AWAKE

This lotus was drawn from a photograph I took at a Buddhist monastery and library in India.

I had traveled throughout India and into the Himalayas, meditating with monks and yogis before continuing into Nepal and Bhutan. It was more than a journey. It became a pilgrimage, and the beginning of a deeper relationship with myself.

I photographed this lotus because, even then, it seemed to contain something I couldn’t yet put into words.

Years later, I understood.

The lotus had been teaching me long before I knew I was listening.

Without the mud, there would be no lotus.

The flower doesn’t rise in spite of the mud.

It rises because of it.

The same conditions that appear to bury us can become the very conditions from which wisdom, compassion, and strength emerge.

AWAKE is a reminder that our lives work much the same way. We don’t have to wait for perfect circumstances before becoming fully alive. Sometimes the deepest transformation begins exactly where we’d least choose to begin.

• A daily reminder that beauty often grows from the places we would rather avoid.

• An invitation to meet life with greater presence, patience, and curiosity.

• A drawing carried home from a pilgrimage, offered to anyone walking their own.

- 100% combed and ring-spun cotton (Heather colors contain polyester)
- Heather colors are 52% combed and ring-spun cotton, 48% polyester
- Black Heather is 90% combed and ring-spun cotton, 10% polyester