THE INSPIRATION

Meaning: Knowledge as Care
Theme: Inheritance, Empathy, and Becoming
Palette: parchment, warm walnut, muted navy, sage, linen

Personal Mythos:
This piece is the quiet inhale before the question.
The kitchen table where curiosity was holy.
It’s the place where my mother sat, book in hand, notebook beside her, pencil sharp like her wit.
She didn’t just teach — she invited.
She didn’t just read — she searched.
And I, child of her mind and her mercy, followed.
This image is my heart, folded around a book.
It is not about intellect.
It is about inheritance.
The passing down of eyes that stay open, even when the world wants them shut.
It is about a woman who used words to build both walls and windows.
A woman who believed the sacred was found in the footnotes.
In the worn spine.
In the question you dared to ask.

A woman sits in quiet light, clutching a worn book against her chest. Her head is bowed — not in shame or sorrow, but in reverence. This isn’t just a book. It’s a key. A map. A memory pressed between pages.

This piece is for the mothers who taught us not what to think, but how to think. Who filled the air with stories and let us ask “why?” five hundred times without flinching. It’s for the women who handed us magnifying glasses and field guides and said, “Let’s find out together.”

It’s about my mother — who taught me at the kitchen table, with butterfly larvae on the counter. Who loved clarity, growth, and the pursuit of truth, even when it was messy. Who believed that writing was a way to shape the world, and that curiosity was sacred.

It’s not about information. It’s about transformation.
A nod to her non-fiction soul. Her journalistic fire. Her gentle, fierce intellect. A portrait of what she passed down to me: a reverence for words, for wonder, for walking the path of questions.

Books, to me, are portals into other minds, other lives — and she was the one who handed me the key. Every time I create, I carry that legacy.

 If This Piece Could Speak...
“She handed me the world, one word at a time.
She showed me that love is the patient answering of questions.
She told me that stories are how we survive, and how we return to ourselves.
I hold this book to my chest because it is her. It is me. It is the space between us.”

Little Sacred Details to Consider:
Include her handwriting somewhere — maybe a faint signature or quote etched in like a ghost.
Hide a tiny butterfly motif somewhere in the linen background — for that cocoon-to-flight metaphor. 
Add thread lines in the background that feel like lines of thought, or lines of legacy.
Maybe the figure wears a ring of hers, or a bracelet, if it feels honest to include.