Finding My Way Back to Painting

A while back, I told my mother that I’d started painting again after many years away from it, and she said, “You’ve loved painting since you were one year old.”

One year old.

Those words echoed in my mind for a long time.

How had I lost something that had been part of me for my entire life?

I thought about that little girl who painted simply because she loved to paint. She didn’t wonder if she was good enough. She wasn’t thinking about whether anyone would buy what she made. She certainly wasn’t wondering if painting was a productive use of her time.

She just painted.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped.

Not because I stopped loving it, but because life got louder.

And little by little, the things I loved became things I didn’t have time for.

I don’t think I’m alone in that.

Maybe you loved to dance. Or write stories. Or play music. Maybe you used to take photographs, make things with your hands, spend hours in the garden or lose entire afternoons drawing.

Then life happened.

Work. Responsibilities. Family. Bills. Expectations.

But every now and then, something reminds you that it’s still there.

Because maybe the things we love don’t disappear when we stop making time for them.

Maybe they’re still there. Waiting quietly beneath everything we’ve built our adult lives around.

That’s what painting has felt like for me.

Not like discovering something new, but like remembering something I already knew.

There’s something almost strange about returning to a creative practice after so many years. I don’t feel like I’m starting from the beginning. It feels more like I’m picking up a conversation that was paused a very long time ago.

And I’m trying not to turn it into another thing I need to be good at.

I don’t need to become the best painter.

I don’t need to justify the hours I spend doing it.

I don’t even need to know where it will lead.

I just know that something in me feels more alive when I’m making.

Maybe that’s what I’ve been missing.

Not a new hobby. Not another goal.

Just a part of myself I had forgotten to make room for.

My mother reminded me that I’ve loved painting since I was one.

Maybe some parts of us don’t need to be rediscovered.

Maybe they just need to be remembered.

And maybe the things that have always lit us up are still quietly waiting for us to come back to them.

Even after all this time.