There’s something so special about female gatherings.
Not because our lives are easy, but because of how we laugh through the heavy. The kind of laughter that catches you off guard — the “I just peed a little” kind after a fall or a sneeze, the stories about kids finding scissors and fully committing to their new career as a hairstylist (for themselves… and the dog), the shared “holy crap, what is this life?” moments that somehow become the funniest part of the night.
And then you look around the table.
At the laughter. The support. The way no one has to explain themselves, yet everyone understands.
That feeling — of not being alone in the chaos, the heaviness, and the beauty of it all — stayed with me.
It became the starting point for With You.
Because this piece was never really about two cubs in a tree. It was about connection. About what it looks like to move through something hard and still find moments of humour. To still feel supported. To still reach higher, simply because someone is beside you.
And knowing that… I did something I almost never do.
I started with the hardest part first.
The landscape.
I always want to jump straight into the animals — the expression, the life — it’s what pulls me in every time. But I’ve learned that when I avoid the difficult parts at the beginning, they don’t disappear. They follow me. They sit underneath everything, making the whole piece feel heavier than it needs to be.
So I stayed with it.
Layer by layer, building the bark, letting it feel messy and unfinished longer than I wanted to. Letting patience take over instead of rushing to the “good part.” And slowly, something shifted. The tree started to feel real enough to understand the roughness of the bark, the grips they need to climb, and the strength to hold what was coming next.
Then I moved onto the cubs.
And everything changed.
Because every single time I worked on the one whose face is being stepped on, I couldn’t help it — I smiled. Not just a small smile, but that full, uncontrollable, cheeks-hurting kind of grin.
That moment — that tiny, almost-miss-it detail — became just as important as the entire piece.
Because it holds so much truth.
Even when things feel hard, we hold strong and help hold up others. And when we’re the ones who slip, the right people are already there — steadying us, lifting us, reminding us we’re not doing this alone.
That’s what this piece holds.
The kind of connection that carries you through.
The kind that makes the weight of life feel just a little bit lighter.
The piece became something I could get lost in. The detail deepened in a way that felt almost meditative — each mark building on the last, each layer adding to the story.
It’s not fast work — with approximately 200,000 pastel strokes — and honestly, it’s not meant to be.
It’s meant to be felt.
This isn’t about reaching the top. It’s about how we get there — together, unevenly, imperfectly, and often laughing right in the middle of it all.
Reference photo provided by Donna Feledichuck.