The Map and the Language
There are practices we stumble into before we ever name them.
Long before Layered Stories had a title, long before The Soulful Journey had language, I found myself returning to the same small ritual again and again: listening inward, then responding with words and simple marks on the page. I wasn’t trying to “make art.” I was trying to stay present with what was quietly changing inside me.
Over time, I began to notice a rhythm in my own becoming.
There were seasons when everything in me wanted to grow quiet —
to rest, to listen,
to tell the truth in a softer voice.
There were seasons of noticing small lights, glimmers of what might be next.
There were seasons of being in-between, unsure, tender at the edges.
And there were seasons when something in me was ready to speak, to emerge, to take up a little more space in the world.
I didn’t experience these as a straight line. I circled. I lingered. I returned. But slowly, a pattern revealed itself — not as a formula for growth, but as a way of understanding the inner seasons of becoming.
That pattern became the Arc — not as something to “move through,” but as a map I could use to orient myself when I felt lost in my own unfolding.
And art — simple, imperfect, intuitive art — became the language I used to walk that map.
Not art for display.
Art as listening.
Art as a way of staying in conversation with my own life.
Layered Stories grew from this lived practice.
It is not something I invented so much as something I learned to trust: that when we give ourselves a gentle rhythm of reflection and creative response, our inner life begins to speak more clearly. Not in answers. In presence. In small, honest revelations that gather over time.
This is the practice I return to when I feel unsure.
When I am standing at a threshold.
When I sense something is changing, but I don’t yet know how to name it.
It is the practice of walking with what is true — one layer at a time.
If you find yourself in a season of listening or becoming, you’re welcome to linger here. There are gentle ways to walk this path, and one of them is called Layered Stories.
