Meet Mochi
I have to be honest with you. The weeks leading up to May were some of the hardest I have experienced in a while. I lost my two dogs, my best friends, my beautiful boys, of 12.5 years. I’ve been with them since they were three days old. There are no words, for what it feels like to lose my best friends who have been by my side for that long. They were not just pets. They were my comfort, my home, my everything.
Grief has a way of taking your creativity with it. For weeks I could not make anything. I could not sit at my desk and feel inspired. Everything felt heavy and far away.
Then on April 1st something shifted. I picked up my pen and started drawing on the cover page of my writing journal. I am not sure what made me do it that day. Maybe I was just tired of waiting to feel ready. Maybe something in me knew it was time.
A little panda appeared on the page. Round and soft and smiling, sitting in a wildflower meadow with butterflies all around him. Unbothered and at peace. Completely okay with just existing where he is.
I was so inspired I put down my writing journal and grabbed my sketchbook. That little panda became Mochi, my inspiration for May.
This is the first Touch Grass Mail Club edition where the art print is not a photograph. It is my own original mixed media painting. That terrified me more than I want to admit. Sharing original art feels vulnerable in a completely different way than sharing a photograph does. But Mochi kept looking up at me from the page with that little smile and I decided if he could sit unbothered in a field of wildflowers I could be brave enough to share him with you.
May’s theme is transformation, the quiet kind. The kind that happens when you stop rushing yourself and finally let things bloom in their own time.
I have been doing a lot of healing this season through reflexology and sound frequencies. Transformation doesn’t announce itself. It just happens slowly and then all at once, like wildflowers pushing through the ground in spring.
Mochi is my reminder of that.
To my two boys, Loki and Rocco, thank you for 12.5 years of being my whole heart I will never forget you.
Whatever you are becoming right now, give it space. Give it time. You are allowed to just sit in the meadow for a while and breathe.
Touch grass and hug a tree,
Ashley 🖤