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Embracing my memories
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All my former Lives
some ideas stay with me for years before they become a painting.
this was one of them.
i’ve always had this strange feeling that none of my past selves ever truly disappeared. they don’t feel like distant memories to me. they still exist somewhere inside me, quietly becoming part of who i am today.
sometimes all it takes is something small.
a song i haven’t heard in years. a familiar smell. walking through a place i haven’t visited in a long time.
for a brief moment, it almost feels like time travel.
not because i’m remembering who i was, but because i become that person again. i can suddenly feel exactly how i thought back then, what mattered to me, what hurt, what made me hopeful. it’s as if that version of myself had been waiting there the whole time.
all my former lives
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all my former lives
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i’ve experienced this many times throughout my life, but recently it happened again after hearing an old song that someone once wrote for me. within seconds i wasn’t simply remembering that chapter of my life. i was standing inside it again. it reminded me that even though i’ve changed enormously since then, that younger version of me never actually disappeared.
she simply became part of everything that came after.
that’s what this design is about.
the blurred figures represent those overlapping versions of ourselves. not ghosts, and not strangers, but people we once were, still quietly living somewhere beneath the surface.
i think that’s also why letting go can feel so complicated. we don’t only say goodbye to places or relationships. we say goodbye to versions of ourselves. and even years later, those people can still reach us.
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all my former lives
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a sensory trigger can briefly collapse time.
maybe that’s also why i believe we never stop loving completely. even if life moves on, the version of us that once loved someone still exists somewhere within us. that love belongs to that chapter, and that chapter remains part of who we are.
this piece is my way of honouring those former lives.
not because i want to return to them. but because without them, i wouldn’t be here.
all my former lives
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