Gratitude Healing Arts

05/26/2026

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05/23/2026

Healing Art!

05/17/2026

Simone Biles says put mental health first — not as a reward for success, but as the foundation of it.
Her exact words: ""Put mental health first. Because if you don't, you are not going to succeed as much as you want to.""
She didn't say this as someone who couldn't handle the pressure. She said it as the most decorated gymnast in American history — someone who understands elite performance more completely than almost anyone alive — after choosing to step back at the Olympics when her mind and body told her to.
That decision was not weakness. It was evidence-based self-knowledge. It was a champion understanding that the foundation matters more than the performance built on top of it.
Mental Health Awareness Month is the calendar reminder. The real question is whether you're treating your mental health as a priority on the other eleven months too — or whether you're grinding through and calling it strength.
Your mind is not a bonus feature. It's the infrastructure. Everything else you want to build goes on top of it
Check in today. One step. That's the ask.

05/16/2026

Healing Art

In 1992, Garth Brooks was the biggest country star in the world when he released "We Shall Be Free," a song with the lyric: "When we're free to love anyone we choose."

Country radio panicked. Stations refused to play it. The song stalled at #12, his first single to miss the country Top 10. And Garth refused to back down.

He said the line on the image in a 1999 interview with George magazine, at the height of his commercial peak, when he could have easily ducked the question.

When he opened a bar in Nashville in 2023, he made it clear that transphobic customers were not welcome.

05/15/2026

Mexican surfer Patty Ornelas competes in a traditional huipil — turning every wave into a statement about belonging.*Patty Ornelas is a surfer from Guerrero, Mexico. She surfs in a traditional huipil — the embroidered garment worn by Indigenous women across Mexico and Central America for centuries — rather than the standard swimwear that defines surf culture globally. The choice is not accidental or incidental. It is the entire point.Professional surfing has developed a distinct aesthetic and cultural identity that reflects the demographics that have historically defined and funded it. Indigenous Mexican women are not represented in that identity in any visible way. Patty Ornelas entering the water in traditional clothing is a physical argument that this should change — that Indigenous identity and modern athletic pursuit are not mutually exclusive, that culture does not have to be set aside to compete, and that a sport claiming to be about freedom and individual expression should be able to hold space for the full range of what human expression looks like.The ocean doesn't require her to choose between who she is and what she does. She has chosen to make that fact visible in a sport where it would otherwise remain invisible.You don't have to shed your roots to chase your passion. You can lead with them and let everyone else adjust. Patty Ornelas is demonstrating this with every wave she catches, in a garment that carries centuries of her people's identity.This is what representation actually looks like.

05/06/2026

Healing art! ❤️

05/02/2026

Healing Art

The Banksy statue that just went up in the middle of the night in Waterloo Square in London is, of course, fantastic: the man in the suit so defiantly holding the flag that renders him blind, his trailing hand balled into a manly fist, his resolute stride is so purposeful, so confident, and of course we see that stride at the exact moment that reality is about to catch up with him, and hard. This art is exactly what we, in this moment, need.

You know what we don't need? To know who Banksy is. Seriously! To the reporters, editors, and management at Reuters: read the room, folks! We didn't want to know who Banksy is, we wanted TO WANT to know who Banksy is!

Here: I was in London, having just been interviewed on the BBC, and I was just standing there in that wonderful city, savoring the afternoon, and looking a some graffiti on a wall, wondering if it was a Banksy.

And (I kid you not) a door opened in the wall, and a guy in a cook's uniform walked out, lit a cigarette, saw me looking at the graffiti, and in heavily accented English (he sounded Middle Eastern to me) said "You are wondering is Banksy? Is not... BUT... around corner is REAL Banksy!" and he gestured to my right.

"Aw, thanks so much, man!" I said, and he gave me the universal head-tilt/pooched-lip that says "happy to help." I walked around the corner and saw the real one. I think it was one of the rats, I don't remember. I stood soaking it in for a minute.

As I came back past the guy, still smoking, I thanked him again, and then, jokingly, said "Wait a minute... are YOU Banksy?"

To my utter delight, he threw his head back, laughed heartily, and then suddenly, with mock severity, pointed at me, stared, and said "Maybe YOU are Banksy!!"

I treasure this memory. I love people. Left to our own devices, we do all right. So seriously, Reuters, leave us alone. I'm not going to read your article. Read the room and stop giving us what we don't need. We get enough of that from our governments.

Photo: Martin Pope, Getty Images.

05/02/2026

Healing Art 🫶🏻

04/11/2026

Healing art 🫶🏻

04/03/2026