When I was a child, grown ups would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I would usually answer that I wanted to be an artist, and whenever I and my grandma would explore the mall near her home, I would admire the artists selling their work at pop up keosks with awe.

However, even at that young age, I distinctly remember sensing the doubt grown ups had about my dreams, as if they were thinking, "Poor girl doesn't know you can't make it in this world as an artist. She'll think of something realistic when she's older."

The thing with childhood dreams is, they never really go away. They change and evolve, and we try to shrink and morph them into sizes that will fit society's socially acceptable boxes. Yet still they remain, underneath the surface, and holding the pain of being slowly crushed by patriarchy and capitalism.

This is exactly what happened to my childhood dreams of becoming an artist. Even as a teenager, I would still envision owning an art gallery one day, surrounded by my work, contentedly living a joyful life of creativity. Yet by the time I graduated high school and had ingested all the "helpful" and "realistic" advice from those around me, I gave up on that dream. I had been told, and so I believed, that it was an unrealistic--even an irresponsible dream.

So I entered the 9-to-5 work force, my creative passions constantly trying to push their way through, and yet constantly being pushed down in the name of doing what a "responsible" adult does instead.

As much as I tried to "just do it", going to work gave me crippling anxiety and a debilitating sense of dread no matter what job I had. I constantly felt exhaustion, believing that something must be wrong with me. Every time I realized that I would have to do this for the rest of my life just to put a roof over my head, I would feel suffocated, hopeless, and trapped.

Then I had a daughter, adding more joy, but also more responsibilities to my life. Finding myself in an abusive relationship, I spent the first years of motherhood in a constant state of fight or flight, and once I finally escaped, my nervous system collapsed into even more exhaustion.

Determined to provide for my daughter, I tried one last time to work a full-time job. For one entire year, I woke up every day feeling sick from fatigue. I would spend hours at work in a complete shutdown, feeling dissociated from reality. Lights and sounds around the office made me nauseous, social interactions felt harder and harder to navigate as I had less energy to mask my struggles, and once home, I often experienced intense meltdowns.

It soon became apparent that, in addition to my previous diagnosis of ADHD, I also was autistic, and I finally got up the courage to take an extended sick leave from work in order to focus on my health.

It was later that year in 2025, that I decided I wasn't going back.

Instead, I would learn to reconnect with my inner child and the needs of my body and mind, finding a way to turn my creative passion for art into income that would support a life I could actually fall in love with. I would create a life with room for self-care and time to slow down, allowing me to show up as the mother my daughter deserved.

And now here I am, over two months after making that decision, typing this about section just two days (at the time of writing) before I officially launch my website.

I can't believe I've come this far.

The crazy thing is, the story has only just begun.

~ Rachel Lynn, Jan 2026