A six-year-old girl. A lake cabin. And the moment I learned to disappear.

I came home forever changed. Nobody noticed. Do you know that feeling?

Have You Ever Been Knocked Off Your Throne?

I painted this before I knew what I was painting.

I called her The Red Lady in Mourning. I didn’t understand her fully then. I do now.

I was six years old when it happened.

One minute I was the princess of the family — the adored baby girl, the one everyone fussed over. And then, in what felt like a single weekend, I was gone. Not just moved aside. Erased.

My sister had her first baby. The first grandchild. My mother, naturally, was all hands on deck. And since I wasn’t exactly useful in the labor and delivery department, I was sent to stay with my aunt and uncle at their lake cabin.

Sounds like an adventure, doesn’t it? A little girl. A lake. A weekend away.

It wasn’t.

My uncle did something that weekend that no child should ever experience. And I came home forever changed — smaller, quieter, careful in a way I hadn’t been before. I came home knowing, without anyone having to tell me, that being seen wasn’t safe anymore.

And nobody noticed.

All eyes were on the new baby. The new princess. My role? It no longer existed.

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I painted this a few years ago. I called it The Little Red Boat.

Look at her. Tiny. Alone in all that cold, vast water. Mountains looming. The light barely there.

But she’s still tethered.

That’s what I didn’t understand at six years old — that even when you feel completely adrift, something is still holding you. To yourself. To the life that’s waiting. To whatever you want to call the force that keeps a small boat from disappearing into open water.

I didn’t know that then. What I knew was how to disappear.

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So I did what dethroned little girls do. I faded into the shadows. I learned that staying small, staying quiet, staying out of the way was the safest way to survive.

But even in the darkest corners, something keeps you tethered to yourself if you let it.

For me, it was crayons.

While the world revolved around the new baby, I was holed up in my closet with a coloring book, pouring every ounce of myself into those pages. In that tiny space I felt safe. I had control. I existed.

Looking back, that closet was my first studio. Art didn’t save me because I had big dreams or grand ambitions. It saved me because it was the only place I could breathe.

That is the thing about survival. We don’t always choose how we hold on.

We just hold on.

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Now let me ask you something.

Have you ever been knocked off your throne? Maybe not the way I was — but in your own way. A marriage that ended. A career that evaporated. Children who grew up and left. A slow, quiet erasure that happened so gradually you didn’t notice until one morning you looked in the mirror and couldn’t quite find yourself.

Here’s what I know now that I didn’t know at six:

You were never really dethroned.

You just got lost in open water for a while.

And like that little red boat — you are still tethered. To yourself. To the woman you were before the world started telling you who to be. To something that has been holding you this entire time, even when you couldn’t feel it.

The way back doesn’t have to be dramatic.

Sometimes it starts with a box of crayons.

Sometimes it starts with a painting.

Sometimes it starts with reading somethingthat makes you feel, for the first time in a long time, like someone sees you.

I see you.

And I’m glad you’re still here.

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