The tattoo artist asked if I was ready. I smiled, lied, and nodded my head. “Yes.”

The truth is that I don’t think I’ve felt ready for most of the things that have changed my life. It’s been a little over a year since I got my last big tattoo (my witch tattoo). I had plenty of opportunities to get another one, but nothing felt right. I told myself I would get a tattoo after finishing the first draft of my novel, yet even after typing those final words, I couldn’t bring myself to get one.

Then I read my draft for the first time. It wasn’t perfect. Far from it. But somewhere between the pages, I was reminded of something I had forgotten, how much magic was still inside of me, waiting patiently to be uncovered.

Hiding things, even from myself, is something I became very good at over the years. I’d wake up, pack all my different masks into my purse, and depending on who I was around, put on the version of myself I thought they wanted to see. Little by little, I tucked away parts of myself until I almost forgot they were there. My wants. My needs. My silliness. My dreams. My magic.

And then something happened a year and a half ago. A shoot of an “in another life” dream poked its way through the soil. Instead of deeming it a weed, I watered it. I started writing.

My dream of being a writer grew leaves as I explored essays and reflective writing. Then branches formed as I experimented with fiction, eventually growing into the tiny tight bud that became the first draft of my novel. At first, I thought I was learning storytelling. I was actually learning about myself.

As I stepped into a new version of myself, my inner gremlin, Greta, was right there to try and stop me. She wanted to protect me from disappointment, rejection, and getting my hopes too high. Life is fine as it is, she’d whisper. Why risk getting hurt?

But writing kept asking me to look deeper.

It helped me face parts of my life I had spent years avoiding. Things I thought I had buried. Things that still hurt. Like the fact that my mother has schizophrenia. Even writing that sentence makes me uncomfortable. For years, I avoided talking about it. I avoided thinking about it. I convinced myself that if I ignored it long enough, it wouldn’t affect me. But pretending something doesn’t exist doesn’t make it disappear. Writing forced me to sit with that reality and, for the first time, grieve the mother-daughter relationship I always wished I had.

The more I wrote, the more layers I uncovered. Not just the painful ones, but the joyful ones too. The strong and resilient parts of me. The curious parts. The creative parts. The parts that love horror novels, movies, gardening, dancing, wrestling, and being silly. The one who craves adventure. The one who is sometimes scared to show all parts of herself but knows that once she does, it will be freeing. The one who is committed to opening, layer by layer, even when it’s uncomfortable.

I’m still just a tight bud. But for the first time in my life, I’m not afraid of what’s waiting underneath the petals. And I know that with time, patience, and a little grit, I will continue to unfold into all the layers of myself.

Maybe that’s the magic. Not becoming someone new, but uncovering who was there all along.

I wanted a reminder of that.

A peony tattoo.

The Dark Petal

Peony Tattoo