“God created war so that Americans would learn geography.” ~ Mark Twain
Author’s Note: Thanks to a local art collective (formerly known as Volume, now S.P.A.C.E.), I have had 3 photos, 2 poems, a 2-D collage & a 3-D collage displayed in exhibitions at various art galleries around town. It has felt incredible to take my secondary medium (visual rather than writing) to new heights as I continue to evolve & grow as both artist & creative spirit…
I don’t worry what being anti-war will do to my career, because I’m a human being before I’m anything else. Being anti-war is as American to me as apple pie & baseball are supposed to be, even if most citizens of this country would disagree. What I mean is that being openly, oftentimes loudly, against war is the only way I’m able to label myself an “American” without losing my lunch to the nearest trash can. While some enjoy a sense of pride in saying where they come from, I feel profound shame… I believe many citizens do, at this point, if we have been paying attention to world news & our behavior on global stages. The United States is one of the biggest bullies of other countries that has ever existed, & our recent performance has been tantamount to a childish tantrum.
By declaring myself a pacifist, I’m establishing that I’m also against capitalism, imperialism, nationalism, & any other extremism for which war is waged... I’ve felt this way for so long that I can’t even remember when I started feeling this way, what my initial reasons for becoming one were, or why I felt the need to label myself. I called myself an environmentalist as early as age 9, when I first learned about endangered & extinct species—but, for most of my childhood, I felt humans were the problem & that only nature needed our protection. Yet, at some point in my adolescence, I began to understand that humanity was a part of nature & that some human populations were significantly more at risk than others… (Of course, I also learned how devastating war is to the planet!)
When I was an undergraduate, I came across a book by Vandana Shiva & was introduced to the term “ecofeminism” for the first time. (I later had the real pleasure of attending a lecture by her when I was a graduate student!) This helped me draw parallels between the way people—particularly women—are treated with the way our planet has been pillaged, plundered, & polluted over the course of centuries... War encourages this extraction mentality—which is deeply rooted in misogyny—that has plagued the West since Industrialization, & foolish empires have risen & fallen under the rule of leaders who would’ve conquered an entire continent if they could. When I was a graduate student, I discovered the teachings of Peace Pilgrim, & my perspective shifted yet again:
I finally came to understand that every single individual must make the effort to achieve inner peace for us to ever be able to achieve any lasting world peace. 🕊️
But this realization hit me like a ton of bricks because I realized the work that needed to be done was the same work I’d been avoiding… Working on myself.
That meant it didn’t matter how many meetings I organized in solidarity with others, how many protests I attended, or how many times I talked about the importance of peace… If I couldn’t create peace for myself or carry it around inside of me. At age 24, I saw the mountain I had to climb & it loomed before me, looking steeper than ever. I was a bundle of raw nerves who rarely felt a moment’s peace on a good day—so how was I going to ground myself enough to achieve something even remotely close to inner peace? I had spent so long looking outwards, focused on rearranging the furniture on the exterior, that the interior had been abandoned to my numerous anxieties, biggest doubts, & worse fears. In short, it was a mess. I was one of the messiest humans I knew.
That was the beginning of a full decade of therapy for me, which included a ton of trial & error with a dozen different counselors—half of whom told me there wasn’t anything they could do for me, & a handful who were overpriced hacks trying to sell me more talk therapy. Inner peace turned out to be even trickier to reach than I initially thought it would be… I tried everything from changes in diet to exercise, a fair amount of drugs & stints of sobriety, more than one religion & spirituality, health gurus, self-help books, pilgrim quests, psychic readings, & even more esoteric means. It was like an obsession… My search became increasingly desperate, until I spiralled & lost myself in it for a few years, then had to return to myself one painstakingly slow step at a time.
It wasn’t until I was in my mid-30’s & living overseas that I found a therapist I felt comfortable enough with to agree to try medication. I’d become fluent in a foreign language, which was the only way I could even talk to this therapist, & was diagnosed with the first (of six) conditions I was struggling with. A light flickered at the end of that long tunnel… It was dim, but it was getting slightly brighter. A few years later, I would add marijuana & daily meditations to the mix. My moments of peace began to expand into mornings, entire days, then several weeks of feeling peaceful. It has only been about five years so far, yet I reached several months of peacefulness recently… At age 40, I finally feel like I’ve become a stable enough person & partner to actually call myself at peace.
Last August, just two months short of my 40th birthday, I had another collage exhibited at a gallery here in town. This time, the work was a 3-D piece made with found objects & featuring two toy soldiers aiming their guns at flocks of golden butterflies united by a single thread that mimics the path of the bullet. I titled it “Don’t Shoot” & hoped it would present a straightforward message about my stance on weapons taking innocent lives. But what I didn’t include in my artist statement—displayed for the audience to read next to my work—was anything about what it took to get to this place inside of me… The place from which I can regard all life as valuable, yet not fall apart at the mere mention of violence. It is a place from which I can create meaning with my entire being.
Though it is not a permanent state of being, like I initially believed, mindfulness flickers in & out of my mind as minute observations or little moments of zen. 🧘♀️
I’m still learning to resist the temptation to capture these moments in a haiku or by reaching for my camera… Learning to simply enjoy them quietly instead.
If I made it this far, it is thanks to poetry, even though I already know writing poems is going to be a more modest part of the process going forward. If you made it this far, it is doubtless thanks to some kind of art or creative practice into which you’ve woven ancestral memory & channeled generations of woe… We carry the trauma of our forebearers, after all, so the grief must either be expressed or expunged in some form. I’m grateful to my friends, particularly those willing to do the difficult soul-work alongside me: The wild women who “sing over the bones,” as Mexican-American writer (& Jungian psychoanalyst!) Clarissa Pinkola Estés calls it, or who plant seeds the way we’re encouraged to by Robin Wall Kimmerer & our other indigenous leaders. The time is now.
~ Read more about this particular show in the June 2026 issue of Polk Arts! ~
{ Pt. 2 of this essay will feature better photographs of the artwork in question }
The Big Bang
Author’s Note: One of my mixed media collages was recently accepted for an art exhibition featuring local artists & organized by a new collective comprised of some of those artists… The name of this collective (which we call S.P.A.C.E.) stands for Sanctuary for Polk’s Arts, Culture, & Education
Wonderful to hear about your journey, Cecilia, and you've shouted out many of the touchstones on my own path - ecofeminism! inner peace! therapy! Estes & Kimmerer! yes, yes, yes!