This self-portrait is about triumph over adversity. After navigating painful and traumatic challenges in life, I felt like a husk of the person I once was. I had freed myself from a dark, miserable place and faced a mountain of pain and grief. I found myself wondering, now what? Where do you go after everything falls apart? The answer was up. Sometimes the only way past a mountain of pain is to climb it, process it step by step, and view it from a different perspective.

At the peak of the mountain, I found a new way of looking at life, the world, and my moment in it. I will never be who I was before the trauma, but I am still me. Different, but certainly not less. No doubt, life will throw many more mountains my way, but when you climb a mountain once it proves that it can be done again. I hope that when people look at this painting, it helps remind them they are not alone and that they too can conquer their own mountains.