I’ve been gone for a long time, and many of you have asked where I’ve been.

The truth is that life has been incredibly difficult.

Over the last several years, my family and I have endured ongoing bullying, harassment, and circumstances that left us feeling powerless and unheard. At the same time, my own health was steadily deteriorating. While desperately trying to find answers and obtain proper medical care, I found myself caught in a system that often seemed unwilling to listen.

What should have been straightforward became an exhausting battle.

Medical records disappeared. Questions went unanswered. Symptoms were dismissed. Instead of receiving the help I needed, I spent years fighting to be heard while becoming increasingly ill.

There were many days when I simply didn’t have the energy to write, create, or even explain what was happening. Survival became my full-time job.

I am still dealing with the consequences of those experiences today.

For a long time, I wasn’t sure how to talk about any of it. Trauma has a way of silencing you. It can make you question your own reality, your own voice, and your own strength.

But I am an artist.

Artists process the world differently. We take pain, joy, confusion, beauty, and loss and transform them into something visible.

That is what I intend to do now.

I will be returning to this blog and sharing a new series of paintings born from these experiences. The work will explore trauma, resilience, survival, truth, loss, healing, and what happens when a person is pushed far beyond their limits and somehow continues forward.

Some paintings may be symbolic. Some may be deeply personal. Others may tell stories that words cannot.

I will also be writing about the process here—the memories, the challenges, the discoveries, and the lessons that emerge as I work through it all.

This won’t always be an easy journey to share, but it is an honest one.

To those of you who have stayed connected through my absence, thank you. Your support means more than you know.

I’m still here.

The road back has been longer and harder than I ever imagined, but I’m picking up my brushes again, finding my voice again, and beginning the work of turning these experiences into art.

I hope you’ll join me.

— Marelle Couture