Have you ever had a painting wait for you?
Not just hanging there in a museum or on your computer screen,
but holding its breath,
quietly biding its time
until you are tender enough to understand what it’s been trying to say?
For me, that painting was Frida Kahlo’s The Love Embrace of the Universe, the Earth (Mexico), Myself, Diego, and Señor Xolotl.
I had planned to bring it into my Art Church session in June. It didn’t feel right.
I skipped July entirely.
It wasn’t until August—a month when I was swaying dangerously in every breeze, like a tree without roots—that I pulled it up on my screen and let a group of soulful, insightful people help me see it.
There she was.
Frida, held by the earth, who is held by the universe.
Her dog at her side.
Roots dangling.
Those roots wouldn’t let me go.
They looked exactly like I felt: untethered, unsteady, searching for soil.
Three days later, I was on a six-day river trip with a circle of women.
Our very first activity? A meditation imagining roots growing from our feet, winding deep into the earth.
The painting had named the wound.
The river gave me the cure.
One year later, everything about that August feels different.
My connection to Spirit is no longer a maybe—it’s a knowing.
The painting’s embrace is not just something I see—it’s something I feel in my body.
I can still picture those roots, not dangling anymore, but anchored.
And I can still feel the river’s current, carrying me but also holding me steady.
The same painting. The same river.
But a different me.
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