This imagery is an imagined cellular landscape of my cervix, its opening, and surroundings – the site of near constant entry points for probes, examinations, and exploratory surgery -- while awaiting the results of uterine cancer testing. To relieve stress I imagined my cervix bathed in rings of healing yellow light, golden medicinal salve, and cleansing water all encircled by borders of scar tissue and tough, multiple membranes. I imagined it as a portal to the void, with no beginning and no ending, but just an empty cancer-free space.

This art is about the joy and pain of navigating my menstruation for the last forty years. It is also about honoring the end of my "flow" in its various iterations. Though our menstrual periods are an immensely integral, sacred part of our lives -- eliciting a monthly myriad of private emotions, thoughts, and actions -- politics, commercialism, advertising, religious attitudes, and the medical community have all weighed in heavily dictating what is proper, normal, and acceptable about our “monthly cycles.” While these public forces have gained momentum in our culture-at-large, "Flow" recognizes all the women who privately and courageously assimilate with their own bodies month after month, year after year, and seeks to uplift those who struggle with any multitude of uterine battles.