This thesis for me is my message. It’s about all the things I can’t express any other way except through paint. It’s about hope, transformation, rebirth, and ultimately healing. No matter the path, the circumstance, or the inevitable fear that comes with it. It’s about facing those things inside of us that we might want to run from so we can overcome them and overcome them together. Which isn’t easy either. It’s a struggle and sometimes a daily one, to understand each other and trying to find that understanding can become a heavy thing where silence, space, time, and lies divides that which wasn’t divisive, that which was supposed to be pure. Acceptance isn’t something that happens overnight. It’s this thing that happens over many days and nights. When breakdowns become breakthroughs. When tears become healing to release all we don’t have words for. When the will to go on is stronger than anything else. Because we have this light inside of us that never leaves us, encourages us onward, and tells us to fight. Fight for that which is worth fighting for. Hope for what we can’t see and run towards that thing we’re not even sure is there. It’s through this process that we become someone we once weren’t and burn away all that won’t ever be the same. It’s through this process we become the person we couldn’t have become any other way.