Mary Hunt 4/52
Painting 4 of 52 influential people, “and so they changed the world.”
Piece Name: Self Portrait 1
Style: No Pre Planning, No Color Theory, Graffiti, Compulsive Choices in the Moment. I love this style, I feel most myself when creating this way. So natural and healing.
Medium: Art Journal Page, Pencil, Alcohol Markers, Carandache (water soluble crayons)
I want to keep building communities, nurturing creativity, restoring beautiful things, and helping others live more authentically. But I also want to give myself the life I so passionately encourage others to create.
I want peace that doesn't require me to silence my needs. Love that doesn't ask me to become smaller. A life that feels as true and beautiful on the inside as the things I create on the outside.
I am valuable. I am capable. And I deserve to stop treating my own happiness as something that can wait.
Maybe the most important thing I will ever restore isn't a forgotten object or a neglected space. Maybe it's my relationship with myself.
I cannot spend my life teaching people that they are allowed to live authentically while refusing myself the same freedom.
So this is where my next chapter begins. Not with the promise that I won't be afraid, but with the decision to stop letting fear determine the life I live.
I will keep my heart open, but I will no longer abandon myself to prove that it is.
I will make room for what is true, release what I cannot make whole, and trust that the life waiting on the other side of honesty is worth the courage it takes to reach it.
Perhaps changing the world begins with the courage to change our own. And perhaps, this time, the person I am here to help is me.
October 11, 2026
If you know me, you probably have a lot of good things to say about me. You might talk about the things I create, the communities I build, or the way I seem to find beauty and possibility in unexpected places.
What you might not see is the quiet work happening underneath it all.
I know I have something meaningful to offer the world. I don't need attention or recognition. I just want to help people, create spaces where they can grow, and leave the world a little more beautiful than I found it.
I am proud of the things I am building. But lately, I've had to confront an uncomfortable truth: sometimes, I get so busy creating beautiful things for the world that I neglect the parts of my own life that need attention.
I have spent years learning how to restore what others might discard, finding potential in forgotten things, and creating something meaningful from what already exists. Yet I am still learning how to do that for myself.
As a child, when I had a loose tooth, I would let it hang by a thread rather than pull it out. I wanted it to fall out on its own. I was afraid of the unknown pain, even though holding on hurt, too.
I think I've done the same thing in my life. Held on to things that were unraveling, hoping that if I loved enough, tried hard enough, or waited long enough, I could avoid the pain of letting go.
I've always longed for a deep connection. I wanted to find my person, someone with whom I could finally feel understood and at home. And sometimes, in my pursuit of that connection, I accepted fragments of love when what I wanted was something whole. I confused holding on with devotion and being chosen with being loved.
A therapist once told me that I could have a prince if I released the dragon from my basement. I used to think the dragon was someone I needed to let go of to make room for someone better.
I see it differently now. Perhaps the dragon is the collection of fears, old beliefs, and familiar patterns I've carried with me. Perhaps the prince is not another person coming to save me, but the possibility of a life in which I no longer need saving.
Today, I am learning that I can love people without abandoning myself. I can have compassion without taking responsibility for everything. I can honor what something once meant to me and still acknowledge when it is no longer right for me.
I don't have everything figured out. There are difficult decisions, practical realities, and unknowns ahead. But I am beginning to understand that fear doesn't have to make my decisions for me.