On a Retreat — 2022

In 2022, I was a lost soul — grieving the loss of my first love while everyone else seemed to move forward with their lives. One night, a TikTok ad for a creative women’s retreat in Escalante, Utah, appeared on my feed. The account had barely any followers. It looked suspicious, maybe even fake. My parents were convinced it was a scam — and truthfully, part of me agreed. But another part of me, the quiet part that still believed in chance, decided to go anyway.

Freshly 21, I booked a flight to Las Vegas to meet ten strangers — women of all ages, each with their own reasons for being there. We carpooled through the desert into southern Utah, where we spent the next few days creating, reflecting, and simply existing together.

I remember sitting on the edge of a canyon, watercolor painting the landscape in front of us. It was fascinating — every one of our paintings looked entirely different, even though we were all looking at the same view. The artist sitting next to me, who had over 100K followers on Instagram, glanced at mine and said, “That is so cute. I would literally buy that.” Our aesthetics couldn’t have been further apart. I was the sun, she was the moon.

But in that moment, her words lit something in me — not ego, but recognition. I realized art doesn’t ask us to be the same; it asks us to see differently.