"Know Thyself" —

This is not one woman. It is one woman remembering she is two.

This emotional work was a commission from a film student for her final year short film — a story about a refugee woman who holds an exhibition about her life's journey. She allowed me to keep the original after filming, and its truth has stayed with me.

On the left, you see her in her human form: a woman in a dark headscarf, holding herself. One self is collapsed, eyes closed, hand in her hair, in anguish — the self that has endured displacement, loss, the breaking.

The other self holds her, upright, eyes open and steady, looking directly out at us — the witness, the survivor, the soul who has not forgotten. To the right is what she is holding against: a textured, scarred world — a ghostly face, hands that drip blood-red paint like wounds that won't close, like a border crossed at night. It is chaos, violence, history.

But look at the bottom of the painting. From that dark, cracked ground, something impossible grows: delicate green vines and three vivid red poppies — symbols of remembrance, of blood that becomes bloom, of life that insists. The relationship is the whole story.

The outer world tries to tell her she is broken, weaker than she is. The inner world says, Know thyself. Hold your own grief. You are both the one who cries and the one strong enough to carry her. A painting about the forgotten strength inside every woman who has had to start her life over.