EXIST Print (12x12")

Illustration by Lor Begent
Archival ink on on archival paper (choices pictured)
12x12 inches with border options

There’s a grief that comes with transformation - especially the kind you didn’t choose. Chronic illness, disability, trauma - they remake you whether you’re ready or not. The person you were dissolves, and something new has to emerge.

This illustration holds both truths: the loss is real, and so is what comes after.
A figure covers their face in a gesture that’s both protection and surrender. Turquoise tears fall like something precious - because maybe they are. The red background pulses with intensity, with the heat of change, with the energy it takes to become someone new.

The declaration isn’t defeat. It’s acknowledgment. The person I was no longer exists - and I’m still here. Different, rebuilding, learning to inhabit this new version of myself.
For anyone in the middle of unwanted transformation who needs to see that grief and hope can coexist.

Art by Lor Begent, a disabled chronically ill artist creating from Salt Lake City.