A few years ago, I was living outside Philadelphia with my husband and our pup, working in senior leadership at a marketing agency and heading toward the career I thought I was supposed to want. Then my health fell apart. Long COVID, POTS, Celiac, anemia, mold exposure, surgery, burnout, grief, one thing after another. I went from the woman who could push through anything, leading a team, to someone lying on the couch wondering who I’d become.

In the fall of 2022, alone at my kitchen table and looking for anything that might make life feel less over, I logged onto an online painting event. For the first time in months, I felt calm, curious, present, and not alone. That feeling cracked something open. I realized how many women are quietly grieving versions of themselves that nobody else even realized they’d lost.

So I built the thing I needed. Not another technique class. A studio that meets you in a fluctuating body, on a flare day, from the couch, and helps you find your way back to yourself one small painting at a time. I’m not teaching this from the outside. I built it because I needed it too.