I Deserve My Flowers

Series: Beauty Beneath the Chaos
Medium: Mixed media and oil on canvas
Dimensions: 48 × 48 inches

I Deserve My Flowers began nearly a year before it was finished, under a different name: Blue Stain on My Mind.

The title came from a song Everflow had written years earlier about loss—the kind of loneliness that stains perception until everything seems blue, gray, and heavy. That was where the painting began: a mind colored by sadness, a heart reaching outward, waiting to be seen, held, and chosen.

And then, slowly, the painting began to change.

Over the course of a year, it evolved alongside the artist. What began as an expression of loneliness became a form of therapy. New colors appeared. Layers accumulated. The blue was never erased; it became part of what came next.

And then came the flowers.

One flower. Then another. Then a garden.

With them came a realization: I cannot wait for someone else to cultivate my garden.

Whether alone or beside another, the inner garden must first be tended from within. Before asking someone else to recognize the flowers, we must learn to see them ourselves. Before waiting for someone to bring beauty into our lives, we must become willing to cultivate it.

The flowers represent that return to self—healing, resilience, joy, and the recognition of one's own worth. Beneath them remain the earlier layers: the grief, the solitude, the blue stain. Nothing was wasted. It all became part of the soil.

A year later, what began in sadness stands in bloom.

I Deserve My Flowers is not simply about healing. It is about learning that the love, beauty, and acknowledgment we spend so much of our lives seeking outside ourselves must also be cultivated within.

Not given.
Not granted.
Cultivated.
Claimed.

I deserve my flowers.

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