s lived with my friend ever since. But last night, she came to me in a dream—her message pulsing in my chest when I woke up.

I don’t know exactly where this post is going. Maybe it’s just a reminder to listen. To your dreams. To your hands. To the energy in the world that’s asking something of you.

Maybe it’s a call to make something that carries a message.

Or maybe it’s simply this: art matters. Spirit matters. Love matters.

And sometimes, what we make helps us remember how to live.

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