Journey Unfiltered
The lanai is quiet. Afternoon sunlight turns dust into gold specks that float in the air. I sit with the website open, thinking about all the times I rebuilt it, hoping it might finally be ready for the world. I once believed structure—plans, schedules, goals—would save me, providing armor against chaos and the burden of home, children, and a husband who disappeared into other nights. But planning only delayed the truth: the work must leap into the world before I am ready.
Journey Unfiltered. The title has stayed with me since my mid-twenties. Then, the house was worn, I was alone, and the children drifted between sleep and imaginary worlds. The baby slept quietly while the older children whispered, tossed toys, and built temporary universes. I was young, bearing responsibility, weighed by both routine and the knowledge that my husband’s life was elsewhere—in cards, bars, and other people’s homes.
I clung to order and structure for the sake of the children, so after every family dinner we would walk, bathe, dress them, and read stories. It was a rhythm that felt sacred to me. Then he would leave for a “quick game of cards,” though the hours stretched, and he returned loud, smelling of alcohol, oblivious to the quiet chaos he left behind. In his absence, I would step out onto the front porch, cigarette in hand, letting the smoke curl upward into the indifferent night. The stars and sky offered no judgment, only a vast silence to witness my exhaustion and my rage. In that fragile quiet, I wrote and painted, letting my anger and loneliness spill onto pages and canvases, desperate to exist in some unfiltered form, even as the world refused to see me. The children slept—or pretended to—but I could feel the tremors of their energy, the echo of whispered games, the way their small lives carried on while mine hovered in tension, tethered to routine and an unspoken longing for recognition.
Journey Unfiltered was born of that desperation. I wanted layers: writing, photographs, paintings, slivers of thought and feeling intertwined. I wanted to capture life’s fluctuations, the rise and fall of moods, the ways survival and collapse intertwined. I wanted to be honest, to be seen, even if it was only by myself. It was a young woman’s act of rebellion: to document, to confess, to survive the stigma of being uneducated, unpolished, and emotionally exposed in a world that punished vulnerability. It was a way to anchor myself while life around me shifted and shook, refusing to wait for my equilibrium to return.
I remember those nights vividly. The click of a light switch, floorboards creaking as I moved, children breathing in their beds, unaware of my inner storm. Each journal entry and each canvas was an anchor, helping me navigate uncertainty. I was obsessed with my journals combining text and images: layered narratives bringing sense to chaos. I wanted to do the same, to examine my life honestly and unapologetically.
And yet, even as I created, I was afraid. Afraid that the world would judge me. That my story (messy, broken, painful) would not be enough. That I myself would not be enough. And still, I wrote. I painted. I photographed. I let the work unfold without waiting for permission or readiness. That is what made it real. That is what made it unfiltered.
Fast forward to today. I am no longer that young woman. The project that began as Journey Unfiltered has evolved, twisted, expanded, and deepened. It is now I am. I am. I am. The same heartbeat, the same impulse to bear witness to life, but the voice is different. Older. Wiser. Seasoned by decades of living fully, painfully, and with intention. The crone sits in place of the young woman, her hands steady, her mind centered, her heart tempered. I can look back now with compassion at that raw, searching version of myself: the one who carried so much, the one who survived nights alone, the one who wrote on the concrete porch steps under the indifferent stars.
The younger me was all tension, a body tight with worry, a mind spinning between despair and hope, longing for recognition in a world that often dismissed her. The present me carries the same truths, but in a different way. I am calmer, more deliberate. I understand the patterns. I can name the chaos and the survival strategies, the coping and the mistakes, and see them not as failures but as markers of life lived with fierce persistence. I can hold both the rawness and the reflection in one frame.
Journey Unfiltered was a survival mechanism. I needed it to breathe. I needed it to exist outside the ordinary, mundane acts of cleaning house, raising children, and tolerating absence. I needed it to be the place where I could scream silently into the night, where the stars could witness the fear and the hope and the stubborn insistence that I mattered. That insistence was the seed. That seed is what has grown into I am. I am. I am.
The crone who writes now understands the young woman, honors her. I am the same person, in essence, but the layers of experience have transformed me. Education, lived knowledge, therapy, reflection, and the very act of returning to the work again and again have tempered anxiety into discipline, chaos into focus, and desperation into clarity. The work that once served only as a lifeline has become a map. A way to navigate not only my interior landscape but to offer insight, understanding, and resonance to others. Or at least that is what I hope.
I remember the porch, the stars, the cigarette smoke curling into the night. I remember the weight of responsibility, the ache of carrying so much while the world seemed indifferent. Evenings alone with my mind and art brought quiet intensity, trying to survive and make sense of life. Without that young woman’s frantic energy and searching impulse, there would be no crone, no calm, no creation.
Yet the project’s heart remains unchanged. Journey Unfiltered and I am. I am. I Am. both express the same truth: a life examined, honored, lived in all its terror, grace, and absurdity. The evolution is expansion, not rejection; a recognition that the impulse to bear witness to oneself is timeless and unbroken.
The work is still confessional, still raw, still honest. It has only learned to breathe differently. Where once I wrote in desperation, now I write with intention. Where once I clutched at fragments of life, now I hold them deliberately, letting each word, image, and reflection serve a purpose. The young woman who smoked on the porch steps under the stars would not recognize the crone fully, but she would see the roots of her own courage, her own refusal to vanish into silence. That is what I carry forward: the refusal to vanish. The insistence on witnessing. The act of creating is proof of life.
The night falls slowly outside the lanai. Dust drifts in golden streams through the sunlight, now fading. I breathe. I look back with compassion. I look forward with clarity. Journey Unfiltered was never abandoned; it was merely the first chapter. I am. I am. I Am. is the continuation, the evolution, the reflection, the expansion of that original voice. And both are necessary. Both are me. Both are witnesses. Both are survival. Both are proof.
And in that, I finally rest.
