Sister ―

For your sake and mine, I wish we were meeting under different circumstances ― perhaps striking up a conversation in line at a coffee shop because I like your shoes or you notice my tattoo. Or a world in which you lend me a magazine on an airplane or we are invited to a game night by a mutual friend. Instead, we are part of a club that no one asks to join: the breast cancer club. I wish we weren’t sisters in this fight but we are.

My watercolor painting, seen below in postcard form, explores my personal identity as a young woman diagnosed with breast cancer at 27. It is an identity that must mix unexpected loss, determined hope, and solitary acceptance in order to survive. I was honored to lend the piece to Breast Cancer Research Foundation's Postcard Project in Grand Central Station.

Created in a remote cabin during a rainstorm, the natural fluidity of watercolor mimics that of the cancer coping process in an effort to convey the inner dialogue of uncertain movement. I chose the title luctus accumsan which is a Latin for "layers of grief"  -informally translated as "grief and favor" or "sorrow and acceptance" .